“The dead don’t walk,” (Kingfisher 113). Retired soldier Alex Easton has received a letter from their childhood friend Madeline Usher saying that she is dying. Alex heads to the imposing old house of Usher and finds horrid smelling mushrooms on the grounds, strange hares that disturb the people around the land, and an oddly glowing lake. …
I received this book from The Next Best Book Club in exchange for an honest review. “Sometimes I think we wound people just to see if we’re capable of wounding them. Or maybe we do it to see if they’re capable of being wounded,” (Cromley 55). It’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Kirby Russo has finally found peace. Attending …
“Community is when you never let go of each other. Not even after you’re gone,” (Felker-Martin 256). Beth and Fran are manhunters. Living in a post-apocalyptic world, they hunt feral men who were exposed to the T. Rex virus and harvest their organs to maintain their estrogen levels so they don’t meet the same fate. Robbie …
“What if the part you so achingly want to fix, change, banish, or destroy is the part that is fundamentally you?” (Tremblay 217). When Art Barbara was in high school he was not cool. A loner who listened to metal, he decided to start a extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers to help at poorly attended …
I received this book from The Next Best Book Club in exchange for an honest review. “Language is a cross-cultural love story of chatty merchants, violated verb conjugations, insolvent loan words, and forgotten Latin declensions. Language is a giant swingers party where slang swaps partners with grammar. Language is an hourglass of human culture, a vivid ekphrasis …
CW: Sexual assault (off-page), animal death. “I will hide her small truths in this story and she will take shape among the pages, emerge like a pop-up, come face to face with the reader. Then they will know. Then, his story will be concluded,” (Parker 86). Famous Canadian author Baby Davidson is writing a memoir, or …
“I think it is critical that non-Indigenous Canadians be aware of how deeply the Indian Act penetrated, controlled, and continues to control, most aspects of the lives of First Nations. It is an instrument of oppression,” (Joseph 4). I didn’t learn about residential schools until I was in university and to this day I’m grateful for my …
“These letters, and the people who wrote them, were a lifeline for me, an antidote, a cure for the sudden stillness of the wheels under me,” (Coyote 5). During the beginning of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Ivan Coyote found themselves grounded in Ontario after years of performing and speaking around the world. During this time, …
“If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different,” (Montgomery 9). Twenty-nine-year-old Valancy Stirling lives a sad and lonely life with her overbearing mother and strange aunt, never having been in love and considered the “old maid” of the Stirling clan. The only solace she …
I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review. “At some point you have to admit the truth,” (Cardinal 62). Maria and her two children, pregnant teenager Lisa and excitable preteen Jude, have just moved in to a beautiful new house. Her children can’t believe it, it’s too good to be true, …
Sarah O'Connor 