Book Review: Letters of Note: Grief by Shaun Usher

By Evan J

Grief is a collection of letters compiled by Shaun Usher. The book belongs to the Letters of Note series, a collection of small books of collected letters, compiled by Shaun Usher about topics such as war, mothers, cats, and more.

Each letter in Grief was written by a person of historic importance, such as Audre Lorde, Kahlil Gibran, Helen Keller, Virginia Woolf, Albert Einstein, and Abraham Lincoln. The letters are predominantly addressed to a friend or family member of the famous figure, often about the recent loss of a mutual acquaintance. And as expected, the variation of content, of distress, and of tact is remarkable. Many letters speak to spirituality and the brevity of the spirit’s time in the body, such as Benjamin Franklin’s letter “A Man Is Not Completely Born Until He Be Dead.” While other letters, such as the letter written by Eung-Tae Lee—written around 1586 and discovered on her husband’s tomb during an archeological excavation in South Korea in 1998—are burdened by that denial stage of grief, the widow pleading for her husband to visit her in a dream and offer guidance on how to live without him.

So what is this book for?

Grief can cause life to feel like treading water in an ocean. Every second, you’re just trying to stay afloat. And it is the ocean, so it is polluted with scraps of garbage floating by every so often, but there is rarely anything of use, rarely anything to help you stay afloat. Every so often, you pass by a giant ship, something named The Brothers Karamazov, or Hamlet, but the ship is so large, the walls of the hull so tall that, in your tired state, it’d be impossible to climb aboard, so you don’t even try. All you’re really looking for is something small and easy to grasp—a lifebuoy ring, maybe even an inflatable dingy, something you can tip yourself into without a struggle. Something to give you a break from the sharks nipping at your toes. And this book, Grief, that’s what it is: a raft, something to help a grieving person, to help someone treading water. The book is not meant to be a rescue, but it can be a little bit of assistance; a little floatation device helping a person out of the ocean of grief.

So what should you do with this book?

You offer it to someone who has recently experienced a loss. But first, you read the book yourself. You earmark the pages you think that a grieving person might benefit from reading. You annotate the pages with your own comments. You make the book one part historical and one part personal. So that when the book reaches the grieving hands, that person knows that you’re not just handing them a book of letters, you’re offering to hold their hand and read along with them.

Thank you, Penguin Random House Canada, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Perfumist of Paris by Alka Joshi

By Christina McLaurine

The final book of Alka Joshi’s Jaipur Trilogy, The Perfumist of Paris is a story of scent, memories, and secrets. In this novel, the reader follows Radha in 1974, and the spirited teenager we meet in The Henna Artist, has blossomed into a bright and vibrant woman. Living in Paris, Radha is trying to balance being a wife, and mother and her budding career as a lab assistant at a perfume house. In search of inspiration and materials for her first solo project, her first business trip takes her back home to India. While there, she learns that Nikki, the child she gave up at the age of thirteen, is on his way to Paris to find her. The secrets of Radha’s past are catching up to her and as they do, they threaten the stability of the family she’s created and the future she’s been working towards.

Nothing pulls a memory from the recesses of the mind like scents. They transport us back in time as they unlock memories of parents, lovers, heartbreak, and delight. Some readers might find Joshi’s descriptions of perfume synthesis and scent production uninteresting but they paint a vivid picture of the detail and refinement the process entails. The way Joshi uses scent to coax out memories from the characters’ past is sure to have readers reminiscing about the scents of their lives.

Unlike the first two books in the series, The Perfumist of Paris doesn’t alternate points of view. All four parts of the novel are told solely from Radah’s point of view. The first half of the book is slower paced as it’s more character-driven. The second half of the novel is plot-driven and as such is faster paced. The Perfumist of Paris is a wonderful finale to this exciting trilogy. Readers are reacquainted with characters from the first novel and left satiated as the loose ends are tied up and there are no questions left unanswered. Turning the last page of this book will have readers wanting to return to The Henna Artist to restart their journey with these enchanting characters.

Thank you, HarperCollins, for a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner

By Christine McFaul

The Summer Place is a humorous and heartfelt novel by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner (see also In Her Shoes and That Summer).

When Ruby announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser works hard to bite her tongue. A feat which proves especially difficult when she learns that Ruby has already set a date and Sarah’s mother Veronica has volunteered to host the wedding at the family’s old beach house in Cape Cod. Sarah is certain that at 22 years old and with only three months to go before the big day, Ruby is rushing headlong into a huge mistake. She also knows that there is no stopping her headstrong stepdaughter once she sets her mind on achieving something.

But life, family, and decisions are never as cut and dry as they seem.

Case in point: Ruby isn't as sure about her decision to get married as she might appear. Accustomed to always knowing exactly what she wants, Ruby struggles to acknowledge that maybe this time she’s got it wrong. Veronica, however, is thrilled at the opportunity to gather her wayward family together at the old beach house.  Especially since, unbeknownst to her children, it is set to go on the market as soon as the wedding is over.

As the days tick by, even level-headed Sarah begins to question herself. Increasingly frustrated with her husband who has been mentally checked out of their relationship for months, Sarah contemplates the various futures she might have had if she hadn’t been so afraid to take a risk. But what starts as “what could have been” quickly becomes “what could still be” when someone from Sarah's past suddenly reappears in her life.

With the date of Ruby's wedding fast approaching, the exposure of old secrets, hopes, and hidden dreams will test the connections, bonds, and love that tie Sarah’s family together. But if there’s one place that can withstand a storm, it’s the old family beach house.

The Summer Place unfolds at a leisurely pace and is told through multiple points of view—a favourite narrative style of mine when well executed, and it is very well executed here. Weiner artfully weaves together the inner thoughts and nuanced quirks of each of her characters, creating a warmth and familiarity that leaves the reader feeling like they have been enfolded within the circle of an old group of friends. And although some of the plot points fell a little flat, what did linger after the last page was turned were Weiner’s sharp observations and lush descriptions of childhood summers spent at a family beach house. Layering questions and assumptions around class and privilege alongside nostalgia, traditions, and the sheer beauty of the coast, Weiner crafts a bittersweet and beautifully turned ode to a Cape Cod summer.

