Reviews

Review: All the Bumpy Pebbles by Tamara Cherry

Synopsis: When it comes to bad days, Roxanne Brown has had more than most. Her mom’s a drunk. Her dad’s not around. And the haircut she got before her first day of high school was a total disaster. Soon, a seemingly serendipitous encounter gives her a reason to celebrate. He’s cute and confident and best… Continue reading Review: All the Bumpy Pebbles by Tamara Cherry

bipoc authors, Reviews

Review: The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Synopsis: In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a… Continue reading Review: The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

indigenous authors, Reviews

Review: nîtisânak by Lindsay Nixon

Synopsis: How do you honour blood and chosen kin with equal care? A groundbreaking memoir spanning nations, prairie punk scenes, and queer love stories, Lindsay Nixon’s nîtisânak is woven around grief over the loss of their mother. It also explores despair and healing through community and family, and being torn apart by the same. Using… Continue reading Review: nîtisânak by Lindsay Nixon

indigenous authors, Reviews

Review: A Mind Spread Out On The Ground by Alicia Elliott

Synopsis: In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight into the ongoing legacy of colonialism. She engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love,… Continue reading Review: A Mind Spread Out On The Ground by Alicia Elliott

Reviews

Review: The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Synopsis: Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin… Continue reading Review: The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Black authors, Reviews

Review: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Synopsis: Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled… Continue reading Review: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Reviews

Review: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Synopsis: Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration… Continue reading Review: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Reviews

Review: The Story of Jane by Laura Kaplan

Synopsis: "In the four years before the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, most women determined to get abortions had to subject themselves to the power of illegal, unregulated abortionists...But a Chicago woman who happened to stumble across a secret organization code-named 'Jane' had an alternative. Laura Kaplan, who joined Jane in 1971, has… Continue reading Review: The Story of Jane by Laura Kaplan

Re-reads, Reviews

Review: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Synopsis: In the final days of December 2004, in a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides in the woods when her father is abducted by Russian forces. Fearing for her life, she flees with their neighbor Akhmed—a failed physician—to the bombed-out hospital, where Sonja, the one remaining doctor, treats a steady stream of… Continue reading Review: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Reviews

Review: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Synopsis: Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold… Continue reading Review: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Reviews

Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

Synopsis: This is the story of a woman's struggle for independence. Helen "Graham" has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was gifted to me by my best friend,… Continue reading Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

Reviews

Review: Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Synopsis: Augustine, a brilliant, aging astronomer, is consumed by the stars. For years he has lived in remote outposts, studying the sky for evidence of how the universe began. At his latest posting, in a research center in the Arctic, news of a catastrophic event arrives. The scientists are forced to evacuate, but Augustine stubbornly… Continue reading Review: Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton