Shortly after we meet Madeline it becomes clear that she is dead and that I Liked My Life is going to be one of those books about a dead person hovering over the lives of the people they left behind. The good news is that this is not a bad thing. She doesn’t write the novel with much spiritual angst on Maddy’s part—either as to where she is now or why she’s there. ... Read More...
Idaho: A Novel by Emily Ruskovich
When a mother brutally murders one of her young children in the first quarter of a novel there is an expectation that the motivation behind the act will be a theme or, maybe, her backstory and how it led to such an act, but in Emily Ruskovich’s debut, Idaho, neither happens. I picked up, put down and tried to re-engage this novel multiple times in the course of several ... Read More...
The Second Mrs Hockaday
Placidia is seventeen when she meets Major Hockaday and when he proposes that very same day she says yes. That he is a widower and has a small son makes little difference to her. It’s 1865 and given the war there’s no point in waiting for a proper courtship and wedding. In fact, the very next day they set off for the Hockaday’s home. From there, Susan Rivers’s novel The ... Read More...
High School Trauma and Drama: Mini-Reviews
There are few people who look back on high school as the best years of their life and, quite frankly, I don’t trust them. These two novels encapsulate what may or may not be the truth of high school life in America today. Is it accurate? Dear God, I hope not, but I’m so far removed from that time that all I can do is share my thoughts on them as novels. Mostly, they made me ... Read More...
The Ornatrix: A Novel
Those of us in the contemporary world often believe that our problems are new to civilization and have never been experienced before, but Kate Howard shatters that belief in her debut novel The Ornatrix. She takes three women and seals their fate to their faces in this gothic tale of beauty set in Italy in the 16th century. Flavia is a country girl whose face is half ... Read More...
The Mothers: A Novel
Upper Room Chapel is a church that is at the center of a Southern California black community in Brit Bennett’s debut novel, The Mothers. In the last year, it is where Nadia Turner’s mother was last seen alive before she killed herself, where her father, Robert goes every day to volunteer his truck in an effort to assuage his grief and where her friend Aubrey appeared, crying ... Read More...
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