At its heart, The Summer Place is a story about the shifting shapes of the secrets we keep, the ways in which we love, and the families we choose to form. With a vibe that invokes vibrant sunsets, firefly nights, and the sea-salt air of a coastal beach house, this book would be a solid contender for any upcoming summer reading lists.

Interesting to note, set in a post-pandemic world, Weiner approaches what is relatively new ground for fiction with a light touch and in the rearview mirror. This is the first fictional book I’ve read where Covid quarantine forms part of the character’s backstory.  Weiner chose observations and experiences that were well-suited both to the world her characters inhabit as well as to the genre itself.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Grievers by adrienne maree brown

By Lindsay Hobbs

Content warning: death, illness, hospitalization, racism

Grievers is a quiet story with deep, unsettling roots. It is at once an astute portrayal of grief and loss, an invitation to engage with ideas of death and renewal, and a love song to the Black communities of Detroit.

When we meet our protagonist Dune, she is struggling to heft her mother’s body, heavy in death, into their backyard. She has built a makeshift pyre and sits vigil over her mother’s cremation. Here begins the story, which then weaves back and forth in time, showing us in lovely and precise language all the details that have led up to this moment and then moving beyond. 

Dune’s mother Kama is patient zero of a sickness that will eventually be labelled Syndrome H-8. It hits people out of nowhere, stopping them abruptly in the middle of their lives, rendering them conscious but nonresponsive, with expressions that look like extreme grief on their faces. No one recovers from H-8.  

“There was a deeper stillness, a giving up way down in the nervous system. The look on the faces of the sick was usually somewhere between horror and immense longing, the way the word ‘why’ looks when something precious and irreplaceable dies.”

The city grapples with what is happening slowly and clumsily. In a scenario that will feel familiar to us, there are attempts at curfews, masking, social distancing, and enforcement by police. How H-8 is transmitted remains a mystery, and conspiracy theories vie with unsuccessful attempts at research. What is apparent to everyone is that H-8 strikes only Black people.

Dune’s story follows her through the stages of her grief, starting with acute inertia and despair, moving through her efforts to remain connected to her family members via the books and projects they left behind, and finally, on to her growing commitment to document the sick when she finds them in the streets and their abandoned houses. Her own survival is braided into these processes as she learns to follow the rhythms of the seasons, to forage and identify and preserve food, and to move through the empty streets with purpose. These every day and homey aspects of the novel are soothing to read, much as they must have been soothing to Dune to enact.

But as tempting as it is to stay cocooned inside, it is not truly an option. H-8 is steadily ravaging Dune’s city and community. Grief, it seems, is the key to this syndrome. Although there are no explicitly stated resolutions to the questions of what and why, in the novel, it seems clear that H-8 is a sort of manifestation of the injustice, and at times, the sorrow of being a Black American.

“‘Black people. H-8 takes Black people out of ourselves. To…grieve?’
They stood together, quiet, feeling the tender logic in the mystery. Of course Black people were dying of grief.”

Yes, there is a tender logic to this. Anyone who has been paying even the smallest amount of attention to the world can see that. With this novel, author adrienne maree brown, activist and writer-in-residence of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, takes the reader by the shoulders and gently shakes them. The victims of H-8 may not wake up, but we, the readers, still can.

Dune comes from a lineage of women and men in the social justice movement, and it is in this context that we see her home city of Detroit. Understanding the legacies of work that marginalized communities have always done is crucial to reading this story. Fighting oppression and dispossession is work layered with heartbreak, and within Kama, there had always been a necessary core of rage that Dune herself shied away from. Despite being raised in a socially conscious home, she spent a lifetime tucking herself away from her family’s passions. Dune’s grief is now complicated not only by regrets but also by a realization that with her mother gone, so too is a certain tether to life.

Left almost entirely alone in a city that is becoming more and more ghostly, Dune must figure out how to tether herself to life. Her project thus becomes the documentation of the sick and of their pain, and a dogged, steadfast commitment to others that doesn’t waver—even when that commitment means changing soiled adult diapers, cremating family in the backyard, or tucking loved ones who have been taken by H-8 into their beds so they will have some small comfort in their coming deaths. Dune opens herself fully to grief, and her strength grows daily. 

Grievers asks hard questions and doesn’t provide any pat answers. It invites us in to this discussion to reflect on how the past informs the present, how trauma can be witnessed and honoured, what can be done to address injustice in the face of such power imbalance, and under what circumstances life can re-emerge and possibly even thrive. It is not an easy read, but it is one that is worth every second.

Thank you to AK Press for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Wild Ones by Nafiza Azad

By Meghan Mazzaferro

Content warnings: sexual violence, misogyny, rape, sexual assault, suicide, child abuse, child trafficking, toxic relationships, death of a parent

The Wild Ones is a lyrical story following a group of girls who call themselves the Wild Ones. Many years ago, Paheli, the first Wild One, was betrayed by her mother.  After escaping the man she was sold to, she met a boy with stars in his eyes who tossed her a box of stars and disappeared. The stars give Paheli access to the Between and unlock a hidden world of magic layered over her own. Paheli uses the stars to help other girls like her, and together they use the Between to travel the world and work through their traumas. When the boy with stars in his eyes reappears, the Wild Ones will need to fight to protect his freedom and their own.

This book is beautifully written, with a lyrical voice and several different points of view. The majority of the chapters are told from the collective perspective of the Wild Ones. By using we instead of I or they, this book invites the reader to become one of the Wild Ones and speaks directly to the reader about the universal dangers girls and women face. There are also chapters from Paheli’s point of view that give us insight into the mind of the first Wild One, a girl who has tasked herself with protecting as many people as she can while struggling to let any of them close, as well as pages with poetry that capture the experiences of each of the Wild Ones.

