'Icarus' by K. Ancrum

Icarus

Author: K. Ancrum

Rating: B

Vibe: A tender, atmospheric YA novel about a touch-starved art thief and the boy he can't stay away from—well-written and emotionally smart, even if the Greek myth that gives the book its name never quite earns its weight.

Icarus Gallagher is seventeen, a senior in high school, and a thief. By day he keeps his head down and lets nobody in. By night, under the direction of his cold and controlling father Angus, he breaks into one specific mansion—belonging to the wealthy Mr. Black—and replaces priceless artworks with his father's flawless forgeries, all part of a long-running revenge campaign for what Mr. Black did to Icarus's mother. Then one night Icarus gets caught—not by Mr. Black, but by his son Helios, a beautiful redhead under house arrest with an ankle monitor and a story of his own. Helios doesn't turn him in. He bargains for something more dangerous: a friendship.

This is a YA novel, and it's worth saying up front, because expectations matter. K. Ancrum is writing for teens: short chapters (sometimes a single page), sparse and lyrical prose, emotional beats that hit hard but lean. One quick note before I get into it—skip the audiobook on this one. The chapters are so brief and the scenes shift so often that the format that feels dreamy and propulsive on the page becomes choppy and disorienting when you're listening. This is a book to read.

What works best is the writing. Ancrum's sentences are clean, the chapters move fast, and there's a dreamy quality that suits the heightened emotional reality of being seventeen. Icarus himself is a quietly devastating creation—a boy raised to be untouchable in every sense, who has built a life of carefully spaced-out acquaintances because his father won't permit anything closer. There's a specific ache to a queer kid who's trained himself out of wanting closeness, and Ancrum gets it. When Helios asks for friendship, what's at stake isn't the heist; it's whether Icarus can let himself be a person.

The supporting cast is also a real strength. Icarus has a small constellation of "acquaintances" at school who, despite his careful distance, refuse to let him be alone. They notice him. They feed him. They defend him. The found family in this book is rendered with such warmth that it nearly steals the romance plot, and that's a compliment. For queer kids—and queer adults remembering being queer kids—the people who quietly love you when your home doesn't is the whole story.

Helios is more of a mixed bag. As a romantic lead he's deliberately ethereal—half real boy, half symbol—and your mileage will vary on whether he reads as luminous or a touch fanfic-coded. The chemistry is there, the longing is real, but some of the dialogue swings poetic in ways two actual teenagers wouldn't.

But here's what really left me wanting more: the mythology. It's called Icarus. And yet the mythological scaffolding is held at arm's length—Ancrum even gives Icarus a moment where he denies his name has anything to do with the Greek myth and explains he's named after a fern. Clever in theory, but in practice it lets the book off the hook from wrestling with its source material. The Daedalus-Angus parallel is gestured at without being dug into. The "flying too close to the sun" metaphor is left implicit when it could have been load-bearing. For a novel this lyrical, the decision to underplay the myth feels like a missed opportunity.

A solid B. Icarus is good YA—lyrical, queer, emotionally smart, and full of characters worth caring about. (Fair warning: it deals with psychological abuse and neglect from Icarus's father.) If you want a tender story about a boy learning to let himself be touched, this delivers. If you came for a deep mythological reimagining, you may find yourself wishing Ancrum had flown a little closer to the sun.