4 Stars. I generally like reading horror. I get spooked, I have fun, I move on. Demons and/or possession are too scary for me and I’m not happy with way over the top, incredibly gory violence, but otherwise I’m good. Hendrix delivers on the “spooking me” front. In the world of this book, six women survived their own real-life […]
4 Stars. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this book but I ultimately found it to be a surprisingly touching story of a boy on the cusp of manhood. Robert is fairly innocent in the ways of the world (he thinks that the tiny town of Rutledge, Vermont is almost as big as London). But he also has a practical knowledge of […]
5 Stars. Holy cow. Can I give this book all the stars? Because five doesn’t seem like enough. Written by a Black author and a White author, All American Boys covers all the nuances of a scene that’s shamefully familiar to the American public–a policeman beating and/or killing a Black man. Rashad shows signs of PTSD. His older […]
4 Stars. I’ll be honest–I fully expected to dislike this book. I only decided to read it to see why it’s always on lists of banned/challenged books. You can’t even begin to imagine my surprise when I immediately clicked with Holden. Is he young and judgmental? Yes. But he’s broken and feels the world deeply. He sees all the ways we hurt […]
4 Stars. This was published in 1993, when I was 15 years old, and I must have just barely missed having it as assigned reading in school. While it’s probably a classic to many of you, this was the first time I’ve read it. I was surprised by how unsettling it is. Jonas’s world seems almost perfect at first. Everyone apologizes […]
4 Stars. I liked Callie and her theatre geek crew! (I was a band geek myself.) Callie is outgoing and unashamedly enthusiastic in her passions. She’s a great friend and encourages others at every opportunity. She’s also in 7th grade, at an age when boys and girls are developing school romances. This group of schoolmates sure […]
3 Stars. I’m just not the reader for magical realism in literature. Oh, I do just fine with Sarah Addison Allen’s light touches of fantasy in otherwise contemporary novels. But a huge black beast of an unknown species adopting a family? Spirits wandering the house? Curses? Mermaid girls? All in dark historical fiction? I just […]
4.5 Stars. I got behind on the monthly prompts for the Diversity Reading Challenge in August so I was looking for a short book about mental health or addiction when I stumbled on this title. It seemed like the perfect choice to help me catch up. But what started as a book I was reading simply to check a box quickly became a […]
3 Stars. I’m not a fan of New York. To be fair, I’ve only spent one day there and that was the day after my best friend’s funeral; still, nothing about the city has ever appealed to me. That said, Time and Again didn’t work particularly well for me but I think those who love New York and its history will relish it. I don’t […]
4 Stars. I’m not a huge fan of Westerns but this book caught my eye when a friend of a friend mentioned it on Facebook. I really enjoyed it. There’s no denying the Western background but the themes of family, love, and loss are universal. I would actually recommend this for a book club. Jess’s mother died in childbirth and Jess […]
4 Stars. The Hildegard in these pages was fascinating. She was a strategist but she also had a heart to care for others. She was “only” a woman but she was a woman with connections and she wasn’t afraid to use them. As she grew older, she called out hypocrisy and inhumane practices. God was always female in her visions. She was […]