The book deals with heavy subject matter and has a plot steeped with overcoming abuse and reclaiming your body and sense of self, as well as exploring class differences and the pressures from different cultures on girls.

It is also full of magic, beautiful descriptions of different cities around the world, and a sisterhood of girls who protect and provide for each other. The story moves slowly, but the lyrical and unique writing style is really beautiful and helped keep me engaged. I did find the magic system a bit confusing, and this was not a book I could read super quickly, but every time I picked it up, I connected with the story again and was very emotionally invested in the characters and their journey.

The relationship between Paheli and Taraana, the boy with stars in his eyes, is particularly compelling and complex. I also loved the relationships between the Wild Ones,  the ways they support each other, and the ways they connect with Taraana. The book doesn’t shy away from the traumas each of these girls has experienced, but it also puts power back in their hands and shows them embracing safety, comfort, and community as they walk together through cities they know and love, eat and laugh together, and keep each other safe when threats emerge.

The plot of the book is interesting but definitely takes a backseat to the atmosphere and character work that happens in this story. I did enjoy the plot, but the main reason I picked the book up every day was because of the characters and the writing style, which I found to be impactful.

If you’re a fan of lyrical and uniquely written, character-driven, feminist stories that examine trauma and are full of girls who embrace their wildness and are willing to fight for their freedom, I would suggest checking this one out. It’s slow, but very impactful and vastly different from anything else I’ve ever read.

Thank you, Simon and Schuster Canada, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer

By Kaylie Seed

Mikki Brammer’s debut novel, The Collected Regrets of Clover, follows thirty-six-year-old Clover Brooks, a death doula living in New York City. Clover has been surrounded by death her entire life and has found it rewarding to be with someone as their time ends. She has dedicated her life to ushering people peacefully through their end-of-life process, something that is incredibly unique, just like each person she interacts with. Clover spends so much time giving others a beautiful death that she has forgotten to give herself a beautiful life, so when the opportunity arises for her to go on an unexpected trip—hopefully to uncover a long-forgotten love story—Clover steps out of her comfort zone. And she just may end up finding some happiness for herself in the process.

When I started reading The Collected Regrets of Clover, I found myself very much drawn to Clover’s character. To me, Clover is autistic-coded because she possesses many traits similar to my own as an autistic person.* Whether or not this was Brammer’s intention, I strongly identify with Clover. Clover has a strong interest in death and the dying process: autistic people tend to have intense interests surrounding topics, to the point where that may become their life—like Clover becoming a death doula and surrounding herself with this interest. She is socially awkward: oftentimes autistic people are unaware of how their actions or words could affect others. Clover will sometimes speak her mind without really thinking about what it is she is wanting to express; I can relate to that! While Clover is an empathetic person, she can be unsure of her emotions and how to identify them, something I continue to struggle with and spend a lot of time focusing on. A misconception is that autistic people cannot love, show affection or empathy, or have meaningful relationships (both romantic and platonic). This is not true at all and Brammer shows all these wonderfully through Clover. Again, whether Brammer had the intention of creating an autistic-coded character, I very much saw myself in Clover’s words, actions, and behaviours; I do not see myself often in characters.

Brammer’s main topics in The Collected Regrets of Clover are death and the dying process, which are normally stigmatized and considered taboo in many places around the world. The research that Brammer has completed for this novel is evident throughout the book and is shown to the reader through Clover’s endless knowledge on the topic and through the schooling and training she went through to become a death doula. As someone who has a background in gerontology and who has studied palliative care and grief closely, it was very neat to see things that I learned shown through Clover. Brammer also focuses heavily on grief and reiterates to the reader how this process is not only unique to each person, but how it is not something that just goes away—we learn to have it living alongside us. I would recommend The Collected Regrets of Clover to anyone who is wanting to break the stigma surrounding death or who is looking for a unique read that might get you to think differently about death and the dying process. I highly suggest keeping this one on your radar when it hits shelves on May 9th!

*Many autistic people prefer identity-first language, including myself, which is why I used identity-first language throughout my review. Both identity-first language and person-first language are appropriate. Always check with an individual when you are unsure which to use.

Thank you, St. Martin’s Press, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The It Girl by Ruth Ware

By Carly Smith

Content warning: murder

Set in Oxford, UK, and alternating between the early 2010s and present day, The It Girl takes readers into the mind of Hannah Jones, a former college student who found her roommate April dead in their dorm room. Convicted of her murder was John Neville, who, in the present day timeline, recently died in prison. John, once a porter at the college, had rubbed Hannah the wrong way several times over the course of her freshman year at Oxford, and having watched him leave the stairwell of their dorm shortly before finding April lifeless, Hannah was certain he had committed the crime. After a nudge from a friend of a friend, Hannah starts to dig further into April’s death. With evidence missed during the trial, new clues come to her attention and she starts to second-guess herself. Did Neville really kill April, the smart, talented, beautiful, rich student whose life most people both revered and resented? After joining forces with someone equally as invested in April’s death, Hannah sets out to unveil the truth.

Ware does a spectacular job of building the characters in the novel and consistently supports their respective demeanors and quirks through dialogue and narrative. Hannah is surrounded by a group of friends at college, each with their own personality. Hannah herself is somewhat naive, quite well studied, and very basic. April is outspoken, brazen, carefree, and clever. They are friends with Ryan, the funny one, Will, the hard-to-read one, Emily, the quick-witted one, and Hugh, the meek one. Also in the mix is Dr. Myers, a tutor who fancies the attention of the female college students he works with, and John Neville, the awkward, creepy porter.

