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Feb 6
Review of The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
This middle-grade writing collaboration inserts a clever young protagonist into the behind-the-scenes World War II British codebreaking...
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Oct 24, 2024
Review of Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Intermezzo is one of my favorite Rooney novels yet, exploring complicated families, grief, unconventional relationships, forgiveness, and...
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Feb 21, 2024
Review of The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
The Whalebone Theatre begins with offbeat children's performances on a lazy, decadent English estate in the 1920s and builds to the...
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Nov 2, 2023
Review of Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Emily Tesh's debut novel is a space opera about war, duty, brainwashing, escaping limitations, and reinventing oneself--with fascinating...
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May 30, 2023
Review of Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1) by Alexandra Bracken
Alternative Arthurian legends twist through this first in a young adult fantasy series, but what hooked me was the fearless, hardened,...
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Oct 4, 2022
Review of The Frederick Sisters Are Living the Dream by Jeannie Zusy
Zusy's Frederick sisters navigate a complicated, stressful situation and drastic changes with plenty of mistakes, forgiveness, and...
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Sep 27, 2022
Review of Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott
In Nethercott's Thistlefoot, estranged siblings Bellatine and Isaac Yaga find their way back to each other within this odd, dark story...
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Jul 19, 2022
Review of Upgrade by Blake Crouch
Main protagonist Logan was hard for me to emotionally connect to, but I was hooked by the heart-pounding action, the fascinating imagined...
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Apr 19, 2022
Review of Let's Not Do That Again by Grand Ginder
Much of Ginder's novel is focused on a revenge fantasy, but I was drawn more to Nancy Harrison's strong personality and political...
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Feb 9, 2022
Review of Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner
Faulkner's debut mystery is twisty and turny, with various potential bad seeds and complications--and it ends in a satisfying whirl of...
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Nov 1, 2021
Review of The Best of Me by David Sedaris
This collection of previously published Sedaris works is a gold mine of discomforting, edgy, offbeat observations--with more heart than I...
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Oct 19, 2021
Review of Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Main protagonist Gifty's journey was full of challenges and not too easy or complete, and her voice had me hooked throughout Yaa Gyasi's...
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Aug 6, 2021
Review of Now You Say Yes by Bill Harley
Now You Say Yes is beautiful. Harley's middle-grade story about love, duty, self-discovery, disappointment, and pushing through the...
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Jul 29, 2021
Review of Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I had fun reading about the glamorous modeling-surfing-photography-music star family pedigree. But I felt as though the last hundred...
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Jul 28, 2021
Three Books I'm Reading Now, 7/28/21 Edition
The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading The People We Keep, Allison Larkin's upcoming novel about a young protagonist shaping her life...
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Jun 22, 2021
Review of One of Us Is Next by Karen M. McManus
This is a great, character-driven sequel to McManus’s young adult mystery One of Us Is Lying. Last year, in McManus's great young adult...
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Mar 22, 2021
Review of The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan
Characters cope with lost dreams and find ways to (often clumsily) come together through their shared pain. The vibrancy of Beirut is...
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Mar 16, 2021
Review of Body of Stars by Laura Maylene Walter
I wished that the book had more fully explored the cycle of prediction and realization that lies at the heart of its premise. In the...
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Mar 8, 2021
Review of Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack by Heidi von Palleske
The book introduces some fascinating detail and interesting themes, but the story frequently feels choppy and unfinished. In von...
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Mar 3, 2021
Three Books I'm Reading Now, 3/3/21 Edition
What I'm Reading Now Here's what I've got going at the moment: a dark, intriguing story of interconnectedness between unusual characters;...