‘A Haunted Girl’ Over the last decade or so, mental health and its importance has been a balm for anyone with a chemical imbalance. Understanding and empathy have vastly improved in many spheres, but, for children and teens, the complications of mental illness are especially harrowing. In this beautifully sad
Read More →‘A Sorceress Comes to Call’ Fairy tales are supposed to teach us things. Sometimes trite truisms like not telling lies, other times the tales are meant more as a warning, a call to trust your instincts, to know that not everyone is who they say they are. Cordelia knows she
Read More →‘The Daughters’ War’ To be perfectly clear before we start, this is a book about grief. It is a story of loss and war and lives cut short in the pursuit of survival. Sure, this is a military fantasy at its most basic level, but, in truth, it is an
Read More →‘Rakesfall’ There’s a school of thought that there are only a handful of stories in the world, and everything else is just a retelling or mishmash of those few tales. I’m not philosophical enough to argue the concept, but something about this dark and glorious novel makes me think this
Read More →‘Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos’ I love space. I follow all the launches, the probes, the landers on Mars; I can’t get enough of all the fascinating and paradigm-shifting discoveries that surround us in this era of technological wonders. If you’ve got a penchant
Read More →‘Diavola’ Family drama with all of its undercurrents and toxicity is not a new concept for a book, but mixing that particular brand of unsettling anxiety with the slow dread of a deliciously gothic haunted house story is so much fun. Jennifer Thorne is at the top of her game
Read More →‘An Education in Malice’ Is it weird that I wish I had been sent away to boarding school? I’ve read so many books about people having strange and fantastic adventures when sent to some gothic revival mansion in the deep woods, I feel like I missed something important at my
Read More →‘The Parliament’ I’m a huge fan of parallel stories — books that flutter back and forth between two worlds, two people’s lives, or the past and the future. Here, in this gorgeous, deliciously dark modern fairy tale, the author gives us two stories in one in the best way —
Read More →‘Martyr!’ There’s something special about reading a debut novel. When that author is a beloved poet, however, I get a little worried. Poetry in long form doesn’t always translate well, and sometimes substance gets lost in a whirl of words. I shouldn’t have worried. Akbar has a true gift in
Read More →‘The Iliad’ If you are shuddering from echoes of long, boring classes back in school, stick with me for a few minutes. I promise, there is more to the classics than difficult-to-pronounce names and indecipherable writing. In fact, this is a deeply complex, layered tale with themes as fresh today
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