From chapter to chapter, the reader is presented with evidence that makes a number of characters seem culpable. Through Hannah’s recollections and new information from a journalist, Ware sprinkles clues that, at one time or another, point the blame to several different people, all of whom seem equally plausible. I was impressed by how subtly Ware includes hints relating to the true circumstances surrounding April’s death.  

Suspenseful, captivating, and ingenious, Ware will have readers unable to put down the book. Crafted with descriptive language that will make you feel as if you’re in Hannah’s friend group on campus, The It Girl takes readers on a thrilling ride with many heart-stopping moments. This book is appropriate for adults who enjoy thrillers.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: VenCo by Cherie Dimaline

By Larissa Page

Cherie Dimaline has made a name for herself writing gritty, genre-bending stories, from the dystopian world in The Marrow Thieves and Hunting by Stars to the modern retelling of traditional Métis story in Empire of Wild. With VenCo, Dimaline tries her hand at something a little different than before: witches.

A coven must be formed, using enchanted spoons found by women who become members. Time is not on their side and an ancient enemy is at their door. When Lucky St. James finds a spoon in a very odd place, she gets pulled into a different world, and has days to complete an important task. She, with the support of the rest of the coven, must find the final witch to complete the circle.

There is no doubt that Cherie Dimaline is a skilled storyteller. Her writing is engaging and accessible, and her characters are both damaged and loveable. The relationships she writes are what kept me going through this book. Lucky and Stella are stars, Meena and Wendy are heart, and the rest of the coven is so important, too. I do wish I had gotten more from the rest of the coven. While we are given peeks into the lives of Freya, Morticia, and Lettie from before they found their spoons, I wanted more. I wanted more of their histories, but I wanted more of them from their place within the coven as well. I felt particularly drawn into the story of Lettie, only to be left wanting to know her better.

I did feel the world of magic in this story was underexplored. I found it so interesting that I wanted more details. I will be happy to have those details in another book (like a sequel, or even more stories on each of the characters), but I felt left wanting to know what each character’s magic did and how it worked. What is this coven, once formed, meant to accomplish in more concrete terms? I also wanted to have a better understanding of VenCo or perhaps other covens from around the world. The world of magic Dimaline has created is potentially very interesting and intricate and I want to know more about it, especially with the secondary levels of magic that support witches.

This story features road trip-style adventure, a really solid grandmother-granddaughter relationship, solid smash-the-patriarchy themes, and a new world of magic to be introduced to. For lovers of witchy reads, this one does provide, with room to speculate. You’ll love it in particular if you love feisty, unconventional, no-nonsense grandmothers.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Recovery Agent by Janet Evanovich

By Sara Hailstone

Content warning: guns and violence

Janet Evanovich is well known for her mystery series featuring strong female leads paired with the comedic relief of masculine counterparts. Born in South River, New Jersey in 1943, Evanovich made a name for herself with the creation of her first strong female lead, Stephanie Plum, a sharp-tongued Jersey girl who pushes her way into tracking down bail jumpers by blackmailing her own bail bondsman. Plum’s character led to a series and the cookie-cutter template for Evanovich’s New York Times bestsellers. Evanovich is now a household name. The Recovery Agent is the first book of a new series in alignment with this Evanovich template. Now, Evanovich introduces readers to the duo of Gabriela and Rafer.

Gabriela is a recovery agent, retrieving missing treasure, family valuables, or stolen property for the rich. Evanovich thrusts Gabriela into the throes of personal crises with a hurricane that has levelled her family’s home. With the supernatural guidance of an ancestor named Annie, Gabriela’s family wants her to find Blackbeard’s treasure map that will lead her to the Ring of Solomon. Annie had sent a message to Gabriela’s grandmother with knowledge of a historical diary that the infamous Blackbeard had: a diary with a map to the famous treasure sought by others. With this long-kept family secret, Gabriela would be able to help the family start over after devastation. But first, Gabriela has to find the treasure in a case in the basement of her old house where her ex-husband Rafer lives. He insists on joining her when she comes to retrieve the map and case.

Rafer is funny. With his quick-witted interjections and stubborn persistence in helping protect Gabriela while simultaneously driving her crazy (much like the dynamics of their marriage of antler smashing), the duo takes on the jungles of Peru and are soon trekking across various geographic hotspots, dodging snakes, going toe-to-toe with drug cartels and cults, and finishing with the climax of facing an unhinged antagonist who has stalked them throughout the plot. The Recovery Agent throws the reader in hard; they hit the ground running. 

The Recovery Agent meets the genre’s needs and is an anticipated first book of a new series for devoted readers. A text suited for escapism and entertainment, it secures the plotline with historical anchors. It took me some time to feel emotional ties to the characters and I read courageously through a template feel, but investment in the characters was not fully achieved as I knew they would always be okay. I appreciated Rafer’s comic relief and the chemistry between he and Gabriela that moves the narrative along. With the inclusion of a supernatural subplot, I was impressed with the experimentation in cross-genre writing between mystery and the elements of magic realism found in literary fiction. I could be stretching and inserting my own creative wondering into my reading, but those familiar with the mystery genre will walk away satisfied and wanting more. 

Thank you to Atria Books of Simon & Schuster for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review!

Book Review: Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult

By Graham Strong

Content warning: COVID-19

This book might be too soon for some, dealing as it does with COVID. But Jodi Picoult’s Wish You Were Here is not what you might think a “COVID novel” would be.

If you’ve read Picoult before, no doubt this March 2021 offering will feel like familiar territory. Picoult’s refusal to stick with any particular genre is one of her endearing qualities, and she manages to combine several genres here. You’d be forgiven if you wondered if this might be a rock novel with a Yoko Ono-type artist selling a painting given to her by a John Lennon-esque husband for a wedding present before his untimely death. Maybe that’s the book that it was going to be. Maybe COVID interrupted her original novel, forcing Picoult to interrupt her story. Maybe.

