Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: Arrangements in Blue – Notes on Loving and Living Alone by Amy Key

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March 29, 2024

“My scared voice also asks if it’s truly possible to have a chosen family when, for me at least, almost everyone in it is tied romantically to another, or will be, their sense of family closing in on itself as they couple up and have kids. I feel frustrated with myself for wanting to be someone’s number one. To be their person,” (Key 65).

Amy Key’s debut memoir examines how she spent most of her life imagining a great, romantic love story for herself that by her mid-forties never did unfold. Using Joni Mitchel’s Blue album, Key looks back at her expectations on love, on being single, and how to live a life without romantic love when it is so often seen as the only thing worth living for. Continue reading

gritLit 2024 Writing Contest Longlist

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March 23, 2024

I’m very honoured to announce that my short story “Peach Baby” made gritLit’s 2024 Writing Contest Longlist! Check out the other longlist authors here.

2024 gritLit Longlist

Book Review: The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones (My Heart is a Chainsaw #3)

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March 21, 2024

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

“In your head, and your secret heart, it’s easy to be tough,” (Jones).

Four years after Dark Mill South’s Reunion Tour, Jade Daniel’s is back in Proofrock, Idaho. Now a history teacher at her old high school, Jade tries to move on with her life until one day as her students are giving presentations on Proofrock’s history, one of her students shows drone footage that reveals the dead bodies of two missing teens from town, and right when a manmade wildfire has started in the forest nearby. As the sheriff and a number of volunteer firefighters go into the forest in an attempt to stop the fire, Jade stays behind, recognizing the signs of a slasher. But final girl Letha is away getting surgery, so who will be the one to save Proofrock this time? Continue reading

Book Review: Finding Edward by Sheila Murray

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March 19, 2024

“‘Not invisible…Because it’s there if you look. You’re just not going to find it in the way our history’s told. Canadian history is white people’s history, and they don’t get that because they don’t know that white is a colour. They think they are invisible…We see them clearly because we have to. And we see that they definitely control the story,'” (Murray).

After the death of his mother and surrogate grandfather, Cyril Rowntree moves to Toronto as his mother wished him to do. Cyril works two jobs, studies to earn a degree, and tries to understand Canada as a mixed race man, coming face-to-face with racialized prejudice. When his paths cross with a panhandler named Patricia and the story of a missing mixed-race boy named Edward from the 1920s, Cyril is determined to find out what happened to the boy and learns Canadian history during his research. Continue reading

Book Review: A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand

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March 13, 2024

“Hill House neither sleeps nor dreams. Shrouded within its overgrown lawns and sprawling woodlands, the long shadows of mountains and ancient oaks, Hill House watches. Hill House waits,” (Hand 3).

Struggling playwright Holly Sherwin has just received a grant to develop her play, an adaption of The Witch of Edmonton, that may just bring her the success she was promised in her youth. When she finds the isolated and remote Hill House, Holly knows she’s found the perfect place to rehearse and develop her play. Inviting her actors, the infamous Amanda Greer, her best friend Stevie, and her girlfriend Nisa, Holly is sure that once they settle in to Hill House everything will become clear. And Hill House, not sane, is ready to welcome it’s guests. Continue reading

Book Review: The Curse of Eelgrass Bog by Mary Averling

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March 7, 2024

“It’s a feeling that comes from inside a person. A brightness certain people possess that makes them unique. Your heart glows especially bright, Kess Pedrock,” (Averling 116).

Kess Pedrock’s life is unnatural. Her favourite hobby is looking for megafauna fossils and skeletons, she lives in her family’s Unnatural History Museum, and her best friend is Shrunken Jim, a demon’s head that speaks to her from a jar. Despite being an unnatural life, Kess has grown to love it while her parents are off working in Antarctica and her brother Oliver locks himself away in the library. But when a new girl named Lilou Starling comes to Wick’s End asking Kess for help breaking a mysterious curse, Kess is ready to do so. But the key to breaking the mysterious curse hides in the centre of Eelgrass Bog, a place full of witches, demons, and all things dangerous, but Kess and Lilou are ready to solve it’s mysteries. But Kess might be more connected to the curse than she originally thought. Continue reading

Book Review: Calpurnia by Audrey Dwyer

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February 29, 2024

I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review.

Jamaican Canadian screenwriter Julie is working on her passion project, adapting the beloved To Kill a Mockingbird from the perspective of the Finch family’s Black maid, Calpurnia. But Julie has lived a privileged life. Her father, a successful judge, helped get her a successful literary agent and is given space and her encouragement by her father and their Filipina housekeeper, Precy, to write her screenplay. But Julie has writer’s block, and her brother Mark, hoping to impress his father’s lawyer friend and be asked to join his firm, tells Julie that she shouldn’t appropriate and write from a perspective she doesn’t know. This causes Julie to go to great lengths to prove that she can, which will lead to one unforgettable dinner. Continue reading

Book Review: Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese

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February 28, 2024

“Sometimes we let our truths rot in darkness to preserve the lies we tell in the light,” (“A Cure for Fear of Screaming,” Varghese 147).

Varghese’s debut short story collection Chrysalis has gotten a lot of hype surrounded around it and it is deserved each and every one of them (including the numerous awards it has won). I love how Varghese balances horror, fairy tale, surreal, and contemporary fiction all so neatly in this collection. The stories are all so different from one another but communicate a lot of similar themes. It is unapologetically queer and at it’s heart shows the ways that women of colour fight to find power for themselves. The stories in this collection were brilliant and I can’t wait to see what Varghese has in store for us next!

Here are my thoughts on each of the stories in this collection: Continue reading

Book Review: Tender Beasts by Liselle Sambury

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February 20, 2024

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

“That was the thing about families. They knew even the things you wanted to keep secret,” (Sambury).

Grieving her mother’s sudden death, Sunny Behre knows she has what it takes to take up her role as leader of her family, as her mother wanted. But at the will reading there is no declaration of Sunny being the new leader of the Behre family, just a sticky note that says, “Take care of Dom.” Sunny has four siblings, and the youngest, Dom, has always been the black sheep of them, even before he was accused of murdering his girlfriend the year before. Dom swears he’s innocent, but when one of their classmates is found brutally murdered, and then another, Sunny can’t be so sure. What she does know is that she’s going to take care of Dom, and her other siblings who seem to have secrets of their own. It’s what her mother would have wanted. Continue reading

Book Review: Roll for Initiative by Jaime Formato

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February 12, 2024

“Maybe I don’t wanna fight a dragon. Maybe I wanna be a dragon. I’m going to write a campaign and I’m going to be the Dungeon Master this time. The Dragon Master Dungeon Master,” (Formato 16).

Things aren’t going well for Riley Henderson. She has to take the bus to school now, make herself an afterschool snack, finish her homework and do her own laundry (gross) all because her older brother Devin is off in college in California. Devin used to do all of this for Riley but now she and her mom are alone stuck fending for themselves in Florida. Riley misses her and Devin’s DnD games and starts planning a campaign for them to do together. But when her map is found by one of her classmates she finds a group of girls interested in joining her campaign. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all. Continue reading