Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

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July 5, 2022

“If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different,” (Montgomery 9).

Twenty-nine-year-old Valancy Stirling lives a sad and lonely life with her overbearing mother and strange aunt, never having been in love and considered the “old maid” of the Stirling clan. The only solace she finds are in the books of her favourite author, John Foster that her family mocks, and daydreams in her Blue Castle, a place where she can be who she wants and everything she wishes for comes true. But after learning from a doctor she only has a year to live, Valancy decides to be who she always wanted to be and finally starts to live. Continue reading

Book Review: Too Good to be True by Cliff Cardinal

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June 20, 2022

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

“At some point you have to admit the truth,” (Cardinal 62).

Maria and her two children, pregnant teenager Lisa and excitable preteen Jude, have just moved in to a beautiful new house. Her children can’t believe it, it’s too good to be true, but Maria is insistent that this is there house. But the family is running away from something but Maria doesn’t want to talk about it, so while the family settles in Maria makes one last supper for her children and prepares them for how they will survive in the world without her. Continue reading

Book Review: I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

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June 15, 2022

“Shame is a way of life here. It’s stocked in the vending machines, stuck like gum under desks, spoken in the morning devotionals,” (McQuiston 288).

Four years after moving with her moms from sunny California to False Beach, Alabama and attending Willowgrove Christian Academy, Chloe Green is so close to winning she can almost taste it. All she needs to do is beat her rival, prom queen, principal’s daughter, THE GIRL Shara Wheeler as valedictorian. But a month before graduation Shara kisses three people: her jock boyfriend Smith, her bad boy neighbour Rory, and rival Chloe, and then disappears. Leaving a scavenger hunt of notes and clues on pink monogrammed stationary, Chloe is determined to find Shara, even if it means joining up with two guys she would never hang out with in a million years. As they search for clues, the three find out secrets about Shara and maybe (but probably not) Shara isn’t as bad as Chloe thought. Continue reading

Book Review: What Happened to You? by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey

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June 13, 2022

“We often use our belief in another person’s ‘resilience’ as an emotional shield. We protect ourselves from the discomfort, confusion, and helplessness we feel in the face of their trauma. It’s a kind of looking away; it lets our worldview go unchallenged and lets our life continue with minimal disruption,” (Perry 187).

What Happened To You? is an incredibly detailed book so I don’t know exactly where to go with reviewing this. The main focus of Dr. Perry and Oprah’s book is to look at what happened to a person to cause certain behaviours, reactions, and lifestyles instead of assuming something is wrong with a person based on how they act. It’s a very detailed book (though Dr. Perry’s charts did confuse me at times) I enjoyed the many examples of different cases, especially with children and how certain unseen triggers could dramatically alter how they reacted in different settings. Continue reading

Book Review: Mistakes To Run With by Yasuko Thanh

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May 31, 2022

“I write as though I’m writing about someone else. ‘I’ is an invention to prove we exist. ‘I’ is the line drawn through the fabric of time. ‘I’ imposes meaning on random events. ‘I’ implies significance,” (Thanh 16).

Yasuko Thanh’s memoir follows her early childhood in Victoria, B.C as an honour role student and embracer of evangelical religion, her teenage years as a sex worker where she eventually fell in love with her pimp and experienced a number of traumatic incidents in her work, to motherhood and a complicated marriage to, eventually, an award-winning author. Thanh’s memoir offers reflections back on why she was drawn into this life, whether it had to do with her desire for love that she didn’t receive from her strict parents and the depths she’d go to find it, or rather there was another reason that could only be answered years down the road. Continue reading

Book Review: A Perfect Bowl of Pho by Nam Nguyen

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May 30, 2022

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

“Pickle veggies on the side, milky coffee on the ice

Your pick of rice, friend or white, at no additional price

Not only that, I got a burner stove and cans of gas

So you can slurp a bowl of pho when I’m through kicking yo ass,” (Nguyen, Act 1, Scene 2, 12).

Nam is a Vietnamese-Canadian university student who needs to write a musical, but has procrastinated to an impressive extent to avoid doing it. He knows he wants it to be about food and diaspora, with great focus on the world-favourite pho. As Nam goes about making his musical we get a look at the history of pho, an excitable and passionate child eager to show her classmates what true Vietnamese cuisine is, an awkward first date with yearning for more pho of course, what else could they be yearning for? And even the hipster white-washing of Asian food. Nam has a lot he wants to cover in his show, but what exactly is the point of it all? Continue reading

Book Review: Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen E. Kirby

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May 23, 2022

“A woman walks down the street and a man tells her to smile. When she smiles, she reveals a mouthful of fangs. She bites off the man’s hand, cracks the bones and spits them out, and accidentally swallows his wedding ring, which gives her indigestion,” (Kirby, “A Few Normal Things That Happen A Lot, 7).

Gwen E. Kirby’s short story collection Shit Cassandra Saw is a treasure trove of unique stories. From historical figures to cockroach women, one-star reviews and “how to” articles, to tropes of women who are tired of appearing in fiction Kirby’s anthology says it all. Shit Cassandra Saw is a collection of feminist stories that are sharp, funny, and aching, filled with women who are tired of hurting, tired of being victims, and who are ready to fight back and be the protagonist.

Read my thoughts on all of the stories in the collection below: Continue reading

Book Review: The Mask Falling by Samantha Shannon

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May 22, 2022

“It is a beautiful mask, but all masks fall. In the end,” (Shannon 36).

After being tortured by Scion, Paige Mahoney is sent to a safe house in the Scion Citadel of Paris with her former enemy but now partner, the Rephaim Arcturus Mesarthim. The mysterious Domino program, which has saved her, has plans of their own for Paige, but Paige has other tasks she wants to accomplish, like searching through the catacombs of Paris and glittering halls of Versailles. It’s risky, but Paige has always been a risktaker, and if she succeeds with the Parisian underworld she could escalate the rebellion and grow The Mime Order. But Scion’s power widens threatening to take over as many free countries as possible, and Paige is still recovering from her memories of torture at the hands of Scion while trying to figure out the strange bond between her and Arcturus that grows stronger each day. Revolution is growing, and Paige has to fight hard to survive each day to keep it burning. Continue reading

New Play on Rad[io] Shorts Podcast!

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May 15, 2022

Surprise!!! I found this out way back in January but have kept it secret for so long, but my short play Dead Serious won Rad[io] Shorts Scriptwriting contest and has been performed and posted on Spotify!

Listen to it below, and check out these talented actors! Thanks to Kyle Billie and the amazing cast for giving literal voices to this little show.

Book Review: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

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May 11, 2022

“Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace – as though not built to fly – against the roar of a thousand snow geese,” (Owens 3).

After her family one by one leaves their shack on the marsh, Kya Clark finds her self alone, working hard to survive. Shy and uneasy around others, Kya is judged at a young age by the people of Barkley Cove who view her as swamp trash, eventually giving her the name “Marsh Girl” and creating rumours about her. And while Kya finds comfort in the creatures that inhabit the march and knows how to live an isolated life, she yearns to connect and be with people. When two men become intrigued by her beauty and wild nature Kya slowly begins to open herself up until tragedy strikes. Continue reading