

Review of Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi
I was taken with the premise of conflicts and mystery in a post-colonial West African city, but I didn't feel very connected to or...
Jun 10


Review of Lucky Loser: Adventures in Comedy and Tennis by Michael Kosta
The Daily Show 's Michael Kosta recounts his youth as a pro tennis player (#864 in the world), an assistant college tennis coach, then a...
Jun 5


Review of The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker
Walker offers an unreliable main protagonist, her dedicated new psychiatrist, increasingly inexplicable and complicated occurrences, and...
May 27


Review of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen Graham Jones offers an intriguing premise--an Indigenous man with supernatural abilities enacts brutal justice--but I found the...
May 6


Review of Dream State by Eric Puchner
Dream State felt like different genres in one book; what felt like a romance became a story of characters who are often bitter or...
Apr 30


Review of Tilt by Emma Pattee
After a devastating earthquake, nine-months-pregnant Annie desperately searches the city of Portland, Oregon, for her husband. Pattee...
Apr 29


Review of The Life We Bury (Joe Talbert #1) by Allen Eskens
The pacing of The Life We Bury built from slow and steady to a whirlwind. It always seemed clear that we would have clean resolutions to...
Apr 16


Review of Pony Confidential by Christina Lynch
Pony Confidential is a cute story of a bond between a pony and its long-ago owner. It's nominally a mystery, but it's mainly a...
Apr 9


Review of All Fours by Miranda July
The unnamed main protagonist in All Fours frequently made me feel uncomfortable because of her unorthodox decision-making and...
Apr 8


Review of The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Whitehead, inspired by a real-life reform school that abused and terrorized boys for over a century, shares a tale of racial injustice,...
Mar 13


Review of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt's examination of the power of smartphones and social media may feel logical and disturbingly unsurprising, but he offers...
Mar 12


Review of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
I had unreasonable hopes for gaining compassionate understanding of disparate political views through reading Haidt's book. I was...
Feb 13


Review of The Road to Dalton (Dalton, Maine #1) by Shannon Bowring
This slim, debut novel about a small-town community in northern Maine introduces various faulted, interconnected characters making their...
Feb 12


Review of Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller
Lula Dean focuses on the incredible power of books and truth-telling as characters discover their bravest selves and confront difficult...
Jan 22


Review of Hum by Helen Phillips
The dystopian future of Hum is haunting in its familiar elements, its plausible, terrible climate-change effects, the extreme reliance on...
Jan 7


Review of Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
Our Evenings explores a young, often cruel, existence at a British boys' boarding school; later fits and starts of exploring sexuality...
Dec 10, 2024


Review of All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
Met Museum guard Bringley reflects on the decade he spent guarding priceless works of art, encountering a fascinating range of...
Dec 5, 2024


Review of We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida
Ishida's offbeat, heartwarming story of unconventional "medicine" in the form of cats explores interconnectedness and new perspectives,...
Dec 4, 2024


Review of Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
Blue Sisters explores three surviving sisters' messy paths into and out of grief after the loss of their fourth sister Nicky. They make...
Nov 26, 2024


Review of Pines (Wayward Pines #1) by Blake Crouch
In the first book of Blake Crouch's haunting mystery trilogy, secret agent Ethan Burke tries to grasp the shifts in time, widespread...
Nov 21, 2024
