Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: The Grief Keeper by Alexandra Villasante

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March 7, 2020

I was incredibly excited to read The Grief Keeper after learning a big part of the story was an immigrant girl allowing herself to be experimented on by the U.S. Government so that they could gain asylum into the country sounded amazing and not exactly fictional. Of course I have no idea if the U.S. Government experiments on immigrants in exchange for asylum, but it’s one of those horrifying ideas so scary that it sounds like it could be true. The idea of it horrified me and I was intrigued at where the story would go with that plot but was unfortunately left disappointed. Continue reading

Next Steps

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March 6, 2020

From November 1st 2019 to February 21st 2020 I’ve been finish my NaNoWriMo project. This isn’t exactly the traditional way to do NaNo, when you reach your 50,000 words by the end of the month it’s also supposed to mark the end of your novel. My issue was that once I reached the NaNoWriMo word count I realized I still had much more story to tell and was far from finished, so I decided to finish it. I enjoyed the story; it wasn’t finished and I wanted to finish it. I had hoped to finish it by the end of 2019, then the end of January, and then finally I did finish it by February. Continue reading

Book Review: The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao

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February 21, 2020

“When your sister murders three hundred people, you can’t help but wonder why – especially if you were one of the intended victims – though I do forgive her, if you can believe it. I tried my best to deny the strength of family ties when everyone was still alive, but now I realize the truth of the cliche: Blood does run thick. Even if poison trumps all,” (Tsao 1)

A strong start to Tiffany Tsao’s newest book The Majesties which follows the comatose Gwendolyn, the only survivor after her sister Estella has poisoned their entire family at their Opa’s birthday celebration, as she struggles to wake up as she sorts through her and Estella’s life and what led to her sister doing such a thing. Continue reading

Book Review: Followers by Megan Angelo

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February 19, 2020

“There are eight million people people here, and all of them want something as bad as I want what I want, as bad as you want what you want. We’re not all going to get it. It’s just not possible, that all these people could have their dreams come true in the same time, same place. It’s not enough it be talented. It’s not enough to work hard. You need to be disciplined, and you need to be ruthless. You have to do anything, everything, and you need to forget about doing the right thing,” (Angelo 47)

This is my favourite quote from the book and probably the smartest thing Floss says in the entirety of it, and at its heart it’s what motivates our characters and Angelo’s story. Megan Angelo’s debut novel is filled with great insights into our relationship with technology, being seen, and what we’ll do to be noticed. Continue reading

Jellicles Come to the Jellicle Ball!

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February 17, 2020

I love Cats the musical. I’ve already written about this but it’s worth mentioning again because I also saw the CGI nightmare that is Cats the movie, and I didn’t hate it.

I saw it awhile back when it first came out, and while I definitely had some issues with it like the CGI (which isn’t the special effect workers fault they were just doing what they were told) and the serious miscasting (why were Rebel Wilson and Taylor Swift in this movie? But I will say, Ian McKellen went FULL CAT for his role as Gus), but someone would have to do A LOT for me to dislike Cats, and Tom Hooper didn’t fully achieve that. Continue reading

Book Review: Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

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February 7, 2020

This book was amazing in so many ways that it’s difficult to put all my thoughts in order on what made this book such a good and memorable read.

Such a Fun Age follows the lives of two women: Alix Chamberlain and Emira Tucker. Alix is a blogger turned girl power brand entrepreneur and is the mother to two young daughters. While she adjusts to life in Philadelphia and tries to make her online audience continue to believe she’s still a New Yorker. She hires Emira Tucker to babysit her oldest daughter and is shocked to find that one night when Emira brings Briar to a grocery store and that Emira is accused of kidnapping her daughter. The whole event is filmed by a bystander and both they and Alix want justice in different ways but Emira just wants to forget the whole thing ever happened. But the video resurfaces in a surprising way that ends up changing the courses of Alix and Emira’s lives in ways they never expected. Continue reading

Honourable Mention: 2020 GritLit Literary Festival Short Story Contest

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February 4, 2020

I am so excited to get to share this information with you…

MY SHORT STORY “What Happened to Natalie?” WAS AN HONOURABLE MENTION FOR THE 2020 GRITLIT LITERARY FESTIVAL SHORT STORY CONTEST! Continue reading

Fingers and Bows

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February 3, 2020

I have these bows that I wear sometimes for fun. They give off a kind of 50s style when you wear them, like you could be an old school cleaner or Rosie the Riveter, it’s a cute aesthetic that I love and I definitely don’t wear my bows as much as I should considering how much I love them, but alas growing confident in your fashion decisions is a long process. But I did wear one of my bows last Friday, a white one that has the pattern of a black cat and green fern leaves on it, my favourite of the two if I’m being honest. I had my hair done up in a simple braid and put the bow as a way to kind of jazz up my dull hairdo I guess. I wore my orange lipstick to accent the bow (another fashion trend that I’m slowly growing confident in) and was happy with how I looked for the day (which is another rare occurrence). Continue reading

Book Review: In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt

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February 1, 2020

“A woods can be a miracle of light and shadow. A woods can be a place to dream,” (Hunt 5).

If you know anything about me then you know that 1) I love fairy tales, especially if they’re dark and 2) I love books about evil/complicated women. In the House in the Dark of the Woods has all of these things and more so naturally this book was a win for me! Continue reading

Book Review: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

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January 30, 2020

Little Women is a timeless classic and you probably know what it’s about but I’m going to give a small summary just because I can. The novel follows the March sisters (Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy) as they live and grow and adapt to life with their father away fighting in the Civil War. Their mother works and the sisters must learn and help and support one another in their own ways in fun, heartache, and challenges that only sisters can face and overcome. Continue reading