Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman

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November 11, 2024

“Ghost stories might not all use the same words, but they all sound like the same words because it’s the ghost we think about, not the words,” (Malerman 65).

Eight-year-old Bela loves Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth, and she used to like Other Mommy until she changed. Other Mommy used to make her smile, but now all she does is make scary faces and ask Bela the same question over and over: Can Other Mommy live inside Bela’s heart? Bela doesn’t want to let Other Mommy into her heart, but horrifying incidents continue around the house that even Mommy and Daddo start to notice. Mommy and Daddo don’t want Other Mommy to hurt Bela either, but no one seems to know just how strong Other Mommy might be. Continue reading

Book Review: Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram

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October 28, 2024

“Pain is a God the body worships,” (Ajram 69).

Vicken has planned his suicide; he will drown himself in the Saint Lawrence River after suffering from clinical depression for years. But when he gets off the subway he finds himself in a strange, endless labyrinthine station that he can’t escape. And he’s beginning to suspect he isn’t alone. Continue reading

Book Review: The Donoghue Girl by Kim Fahner

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October 26, 2024

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

“Despair was like that, eating away at you from the inside, so that you hardly recognized it when you went dark. There was no point arguing with it at times like that. It would always win,” (Fahner 176).

Lizzie Donoghue wants more out of life. She wants out of the mining town of Creighton and her large Irish family’s convenience store and finds that Michael Power may be able to offer her just that. But Michael is not all that he appears to be, and Lizzie’s life will turn out anything than what she hoped it would be. Continue reading

Book Review: Annabel by Kathleen Winter

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October 24, 2024

“A child’s worry was not like an adult’s. It gnawed deep, and was so unnecessary. Why did people not realize children could withstand the truth? Why did adults insist on filling children with the deceptions their own parents had laid on them, when surely they remembered how it had felt to lie in bed and cry over fears no one had bothered to help you face,” (Winter).

In 1968 Labrador, Canada an intersex baby is born and only three people know, the baby’s parents and their neighbour and midwife Thomasina. Treadway, the baby’s father, decides to raise the baby as a boy named Wayne while his mother Jacinta and Thomasina secretly nurture his feminine side. As Wayne grows up in the patriarchal world of his father he thinks of an image of a girl curled inside of him Thomasina has called Annabel. Wayne must leave Labrador for St. John’s in order to finally come to terms with his identity. Continue reading

Book Review: We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman

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October 22, 2024

“When I’m in the theatre I feel held. I feel simultaneously safe and like something very dangerous is about to happen, and that dangerous thing is the wall of my chest peeling back — slowly, so slowly, in time with the curtain rising. And if the play is my play then everybody present can gather close and peer at my naked heart,” (Silverman).

Cass has fled to Los Angeles after ruining her career in New York. Her life as a promising feminist playwright has gone down the drain, but Cass can’t fully accept that yet. As she ignores the articles about her online and tries to reinvent herself she meets her next-door neighbour Caroline, a director making a semidocumentary on a group of teenage girls who meet to participate in a Fight Club like group. But as Cass watches the film take shape she is troubled by the way Caroline manipulates the young girls into performing her vision of the movie as she comes to terms with her own relationship to art and the price of fame. Continue reading

Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker

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October 13, 2024

“All scary stories have two sides…Like the bright and dark of the moon. If you’re brave enough to listen and wise enough to stay to the end, the stories can shine a light on the good in the world. They can guide your muzzles. They can help you survive,” (Heidicker 5).

On a dark autumn night, seven fox kits find the storyteller and beg for a scary story, but are all seven kits brave enough to stay until the end? Continue reading

Book Review: ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

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October 11, 2024

“The town cares for devil’s work no more than it cares for God’s or man’s. It knew darkness. And darkness was enough,” (King 327).

After some time on the run a terrified man and boy resolve that they must return to the small town of ‘Salem’s Lot they escaped from and face the evil that has made a home there. Continue reading

Substack – Happy Birthday

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October 10, 2024

Today would have been my mom’s sixty-sixth birthday.

I don’t usually make a post for her birthday, only on the anniversary of her death. I’m sure it’s to the annoyance of those who follow me online and maybe even to some of my friends. I’m sure some people see it as morbid, that others are probably wondering why I’m still going on about it as if I’ll ever stop grieving my mom. But not too long ago someone I follow who also has a dead mom made a post for her mom on her birthday and remembered her then, instead of on the day that she died.

Read more on my Substack.

Book Review: Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

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October 8, 2024

“Little Natalie, never rest until you have uncovered your essential self. Remember that. Somewhere, deep inside you, hidden by all sorts of fears and worries and petty little thoughts is a clean pure being made of radiant colours,” (Jackson 42).

Seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite is eager to start at Bennington College. There she’ll be away from her egotistical father that she conforms to but can’t help but love and her neurotic mother who she resents. But once Natalie finds herself at Bennington the happiness and understanding of who she could be doesn’t come. Natalie doesn’t know how to fit in and finds herself in the company of one of her professors and his wife and a strange new friend trying to find her place and self-amongst it all. Continue reading

Book Review: Bonavere Howl by Caitlin Galway

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September 19, 2024

“However much Connie’s absence permeated my every though, I had never once said so out loud. Never recounted to anyone the lost, dark-edged hours, knowing that the words themselves, the weight of them in my mouth, would be like drowning, and all at once her disappearance would cease to be a series of frantic flashes, scattered in ungraspable ether. It would be linear. It would be a thing that another person told another person,” (Galway).

In 1955 New Orleans the Fayette sisters Fritzi, Constance, and Bonnie love, tease, and care for one another as only sisters can, relying on each other since their emotionally distant parents keep themselves at arms length. But when Constance disappears the youngest Bonnie seems to be the only Fayette worried about what has happened to her, everyone else assuming that Constance has simply run away. Bonnie is determined to discover what has happened to her sister and unravels the secrets of Constance’s life and goes on a journey that takes her through the swampland and meeting wealthy families to find the truth. Continue reading