I want to be very careful describing what follows. I highly recommend going into this book “cold,” without too much information about the story. Suffice to say there are twists and turns, examinations of memory and our place on the earth, and deep questions about who our self-actualized selves actually are. Yet through all her semi-existentialist exploration, Picoult keeps the tone as light and breezy as you’d expect from an upmarket novel.

I was also impressed that Picoult doesn’t let COVID overwhelm the story. Yes, it’s there in the background—and sometimes even in the foreground—but then, isn’t that the way COVID was for most of us? Always there like a heavy blanket, sometimes hanging behind us and sometimes smothering us? She also deals with the pandemic from many different angles while maintaining a first-person POV. We, the readers, saw our own points of view through COVID, and perhaps two or three others vicariously through our family and loved ones. Picoult shows us a good half-dozen, including viewpoints from different locations in the world.

If I had a quibble, it would be with the first quarter or so of the novel. It felt uneven in places, perhaps a little rushed. Indeed, this was one of the first major novels to be written during COVID, published almost exactly one year after the pandemic shut down the world. I wonder if maybe Picoult took a different direction with her story partway through and had to go back to change the beginning. Either way, it could have used another polish to smooth the edges.

I was also not a fan of the ending, but that won’t matter to you. You’ll make up your own mind about the end, and many of you will love it. I will say this: Picoult kept me guessing right to the last page, so in that way I found the ending satisfying.

The Author’s Note at the end of the book is a nice touch too. It gives the reader some interesting insights into where she got her story ideas from and how difficult it was to write this during COVID. Writing is a lonely business, but it seems writing this book was especially lonely for Picoult. I know many creatives who had a hard time producing during COVID, so the fact that she completed a whole novel under more difficult circumstances than many is an achievement in itself.

Ultimately, this novel is a recommend for all readers; for Picoult fans, it’s a no-brainer. She does a masterful job of weaving a tight, twisting story with COVID as mostly peripheral backdrop.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Earned Life by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter

By Caprice Hogg

In this book, the author states that we all have a certain amount of regret, and advises us how to avoid these regrets and live with more motivation, confidence, and aspiration. “Our official policy on regret in these pages is to accept its inevitability but reduce its frequency. Regret is the depressing counterweight to finding fulfillment in a complex world. Our primary theme is achieving a life of fulfillment—what I call an earned life.”

While the advice is very good, I found it difficult to relate to the examples the author used. Goldsmith is a life coach to major CEOs and large management teams. He used many of these influential people as examples to show how they made difficult decisions. Since many of these stories were from extremely wealthy people in elite positions, the decisions they were making were not what many of us encounter in our daily lives. For most people, this is not the realm where we reside and our daily decisions regarding our jobs, finances, and family life are greatly different from these stories. It does, however, give us a look into that world and Goldsmith states that it is helpful to look at your heroes to see how their choices allowed them to succeed. I feel that there is a large discrepancy from that type of lifestyle to perhaps that of a single mom or a teacher who has a fulfilling job but is making a low income.

Still, no matter what our life story is, Goldsmith’s advice is valuable. His recommendations are applicable to each one of us. “We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome.” At the end of each chapter, there are exercises that help the reader ponder their own life and examine where changes can be made. Some exercises struck a chord with me, and I probed a few deep thoughts that I uncovered as I went through the exercises.

I do not feel that the advice in this book is anything revolutionary, but it is valuable reading it in a new context. “The secret to living an earned life: It is lived at the extremes. You are maximizing what you need to do, minimizing what you deem unnecessary.” This helps us to examine our life and hopefully discontinue being on autopilot with our decisions. He discusses inertia and how sometimes the act of doing nothing at all squashes our successes. Who doesn’t need those types of reminders once in a while? Goldsmith offers step-by-step guidance to follow our dreams by simply reminding us that any step towards our goals is a step in the right direction. Action and avoiding inertia are key.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton

By Larissa Page

This novel opens with Frida making supper for her husband and two stepsons as they prep the house for Hurricane Wanda to hit their small community in Florida. What transpires during the hurricane changes all of their lives irreparably. And so begins the story of Wanda, a girl born and named for the worst hurricane ever to hit, and who lives her subsequent years in a Florida that is quickly being overtaken by the ocean. The Light Pirate gives us an incredibly believable and realistic look at climate change in the growing, and at points terrifying, genre of climate fiction. 

I truly loved this novel. I was hooked from the start and didn’t want to put it down. I fell in love with Frida, and Wanda—and, truly, all the characters. It ripped my heart out then put it back together again, more than once. The characters were well written and well developed right from the start. I instantly felt connected to them; I could feel their grief and sadness, their push and pull. 

I also loved, and hated, how realistic the climate-induced dystopia was. Every part of the story— the increase in hurricanes, the decrease in coastline, the movement into the central US—was believable. The descriptions of the impact on Florida AND the impact on the interior states made sense. I hated this because it is scary; I loved it because it made the story believable and because I hope it will also work to open people’s eyes to the climate crisis. 

I knew nothing about this novel going into it. It hadn’t been all over social media and I hadn’t seen it hyped anywhere. So, I am here to hype it for you! Fall in love with Wanda, and Florida. Be terrified by the very real possibility of losing an entire state to the ocean amid increasingly brutal hurricanes. Enjoy the slight touch of magic this novel brings, a small magic that doesn’t overtake the human story whatsoever but instead helps steer it here and there.

This is a story of human resilience and women’s resilience. A story of determination and grit, survival and love. It’s a bleak look at climate future but a hopeful look at human adaptation to it.

Book Review: God Isn't Here Today by Francine Cunningham

By Shantell Powell

Content warning: suicide, substance abuse, self-harm, sexual harassment

Francine Cunningham is an award-winning poet and author. She is the winner of the 2019 Indigenous Voices Award and Grain Magazine’s 2018 Short Forms Fiction contest. God Isn’t Here Today is her debut collection of short fiction, and it delves into the speculative realms, frequently dipping into horror with a dark literary touch. It has been longlisted for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize.

