“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 …
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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“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 …
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 …
“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 …
“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 …
“‘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 …
“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 …
Sarah O'Connor 