You have to suspend a lot of belief to really love Yesterday by Felicia Yap, a sci-fi mystery where people either remember one day or two. In Yesterday, the world is divided into Monos and…
Posts tagged Novel
Eleanor Oliphant is Okay at Best, Annoying at Worst
One thing to know before you crack into Gail Honeyman’s novel Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is that it’s very voicey. You are immediately and wholly ensconced in Eleanor’s world and her voice drives and…
Three Quickie Reviews
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi One of my weaknesses as a reader, and as a human, is that I’m not too keen on history. I don’t like to read about olden times. If a book takes…
Ballad of the Sad Middle-Aged Man
There are times when there’s a comfort to cliched material. It’s pleasantly familiar, devoid of the unexpected – like a favorite meal or well-worn sweatshirt, it holds only satisfaction, not surprise. One Last Thing Before…
Feeling Wisconsin
Recently, a friend pointed out on Twitter that a book he was reading would drive me bonkers because it touched upon very many of my literary pet peeves. “Dick Lit to the extreme. Selfish, sad-sack,…
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
There’s something of an old west feeling about Hannah Tinti’s novel, The Twelve Live of Samuel Hawley even though it a lot of the book takes place in the here and now. There’s no time…
My Favorite Novel of 2017 (So Far)
So far this year I’ve finished reading nineteen books, eighteen of them have been novels. I know we’re not even six months into 2017 and there’s still a lot of reading ahead of me. But…
Everything You Want Me to Be
The first thing I will tell you about Mindy Mejia’s mystery Everything You Want Me to Be is that when the big reveal comes, when whodunnit is revealed, I gasped because I did not see…
A Nerdier Nick & Norah
Nicola Yoon sure has a knack for writing smart, charming teenagers in unusual situations. Her prose clips along at a delightful pace and one of these days she’s going to write a book with a…
You Puzzle Me, Charlie Freeman
It’s 1990(ish) and 14-year-old Charlotte Freeman has recently moved from Boston to rural Massachusetts. She’s got a scrunchy in her hair, is starting a predominantly white school, and she doesn’t quite know the lyrics to…
Who Can Resist a Book that Takes Place on Scribbly Gum Island?
I’m slowly making my way through Liane Moriarty’s backlist as it becomes available from the library. The latest in the rotation is a cute, though somewhat predictable mystery called The Last Anniversary. This one centers…