Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

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March 23, 2023

“One step forward, two steps back. You think this house is going to be a real windfall and then – boom – it’s haunted,” (Hendrix 153).

When Louise Joyner learns her parents have died in a car accident, she’s understandably heartbroken, but she doesn’t want to go back home. She doesn’t want to leave her five-year-old daughter Poppy with her ex and fly to Charleston, to deal with her childhood home and the hoarder level of puppets now live inside of it. Most of all she doesn’t want to deal with her estranged, immature, slacker brother Mark who resents her success and who her parents adored. But the house needs to be sold, the money would help her daughter when she’s older. But there are strange sounds coming from the attic, and her mother’s favourite puppet Pupkin keeps showing up in the strangest of places, probably put there by her brother to scare her. But Mark keeps saying the vibes in the house are off, will they be able to sell it or does something more sinister lurk in its foundations? Continue reading

Book Review: First Snow, Last Light by Wayne Johnston

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March 18, 2023

“Guilt casts a spell like the one cast by despair. The spells of love and hope don’t linger like the others,” (Johnston).

When fourteen-year-old Ned Vatcher comes home from school after the first snowstorm of the season he finds his house locked, the family car missing, and his parents gone. Word spreads across Newfoundland about the Vanished Vatchers: Edgar, the disliked right-hand man to the colony’s prime minister who fell from grace and his wife, London-born Megan who yearned to go back home. The Vatchers weren’t liked on the island, and Ned agonizes over what happened to his parents. Murder? Suicide? He can’t believe his parents would leave their only child behind. But the Vatchers are no strangers to tragedy, years before his uncle vanished at sea and his death still haunts his grandparents and Uncle Cyril. He finds care and kindness from a Jesuit priest, Father Duggan, who starts a trust so that Ned won’t be destitute, and a friend of his father’s reporter Sheilagh Fielding who finds a surrogate in Ned from her estrangement from her twins. Spanning fifty years, this epic novel offers a character study into grief, longing, love against the backdrop of Newfoundland. Continue reading

Book Review: Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher

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February 28, 2023

“I don’t want to talk about the rain or the trees or the…guilt I feel every single minute of every single day. And if I write it all down, I want to do it in pencil so I can rub it straight back out again, erasing that whole part of my life so it smudges into nothing and I can start again,” (Pitcher 224-225).

Zoe has become penpals with Mr. Stuart Harris, a Texas Death Row inmate awaiting capital punishment for killing his wife. But he’s the only one who really understands Zoe, since both of them have committed crimes of passion. In a dark garden shed Zoe composes her letters, her confession to Stuart, explaining how it all began with two boys, one she betrayed, one she killed, and how she hides it all away. Continue reading

Book Review: Reaching for Starlight by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

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February 27, 2023

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

Reenie wants to dance just like her mother who worked hard to make a spot for herself on the stage and her grandmother who worked behind-the-scenes making costumes. It’s her legacy, and like the other young dancers in her ensemble Reenie feels that she is the one who will be performing the coveted solo as the role of the Firebird in the year-end recital. But Reenie begins to notice that the incredibly strict maestra holds some of the dancers to a different standard than others, particularly Maia, the other Black girl in class, because of her “urban” look. Reenie knows it’s wrong, and she’s finding the words to fight for what she believes in but doesn’t find support from her mother or the rest of the classmates. What can Reenie do to challenge and change the injustice she sees when no one wants to stand beside her? Continue reading

Book Review: The Midnight Club by Christopher Pike

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February 26, 2023

” Are you a Christian?’ Ilonka finally asked.

‘No, I am dying.” Anya turned a page. “Dead people have no religion,'” (Pike 4).

