by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 10, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
Angie Thomas inhabits her main character Starr Carter’s voice in The Hate U Give. Starr is an African American teen living in a rough neighborhood. But her life is so much more than that. She’s got two younger brothers, plus a mom and dad who work their fingers to the...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 2, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Dear Kevin Wilson: Thank you for giving me something to laugh at while on lock down in my house. Nothing to See Here offered me hours of escape, into the world of kids who catch on fire and the pliable definitions of parental love and family. It was a life saver for a...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 21, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
In Women Talking by Miriam Toews, a group of women sort life out after experiencing terrible assaults. What makes this unique is that the women are all conservative Mennonites living in the isolated, fictional colony called Molotschna. But this isn’t strictly a work...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 17, 2019 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
In Disappearing Earth, author Julia Phillips transports the missing girl trope to a unique location. On the Kamchatka Peninsula in Eastern Russia, life is hard. It combines both modern conveniences like cell phones, and long-established behaviors like misogyny. So...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 21, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Eleanor Oliphant is the oddest of odd ducks, created by Gail Honeyman in her 2017 debut novel, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Thanks to my IRL book group for suggesting it, as I probably wouldn’t have read it without them. Eleanor has a way with words. In fact,...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 18, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Richard Powers weaves the stories of nine disparate people’s lives together like tree branches on the ground after a strong storm. There’s a college student, a software genius, an engineer, a soldier, an artist, a researcher, a scientist, an actuarial attorney, and a...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 5, 2019 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
Tosca Lee brings us a strong entry for the “young innocent woman tries to save the world” genre. The Line Between is a cult escapee, pandemic, dangerous emergency road trip book. Its heroine is likable, and the topic is fairly relevant.The young protagonist is Wynter...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 31, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Matthew Quick provides a window into the mind of his unique Everyman main character in The Silver Linings Playbook. Pat Peoples is a thirty-something guy who has just been sprung from “the bad place” by his mom and her legal team. And he tries hard to reintegrate...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 21, 2019 | RESIST: Social Justice
Jewell Parker Rhodes mixes hard, cold reality with imagination in her middle-grade novel, Ghost Boys. It’s the story of a young African American boy, just 12 years old. And he dies by the gun of a police officer. So, going in I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 18, 2019 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
In A Ladder to the Sky, John Boyne and his main character, Maurice Swift, take us inside the world of a writer. And a sociopath. It’s so completely wrong that it’s right. This is the follow up to Boyne’s fabulous 2017 book, The Heart’s Invisible Furies....
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 10, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Lindsey Lee Johnson takes readers deep inside the high school ecosystem in The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. Actually, the first chapter occurs in eighth grade, but the remainder are during high school. Her main characters are students, and one first-year...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 19, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Pickle’s Progress is a quintessential modern New York City novel. In it, Marcia Butler gives us identical twin brothers and the women in their lives. But it’s much more dysfunctional and convoluted than that. Fundamentally, that’s a good thing. Butler’s taut...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 8, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
There There by Tommy Orange wasn’t the book I’d hoped it would be. Where Heart Berries was a deep dive in one woman’s psyche, There There is a shallow dip into the lives of many, many characters. That they both center on the varied experiences of Native Americans in...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 16, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Gregory Erich Phillips takes on a main character very different from himself in The Exile. First, Leila del Sol is a woman. Second, she’s a Colombian immigrant living and working in Phoenix, Arizona. But they both work in the chaotic bubble-bursting mortgage loan...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 14, 2019 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
After listening to her nonfiction book, Forensics, reading Val McDermid’s psychological thriller series was an easy choice. I liked her detailed writing style, and was glad to see it here also. The Mermaids Singing is told from two points of view. First we have the...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 4, 2019 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
Delia Owens crafts a genrebusting debut novel. It’s primarily a Bildungsroman—coming of age story. But Owens throws in elements of romance, adds a treatise on nature, plus a strong mystery and courtroom procedural.Her main character Kathryn Danielle Clark, nicknamed...
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