Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is one of those rare books that successfully and with quietly devastating effect takes you deep into the life of an historical figure and brings them into life with a vivacity so palpable you feel as if you known them as well as your own friends. Continue Reading
Books
Book review: Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales
It was Lysander, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream who remarked that “The course of true love never did run smooth” but it’s Ollie, the protagonist from Sophie Gonzales’s passionately heartfelt tale of young gay love, Only Mostly Devastated, who can issue a hearty “Amen!” some 400 years after the Continue Reading
Book review: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
In one sense, there is nothing in The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix that you haven’t read a thousand times before in any number of fantasy books where an ordinary everyday mortal discovers they have a far richer and more fantastical inheritance than they could ever have imagined. Continue Reading
Book review: Lucky’s by Andrew Pippos
Life can be so unremittingly bleak at times, 2020 being a perfect case in point, that it’s important to be reminded of the opportunities it affords for salvation, redemption and fresh starts. These are not exactly lying on the ground for us to gather up as we will, but as Continue Reading
Book review: Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air by Jackson Ford
In the often action-packed world of urban fantasy, where narratives move at a blistering pace and the time for introspection or contemplation is scant, it’s rare to have characters who truly wear their hearts on their sleeves. That’s not to say that characters in all urban fantasies don’t go on Continue Reading
#Halloween book review: The Lost Ones by Anita Frank
People, it so often turns out, have a fairly limited perception of time. We tend to see the past, present and future as unalterably locked away in their own sealed-off chronological prisons but the truth, as Anita Frank demonstrates with gothic-tinged dread and considerable insightful compassion in her hauntingly atmospheric Continue Reading
Book review: Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday by Christine Reilly
For many people, family is the prism through which much of life makes sense. We may not always love our fellow family members are fully and completely as Hallmark might suggest, but it is through our connections to our parents and siblings and uncles and aunts and grandparents and on Continue Reading
#Halloween picture book review: Gustavo the Shy Ghost by Flavia Z. Drago
We all need friends. They are the people who are always there for you, love you regardless of your strange flaws and (hopefully endearing quirks) and who make your time here on this earth far more than just the sum total of what you bring to the table. But what Continue Reading
Book review: The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
After what has been by any measure the year from hell, where reality’s failings have been laid bare without fear or favour and without the hint of an apology, you could be forgiven for wondering if there is anything good or just left in the world at all. Everywhere you Continue Reading
Book review: Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
Much of the time, the way we react to life is purely instinctual, especially when we’re children and we form our defensive responses less on reason and more on emotion and a need for some kind of perceived protection. The problem with these perfectly understandable responses to childhood trauma is Continue Reading