Tag: new publication

Finlay Donovan is Killing It

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Author: Elle Cosimano
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Pub. Date: Feb. 2021 (read Apr. 2021 on Audible)

I listened to this entire audiobook during one rainy weekend while doing jigsaw puzzles and LOVED it! GabbyReads recommended it on her booktube channel and said it was a good audiobook, so I downloaded it on Audible and was immediately pulled into the story. The whole plot is an absolute nightmare train-wreck, but in the most unputdownable way!

Finlay Donovan has recently divorced her husband after he started shacking up with their realtor and she’s struggling to manage her two kids while simultaneously trying to deliver on a book deal for which she has huge writer’s block. She’s spent the advance on her book and the bills are piling up – if she doesn’t submit the rest of her book soon, she might be asked to return the advance.

She meets her agent in a shop to discuss the outline of her murder mystery and an eavesdropper misinterprets their conversation, thinking that Finlay is actually a hired killer. Finlay receives an anonymous note with a huge sum of money to dispose of the woman’s husband. The whole thing is a huge misunderstanding and Finlay tries to tell the woman she’s not a killer, but after doing some research on the husband and reflecting on the huge sum of money, is it possible she could be?

It sounds like an intense book, but the writing is so light and the author packs a ton of comic relief into the narrative that made it such a fun read. It reminded me a little of How to Get Away With Murder because of the run-away storyline. Finlay is a mess and she always seems to be a step behind everything that’s happening around her, which would make for a very stressful reading experience if not for Finlay and Vero’s comedy. 

I don’t want to give anything away about the story because you should definitely experience it for yourself – I’ll just say that Finlay and her sidekick, Vero, make for some truly excellent heroines. I don’t normally give 5 stars to mystery novels and this is by no means quality literary writing, but it was just so much fun to read and when I reflected on it, there was really nothing I would change about it, so 5 stars it is! Recommend if you’re looking to get out of a book slump!

Migrations

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Charlotte McConaghy
Genres: Fiction, Dystopian
Pub. date: Aug. 2020 (read Sep. 2020 on Audible)

I really liked this book. It was a total impulse buy at a bookstore in Kits when I was out shopping with my sister. I was drawn to the front cover and thought the setting sounded awesome, so I bought it and started reading it the same day.

Migrations is set in a slightly dystopian future where the majority of wildlife has become extremely endangered or extinct. There’s no year, but it’s easy to believe in the possibility of this future as we continue to speed our way towards non-reversible climate change. Our main character is Franny and the story picks up with her in Iceland trying to talk her way onto a fishing vessel heading south. She’s had a troubled past but has always had a close connection to the ocean. She studies Arctic Terns, one of the last remaining birds on planet earth and followers of one of the most extreme migrations. Every year the terns migrate from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica and back again. My husband is an ornithologist and talks about birds all the time, so I couldn’t help but be intrigued by this one.

First off, the writing is excellent. I was flabbergasted when I googled the author and discovered that this is her first foray into literary fiction and that all her previous books have been YA fantasy… quite the departure! The writing is beautiful, but also compelling and I was immediately dragged into the story. The plot and setting are equally wonderful and I was hooked from the first chapter when Franny wildly throws herself into the freezing cold ocean to rescue someone that didn’t need saving.

Franny convinces Captain Ennis Malone to take her on board under the promise that the terns will help lead them to fish. The fishery is still open despite the dwindling fish stocks and Malone is chasing after a legendary catch of fish so that he can finally return home to his family. The story takes us from Iceland to Antarctica, while the sordid details of Franny’s past are slowly revealed to us and we realize she’s not just running towards the terns, but away from her past.

It’s definitely one of the more bizarre plots, but what literary fiction isn’t just a little bit weird? It’s what makes it so compelling. Franny is a deeply damaged individual, but it’s only through traveling back into the past with her that we realize just how deeply she has hurt and been hurt. McConaghy explores the impact of our childhood experiences on who we grow up to be and whether we are doomed to repeat the cycles of our past.

There was just one part of this book I didn’t like, and that was how the author portrayed Newfoundland. That’s right, my beautiful little island was featured in this book! As we start to meet all the crew of Malone’s fishing vessel, I wasn’t at all surprised to find that this small crew of diehard fishermen would include a Newfoundlander. But when the crew are forced to land in St. John’s, I became disappointed at McConaghy’s portrayal of the island.

