🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A beautifully crafted sci-fi look at a society writhing with power, and the technology to enslave, alter or coerce the behaviors, and even more chillingly, the identities of its own citizens. In a world where rewriting history is as easy as a surgical procedure, people’s views have become, largely,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A tale as twisted as many of the people contained within it, this second in the Fati Rizvi series centers on a nineteen-year-old pair of twins, whose mysterious disappearance, following their lavish birthday celebration, marks the start of a complex and intricate story. As Fati works to solve the…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A disconcerting look at systemic racism, as it exists, in even the very nicest neighborhoods and families. For Salma and Bilal Khatun, along with their eighteen year-old son Zain, a move to new house signals the beginning of a nightmare, made all the worse by the seeming civility of…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 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…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 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”.…