“If the police didn’t help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean that the government is also a terrorist?” As the title of Megha Majumdar’s debut novel implies, A BURNING is a blaze of a book that burns brightly from start to finish. The story begins after…
The Beauty of Your Face
THE BEAUTY OF YOUR FACE by Sahar Mustafah is a complex story about Muslim identity and Islamic faith centered around a school shooting. As Afaf Rahman – the principal of a school for Muslim girls in the suburbs of Chicago – comes face-to-face with active shooter at her school, we are brought back through Afaf’s…
This is My Brain in Love
I knew that THIS IS MY BRAIN IN LOVE by I. W. Gregorio was going to be a cute read but, boy oh boy, there is so much more to this book than I expected! As a YA contemporary romance novel I was very impressed that the book not only depicted a budding romance well…
Conjure Women
CONJURE WOMEN is Afia Atakora’s intriguing debut novel that is steeped in history and heart. Atakora drew largely from actual historic records, basing elements of the plot and characters on the stories of formerly enslaved people collected by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. The characters and their relationships are the soul of this…
Death in Her Hands
DEATH IN HER HANDS is Ottessa Moshfegh’s riff on the classic detective novel. The “detective” is Vesta, a lonely old widow who stumbles upon a note in the woods that alludes to a woman’s murder. The note consumes Vesta’s every thought. Her mind runs wild as she fabricates clues and invents background stories for the…
The Mirror & The Light
THE MIRROR & THE LIGHT by Hilary Mantel was my most anticipated book of 2020. I absolutely loved the first two books in the Thomas Cromwell Trilogy and I’ve been waiting almost 8 years for this final book, so needless to say my excitement and expectations were very high! But don’t worry, it did not…
Everywhere You Don’t Belong
I’m a sucker for coming-of-age stories ESPECIALLY ones centered on diverse characters. So when I got a copy of Gabriel Bump’s sharply funny debut novel EVERYWHERE YOU DON’T BELONG, I just couldn’t wait to read it! Claude McKay Love is a young, black boy growing up in the south side of Chicago in the 1990s….
The Prettiest Star
THE PRETTIEST STAR by Carter Sickels is a devastating and poignant story about the AIDS crisis. This powerful book shines a spotlight on the often overlooked demographic of young people that were forced to return to the families they ran away from and the communities that rejected them because they were dying and had nowhere…
These Ghosts Are Family
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: I LOVE multigenerational family sagas! So when I heard about Maisy Card’s debut novel THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY, I knew I had to get my hands on it! THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY follows multiple generations of a Jamaican family as they grapple with the…
Booky Nooky 