Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards by Jessica Waite

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June 28, 2024

I received this book from Simon and Schuster Canada in exchange for an honest review.

“Driving home, I’m caught in the crazy paradox: people want to be remembered when they’re gone, yet everyone’s afraid to talk about the dead. The fastest way to forget someone is to stop saying their name,” (Waite).

When Jessica Waite’s husband dies suddenly of a heart attack she’s heartbroken. But as she prepares for the funeral and adjusting to life as a single mother to her nine-year-old son, she learns that her late husband was living a secret life of drug addiction, infidelity, and debt. Her grief complicated, Jessica’s feelings towards her dead husband become overwhelming as she tries to understand the man she thought she knew with the secrets he was hiding. And when her late husband appears to be trying to contact her from the afterlife, Jessica doesn’t know whether or not she wants a sign from him. Continue reading

Surprising Saints – Saint Lí Ban Muirgen

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June 26, 2024

You can bet that had I known there was a mermaid saint when I was preparing to get confirmed I would have wanted to choose her. That being said, I probably would have been too wracked with Catholic guilt to choose a mermaid for a saint name and would have stuck with St. Joan of Arc anyways (I still love you Joan!). But a mermaid saint is too interesting to ignore, so let’s talk about her here. Continue reading

Book Review: All the Dead Lie Down by Kyrie McCauley

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June 24, 2024

“It wasn’t hard to be brave. Not if it was for someone you love,” (McCauley 336).

After a tragedy that results in her mother’s death, Marin Blythe finds herself lost in the world until she receives a letter from her favourite horror author, Alice Lovelace and former friend of her mother, offering her a nanny position at Lovelace House. Marin jumps at the opportunity, watching the two strange children as Alice writes her next novel. Thea holds funerals for her dolls, and Wren pulls pranks that escalate in a way to scare Marin away. But when Alice’s eldest daughter Evie arrives things settle at Lovelace House, and Marin is drawn to Evie. But all is not well in Lovelace. Not when dead birds appear in Marin’s room or when the girl’s show her the chest full of braids made of human hair in the attic, certainly not when a mutilated animal is found in the woods. Secrets cloak themselves around Lovelace House, and Marin will discover what they are. Continue reading

Book Review: Grey Dog by Elliott Gish

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June 22, 2024

“Is it some disorder of the mind that causes me to see things, hear things, that then vanish as though they never were?” (Gish 230).

Spinster Ada Byrd has just started a teaching position in Lowry Bridge, an isolated town where no one knows of her disgrace and shame from her last post. As she establishes her life in town teaching her young students naturalism in the woods around them and befriending the Reverend’s wife, Ada believes there may just be a place for her here. But Ada is starting to see some strange things: a swarm of crickets that disappears in the blink of an eye, a crow’s wing left on the schoolhouse door, and something calling her name on the wind. When she befriends an ostracized widow who the town believes is a witch, Ada is left pondering the happenings around her and is forced to look inwards for the answers, and listening close to what calls to her from the woods. Continue reading

Pansy – Substack

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June 20, 2024

Well, it sure has been a bit since my last flower talk. Let’s fix this by talking about the next flower Ophelia hands out, shall we?

According to Jessica Roux’s Floriography, pansy (viola tricolour var. hortensis), also known as “Johnny Jump Up, heartsease, tickle-my-fancy” and other names (Wikipedia) was given the meaning “You occupy my thoughts” during the Victorian times (Roux). Roux goes onto explain that the flower gets it’s name “from the French pensée, meaning “thought.” According to House Plant Central, many English botanists began crossing pansies “en masse” during the Victorian era, so much so that “by the year 1835, there were over 400 different pansies in existence” each with their own individual meaning (House Plant Central).

Book Review: The Project by Courtney Summers

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June 18, 2024

“God, she whispers and it’s all she whispers, over and over and over again. God, I’ll do anything. Please, God… And then He appears,” (Summers 9).

In 2011 Bea’s younger sister Lo would have died in the car accident that killed their parents if it weren’t for Lev Warren. After finding Bea praying in the chapel he brought Lo back and Bea becomes devoted to him and The Unity Project, an organization that takes care of the needy and the lost and offers them community. All Bea needs to do is prove herself to Lev. In 2017 Lo doesn’t know why her sister abandoned her for The Unity Project but has hated them ever since, wondering when she will see Bea again. When Lev invites Lo to The Unity Project for an exclusive interview Lo jumps at the chance to finally get answers about where Bea is and why her sister would leave her real family in place of the Project’s. Continue reading

Book Review: Nobody Cares by Anne T. Donahue

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June 16, 2024

“Some are born anxious, some achieve anxiety, and some have anxiety thrust upon them. I am lucky enough to have been blessed with all three,” (Donahue 7).

I heard Anne Donahue read from her collection of essays a few years back (the same literary festival where I heard Claudia Dey read from Heartbreaker, so I guess I’m getting through my festival reads backlog) and loved how frank and comfortable she was in her interviews. It made me interested in her debut collection of essays, Nobody Cares, and the beautiful cover didn’t hurt either. Continue reading

Book Review: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad

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June 14, 2024

“Some of us are forced to eat spring mix in the half-dark of our low-ceilinged studio apartments and still expand inexplicably. Some of us expand at the mere contemplation of what you shovel so carelessly, so dancingly into your smug little mouth,” (Awad 74-75).

I’ve been a fan of Mona Awad’s since first reading Bunny but it’s only now that I’ve read her debut novel. It’s interesting to read a contemporary work by her with her many horror/Gothic novels, but it was still fantastic. Continue reading

Book Review: Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey

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June 12, 2024

“This is what I know: She left last night,” (Dey 3).

Billie Jean Fontaine is missing. Seventeen years earlier she arrived to a smalltown far in the territory and now she’s left her teenaged daughter Pony, her husband The Heavy, her devoted dog, the teenager Supernatural who always seems to know more than anyone, and the rest of the town wondering where she’s gone. Pony, the dog, and Supernatural wonder whether or not they were the cause in some way in her leaving, where Billie Jean has gone, and whether or not she’ll come back. Continue reading

Book Review: The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee

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June 10, 2024

“As much as you love them, dreams are just dreams,” (Lee 26).

Unremembered and unknown to us when we awaken lies a store in our subconscious: The Dallergut Dream Department Store. Inside customers find a variety of options from dreams from childhood to living the life of another person, nightmares, mysterious dreams, dreams that stick and are hard to shake. Penny has just started working at the Dallergut Dream Department Store and is eager to learn what dreams are meant for which person and meet the mysterious dream makers who create the dreams so widely sought after. Continue reading