Each of the stories is quite different from the other, but many are connected by themes of death and transformation and a fragrant throughline of lemon and lavender. The death of a barman brings life to others. A hunting expedition becomes a death sentence. A dead artist becomes an artistic medium full of love. A meet-cute in a porn shop turns ugly. A pleasure ghost gets a new assignment. The stories contain a distinct viscerality: hemoglobin and skin grafts, fantasies of rough sex and bondage, ice cream melting down forearms, and a DIY trepanation.

The stand-out stories for me include the eponymous story, a surreal tale of a young man seeking audience with God in an unoccupied office. Instead of finding God, he finds other people seeking God. It reminds me a bit of Waiting for Godot by way of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.

I also enjoyed “Spectre Sex,” which imagines ghosts as working stiffs. The protagonist of this story is a sex worker who enjoys his job about as much as someone working in a dead-end cubicle farm enjoys theirs.

“Glitter Like Herpes” gives me a John Waters vibe. Michelle is an aging stripper who makes ends meet by stealing used panties from the other workers and selling them on the dark web. The seedy setting, the betrayal, and the climactic cat fight make me imagine this story acted out by Mink Stole and Divine.

“Mickey’s Bar” follows a deceased barman’s body parts as they bring parts of his personality into their organ recipients, and in return, their memories join with his.

Cunningham experiments with form in this collection. Some pieces are classic short stories, some are free verse, and some are hybrid works, such as “Thirteen Steps” which marches across the pages in paired columns of thirteen paragraphs. Cunningham has provided a musical playlist to accompany the stories in this collection, and the songs sing out the themes of each tale. https://www.francinecunningham.ca/post/god-isn-t-here-today-the-playlist

God Isn’t Here Today may appeal to fans of Joshua Whitehead, Chuck Palahniuk, and the trash cinema of John Waters.

Thank you, Invisible Publishing, for a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Cooking Tips for Desperate Fishwives by Margot Fedoruk

By Christa Sampson

I love a good memoir, and I was intrigued by this one from the beginning because of the title. In this book, author Margot Fedoruk weaves the tale of her difficult upbringing with her life spent dedicated to a man whose heart is forever indebted to the sea—something that she initially loved about him, but also something that became the bane of her existence as she navigated motherhood.

Although she has lived on the west coast of Canada for most of her adult life, Margot was born and raised in Winnipeg, MB. Her parents divorced when she was very young, which led to a turbulent childhood trying to avoid her mother’s subsequent and equally deplorable partners. There was one stepfather figure that treated Margot and her sister well, but unfortunately that wasn’t the one that lasted the longest. She did, however, find solace in the homes of her grandparents, especially her grandmothers, both of whom she affectionately called “Baba,” per Ukrainian custom.  

As life at home became more toxic and heartbreaking, Fedoruk decided to remove herself from everything she’d ever known and move a considerable distance away. In one sense she reinvented herself, but on the other, her new experiences kept building on the strong character she always seems to have had. The relationship with her biological father was sporadic and strained at best, but she reconnected with him later in adulthood and was able to reconcile what happened in the past. Margot also maintained a very close and strong relationship with her younger sister to whom she was a surrogate mother basically from the time she was born.

While working as a tree planter in British Columbia, Fedoruk met Rick, who would eventually become her life partner. While there weren’t immediate romantic sparks, she describes being drawn to him in the same way he’s drawn to the sea. Although this is an extreme story of how to navigate a long-term, long distance relationship, this memoir really highlights the fact that every couple faces struggles. Some struggles may be difficult and some not so much, but at the end of the day, making it work one way or another is about making choices and acceptance.

I do like Fedoruk’s writing style. She has a unique way of bringing a topic into the narrative and weaving it back to something in her past. However, at the end of the book, I was a little disappointed. It left me feeling a bit wanting, and I felt like the story wrapped up too quickly. The ending didn’t reconcile the main points of the book for me, which is something I need as a reader to feel “complete” when finishing a book. Overall, I would still recommend this book, especially for the unique recipes at the end of every chapter. The recipes sound delicious, although I haven’t tried any yet, and for those who are into making things, Fedoruk even includes a recipe for natural soap, the product of her main entrepreneurial venture.

Thank you to Heritage House for the complimentary copy of Cooking Tips for Desperate Fishwives in exchange for an honest review!

Book Review: Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury

By Meghan Mazzaferro

Content warning: body horror, death, child death, sexual assault (off page), childhood sexual assault (off page), child abuse, emotional abuse, animal death, torture

Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury follows two Black girls separated by ten years as they try to discover the secrets of a dark house in Northern Canada. Daisy has always felt trapped by her mother and her life, so when they finally get the chance for stability in the form of a house given to them by a mysterious relative, Daisy hopes this can mean a fresh start for her mother and a chance at freedom for herself. But there is something wrong with the house, something connected to the ghosts Daisy has seen her whole life, and to the past her mother has kept secret from her.

Ten years later, Brittney is desperate to bring justice to forgotten Black girls, starting with the girl who died in the house. She will stop at nothing to unravel Daisy’s story, even as the things she uncovers connect painfully to her own past and relationship with her own mother.

While I like a good paranormal story as much as the next person, I am an absolute coward and not great at horror or psychological thrillers. When I read the concept of this book I was intrigued but scared to read something outside of my comfort zone, but I am so glad I pushed myself because once I started this book it was impossible to put down. This book has so many secrets, so many twists and turns and people hiding things, and I absolutely had to get to the bottom of it.

The writing style is tense and eerie, and the plot unfolds slowly while revealing just enough in each chapter to make the reader uneasy and desperate for more crumbs of information. The balance of paranormal happenings with psychological and real-world threats was really well done, and the way the story explored the dangers of both supernatural and human evil was riveting.

