Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: Rouge by Mona Awad

NotSarahConnorWrites

September 22, 2023

“Of course that’s you, the jars seem to whisper. Who else would it be?” (Awad 230).

Mirabelle Nour’s mother is dead. Travelling from Montreal to Southern California, Mira needs to get her mother’s estate in order, find a way to pay off her mother’s astronomical debt, all while maintaining her skincare routine. But when she’s invited to the mysteries La Maison de Méduse, where her mother was a member, Mira finds herself transformed. People are calling her Belle again, which hasn’t happened since she was a child, and she finds herself glowing. Belle is thrilled to find she’s been identified as a Perfect Candidate by the red-haired woman at the spa, whatever that means. Aside from the fog blurring her thoughts and words becoming lost, Belle is excited to go on her journey to become her most beautiful self. Continue reading

Book Review: Ducks – Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

September 20, 2023

Cartoonist Kate Beaton recounts her time working in the Oil Sands after graduating from university. Eager to pay off her student debt, Beaton knows the best way to do that is a job in Alberta. Many Maritimers have done the same, and if it will get her out of debt fast and onwards to the career she wants then it’s worth it. But Beaton doesn’t understand what she’s in for until she gets there. Continue reading

Book Review: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

NotSarahConnorWrites

1 comment

September 5, 2023

“When some dies, you stop remembering them fully,” (Johns 23).

Mackenzie wakes up with a crow’s head in her hand, but moments later it disappears as if it was never there to begin with. It isn’t the first thing Mackenzie has brought back from her dreams, but it is the most troubling. Night after night Mackenzie returns to her dreams where she sees a horrifying vision of her sister Sabrina who died the year before and returns to a memory at her family’s lakefront campsite and something that may or may not have happened in the woods. When she wakes up coughing up water from almost drowning and a text message from Sabrina, Mackenzie knows it’s time to return to her family in High Prairie, Alberta. She’s welcomed back but grief still hangs heavy among them, and when the dreams continue and get more dangerous for herself and her family, Mackenzie can’t help wondering if she’s a bad Cree for bringing all of this to them.

Book Review: A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

September 3, 2023

“We will all be stories one day, and I’d want someone to believe we existed. Wouldn’t you?” (Shannon 582).

For fifty years Tunuva Melim has been a sister of the Priory, trained to slay wyrms even though the younger generation has started to question the Priory’s purpose when no dragons have been seen for hundreds of years. In the North, Princess Glorian, daughter to Queen Sabran the Ambitious and the King of Hróth, prefers to live in the shadows of her parents since she fears she will never learn how to rule the Queendom of Inys as her mother does. In the East, Dumai has spent her life as a godsinger on Mount Ipyeda worshipping the dragons that have slept for centuries until a mysterious figure from her mother’s past finds her on the mountain. Wulfert Glenn, housecarl to the King of Hróth is dedicated to protecting Inys even though many around him see him as a heathen since he was discovered in the mysterious woods as a baby near his adopted home. When the Dreadmount erupts an age of terror, violence, and strange wyrms emerge that these characters will have to find the strength inside of themselves to save humanity. Continue reading

Book Review: Enter the Body by Joy McCullough

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

August 26, 2023

“I won’t/ be used/ without consent./ You think me/ easy to ignore./ Perhaps I am./ But only notice me/ when you have use/ and I will scream/ so loud I’ll wake the dead,/ and they might have/ some words for you” (McCullough).

Cordelia, Ophelia, and Juliet gather beneath the trapdoor of the stage to retell their stories to the other women of Shakespeare’s plays who haunt the corners. All the while they ignore another teenage girl, Lavinia, horrifically maimed who silently takes their stories in. Continue reading

Book Review: Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

August 15, 2023

“You’re searching for something profound. Something to tug at your heartstrings…The house is an animal. And it wants to feed,” (Samsbury 234).

Daisy can see the dead. It’s an ability she’s had all her life which makes living in ghost-filled Toronto difficult. She usually has a handle on it, but when her boyfriend suddenly dumps her the dead come for her sadness. But when the uncle she’s never met dies and leaves Daisy and her mother his huge mansion in Timmins, Daisy sees it as the perfect opportunity to start again. This is the moment she and her mom have been waiting for, a chance for them out of their tiny apartment and to stop worrying about money and maybe, for Daisy, a chance at freedom. But her mom won’t let her in the mansion and she won’t tell her why, and the house turns out much different than it seems, Ten years later Brittney decides to investigate the “Miracle Mansion” that to the world reformed her abusive mother into the caring woman she markets herself as in her book, but Brittney knows better. She believes that if she can find out what happened to another young Black girl in the mansion a decade before she can expose her mother for the abusive woman she still is. But is Brittney seeing the story correctly or letting her own bias seep through? Continue reading

Book Review: The Executioner of Yrecep by Laura DiNovis Berry

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

August 1, 2023

I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

“The village hunters never even went close to that menacing forest, and if their prey happened to make its way through the treeline, they gave up the chase. There was nothing worth a trek into Yrecep Forest, or at least, there hadn’t been until today,” (Berry).

Taken in by the Coven as a young child, Pesdari hopes for a chance to escape one day. Though she has been taught in the ways of magic, she has also witnessed death and sacrifice and the terrifying closeness of their gods. When she witnesses her only friend Thade doing something horrifying, Pesdari finds an opportunity to leave with two unlikely companions. But will Pesdari be able to find freedom or become the gods ultimate sacrifice? Continue reading

Book Review: You’re Not Supposed To Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

July 30, 2023

“‘I’m the final girl…Guaranteed to survive the night,” (Bayron 49).

Charity Curtis loves her summer job playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake, where a popular slasher horror movie, Curse of Camp Mirror Lake, was made. Guests come to Camp Mirror Lake and pay to be scared in recreated scenes from the movie in a full contact game where there are few survivors. But as Charity and her co-workers begin to close for the season they find some of their colleagues missing, another dead, and suddenly everything is becoming too real. Charity and her girlfriend are determined to survive the night, but they’ll need to find out more about Mirror Lake’s dark past first. Continue reading

Book Review: Such Is My Beloved by Morley Callaghan

NotSarahConnorWrites

1 comment

July 28, 2023

“‘If I start hating prostitutes where am I going to stop?…All around us there are all kinds of people prostituting their souls and their principles for money. I know people in this city who prostitute our faith for the sake of expediency. I watch it going on all around and wonder how corrupt our faith can become before it dies. So if I can’t have charity for those girls, certainly I can have no love for many others in higher places,'” (Callaghan).

Father Stephen Dowling is a young priest interested in preaching the love of God to his parishioners. When he meets two sex workers, Midge and Ronnie, who live in a hotel in his parish Father Dowling is determined to help them and save their souls. But not everyone in the young priest’s life is as understanding to his cause, creating trouble that will affect the three of them. Continue reading

Book Review: Blind Spot by Maud Rowell

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

July 26, 2023

“I truly believe there is value in learning about blindness for everyone, because making our world more accessible benefits all its citizens, not just the few for whom it is critical,” (Rowell 11).

Blind author Maud Rowell challenges readers to rethink blindness and disability, educating readers on blind explorers, artists, scientists, and many more who have been able to make changes in the world from their perspective that people who can see are unaware of. Rowell challenges readers to acknowledge the inaccessibility of the world and how society should work to support and help everyone to create an accessible world. Continue reading