The Night Guest is hard to categorise – it’s both a taut thriller and an altogether close-to-home examination of dementia and loneliness, written with a wonderful sense of pacing and language. Although the main plot deals with an elderly lady accepting a stranger into her home and life, the most resonant parts for me come from a beautifully muddled blending of memories and reality. Like last year’s Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller, The Night Guest offers a compelling glimpse into the slow grip […]
The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer
Okay, wow. Wasn’t a good idea to finish this while sitting in a cafe. People think I’m barking. I’m not going to go in depth on this one for two reasons: a) If I were to do that I would spoil the hell out of anyone reading this, and b) the emotions are a little too raw for me to even want to. This book affected me. To sum it up (very) briefly, Tell the Wolves I’m Home is about June Elbus, a fourteen year-old […]
The Players and the Played
Morality Play is another jewelbox novel – sparse, elegant, compact. There is a simplicity and a brevity to the story – it takes place over two weeks – that could feel insufficient, but doesn’t. This could be a longer book, but the sketchbook quality of it fits the time and story. The story is that of a young medieval priest, not without sin, and fairly self-aware. He’s a wanderer, restless and hungry, who stumbles upon a scene of death. A band of players in the […]
Impuse Buys Aren’t Always a Bad Idea
If nothing else, this book is a strong indication as to why I am pretty much constantly broke.
The one where I vow to not read “New Adult” anymore, at least till next time…
I’ve written before about “New Adult” and what crap it is, but I keep reading it because I never learn. I want it to be the equivalent of hangover watching Dirty Dancing on TBS while waiting for your roommate’s boyfriend to come back with hangover McDonald’s with a big fat hangover diet Coke, but it’s not. It’s not at all. It’s like discovering that Dirty Dancing has been replaced with, I don’t know, sports or something, and your roommate’s boyfriend got you a regular Coke […]
Running Mazes, Scorching Trials, and Curing Death. Of course it’s a YA trilogy!
Thomas wakes up one day to find himself in a field with other boys surrounding him. He has no memory of who he is or how he got there. Same as the others before him. He soon learns he is trapped in a maze and joins their quest to find a way out. This series starts as many YA series do. Strong, compelling, slightly twisted. But by book three, I find myself back to 2006, watching the third season of LOST – frusterated, confused, and […]