Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders

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December 15, 2025

“No matter what, you will always be loved. You cannot mess up so badly that you will not be loved,” (Anders 161)

Twenty-something Jamie is working on her PhD dissertation, in a strong relationship with their partner Ro, processing their generational trauma, and is a practicing witch. She has a fraught relationship with her mother, Serena, who has isolated herself from the world after the death of her wife and blowing up her career. Jamie tries to help her mother by teaching her magic, but one working together leads to a domino effect neither of them will see coming. Continue reading

Book Review: Revelator by Daryl Gregory

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December 11, 2025

“Stella Wallace met her family’s god when she was nine years old. Later, she couldn’t figure out why she didn’t run when she saw it. It wasn’t fear that pinned her to the spot, staring up at it, or even shock. It was something else. Awe, maybe. Wonder so deep it was almost adoration,” (Gregory 1).

At nine-years old Stella is sent to live with her grandmother, Motty, in Tennessee. When wandering into a nearby cavern, she meets her family’s god and learns of the special role she has in her family and their church. Year later, after fleeing a tragic incident, Stella is now a bootlegger who returns home for Motty’s funeral and to check on her ten year old cousin Sunny that Motty adopted. Sunny seems like a normal enough girl, but she is stronger than Stella ever was at her age, and the other members are eager to introduce Sunny to their god. Continue reading

Book Review: The Dark Will End The Dark by Darrin Doyle

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November 22, 2025

I received this book from The Next Best Book Club in exchange for an honest review.

Darrin Doyle’s short story collection The Dark Will End The Dark features an array of strange and horrifying stories. Doyle does an excellent job of creating tension, especially the slow build of it to create feelings of dread and horror. There are many unlikable protagonists we follow here and honestly it’s enjoyable to see what fate awaits them, just as it’s nice to read some of the more hesitant protagonists slowly realizing what is happening around them. I loved how varied each of the stories were and think this is a fantastic collection of stories!

Read my thoughts on each of the stories in the collection here: Continue reading

Book Review: The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama

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November 19, 2025

“‘Kabahiko is an amazing hippo. People say that if you touch the area of his body that you want to make better on yours, he’ll provide a cure,'” (Aoyama 13).

Multiple residents at the new Advance Hill condominium find themselves at the children’s playground Hinode Park where an old hippo ride named Kabahiko can apparently heal a person based on the area you touch the hippo. One by one the residents visit Kabahiko and share their worries with him, hoping for some of his healing magic, and maybe finding their own answers in the process. Continue reading

Book Review: Mate by Ali Hazelwood (Bride #2)

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November 17, 2025

“He would die for her, and he would kill for her. More importantly, he will live for her,” (Hazelwood).

Serena Paris is the first Human-Were known to the world. Orphaned and without a pack, Serena thought that her existence might have repaired the rift between Humans, Weres, and Vampyres but if anything it’s only put a target on her back. Serena realizes she can’t survive this alone and so she turns to Koen, the Alpha of the Northwest pack, who also happens to be her mate. Koen won’t let anyone harm Serena even if she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, but with the threat of dangerous Vampyres and a strange group of Weres as well as Serena’s own inner conflict, she isn’t sure if there is anyone who actually can save her. Continue reading

Book Review: Wildwood by Colin Meloy (Ill. Carson Ellis)

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November 14, 2025

“‘My dear Prue, we are the inheritors of a wonderful world, a beautiful world, full of life and mystery, goodness and pain. But likewise we are the children of an indifferent universe. We break our own hearts imposing our moral order on what is, by nature, a wide web of chaos,'” (Meloy 380).

After her little brother Mac is abducted by a murder of crows, Prue is determined to get him back, even if it means venturing into the mysterious Wildwood that her parents have warned her from exploring. With the help of her classmate Curtis, the two kids enter a strange world filled with talking birds and coyotes, warring creatures, and a strange figure dark quest. Continue reading

Book Review: Bear by Marian Engel

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November 11, 2025

“‘Bear…I love you. Pull my head off,” (Engel 90).

Lou works a quiet, easy life in the archives of the Historical Institute, but when her boss offers her the chance to catalogue the library of an eccentric nineteeth-century colonel in northern Ontario, she jumps at the chance. But when Lou gets there she is shocked to find that she will be the colonel’s home with a bear. As Lou begins cataloguing what she finds in the house, her mind drifts to the past occupants and the bear himself, until he becomes an obsession to her. Continue reading

Book Review: Audition by Katie Kitamura

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November 4, 2025

“You can be entranced by an idea…and at a certain point you can no longer see the edges of it…But at the same time, it’s important to be able to come out the other side, you have to be able to come up for air. Otherwise, you won’t survive,” (Kitamura 66).

A successful actress meets a man young enough to be her son for lunch at an elite Manhattan restaurant. Who are they to each other? What parts do they play in each others lives, if any at all? Continue reading

Book Review: Drinking the Ocean by Saad Omar Khan

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October 18, 2025

I received this book from River Street Writing in exchange for an honest review.

“Would it be like that with her? When she died, would her loved ones be told to move on?…She wondered this for weeks. She wondered if this was why people worshipped God, why she herself was attracted to that devotion. God the eternal, keep of an immutable love, with no limits of intensity or of time,” (Khan 206).

On his thirty-third birthday Murad sees Sofi crossing the street, a woman her hasn’t seen in a decade, a woman he was once madly in love with. Murad returns home to his wife as he remembers Sofi, his life from Lahore to London and then Toronto, and how much it had changed. Continue reading

Book Review: All Things Under the Moon by Ann Y.K. Choi

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October 16, 2025

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

“The world is unfair to women. That’s why women need other women to teach them how to survive,” (Choi).

In 1924, Kim Na-Young lives a quiet life in the village of Daegeori where she cares for her sick mother and tends to her household with her best friend Yeon-Soo. But Korea has been occupied by the Japanese, and after a sudden tragedy in her village her father arranges for Na-Young to be married. Not wishing to be married, Na-Young convinces Yeon-Soo to run away with her so that they may decide their own fate, unknowingly setting off a chain of events that will effect not only their lives but the lives of those around them. Continue reading