writer
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Any book with an octopus perspective is a friend of mine! Adored Marcellus entirely, and also loving Seattle as much as I do, it was awesome to travel in my mind to the Pacific Northwest to eavesdrop on these charming characters. It’s honestly a bit of a Hallmark Movie experience–save this read for when you need to feel safe, cozy, and to believe everything will turn out in the end.
View all my reviews
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a story deeply steeped in the culture of gaming that was quietly shaping reality from within imaginary spaces, starting in the late eighties and continuing until today. A hot topic these days, but rarely explored in fiction with such thorough tenderness. There’s a certain insanity that accompanies creative passion, and this is the force driving the tempestuous friendship of our two game designer main characters, who can’t live with or without each other. For different players, games are an obsession, a comfort, an artistic experience, a release, or a thin surrogate for a fulfilling reality. Zevin explores all this and more in her brilliant book.
View all my reviews
Summerwater by Sarah Moss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Sarah Moss is a master of close third person perspective. In this novella that rotates between different strangers’ perspectives while on a dismal, rainy holiday in Scotland, we become so tightly entwined in the idle thoughts of our characters that it’s almost disorienting, nearly uncomfortable. I admire the way Moss understands and explores human flaws. In way of plot, there’s little, but that’s not the point. The point is: What if you could see and understand how everyone was thinking, all at once? It’s a power I’m sure I don’t want to have, but I’m confident that Moss has it.
View all my reviews
We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
We Play Ourselves is a wry, spicy critique of the pursuit of artistic fame on two different American coasts. Watching the narrator’s past and present derailing creates a metafictional experience, as we also gain pleasure from knowing the private and public details of her life, all her failures and fantasies, complicit in a facsimile of voyeurism that is just… really, really smart. Darkly funny, but also resonant. Made me want to go to L.A. without a plan.
View all my reviews
In his first novel Someone Should Pay for Your Pain, Franz Nicolay comes at his story with a lyricist’s love of beauty and a seasoned performer’s world-weariness. The resulting tension creates a story with a sticky floor and a hazy smell, where moral ambiguity abounds. You could tell a young, starry-eyed scenester “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be”, or you could just hand them this novel. Both rough-edged-honest and blithely cynical, Someone Should Pay for Your Pain is an ode to all the acts who never made it big, fell in love too hard with the life to let it go, and are scheduled to play a weeknight basement show somewhere in Ohio, wondering what it all means now.
How to Make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Like many YA novels, this one starts with a protagonist whose mother dies. But what makes this title stand apart is the way it lingers and sinks into the grief that actually accompanies such a monstrous loss. Grief is not an aspect of the plot line in Glasgow’s How to Make Friends with the Dark; rather, it is the plot line… the horrible, inescapable plot line that all of us must follow at one time or another. As such, it’s a painful read, but also a revelatory and important one. I applaud Glasgow for having the bravery to go here, in such a realistic and three-dimensional way. This book is about death and the aftermath–no sugared-over love story among the rubble, just the truth.
View all my reviews
After the Fall by Kate Hart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
After the Fall is a gossipy YA read with a real beating heart behind it. The way that the narration plays with our perceptions of the characters ultimately reveals a criticism of stereotypes, a reminder that people are rarely what we think we know about them. I appreciate the way Hart refuses to shy away from edgier content–her treatment of sexual assault from multiple perspectives has important and strong messages for her young adult readers. This book could be the difference that makes a kid speak up about something important.
View all my reviews
Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A snackable YA read that serves up quirky characters and romantic chemistry with a side of complicated parental relationships. I appreciate the way that Choi represented the flow of modern relationships from digital to physical and back again. Wish we could have seen Penny confront her own insecurities and evasiveness a little but more without the romantic interest as the vehicle for it, but hey, it’s true to the genre. The thing I respect most about this book is the encouragement to be honest with another person about the big things that define yourself, to share, admit, disclose, and acknowledge rather than hiding it away.
View all my reviews
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Great Alone is one of those emotionally-driven novels that will have you tearing through it like a VW bus careening over icy roads, hungry to know how everything will turn out for the memorable characters that Hannah weaves into this wilderness tale set in 1970s Alaska. Even though several of the characters edge hard into archetype, she breathes such detail into them that they feel real despite it. (And as we all know, some people really are living breathing archetypes… so hey.) While the book spans a multigenerational struggle against patterns of domestic violence and definitely mediates on the ways the wild works on us as human beings, the true shining gem of the novel is the love story at its core. A great read for those who want an emotionally dramatic story that is both harrowing and satisfying by the end.
View all my reviews
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
My Sister’s Keeper is melodrama done well, with a side of interesting ethical quandaries. The premise itself is the book’s biggest strength–should a young woman who was born for the purpose of being a blood and organ donor to her leukemia-stricken sister be allowed medical emancipation from her parents, even if it’s at the cost of her sister’s life? It’s fascinating and emotionally taxing territory to ponder. This is the chess board upon which Jodi Picoult plays her pieces: characters who have exaggerated, caricature-like personalities but also moving, true inner dialogues that almost make up for it. Some of the plot conveniences are certainly too convenient to be believed, but they create a resulting environment of heightened emotion that sets Picoult up to spike her best moments right into reader’s hearts. While elements of the story itself were overwrought, certain truths about parenthood, sisterhood, and human rights get explored along the way, and make this novel worth the quick read.