As a mother of two young children, I was hesitant to pick up a book about a mother of two young children. Especially when this book is also about an intruder who breaks into the house while the mother is at home with her kids, and her husband is away on business. Have I mentioned…
Ah yes, here we are with another domestic thriller. There seems to be a rash of books about naughty-nannies lately, yet this trend keeps going strong because it’s ripe for creativity. The figure of the nanny is an easy one to exploit in fiction because it’s essentially a stranger who enters the heart of a…
I’m a big fan of Drew Hayden Taylor‘s writing. His words are funny, empathetic, and entertaining all at the same time. Every book of his I read, I’m more hopeful that Canada’s indigenous population, colonizers and immigrants will one day live in harmony, a mutually beneficial arrangement where everyone is legitimately taken care of (getting…
What’s better than reading a book that takes place at a Christmas party in front of your very own Christmas tree? How about if that book contains a devious murder plot too? Reading a holiday book during the holidays certainly ratchets up the tension and the dark pleasure of a good winter read, which is…
Did you watch the Giller awards on Monday night? I was glued to the television screen, strangely nervous to see who the winner of Canada’s biggest book prize would be. As you no doubt realized already, Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin did not win, but I really enjoyed it, despite my negative comments at the…
Let me set the scene for you: two kids live in an extremely isolated cove, their parents die, and they are forced to harvest and catch their own food as a means of survival. That’s it. That’s the book. And in the words of the author-who would want to read about that? I would actually,…
Long title, long book. Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles may scare off people for a few different reasons, one of them being the warning issued at the beginning: “This might hurt a little. Be brave.” But those who are brave will be rewarded. I won’t say I…
Reproduction by Ian Williams, winner of the 2019 Giller Prize is a quirky read. Aside from this book being PAINFULLY LONG, I enjoyed it. It plays with lots of things: format, timelines, even phrasing. That being said, I’m a reader who doesn’t like freaky-deaky experimentation in my books, but I still found this story readable….
Are you a fan of ‘noir fiction’ ? Do you even know what ‘noir’ means? There are various definitions for it, but I found this wikipedia listing pretty thorough, and the first sentence does enough for my purposes here: “In its modern form, noir has come to denote a marked darkness in theme and subject…
There’s always a few jobs out there that one knows for certain they could never handle. Personally, I could never be a teacher because I can barely manage my own two children and I find all their questions annoying (sorry not sorry). But for some reason the monumental task of being an emergency services responder…
I wasn’t really planning on reading The Testaments by Margaret Atwood for a few reasons; it had been ages since I’d read The Handmaid’s Tale, I hadn’t seen the television adaptation of it, and I figured everyone else would be reading this book, so why should I? But then, I was offered the opportunity to…
Bafflingly, Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams has been called “A black Bridget Jones” by Kirkus Reviews, which in my mind, does a huge disservice to this taut, intelligent and dark read. Although the protagonist is searching for Mr. Right, men are clearly not the solution to any of her problems, in fact, the author uses her…