Ilonka Pawluk has checked-in to Rotterham Home, a hospice for teenagers, typically state wards, who are soon to die. But Ilonka is different, she’s taking better care of herself, and once her hospital tests prove that she’ll be out of Rotterham and back to living. Until then, Ilonka meets with her roommate Anya and other Rotterham residents Spence, Sandra, and Kevin at midnight for the Midnight Club where the teens regale great stories of mystery, horror, and tragedy to each other. After one frightful story the teens make a vow to whichever one of their group dies first has to come back and show them a sign. But then one of them does die… Continue reading

My Parish Priest Died

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February 22, 2023

My parish priest died in February. Leukemia, relatively quickly it seems based on his obituary. He wasn’t my most recent parish priest, but he was the first priest I knew when I first started attending church as a tiny thing that needed to stand on the kneelers in order to properly participate in mass.

He was the priest I associated with my parish for a long time before he moved to a rural parish. He was the first priest I altar served with. Before I altar served and spent mass time doing that, I’d attend a sort of Sunday school version during mass. Father used to announce at the beginning of mass that it was time for Children’s Liturgy, which offered a simplified version of the gospel and homily, and as I and the other children of the parish gathered around him he’d usually ask us some questions that would be related to the gospel before we followed our liturgy leader to the meeting area of the church. At the end of mass my dad, sister, and I would speak to Father, even if my sister and I had been altar serving and spoken to him already. If it was cold Father wore a black cloak outside when he said goodbye to his clergy.

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Book Review: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

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February 21, 2023

“People love an idea, even if they don’t know what to do with it. Even if they only know how to do exactly the wrong thing,” (Machado 228).

In her memoir, Carmen Maria Machado finds the words, after years and difficulty, to articulate what it was like being in an abusive same-sex relationship. Part fairy-tale, horror story, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure as well as a number of tropes to cleverly and concisely detail the abuse she endured, Machado’s memoir is a unique and unforgettable classic. Continue reading

Book Review: Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey

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February 18, 2023

“I am a delicate mist. No one can look at me or touch me or see me. I do not want to be held, which is fine-no one wants to hold me, and even if they did, it wouldn’t help. I am a murmuration, a lightly undulating spray of particles, moving easily around the earth without impacting it. I don’t miss anyone and have never fucked anything up,” (Heisey 286).

Twenty-nine-year-old Maggie is now a divorcee, but she’s fine. Even though she’s broke and her thesis is going nowhere. Or the fact that she’s taking up “adult” hobbies, eating hamburgers at 4AM, while googling and tweeting anything she can think of. But she’s doing really good, actually, especially with the support of her academic advisor Merris, her newly divorced friend Amy, and her active group chat with her friends. Maggie is certain she can beat this divorce, that things aren’t really so bad. Really. Continue reading

Rosemary – Incapable of Her Own Distress

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February 16, 2023

Let’s take our first look into Ophelia’s flowers with rosemary, since it’s the first flower she hands out in Act IV scene v.

According to the language of flowers, rosemary (salvia rosamrinus), which is also known as “compass weed, incensier, [and] pilgrim’s flower” (Inkwright 133) has often been associated with remembrance and wisdom (Roux 152). Roux explains in her book Floriography that this belief actually stems from ancient Greece when Greek scholars would wear “crowns of rosemary during their examinations” (Roux 152). Inkwright explains in her book Folk Magic and Healing: An Unusual History of Everyday Plants that Greek students would “braid rosemary into their hair to help them with their studies” (Inkwright 133).

Book Review: Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin

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February 14, 2023

“One day I will die, and one day everyone I know will die. One day everyone I don’t know will die. One day every animal and plant on this planet will die. One day earth itself will die, and one day all of humanity, and all relics of human life,” (Austin).

Twenty-seven-year-old atheist lesbian Gilda can’t stop thinking about death. Desperate to stop the thoughts, she goes to a local church that’s advertising free local therapy only to find herself greeted by Father Jeff who believes she’s come to interview for the new receptionist job at the church. Not wanting to disappoint Father Jeff, she’s hired on the spot to replace the beloved former receptionist, Grace. Hiding the fact that she’s very gay, as well as trying to memorize the lines of Catholic mass, Gilda manages to strike up an email correspondence with Grace’s friend Rosemary because she doesn’t know how to tell the old woman her friend is dead. Juggling all this the police have also discovered some suspicious circumstances around Grace’s death, causing Gilda’s already panicked and dark thoughts to run in unexpected ways. Continue reading