Book reviews of new and old, local, national and international books. Anything goes.
War of the Sentinels is the third book in the Dark Lands series, a young adult supernatural fantasy set in the netherworld between life and death. The series is meant for a younger YA crowd with a fourteen-year-old protagonist and some similarities to the early Harry Potter books: a Snape-like character, an ever-changing castle, the…
Celeste Ng is a rising talent in the world of bestseller authorship. She was published in a few anthologies and then she came out with her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, a massively popular pick for books clubs everywhere. Most recently, Little Fires Everywhere has been the “IT” book for the past few…
First Grave on the Right is the first book in a long-running series with volumes continuously being added. I’ve seen this series pushed hard by avid fans and any time a new book in the series is released, there begins the sudden onslaught of new reviews on my feed. With so many rabid fans, it…
The Marsh King’s Daughter is a psychological suspense and thriller by author Karen Dionne. I snagged a copy for myself after reading a review from A Book A Week by fellow book junkie Ethan because the book blurb was altogether too tasty, and his review sealed the deal. This is about a girl born into…
The list of favorites is going out a little late but only because I’ve been extremely busy as of late. Always a good thing! This is my list of favorite reads in 2017 in order of date read, the first being the first favorite book of 2017. Have you read any of these?
Cry, The Beloved Country is a literary criticism of South African apartheid using a handful of South African characters, both black and white, to vividly display the injustice to those who normally wouldn’t see it because of the figurative partition walls. There isn’t much left to be said about a book published in 1948, translated…
Tower of Dawn is the sixth installment in the Throne of Glass series, an epic fantasy that began as young adult but has matured through its duration. An obvious homage to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the series has grown more complex and grand in scope, covering a vast world of different species and nations…
Strange Weather by Joe Hill contains four short stories reminiscent of The Twilight Zone, uncomfortable yet oddly compelling. They’re like the freak shows in a shady traveling circus – you try to avert your eyes when faced with the grotesque, but you can’t stop staring. In this case, you can’t stop reading. William Morrow |…
Tiernan’s Wake, by multi-award winning author Richard T. Rook, is scheduled to be published in early 2018. This light contemporary mystery follows two genealogists, one from Boston and the other from Ireland, who combine forces to unravel the past in order to solve the mystery of a missing painting. Did I mention pirates? Audio Arcadia…
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters is a story told in epistolary format where a small island town off the coast of South Carolina is going through some unusual communication problems. In this light fantasy, a community’s love for words is at stake, all because of some faulty glue. Anchor | September, 2002 |…