Reviews of novels, movies and writing events.
I have mixed feelings about James by Percival Everett. In general, I am not a fan of fan fiction…in other words, taking an author’s work and adding to it. For instance, I love Geraldine Brooks’s writing (Year of Wonders, Horse, People of the Book), but I refuse to read March because it riffs off of Little Women. If Louisa May Alcott had wanted to write a novel about the father of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, she would have. After…
The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center The Rom-Commers is a delightful new offering from much loved author Katherine Center about a blocked, emotionally distant screenwriter and the romance author called in to ghostwrite his terrible manuscript. (According to our heroine rescue-writer, the screenplay is so terrible that terrible is not a terrible enough word to describe it.) Naturally, the screenwriter rejects help from the romance writer whom he deems unqualified. And the romance writer, unrenowned for compelling reasons of her own,…
It’s that time of year for lists. Lists abound. The best restaurants of the year. The best hair salons. The best dog groomers. And the best (or, at least, favorite) books of the year. The folks over at the Shepherd book site gave me (and a bunch of other authors) the opportunity to opine about the three favorite books of 2023. Check out what I said about my three favorite reads. And be sure to check out Shepherd’s listing of the…
The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni Angie Kim, author of the bestselling novel Miracle Creek, describes The Puzzle Master as “The Da Vinci Code + The Silent Patient + sprinkle of Stephen King.” I can’t speak for The Silent Patient, but I’ve read The Da Vinci Code and my share of Stephen King. After finishing The Puzzle Master I had to think about why Kim references Stephen King and came up with King’s novel The Institute (a fantastic read, by…
Review of Hello Stranger. Joy. Heart. Laughter. That’s what you get when you read a book by Katherine Center. And the author wouldn’t have it any other way. In her essay “Read for Joy,” Center explains, “When I talk about reading for joy, I’m talking about reading from the heart.” Katherine Center continues the joy-heart-laughter triage with her newest novel Hello Stranger. Sadie is a struggling portrait artist living in the rooftop storage room of an apartment building owned by…
Every October I participate in a common read of the Supernatural Fiction Readers over at Goodreads. The group selection this time is The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. We have been having a super lively discussion of this supernatural classic. Check out the discussion here. And great news! You can read The Castle of Otranto for free here on Gutenberg. The Castle of Otranto is supernatural lite, the paranormal elements consisting primarily of a giant helmet and a haunted painting….
Book review of Exit by Belinda Bauer My first completed book for Book Challenge by Erin 14! Exit is about a man who belongs to a dedicated group of people called Exiteers. (No, I’d never heard that term before.) Felix aka John lives alone, is seventy-two, and watches people die. An Exiteer is a volunteer who witnesses euthanasia and then clears the scene of all evidence—the most damning item being a canister of nitrous oxide. Who knew nitrous oxide could…
Book review: What You Wish For by Katherine Center What You Wish For features feisty Sam Casey, librarian of a hand-crafted, progressive school and all-around awesome human. She lives on an idyllic island in a carriage house on the grounds of a historic mansion within walking distance of the school. Don’t you love books about beautiful libraries and cool librarians? I know I do. Sam has “adopted” the principal and his artist wife as her parents, which causes no end…
Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella When Cady hears disembodied voices, she fears she is suffering from the same paranoid schizophrenia that drove her brother, a Harvard student, to take his life. Who can blame her? Fear is a character in this novel. Fear of the unknown, fear of things that go bump in the night, fear that, in fact, the things you think go bump in the night are only going bump in your mind. Fear of fear. It…
Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen is a women-in-peril murder mystery written in a haunting, lyrical style. The book opens with a prologue in the voices of the dead silently calling Please See Us. But no one does. The dead are forgotten women, murdered by a sadist and abandoned in a Jersey City marsh between a dilapidated motel and bridge. Jersey City is a character…in fact, a metaphor for the deterioration of place and soul. Forces of fate and poverty…
‘Tis the season for ghosties and goblins and things that go bump in the night. Or, as in the case of Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, things that go bite in the night. If you’ve spent any time reading this blog, you know my heart belongs to the ghost set. However, I always participate in the Supernatural Fiction Readers Group read over at Goodreads (join us!), and this year the members voted for Salem’s Lot, a novel about a small…
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend was, for me, a moving experience. On the surface, it’s a simple story–Budo, Max’s imaginary friend, details their life together. Budo advises Max on the ways of the elementary school world. Max is a smart child who resides somewhere on the autism spectrum and often cannot express himself or understand the motivations of others. That’s when he turns to Budo for help. I thought Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend would be a simple, albeit poignant,…
As some of you know, I have been working on a novel with a service dog for, like, forever. So when the publisher of Hero Dogs contacted me with an advanced reading copy of Hero Dogs, I was excited. After participating in the Oklahoma City bombing rescue effort, Wilma Melville was so moved that she devoted her life to developing a crack-shot team of search and rescue dogs. Her life’s work is the subject of the book Hero Dogs. Before…