“I wish I imagined things less. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. I do think I am capable of doing something bad…I’m worried that at any moment, I am liable to be taken over by my parasite, and that I will hurt someone,” (Austin 43). Enid’s trying her best. She’s reconnecting with her estranged …
“The truth is I hate keep secrets. I always have. All they really do is tear people apart,” (Derrick 1). Eighteen-year-old Stevie and Nora have a deep, true, heart-stopping kind of love, and they also have a plan. In just a few weeks they’re going to leave their ultra-conservative town and their parents and move to …
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. “To grieve is to rot from the inside out,” (Pedersen). Estranged from his family for twenty-years, Nick Morrow returns to Stag Crossing, his family’s farmhouse in rural Nebraska, after receiving a call from his abusive father telling him he’s dying. But Nick isn’t the only …
“You can never win at playing the cis game. You can win on so much, but you will never win that…I hate that they make me choose. I hate it like I hate almost nothing else,” (Plett 125). Thirty-year-old Wendy Reimer’s Mennonite grandmother has just died. After an awkward funeral service, Wendy ends up learning that …
“It’s a feeling that comes from inside a person. A brightness certain people possess that makes them unique. Your heart glows especially bright, Kess Pedrock,” (Averling 116). Kess Pedrock’s life is unnatural. Her favourite hobby is looking for megafauna fossils and skeletons, she lives in her family’s Unnatural History Museum, and her best friend is …
“Sometimes we let our truths rot in darkness to preserve the lies we tell in the light,” (“A Cure for Fear of Screaming,” Varghese 147). Varghese’s debut short story collection Chrysalis has gotten a lot of hype surrounded around it and it is deserved each and every one of them (including the numerous awards it has won). …
I’m very grateful to the Literary Review of Canada for reaching out to me to review R.M. Vaughan’s posthumous novel Pervatory. Read my full review on their Substack, Bookworm!
“The central tragedy of childhood is never getting what you want,” (Easton). Easton’s memoir explores their life growing up in the West as a Mormon, queer, Autistic individual. Following them as a child in the Mormon church and a student at an Anglican boys’ boarding school to be “reformed,” to mall bathrooms, rodeos, bathhouses, and Catholic …
“I’m no longer sure which is worse: surviving and living the rest of my life as a lie, or wasting away in this apartment and dying from this cancer,” (Maylott 35). Paige Maylott’s debut memoir is an honest exploration of transition and discovery. Finding solace, community, and love in online communities and games, Maylott comes into …
“We will all be stories one day, and I’d want someone to believe we existed. Wouldn’t you?” (Shannon 582). For fifty years Tunuva Melim has been a sister of the Priory, trained to slay wyrms even though the younger generation has started to question the Priory’s purpose when no dragons have been seen for hundreds of …
Sarah O'Connor 