Yeonnam-dong’s Smiley Laundromat Review: Can Kindness Bring Strangers Together? Some books sweep us away from ordinary life. Others find something worth holding on to within it. Yeonnam-dong’s Smiley Laundromat belongs firmly to the latter category. Its world is built from washing machines, lukewarm coffee, unpaid bills, family disagreements, and conversations that almost never happen. None Read more…
The Bee Sting Review: A Family Falling Apart One Secret at a Time Some books keep you turning the pages because of the story. Others keep you turning them because you can’t stop thinking about the people inside it. The Bee Sting keeps you reading for a different reason. You want to understand why these Read more…
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats Book Review: A Story That Quietly Finds Its Way Into Your Heart I almost made the mistake of judging this book too early. The first few chapters didn’t completely pull me in, and for a while I wondered whether I’d built it up too much in my head. That can Read more…
Under Your Skin Book Review: A Slow-Burn Psychological Thriller That Prefers Questions to Answers Some thrillers grab you by the collar from the very first chapter. Others slip quietly under your skin, only revealing their impact long after you’ve turned the final page. As a book, Under Your Skin belongs to the second group. Sabine Durrant Read more…
The Eighth Life Book Review: A Story That Somehow Makes a Century Feel Personal I finished The Eighth Life (For Brilka) a few days ago, and I still haven’t entirely figured out how I feel about it. That may sound like an odd way to start a review, but it also feels like the most Read more…
The Paris Secret Book Review: A Historical Novel That Quietly Sneaks Up On You I have a soft spot for historical fiction, but I also know the genre well enough to recognize when certain ingredients are being repeated. World War II, Paris, family secrets, dual timelines… none of these things are unusual anymore. That’s partly Read more…
No One Is Talking About This Book Review There is a temptation, when talking about No One Is Talking About This, to call it a novel about social media and leave it at that. The book certainly invites that description. Its protagonist spends much of her life online. She scrolls endlessly, follows arguments she barely Read more…
Time Shelter Book Review: What Happens When Entire Nations Become Trapped in Nostalgia? Some novels are easy to describe. You can summarize the plot in a few sentences and give readers a fairly accurate idea of what to expect. As a book, Time Shelter is not one of those novels. On the surface, it begins Read more…
Come and Get It Book Review: Kiley Reid Writes the Kind of Social Discomfort That Lingers I kept waiting for something dramatic to happen while reading Come and Get It. A betrayal. A confrontation. Some huge emotional explosion that would finally release all the tension the novel quietly builds from page to page. It never Read more…
Shuggie Bain Book Review: A Brutal, Beautiful Story of Love, Poverty, and Survival Some novels break your heart loudly. Others do it quietly, page by page, until you realize you have been holding your breath for far too long. Shuggie Bain belongs to the second kind. Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning debut does not make for Read more…
