“This isn’t some tabloid story about serial killers. You live in a small town, and most of the people who were there that night still live here too, and there is a lot of pain from that time that never went away for any of us,” (Jones 121). In August 1999, popular cheerleader Clarissa Campbell disappears …
I received this book from The Next Best Book Club in exchange for an honest review. A Geography of First Kisses is a short story collection that follows Southern women in various stages of their lives. We have a young girl collecting boyfriends as she aimlessly tries to find her path, a newlywed couple searching for a missing …
I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review. Grieving siblings Natalie, a palliative care nurse, and Bart, a minister, contemplate life and death after the death of their mom. When a storm hits, a disabled angel visits them and takes the siblings and the audience along to talk about death and …
“Photos soon emerged: heads on spikes outside of rides, corpses floating in detention cells, and viscera decaying in the humid Florida sun. FantasticLand, where ‘Fun is Guaranteed!’, was covered in blood,” (Bockoven 2). Welcome to FantasticLand, promising visitors that “Fun is Guaranteed!” since the 1970s. But when the deadly Hurricane Sadie destroys the Florida coast, a …
“I used pop culture…as a kind of glue to hold me together when I was hurtling through disaster…jamming a piece of pop culture into an absence in my life, no matter how poorly matched, seemed fine. It seemed like the only, no, the best thing to do,” (Sookfong Lee 4). Author Jen Sookfong Lee has always …
I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review. Caroline is the daughter of The Prophet and excited for her Divine Birthday, when the Angels will come and impregnate her. She knows her boyfriend Ian will make a great father; he’s promised her he read all the materials and is fully ready …
“One step forward, two steps back. You think this house is going to be a real windfall and then – boom – it’s haunted,” (Hendrix 153). When Louise Joyner learns her parents have died in a car accident, she’s understandably heartbroken, but she doesn’t want to go back home. She doesn’t want to leave her five-year-old …
“Guilt casts a spell like the one cast by despair. The spells of love and hope don’t linger like the others,” (Johnston). When fourteen-year-old Ned Vatcher comes home from school after the first snowstorm of the season he finds his house locked, the family car missing, and his parents gone. Word spreads across Newfoundland about the …
“I don’t want to talk about the rain or the trees or the…guilt I feel every single minute of every single day. And if I write it all down, I want to do it in pencil so I can rub it straight back out again, erasing that whole part of my life so it smudges …
I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review. Reenie wants to dance just like her mother who worked hard to make a spot for herself on the stage and her grandmother who worked behind-the-scenes making costumes. It’s her legacy, and like the other young dancers in her ensemble Reenie feels that …
Sarah O'Connor 