Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: This Spells Love by Kate Robb

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May 23, 2025

“Sometimes the best risks are the ones you make with your heart,” (Robb 300).

Gemma is distraught after boyfriend of four years breaks up with her and believes that the only way to cope with it is by getting drunk with her sister, eccentric aunt, and best friend Dax. After a few margaritas, Gemma realizes that an even better way to cope is to perform a love-cleansing spell so that Gemma will have never met her ex. Gemma follows the instructions, sealing her fate with a platonic kiss from Dax, and wakes up in an alternate reality where she never dated her ex, but Dax also has no idea who she is. To return to her universe, Gemma needs to convince Dax to kiss her. But as she gets to know Dax from the start again feelings are there, feelings that maybe were there the whole time, even in her reality. Could Dax be the one she’s meant to be with in every universe? Continue reading

Book Review: Wrongful by Lee Upton

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May 21, 2025

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

“Some nights you consign to memory. If you examined those nights or tried to repeat them you’d blow right through what you want to believe was enchanting. It would be worse than disappointing. The original memory would curl and shrink. You’d be left embarrassed by yourself. Or not. She had absorbed enough embarrassment in her life—enough that she felt there might not be room for much more,” (Upton 55).

When Mira Wallacz goes missing at a literary festival devoted to her work, her colleagues and attendees assume the worse, some even hope for it. Ten years later Wallacz’s superfan Geneva Finch is determined to discover what really happened at the festival, and she’ll have to team up with a self-deprecating former priest to solve the case. Continue reading

Book Review: Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

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May 18, 2025

“Children’s lives never belong to them. The grown-ups own us…That’s why we have to try hard to survive until we’ve grown up ourselves,” (Murata 71).

Natsuki is different from other girls. In fact, she might not be from this planet at all, or at least that’s what her stuffed hedgehog Piyyut tells her. Armed with a wand and a magical transformation mirror, Natsuki knows how to control her breaths to make herself become invisible and plans to head back to her home planet of Popinpobopia one day so that her parents and sister can live a happy life. But Natsuki knows it’s only a matter of time before she is called to take her place in her Factory town and become a mother. Until then, Natsuki enjoys her summers visiting her beloved cousin Yuu in the mountains of Nagano, but after a series of incidents the cousins are separated with a only a promise binding them: survive, no matter what. Now an adult, Natsuki lives in an asexual marriage trying to avoid the Factory’s demands of her when she is called to the mountains to reunite with Yuu. But will Yuu remember their promise to each other? Continue reading

Book Review: Queen Goneril by Erin Shields

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May 16, 2025

“That’s women’s work though, isn’t it? To take a bowl of shit and find something that glimmers, something that makes the pain of having to put up with it all just about worthwhile,” (Shields 48).

Seven years before King Lear takes place, Lear’s three daughters struggle to have their voices heard in a patriarchal world. Goneril is a natural-born leader urging her father to announce her as his heir to the throne, Regan pushes boundaries while trying to be seen as more than just a body, and Cordelia keeps the peace with her smile. The three sisters work to break the binds around them as a storm brews and a mountain of corpses rots outside the castle walls, begging the question if such change is ever possible. Continue reading

Doubt Creeps In

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May 15, 2025

I’ve been having trouble writing.

It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. I wouldn’t call it writer’s block so much as an anxiety towards my own writing, which just sounds silly. There’s a piece I’ve been working on for some time now that seems like it will never be perfect. It’s a story I care about a lot and it’s one that I want to write. It’s important, and I worry I’ll never be able to do it justice.

So I took a step back from it, not entirely by choice. Working full-time now it can be difficult to find the time to write. I usually write before work but for a variety of reasons I haven’t been sleeping as well as I should, I’m either lured awake by the blue glow of my phone or else I’m trying to fit in some reading I didn’t get a chance to during the day. Then I’ll wake up tired, the words muggy and slow in my brain and not worth writing down, so I don’t. Then there was an unexpected funeral visitation I rushed to last month, and a few early mornings where everyone in my house had to leave at once meaning a frenzy of activity as we started our days. And I’m sure all of this sounds like an excuse but some of it has been legitimate. But if I were to be honest I think the biggest thing that’s been holding me back is fear and frustration.

Read more on my Substack.

Book Review: The Lamb by Lucy Rose

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April 25, 2025

“‘Why did it have to be me?’ The stray echoed the words of the story. ‘But she was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong person,” (Rose).

Margot and Mama live in an isolated cottage in the woods where they eagerly await the visit of strays, people who get lost in the forest of whose cars break down far from the road and look to Mama and Margot for help. When the strays come Mama keeps them warm, gives them wine, then carves their bodies into beautiful meals for her and Margot. But when a stray named Eden comes to the house Margot’s whole world changes, and she must confront the life her Mama has taught her to live and what place she has in it now. Continue reading

Book Review: Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

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April 23, 2025

“With henching, you know where you stand,” (Walschots 202).

Anna is a hench, meaning she takes temp jobs for the world’s more dastardly (or starting-up) villains to make money. It isn’t honest work, but in this economy a person has to survive any way they can. But once she becomes permanently injured after a well-known superhero wreaks collateral damage during a press conference, Anna is left as one of the “lucky” lone survivors. Now that her employer has laid her off as a result, Anna starts to crunch the numbers and learns that superheroes are actually causing more harm than good which gains the attention of supervillain Leviathan who seeks Anna out to show the world how dangerous superheroes really can be. Continue reading

Book Review: The Bird’s Nest by Shirley Jackson

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April 21, 2025

“Well, when she does all the thinking and knowing, won’t I be … dead?” (Jackson 241).

Twenty-three-year-old Elizabeth Richmond lives an ordinary life. Orphaned and living with her maiden aunt Morgen, Elizabeth spends her days working at a museum and living off of her dead mother’s inheritance, but strange things have started to occur. Threatening letters have been left for her at work, she has started to suffer from migraines and backaches, and after a disastrous dinner party that Elizabeth only has vague recollection of her aunt decides to send her to a psychiatrist to figure out what’s wrong, no one predicting what they’ll discover. Continue reading

Book Review: Anatomical Venus by Courtney Bates-Hardy

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April 7, 2025

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

“Every day, I want to reach / inside my chest, dig my fingers in, / and pull my rubs apart: / let me breathe / until I burst,” (“Ritual for Release,” Bates-Hardy, 9).

In Anatomical Venus, Courtney Bates-Hardy writes a collection of poetry where she takes readers into the vulnerable and real experience of living through chronic pain and how it fundamentally changed her life, not only physically but mentally. Continue reading

Book Review: Anomia by Jade Wallace

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April 1, 2025

“Which is better?…The grief of death of the ambiguity of indefinite loss?” (Wallace 76).

In the small town of Euphoria a suburban couple, Blue and Culver, have disappeared, but only their estranged friend Fir seems to care. Without any help from the police, Fir enlists the help of their friend Fain as they begin their search. But the answers are hidden in the mysterious Unwood where Slip, an elderly trailer park resident, finds a cluster of bones and decides it is their job to find the bones a better resting spot. Meanwhile, two true-crime obsessed teens Limb and Mal have seen the bones in Slip’s trailer and are determined to crack the case. Continue reading