🌟🌟🌟🌟 A new series from the author of the much-loved Clay Wolfe series, this is a very different kind of tale. Set in 1920’s prohibition-infused Brooklyn, the tone is darker, and disquieting, with themes that are both troubling and intense. The story is also historically rich, jam-packed with real-life characters…
🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2 A riveting and powerful read, this multilayered story winds and sweeps through the lives of characters that at first glance, almost appear to have it all. Almost, but not quite, as soon becomes apparent when a young girl is murdered, and it becomes likely that the seventeen-year-old children of…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A compassionate accounting of a complex and seemingly unsolvable problem, this book takes a fictionalized look at a real-life physician’s perspective of drug addiction, focusing on fentanyl, heroin and opiates, and the depths of despair such an addiction cannot help but reveal. As Dr Chen, who runs a Toronto-based…
🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2 A stylistic love-child of sorts, Joanna Trollope meets Marian Keyes, rich with vulnerable, mildly self-informed people, seeking a way forward in lives that feel filled with hardships. That aren’t necessarily so. If one could just shift perspective, ever so slightly. The story is written in the voice of Rachel…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 1/2 Surprisingly engrossing, despite its prodigious coverage (and perhaps just a tad too lengthy), I listened to the audio version of this book. Read in Prince Harry’s own voice, which is nicely-toned and expressive, lending to the feel of a warm and intimate chat (albeit with a royally-birthed multi-millionaire).…
🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2 An engaging memoir (often horrifying), dealing with the crazy, funny, and deeply tragic world of a Nickelodeon TV child actor, Jennette McCurdy, and the hidden depths of the appalling family life that defines her existence. Hard to put down, it’s even harder to imagine some of the things the…
🌟🌟🌟 1/2 An interesting premise, - part competitive cozy-baking tv show, cleverly merged with an Agatha-Christie-like murder mystery. Like the characterizations it is based on, this book has a “folksy niceness”, a clean demarcation of the main players, (each with their idiosyncrasies, secrets, and struggles), and a twisty plot to…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A sometimes horrifying, always mesmerizing look at the power and the passion within - and what it may take to allow one to soar, wildly free of crippling expectations, fears, and the shameful inhibitions that bind us all. Alex, our first person POV narrator, is “something of a mess”.…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 “This was it, forever! Maybe!” Equal parts hilarious and heart-breaking, a memoir-like fictional rendering raising the question: Just how far is one Millennial willing to go towards (or away from) a newly adjusted life, uncoupled? Maggie, our first person POV narrator, is 28 yrs old, - a smartly sarcastic…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 An engaging and suspenseful read, briskly-plotted and hard to put down, with an interesting pair of main protagonists and a clever ending that will not disappoint. Catherine and her mother Ruth are an odd duo - a mother-daughter couple where it often feels like roles are being switched, back…