“Some calculations are simple. Sons trump daughters. Three children trump one. Deep in my heart, I had already decided that nothing could be worse than the life I had,” (Stachniak 10). During King Louis XV reign, scouted teenager girls were sent to live in a nondescript villa in Versailles before being sent to the plaza to …
I received this book from Simon and Schuster Canada in exchange for an honest review. “I’d rather be me now, than me any age prior. But there is this heaviness to aging. Who I am was built on the shoulders of the person I was last year, and the year before, and before, and before. I’m not …
“No matter what, you will always be loved. You cannot mess up so badly that you will not be loved,” (Anders 161) Twenty-something Jamie is working on her PhD dissertation, in a strong relationship with their partner Ro, processing their generational trauma, and is a practicing witch. She has a fraught relationship with her mother, Serena, …
I received this book from The Next Best Book Club in exchange for an honest review. Darrin Doyle’s short story collection The Dark Will End The Dark features an array of strange and horrifying stories. Doyle does an excellent job of creating tension, especially the slow build of it to create feelings of dread and horror. There are many …
I received this book from River Street Writing in exchange for an honest review. “Would it be like that with her? When she died, would her loved ones be told to move on?…She wondered this for weeks. She wondered if this was why people worshipped God, why she herself was attracted to that devotion. God the eternal, …
I received this book from Simon and Schuster Canada in exchange for an honest review. “The Collective can be a powerful force. Perhaps together you’ll make the word flesh. Tap the Wound and bring it to vivid life. Making something beautiful is, after all, the best revenge,” (Awad). Samantha Heather Mackey has just published her debut novel. Living …
“Well, we are the stars…And the stars are us. Every atom in our bodies was once out there. Was once a part of them. To look at the night sky is to look at parts of who you once were, who you may one day be,” (Reid 90). Joan Goodwin lives a quiet life. She …
“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 …
“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 …
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 …
Sarah O'Connor 