Both Daisy and Brittney are wonderful characters, flawed and complex and scarred from their respective pasts and traumas, and they both feel so real and grounded. Daisy makes a lot of mistakes, but you never question why. Her actions all make sense, and as the story begins to escalate it becomes clear that she has no good options, which is so frustrating to read in the very best way. Brittney is sometimes abrasive, harsh, or untrusting, and she feels so deeply for the story she is trying to uncover. Both these girls were absolutely fantastic to follow, and I loved the way the story wove their two narratives together.

This book does deal with a lot of heavy subject matter, and I highly recommend checking content warnings before reading. My copy of the book included an author’s note from Sambury that details the subject matter, which is thorough and which I really appreciated before diving into this story. Yes, it’s heavy. It is dark and twisting and deals with layers of abuse and trauma. But it also explores hope, and coming out the other side of that trauma, which I found very powerful.

Lastly, I will say that it never fails to bring me joy to read a book set in Canada. Seeing my home town mentioned put a smile on my face, and I adored the references to Tim Hortons and all-dressed chips, and Thunder Bay gets mentioned!

This book is absolutely incredible, and while I do think it’s best to go into it informed, I highly recommend checking out this story if you’re interested in ghosts, cursed houses, generational trauma, or the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters. I could not put this book down, and I cannot wait to see what Sambury writes next.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster for providing a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Claimings and Other Wild Things by Noelle Schmidt

By Meredith Grace Thompson

Claimings and Other Wild Things, the debut poetry collection from queer, non-binary poet Noelle Schmidt, is filled with echoes, reverberations, becomings, and claimings. It is a gathered collection—a found collection. Schmidt is a poet on the rise, a poet in the making, crackling with self-effacement, and yet bounding with self-worth, learning and growing and finding and filling their place in the Canadian literary world.

The collection is lyrical, verging on confessional, dancing through the effervescence of thought, and landing for brief moments on memory, exploration, finding, and changing, before continuing to flow forward. Pushing against but never resting on structures of contemporary spoken-word poetry, Noelle Schmidt’s speaker loudly asks poignant questions of the world around them. In the titular poem, they exemplify the grandiosity attempted throughout the collection with the metaphoric claiming of self in a glory of the non-binary.

This collection explores the power of claiming, and subsequently the power of the label. The non-binary poet rises to meet me, the non-binary critic, and we both are seen by one another in a beautiful and encapsulating way. The strength and experimentation of the collection exists in the individual poems, rather than in the structure of the whole. What the larger collection does do is present an argumentation for the question and necessity of labels, of definition with the everyday for the non-binary speaker, and both the freedom and limit of those labels.

The authenticity of these poems, in the way that they cling together and yet stand apart, is something quite beautiful. This collection feels like a chrysalis, standing on the edge of its own becoming. The voice of these poems is in a state of agitation and of growing. The agitation comes from the need to shed the old and become what is new. There are many claimings in this collection and many wild things. I look forward to reading what Noelle Schmidt creates next.

Thank you to Latitude 46 Publishing for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Fool Me Once by Ashley Winstead

By Kaylie Seed

Looking for a contemporary romance that has the perfect amount of comedy? Fool Me Once by Ashley Winstead may be right for you! Fans of Winstead will know that she typically writes dark thrillers that focus on a number of triggering topics, so when Winstead came out with a contemporary rom-com, it was nice to see a lighter side to this talented author. The romantic tropes that readers will find in Fool Me Once include enemies-to-lovers and second-chance romance.

Fool Me Once follows Lee Stone, a woman in her prime who is no longer interested in trusting love. Lee is focusing on her political career while still managing to find time to have fun inside her bedroom, but the idea of a long-lasting love is not at the top of her list. Years after her breakup with Ben Laderman, Lee finds herself having to work alongside him— building tension that is definitely going to lead to old sparks reigniting.

While there is a focus on politics throughout Fool Me Once, Winstead has managed to make this neutral territory so that readers are not bombarded with political views; it is simply part of the story.

While Fool Me Once was filled with humour and laughter, Winstead still managed to create characters that were expressive in all their feelings and showed growth throughout the story. Lee is an ambitious woman who can be crass and messy but also shows off her vulnerability even if she tries to hide it behind a tough exterior. It was great to see this mixture of her personality. Ben is just as ambitious as Lee, which helps to create some great tension between himself and Lee.

Readers who enjoy contemporary romances, rom-coms, political drama, or books that follow an enemies-to-lovers trope will find Fool Me Once a joy to read!

Thank you, HarperCollins Canada, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Those People Next Door by Kia Abdullah

By Erica Wiggins

Content warning: racism

“You can choose your house. Not your neighbours.”

In Those People Next Door, Salma Khatun has just moved to Blenheim with her husband and son, looking for a new start. However, shortly after moving in Salma sees her neighbour, Tom Hutton, knocking their anti-racism banner out of their garden. Wanting to avoid a confrontation, Salma moves the banner inside to a window. When she wakes up the next morning with paint smeared on her window, she decides to confront Tom. There is no going back now—the stakes have been raised and the consequences are inevitable. Those People Next Door is the latest novel from Kia Abdullah, a bestselling author and travel writer, who has won many awards for her writing. She is also the founder of Asian Booklist, a non-profit that advocates for diversity in publishing.   

Wow! This my first book by this author but it will not be the last. While the first chapter started slowly, the story picks up from there, moving at warp speed and making it hard to put down. We meet the characters, literally, of this neighbourhood. Salma, her husband Bil and son Zain are trying to fit in while working through a difficult time. Their next door neighbour Tom lives with his privileged wife Willa and their son Jamie, who is hard of hearing. And then there is the nosy neighbour Linda, who seems to know everything and seems a little off. As the feud escalates, the author pulls you in different directions, offering clues from unreliable sources, and leaving you feeling suspicious of everyone and how they may or may not be involved. It’s a rare treasure to find a story that can keep you guessing like this one. At the end of part one, this feud has reached its boiling point.

