Sarah O'Connor

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

Book Review: Fall On Your Knees by Hannah Moscovitch

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March 28, 2025

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

“Lily: They’re all dead now,” (Act 1, Prologue, 14).

An adaption of Ann-Marie Macdonald’s novel of the same name, the play follows piano tuner James Piper and his thirteen-year-old wife Materia Mahmoud, their four daughters Kathleen, Frances, Mercedes, and Lily. Dark secrets are unearthed as each daughter tries to find their place in the world, haunted by the mistakes of the past and, somehow, finding joy hidden as well. Continue reading

Book Review: Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories on Conversion Therapy ed. Lucas F.W. Wilson

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March 26, 2025

I received this book from the editor in exchange for an honest review.

“Despair followed me like a lingering shadow. The passage of days and nights became a seamless blur, rendering the concept of time inconsequential…Believing death to be my sole escape, I grappled with the realization that both suicide and homosexuality were considered sins,” (“Convert” by Gemma Hickey, 155).

Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories on Conversion Therapy is a collection of accounts by queer and trans writers recalling traumatic forms of conversion practices they’ve experienced in the hopes that such practices will no longer be used to shame, demonize, and traumatize people in the LGTBQ2S+. Continue reading

Book Review: All You Can Kill by Pasha Malla

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March 24, 2025

“Rarely in life does one occasion upon irrevocable proof of a higher power. But sometimes a coincidence stretched not just the bounds of credulity, but possibility,” (Malla 15).

After surviving a plane crash, an unnamed narrator and another survivor, K. Sohail, find themselves stranded on an island anything but deserted. Holding a Wellness Couples retreat, our narrator and K. Sohail are mistaken for the Dhaliwals, who have probably been killed in a helicopter crash. Taking their identities, the new Dhaliwals are welcomed by a robot named Jerome, learn about the subject of Trunity by the unfamous Brad Beard, and have sessions of erotic counselling with Professor Sayer. But this seemingly idyllic paradise is not what it seems, and K. Sohail at least is determined to find out what is happening while our narrator cheers her on. Continue reading

Book Review: I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself by Adelle Purdham

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March 3, 2025

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

“By not claiming space for my art, I am the aporia, the one feigning uncertainty, the one who pretends to others like I don’t know what it is I want to do,” (Purdham 187).

A long time advocate for people with disabilities as a mother of a daughter with Down Syndrome, Adelle Purdham discusses ableism, motherhood, nature, and more in her book of essays. Continue reading

Book Review: Wrapped in Plastic: Twin Peaks by Andy Burns

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February 27, 2025

“The basic story was far from original. But in the hands of two visionary creators like David Lynch and Mark Frost, Twin Peaks took the familiar and transformed it into a series no one could have anticipated,” (Burns 2).

In Wrapped in Plastic: Twin Peaks, Andy Burns takes a look at the early nineties show Twin Peaks and how it made a mark on the cultural zeitgeist at the time before seemingly disappearing from the mainstream, though leaving it’s mark regardless on the television shows and movies we watch today. Continue reading