The crew lands in St. John’s to jeers of protestors wishing death on the fisherman for overfishing the ocean. While I believe Newfoundlanders absolutely understand the importance of not overfishing, fishing is their heritage and they’re known as some of the kindest people in the world, so I couldn’t imagine any future where fishermen would be getting death threats upon landing on shore. Also, the family the crew stayed with lived within driving distance of St. John’s at a bonafide lighthouse with a sandy beach. Like no, Charlotte McConaghy, you have clearly never been to Newfoundland. Like, is this family the Parks Canada manager at Cape Spear? Or are they going on a multi-hour drive to get to one of the like 3 sandy beaches in Newfoundland? I mean maybe we’re supposed to believe Newfoundland has become some kind of tropical paradise due to climate change, but like, come on, it’s called ‘The Rock’ for a reason.

Anyways, I can try to overlook it for the sake of the book, but it did make me question what kind of research the author put into other parts of the book. It was still a compelling 4 star read for me, but not perfect.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Christy Lefteri
Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction
Pub. date: Aug. 2019 (read Jul. 2020 on Audible)

I read The Beekeeper of Aleppo for my July book club meeting. I was super excited when I first heard about this book because it sounded really compelling. It’s about the war in Syria and focuses on the journey of one couple as they decide to leave Syria and flee through Europe to the UK.

Nuri is a beekeeper with his cousin Mustafa and his wife, Afra, is an artist. They are happy in Syria and want to stay, but when war breaks out it becomes unsafe to do so and Afra becomes blind. So they finally decide to leave and try to make it to the UK, where Mustafa, who left earlier, is also trying to go. The book follows their journey across Turkey and Greece and eventually England. They face many struggles along the road, but the real struggle comes when they finally stop moving and are forced to come to terms with everything that happened to them before and along the journey.

I really wanted to love this. There were parts that I really liked and it was an interesting enough story, but I felt like it maybe could have benefited from a stronger author. The story had a lot of potential, but it was just lacking, both in writing style and intrigue. The story moved extremely slowly, which can work in a book like this, but it just didn’t have the writing to carry it through. The author has Greek/Cypriot parents and volunteered with a refugee NGO in Greece, which is what inspired her to write this story. I felt that the author had a story to tell, but unfortunately she just didn’t really have the prowess or the skills to tell it. I feel bad saying that because I’m sure her intentions were good, but the writing just didn’t work for me. I really wanted more from the story.

She does create some interesting characters, but they kind of all fell flat to me, like no one lived up to their potential. For example, why the obsession with bees? Like I get it, but what did the beekeeper story really add to this book? It was overdone with limited meaning. I also found the deeper themes to be lacking. I get what Lefteri was going for with Muhammed and Nuri, but it felt too forced to be natural or cathartic. I felt like she was trying to force an emotional reaction rather than one that would naturally occur from good storytelling and lived experience. Likewise with the symbolism of Afra being blind – it just felt kind of basic to me and I’m not totally sure what it added to the story. Like I get it – I just wish there was more to it.

Which raises the age old question of whether Lefteri was the right person to tell this story. I really do believe that people can and should tell stories that they haven’t been directly impacted by, but in 2020, it is starting to get a bit old reading so many modern day stories not told by own-voices authors. Jeanine Cummins got all kinds of flak for writing American Dirt – I’m not saying it wasn’t justified – but I don’t see how Beekeeper is any different. It just hasn’t been as big a seller I guess and so it hasn’t drawn the same backlash. Personally though, of the two, I thought American Dirt was the better story. But there’s no denying both books could have been written by different authors.

It’s really a hard question about where the line is. Lefteri got published where another Syrian author likely didn’t. I’m sure there are other authors writing these stories and I would love to see them in the mainstream. But honestly – that’s on me as a reader too. As a co-chair to my Book Club it’s something I need to reflect on more and take more ownership over. We are 10 individuals committing to read a book, it’s important that we pick the right ones, even if they’re not always bestsellers…yet. I will try to do better.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5
Author: Ocean Vuong
Genres: Poetry, LGBTQIA+
Pub date: Jun. 2019 (read July 2019 on Audible)
Narrator: Ocean Vuong

I was intrigued by this book, but it wasn’t super high up my TBR. However, I loved listening to the author’s voice in the audiobook sample, so I decided to read it. I’m so glad they got the author to narrate this one because I’m not sure anyone else could really have done it justice.

