🌟🌟🌟💫 Well-written, yet undeniably bleak, this is an 80’s era (both written and set) tale of domestic breakdown, existential nothingness, and bodies in motion, - unlikable characters bumping into each other randomly and in the process, spinning out trails invariably murky and mostly unpleasant. Set in Melbourne, Australia, the story…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 An edge of your seat thriller that has it all - a creepy mansion occupied by a strange and repressed family; a child, old before her time, who is truly unsettling; a murder (maybe?) tied to a mystery; and a first person POV heroine who is female, authentic and…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 What a delight! A book just as likely to break your heart as it is to tickle your funny bone, this charmer is a one-of-a-kind read, featuring a one-of-a-kind family who, come what may, will love and support their offspring. (And their offspring. And all the interconnected others that…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 I’m always so pleased to discover a fantastic and new (to me) Canadian author, and particularly one in the legal/mystery space. This intricate and haunting story, involves two contemporary murders, based in Toronto, Canada, as well as war-time atrocities and the wounds left behind on a global and historical…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Reading this book is akin to taking a deep dive into a richly-fabricated speculative world, filled with interesting and intricate creatures, ideas and characters, and defined by an entirely new language. (Note: the author includes a very helpful glossary). Touching on many philosophical ideas and a whole host of…
Second in the Paradise Cafe series, this is another interesting, enjoyable read, with a likable heroine, an evocative setting in Depression-era 1936 Toronto, and not one, but two mysteries to solve. When Charlotte Frayne, PI, is hired to investigate the suspicious suicide of a severely disfigured veteran, she must confront…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A gorgeously illustrated tribute to diversity, this sweet book is as beautiful to look at as it is thoughtfully messaged. Not to mention funny, playful, and oh so charming. When Weasel, a little boy who notices everything in his neighborhood of Lilypod Lane, identifies a strange house with an…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 This little book is a hilarious, thoughtful, charming, magical gem of a novel, - part fable, and all heart. As laugh-out-loud-funny as it is pure whimsy, the humor in this read is dry, sardonic and continuous, layered with a silliness born of a sort of sweet, childish, eccentricity and…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself” - Emily Dickinson With perfect alignment, the cover quote (copied above), encapsulates the beauty and the wonder that is this book. Written by the poet Maggie Smith, this memoir details, with incredible candor, what it may take to find yourself, or…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Five stars all the way, - for creativity, ingenuity, and cleverness, if for nothing else. But there is so much else! This, the third book authored by one of this reader’s favorite thriller writers, is narrated in the first person by a character like no other - the self-reflective,…