

Review of I'll Be Right Here by Amy Bloom
I'm a huge Amy Bloom fan, and while I appreciated the strong main female character here and the World War II-era crises, for me, the...
Jul 29, 2025


Review of Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1) by Gail Carriger
The first in the author's young adult steampunk Finishing School series offers wonderful, typically strong Carriger women with unique...
Jul 9, 2025


Review of What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown
I was intrigued by the novel's premise, in which a father weaves elaborate lies to raise his daughter in a remote wilderness, away from...
Jul 2, 2025


How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir by Molly Jong-Fast
Molly Jong-Fast's frank memoir explores her complicated, unsatisfying relationship with her famous mother Erica as she faces...
Jul 1, 2025


Review of Sunny Side Up by Katie Sturino
I loved Sunny's body positivity and her self-made-woman status. I didn't fully buy into one of her love interests but was hooked on the...
Jun 18, 2025


Review of Done and Dusted (Rebel Blue Ranch #1) by Lyla Sage
I loved the premise, in which a golden girl and barrel-racer returns home to small-town Wyoming to figure out her future. I was looking...
Jun 17, 2025


Review of The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong's literary fiction offers unexpected bonds between characters coping with desperation, addiction, lies, hunger, and past...
Jun 12, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025


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, 2025