Initially I really liked it. The writing is poetic and it flowed really nicely. The author’s reading is emotional and I enjoyed listening to it, but I must admit, parts of the book were over my head and left me wondering how I should feel about it.

The book is crafted as a letter to the protagonist’s mother. It’s unclear to me whether this book is fiction or non-fiction, so I’d love some insight from other readers if you have it. It certainly read like non-fiction and I internalized it as such, but it could have been fiction.

Initially I liked that it was a letter from son to mother, Little Dog talks about the relationship he had with his mother and how it impacted him emotionally as he grew up. How their Vietnamese past influenced his childhood in America and shaped all of his relationships with his family members.

From there, Vuong moves on to the relationship Little Dog had with his friend Trevor and the struggle of being not only an immigrant, but a confused gay teenager. I found many parts of the story upsetting, but really appreciated their inclusion in the book and thought it brought a great depth to Vuong’s story. However, it did affect my reading of the book as a letter from son to mother. This format worked really well when confronting his childhood demons and the relationship with his family, but I thought the format had less meaning when it got into Little Dog’s exploration of coming to terms with his homosexuality. I don’t have the lived experience to really comment on its effectiveness, but personally I just found the ‘letter to mother’ format lost some of its potency in this part of the book. Just a comment on format, not content.

Mostly I’m left confused on how to rate the book though because parts of it were definitely over my head. I’ve been reading a lot more poetry lately (I used to never read it), but I definitely still struggle with the accessibility of poetry. I want to love it, but I think I just haven’t spent enough time reading poetry to really understand the nuance of it. I really enjoyed the writing, it was flowery, but not overwhelmingly so, but sometimes it’s just so overloaded with metaphors that I kind of missed out on the point. I really liked a lot of this book, but there were definitely some sections where I found myself tuning out.

Overall though, a very thoughtful book and debut for this young author, so well done! I would not be deterred from reading his stuff in the future.

The Place on Dalhousie

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Melina Marchetta
Genres: Fiction, New Adult
Pub. date: Apr. 2019 (read Jun. 2019)

Okay, first things first, it breaks my heart that this book is not currently available in Canada or the US. Send us the love please! I’ve been dying to read this since it came out 2 months ago (lol, it felt WAY longer). I finally broke down and ordered a copy from Book Depository, which is the only place us North Americans can get it as far as I can find. It is $30, which was the main reason I was reluctant to order it, but so worth it! The Place on Dalhousie was everything I was looking for from a Marchetta book and I loved it!

This is the third book in Marchetta’s companion series that starts with Saving Francesca and The Piper’s Son. In honour of her new book, I re-read Saving Francesca and read The Piper’s Son for the first time. Believe it or not, I think this may be my favourite of the three!

Saving Francesca introduces us Francesca and her group of friends that carry us through all three novels. The Piper’s Son is about Tom Mackee’s story and The Place on Dalhousie focuses on Jimmy Hailler. I struggled with parts of The Piper’s Son because I found the story and characters a little hard to follow at times, but The Place on Dalhousie was perfection. We’re introduced to two new characters, Rosie and Martha, who carry the story with Jimmy. This book has a lot of angst and heartbreak, but God, it was just so good!

Jimmy and Rosie meet in a flood in rural Australia while they are both skirting their lives and responsibilities back home in Sydney. Jimmy has always lamented never really having a family and Rosie is dealing with the death of both of her parents over the past few years. They connect briefly and then both go their own ways, not realizing the profound impact their meeting will have on one another in the future.

Rosie returns to Sydney to stake her claim on her father’s house. Seb spent years re-building the house on Dalhousie Street for her and her mom, only to have her mother pass away from cancer before the house is completed. Seb then re-marries less than a year after the death of her mother to Martha, and since Seb’s death, both Martha and Rosie are dealing with their grief, dislike of one another, and their claim on the place on Dalhousie.

I don’t want to go any further into the plot, but this story had a the markings of a good Marchetta book. It’s a character driven, family drama, made all the more special to me by the fact that it’s a new adult book rather than a young adult book. It features all kinds of friendships and relationships and it will make you feel so many things for all of the characters. I loved returning to Jimmy’s group of friends and getting to meet new friendships from Martha and Rosie’s lives. This is a book about grief, family, and growth. We don’t have to be defined or held hostage by the past. We get to make our own decisions and decide how we let the things that happen to us and around us impact our lives.

Exactly what I was hoping for from a Melina Marchetta book. Recommend to all her fans!