Tag: Canadian Reads

The Islands of Elsewhere

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Heather Fawcett
Genres: Middle Grade, Fiction
Pub. Date: Jun. 2023

Heather Fawcett amazes me so much. She’s a local (to me) author and she just keeps pumping out books at a wild pace! It’s been so great to see her first adult book, Emily Wilde, getting so much praise, but don’t sleep on her YA and middle grade books! She never disappoints and consistently knocks it out of the park with her settings.

I’m still working my way through her middle grade books, but I read this one was about Vancouver Island and bumped it up on my list. She writes mostly fantasy, but I would say this book is more magical realism or fantasy lite. There’s some ghosty references, but otherwise it’s pretty much fiction.

Anyways, she nails the setting as usual. The Islands Of Elsewhere is about the 3 Snolly sisters, who travel to their granddaddy’s property in coastal Vancouver Island for the summer to help their mom look after him as he battles dementia. They learn about a potential buried treasure that they believe would enable them to move to their granddaddy’s property permanently to look after him, so they set out to explore the nearby fairy islands.

It’s a nice family story, with just enough spookyness from the remote setting. It’s a fictional town, but it’s clearly modeled after Tofino, so I loved imagining the 3 sisters running around the beaches and exploring coves. It’s a fun and lighthearted read, my only criticism would be that it’s maybe a little too conveniently packaged in the end. Lots of children likely have had or will have exposure to their grandparents becoming forgetful and I would have liked to see that theme explored in a little more depth. It’s sad, but children are resilient.

Otherwise, a really quick and nice summer read (though I read it in December lol).

The Circle

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Katherena Vermette
Genres: Fiction
Pub. Date: Jan. 2023

The Circle is the 3rd book in Katherena Vermette’s loosely related trilogy. I say “loose” because any of her books can be read as a standalone and while they feature many of the same characters, it’s not necessary to have read any of the others (I actually didn’t realize the first 2 were related until The Circle came out). I really loved her first two books, The Break and The Strangers, so I was super enthused about getting another book about these families.

All 3 books have fantastic writing and The Circle was no exception. Vermette is great at capturing both characters and atmosphere. It’s hard for me to remember the first two books now since it was so long ago that I read them – they all focus on generational trauma in metis families. The Break focuses on a violent crime against one family, while The Strangers looks at the family of the girl who committed the crime. The Circle is a marriage of the two books and examines the long term impact and inter-connectness of each of these characters.

I thought the concept of The Circle was fantastic. Let’s look at the cascading impacts of one event on so many people and examine how everyone’s process of healing is different. The Circle centers around this idea that to heal, you bring everyone together and give space for everyone’s pain. Whether or not this idea is valid, I have no idea. I can see how in some ways it could be healing, but I could also see how in other cases it might do more damage than good. Some of these characters are healing, while others are just perpetuating the cycle of violence and trauma.

In any case, this tangible idea of The Circle isn’t really explored in this book, it’s more of an abstract circle. Like I said, I liked the idea and I still think Vermette’s writing and characterization is very strong, but I struggled with the format. She writes every chapter from the perspective of a different character. It’s honestly impressive that each character gets such limited page time and yet she’s still able to get her reader to empathize with most of them. But I felt the scope was just too large for this short book and some perspectives definitely added a lot more to the story than others. There were some storylines that I really wanted to revisit, and others that I didn’t think added much. I would rather see an in-depth look at the main characters from the first two books rather than have the story spread across 20+ narrators.

It’s still a sad and moving story and I did still like it. I just wanted a lot more about Phoenix, Cedar, and Jake. I know that’s not really the point Vermette was trying to make, but it made the book harder to pick up again once you put it down. It didn’t have quite the same draw as her other books because the narrative was split too thin.

That said, I will still be continuing to pick up any of Vermette’s future books because she is a very talented writer!