Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: Babel by R.F. Kuang

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June 26, 2025

“Violence shows them how much we’re willing to give up…Violence is the only language they understand, because their system of extraction is inherently violent. Violence shocks the system. And the system cannot survive the shock,” (Kuang 397).

Orphaned after a cholera outbreak in Canton, Robin Swift is brought to London by Professor Lovell, a professor at Oxford University. After tutoring Robin in translation for many years, Lovell enrolls Robin into the Royal Institute of Translation, nicknamed Babel, where talented students learn the art of silver-working, a type of magic where words lost in translation are enchanted and power most of Britain, from keeping buildings stable to keeping a kettle hot. But as his studies progress and a chance meeting with a curious stranger from a secret society, and Robin begins questioning Oxford and Babel as an unjust war between Britain and China creeps closer and closer. Continue reading

Book Review: The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

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June 5, 2025

“There is so much darkness in Ember, Lina. It’s not just outside, it’s inside us too. Everyone has some darkness inside. It’s like a hungry creature. It wants and wants and wants with a terrible power. And the more you give it, the bigger and hungrier it gets,” (DuPrau 168).

Hundreds of years ago, the city of Ember was created by the Builders to ensure that humanity lived on in a world of crisis. Food and medical supplies were stocked, crops were planted, and lightbulbs kept the city bright and shining. But now Ember is suffering. The crops are blighted, the shelves in the storeroom emptying, and rolling blackouts across the city panic many Emberites into wondering if one day they will be plunged into darkness forever. When twelve-year-olds Lina and Doon find ancient parchment that could be a clue to saving Ember they try to get the adults around them to listen and help, but will they be able to figure out what the Builders had in store for them? And do the people of Ember really want to listen? Continue reading

Book Review: Skin by Catherine Bush

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June 3, 2025

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

“When humans sing together, even if we start in disharmony, our voices find their way unconsciously into agreement,” (“Breathe,” Bush 117).

It’s taken me a while to organize my thoughts around Skin. I found it very hard to be engaged or interested in many of the stories I was reading, and it was only when finishing the collection and mulling it over that I was able to dissect my feelings over what I had read. Overall, I think the characters in the stories are interesting and layered the stories themselves are slow and sometimes feel like a chore to get through. Even though the plots themselves are intriguing with the implications of worlds suffering through climate change and pandemics, I could only recognize this a few days after the story ended. While reading I just couldn’t get interested enough to care about what was happening.

But I also wasn’t a fan of Bush’s novel Blaze Island, so it’s more likely that her writing style just isn’t for me. I think there are many readers who will enjoy her style, but I definitely struggled to finish this collection.

Usually I give a rating on each of the stories in a short story collection, but since I felt the same through most of these stories I’m just going to share my thoughts on each of them. Continue reading

Book Review: The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica

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June 1, 2025

“Without faith, there is no refuge,” (Bazterrica 41).

A woman living with a mysterious convent secretly documents her life with the Sacred Sisterhood after escaping a now inhabitable world destroyed by climate change. An unworthy, our narrator hopes to become one of the Enlightened and has accepted the Sisterhood as her home, but when a stranger appears within the convents walls, some of our narrator’s past memories come back to her as the Sisterhood begins to shed itself in a new light. Continue reading

Book Review: I.R.L. by Jenny Goebel

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May 27, 2025

“Welcome, Lucy! We’re so glad you decided to join us. We’re going to have so much fun,” (Goebel 104).

After being bullied at her school in San Francisco, sixth grader Lucy is eager to start over in rural Alaska. She’s had to meet her new classmates virtually due to the extreme weather, but now that things are starting to thaw she’s both excited and nervous to meet the twelve other students in her class and, hopefully, make some friends. They’re very welcoming, and the other kids all sound excited to meet Lucy on her first day. But when she arrives to her first day of in-person classes Lucy finds a burnt husk where the school used to stand, and a small cemetery with each of her classmates names engraved on a tombstone. Is this another bullying prank, or is there something haunted about her new school? Continue reading

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.