The nitty-gritty: Heart-pounding horror meets a touching story about friendship and family bonds. It’s an odd thing that I start 2017 off by reading three very similar books in a row (and those reviews will all be up in the next week or so). It wasn’t planned, it just shook out that way. If you’ve […]
The nitty-gritty: A strong concept that should have worked, but for this reader, there just wasn’t enough emotional connection for me to enjoy the story. Alex was a survivor. Alex wanted the fix, and that was the deal, the box of Turkish delight to sweeten the work of professional betrayal: half a century. Standard offer […]
The nitty-gritty: Weird and wild, this is one alien invasion story you don’t want to miss. “Give him a change of clothes,” says Oyin Da. She code-switches into Yoruba where her speech is not so devoid of emotion. “I’m not going to see potential adversaries smelling of meat.” “Touch these clothes and you die,” I […]
The nitty-gritty: A fast-paced adventure, back in the exciting world of the quasing, with some new characters, old friends, and plenty of cons, deals and double-crosses. “I’m surprised a man of your qualities managed to find a woman to produce an offspring.” “For every ugly and desperate man, there is an equally ugly and desperate […]
The nitty-gritty: A luminous story filled with magic, friendship, love and diversity, beautifully written. The idea of being called Miss or Ms. or, worse, Mrs. The thought of being grouped in when someone called out girls or ladies. The endless, echoing use of she and her, miss and ma’am. Yes, they were words. They were […]
The nitty-gritty: A strange and thought-provoking story about loneliness and what it means to be human. For me, memory is not only at times flawed and corrupted but also overlapped and confused, one personality hiding parts of another, blending too, so that the selves within my head sometimes seem many-headed and monstrous or deformed and […]
The nitty-gritty: A unique tale with glimmers of magic and wonder, but with some writing inconsistencies that distracted from the story. The city was a huge place of death with very little life. He could not sense the ghosts of the dead, but they had to be out there. And what about the ghosts of […]
The nitty-gritty: An eerie and heart-stopping ghost story, with unexpected depth. If you love haunted house stories, and especially if you love old houses, you won’t want to miss this one. She took the stairs slower than she could have, stalling the inevitable every step of the way. She didn’t want to let them in. […]
The nitty-gritty: A laugh-out-loud spoof of super stores and inter-dimensional invasion, with surprising human moments intertwined with the humor. Nothing ever changes here, she thought as she removed her shirt, again dreaming of the day she would be allowed to cast off this place. She would take Kevin and together the two of them would […]
The nitty-gritty: A story with lots of potential that fell short with a less-than-interesting plot and awkward writing. (Apologies for this longer-than-normal review, but apparently I have a lot to say about this book!) There’s always going to be the “next” book after you read something amazing, and for me, Behind the Throne will always […]