Ok, prepare yourself; this is a heart-wrenching read. Not this review (hopefully!) but this book: Alice & Oliver by Charles Bock. I must have been feeling particularly masochistic when I read the blurb in the publisher’s catalogue and requested it anyway. Alice and Oliver are happily in love and overjoyed at their new baby daughter…
Based on the cartoon-like cover, and the back cover stating “2019’s most uplifting read”, one would expect Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam to be a certain type of book; one that features a helpless and bumbling protagonist that falls apart at the beginning then eventually comes to see the error of his…
There’s a wealth of positive things that have come from the #metoo movement, one of them being a vast improvement in women’s contemporary fiction, aka ‘chick lit’. Do This For Me by Eliza Kennedy features wealthy attractive people struggling with domestic issues, but instead of glossing over the major issues that face women in today’s…
The Amateurs by Liz Harmer is hard to slot into one category; it’s literary, philosophical, dystopian and science fiction, all within 300-ish pages. Even the publishers had to use other books like The Leftovers by Tom Perotta, The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, and The Circle by Dave Eggers to describe what this…
I didn’t realize this until half way through, but this is the second book I’ve read by Diane Setterfield. The first book I’ve read of hers is called Bellman & Black, which I read back in 2014 but didn’t write a review for (according to my 2014 list). Anyway, I don’t remember much about that…
I remember reading the blurb for this book two years ago and thinking how relevant it was for that time. Now as 2018 has just wrapped up, it’s sadly even more relevant today. What I didn’t realize back then was that this book is a sequel to Stone’s first, titled The Iguana Tree. I’m sure…
Sheila Heti’s older book How Should a Person Be? seems a more apt title for her most recent work Motherhood because it’s basically just a woman debating how she should live her life. This is the first book by her that I’ve ever read, so perhaps this is how most of her writing comes across,…
YA (Young Adult) isn’t a genre I read often because…I’m not a young adult. And, I don’t have children who are anywhere near that age group yet (whew!). But, when Christmas time rolls around, I have to read a wide range of books I normally wouldn’t because I do lots of ‘books for everyone on…
For those of you who have read Ami McKay’s first book in this series of sorts, The Witches of New York, you will have undoubtedly devoured her latest, Half Spent Was the Night, which is billed as its sequel. Despite it being so short it packs in quite a bit, furthering the stories of our…
Obviously I had a tough time naming this review, because although this book is technically A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, the book is part of the Puffin Plated series, which incorporates classic stories with modern-day recipes from famous chefs. If you find something like this too commercial or sacrilegious, you might as well stop…
So of course I’m going to post a review of a kids Christmas book before December 25-how could I not? Books are probably the one thing I never hesitate to give my kids. Confession: I love buying toys. I absolutely adore visiting Toys R Us and any other toy store, but I prevent myself from…
The big day is finally here! Halloween; the perfect time to scare yourself silly with a spooky book in one hand and a delicious chocolate bar (or ten) in the other. I indulged in some dark chocolate to accompany my foray into the dark arts with Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker. Yes-that Stoker!…