Without giving the story away, part two and three only prove to highlight the skills of this writer. This story deals with a challenging topic—racism (perceived and actual)—but is handled in a way that reminds us that it is not always possible to know the whole truth. It demonstrates how something small and the way that we handle it can escalate very quickly.

I loved the construction of the story. Split into three parts, it starts with the foundation of the story, before moving into the courtroom and finally to the aftermath. It leaves you turning the pages while you flip back and forth on who you believe. The twists keep coming; you think it’s all sorted and done and then another bomb is dropped. I couldn’t believe how many times the author got me.

Thrilling, gripping, and thought-provoking, Those People Next door slips you into suburbia and takes you on a ride. The author takes this topic, a real-life problem, and spins a fictional tale with a ring of truth to it, making it feel so much more realistic. This story is compelling and makes you question what choices you would make. If you love a thriller that twists until the end, then this book is for you.

Thank you to HarperCollins Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Bindle Punk Bruja by Desideria Mesa

By Kaylie Seed

Bindle Punk Bruja takes readers to the Roaring ‘Twenties in Kansas City, Missouri, and follows Luna Alvarado, a white-passing daughter of a Mexican mother and white father. Luna is a bruja (also known as a witch) and is trying to fully understand her powers. Luna is also one of the first women to own a speakeasy and is known around town as Rose Lane (she has to hide her true identity due to rampant racism in a prejudiced world). Mesa packs a punch with her novel Bindle Punk Bruja that tackles a number of heavy topics, including sexism, racism, and homophobia.

When readers think of historical fiction, they are likely not going to think about the 1920s but it is clear that Mesa has done the research to ensure that her tale is authentic. Mesa includes descriptions of fashion, politics, and historical figures from that time, as well as the language that was used during that time. While there is quite a bit of slang used throughout Bindle Punk Bruja, the overall prose was easy to read and beautifully written.

The characters were all fleshed out quite well and each brought their own eccentricities to the story to keep readers engaged. At the same time, there are a number of people out to get Luna and it starts to feel a little overdone. It can be hard to remember who everyone is and what they want from Luna; instead of having numerous “bad guys”, having one to focus on would’ve been enough and would have made the story just as powerful.

Bindle Punk Bruja begins as a slow burn but picks up pace as the story progresses. Luna is a strong female lead and those looking for that in a novel will likely enjoy this one. Those who are looking for a historical fantasy will want to pick this one up too as Mesa has done a great job at writing a compelling historical fiction read with a magic system that is fleshed out and bound to make fantasy readers swoon.

Thank you, HarperCollins Canada, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Welcome to the Jungle by Anneliese Lawton

By Christa Sampson

Welcome to the Jungle is one woman’s memoir of losing and then finding herself in motherhood, but it really speaks to many mother’s stories in these times and how modern living forces us to recalculate, recalibrate, and eventually remove ourselves from how society thinks we should mother. Described as “A frantic journey through motherhood and self-discovery,” this books takes the reader through all the life events that shaped the author into the person and mother she is today, and all the things she realized that she needed to let go of in order to be the best version of herself and the best mother for her family. That said, there is no “best” way, there are several, because each family and each child is uniquely different and the life events that shape you on your journey are not the same for everyone. That is, essentially, the premise of this book: it’s more of a “here is my story—this is what went down and what’s worked (or not) for me” than an “if you do what I did, you will be successful too” kind of narrative, and that is very refreshing.

I personally identified with a lot of what Anneliese talks about in her book. I, too, found myself lost in motherhood and I didn’t really find my way back to myself until about a year ago (my kids are 13 and 11). Yes, motherhood can really put you through the ringer because just when you think you’ve figured it out, something else will come up and it will call into question everything you thought you knew.

I’ve followed Anneliese, or Annie as she’s often known, on her social channels for a few years, so I was thrilled to hear that she was putting all of her stories into a book. Many of her blog posts on pregnancy and motherhood have been shared widely and one in particular on maternal mental health and postpartum care went viral. She is a true advocate in the mental health space and through a transparent account of her own lived experience with anxiety and postpartum depression, she aims to break down the stigma that still exists and the barriers to proper care a lot of people face.

In this real, nothing-is-off-limits memoir, Lawton calls bullshit (yes, she swears in the book, so if you’re not a fan of four-letter words like one online reviewer I came across, this book is probably not for you), on everything from society’s expectations, the stuff no one tells you about before baby arrives, and also what to expect after. There are of course those popular instructional “what to expect” books that were made into a movie, but they are not a nuanced account of the realities like this book is. If you want the real dirt on what it means to mother, this is it. No glossing over, no bullshit.

Welcome to the Jungle is organized into chapters but reads like a collection of essays. All are related in some way, but each one has its own arc and overriding lesson or anecdote. Some of the stories date back to Lawton’s formative years. One could argue that as a child you’re not even close to the person you’ll be when you start a family; however, when you start a family, you’re nowhere near the person you’ll become after going through the hard times, the highs, the lows, the OMFG can-this-day-get-any-worse type stuff. Every experience shapes us. Looking back on where you came from is a prompt for “where do I go from here.”

Lawton’s writing style is very conversational and pulls the reader in. She’s relatable. She doesn’t make excuses or try to cater to anyone specifically. It’s very “this is me, take it or leave it,” and I appreciate that. The mom space, whether it’s online, out in public, or within the comfort of your own home, is hard. Full stop. Sometimes all you need to get through the hard is knowing that there are others out there who see things for what they are—the beautiful messiness of it all—and provide support by sharing their experience rather than imposing a “fix.” Through this book and her online content, Anneliese Lawton does exactly that, and I’m here for it. 10/10 recommend.

Thank you to Pandamonium Publishing for the complimentary copy of Welcome to the Jungle in exchange for an honest review!