I read Hiromi Kawakami’s Strange Weather in Tokyo many moons ago, and that was quite a curious read. Even though it didn’t contain as many elements of magical realism as Haruki Murakami’s novels (I love Murakami’s works, despite not being the biggest fan of the genre), Strange Weather in Tokyo ventured into the realm of […]
Cut Down the Trees is another gem in this collection. Up until now, in most of Downes’s stories, we saw the British upper-class struggling to adjust to WWII conditions. But that’s not the case here. In Cut Down the Trees, Mrs. Walsingham is the owner of a stately home that has seen better times. During […]
In Kelsey Rae Dimberg’s debut novel Girl in the Rearview Mirror, Finn Hunt is nanny to Amabel, Philip and Marina Martin’s four-year-old daughter. The Martins are a prominent family in Arizona. Philip’s father Senator Jim Martin, up for reelection, is a popular politician who has represented Arizona in the congress for many years. And even […]
Even though I had planned on reading William F. Temple’s Shoot at the Moon on the day of Moon landing fiftieth-anniversary celebrations, I couldn’t quite manage it. But roughly three-weeks later, here we are… 🙂 Written in 1966, three years before Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, Shoot at the Moon chronicles the maiden […]
This summer, my blog didn’t see much action. I’ve been busy making summer plans, and then away – but now I’m finally back from a wonderful vacation in Mexico City, I’m so ready to get back into the groove. While I have a ton of books waiting to be read, I wanted to go with […]
This book had my blood boiling! In the dystopian novel Vox, which many have compared to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (I haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale myself, so I don’t how justified these comparisons are. But I plan on reading it soon, hopefully before its sequel, The Testaments gets published), “Pure Movement” that conforms […]
While I was curious to read Number One Chinese Restaurant written by a fellow Ann Arborite, it is a book I approached with some amount of apprehension. Out of the books that were long-listed for Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, this is one book that received the least amount of love by bloggers who got […]
Well, isn’t life funny? Right when I decided I’m going to swear-off thrillers after I’m done with my current TBRs, Sandie Jones’s latest, which was on top of that pile, managed to knock socks right off my feet! Going in, I didn’t even have high expectations for The First Mistake. I read Jones’s much raved […]
Although it has been almost a month since I read Chia-Chia Lin’s The Unpassing, not a single day has passed by when I didn’t think about it. It’s a mesmerizing novel that in many ways reminds me of Han Kang’s The White Book. So I wholeheartedly agree with Ruth Lefaive from The Rumpus. “Attempting to […]
I think I’m going to have to take a break from contemporary domestic thrillers as soon as I finish reading the ones that are already in my TBR stacks. Lately, they all read the same to me. With familiar plots and twists, they don’t wow me anymore like they once did, and I had been […]
Lila Savage’s unflinchingly visceral debut novel Say Say Say revolves around Ella, a young woman on the cusp of 30. Ella is an aspiring artist who had dropped out of graduate school a few years back to make a living. While searching for a job, Ella had stumbled upon the career of care-giving. And the […]
Lately, I have been having marvelous luck with my Crime Classic picks! I loved Michael Gilbert’s Death in Captivity, which I read a couple of weeks back. Set in a POW camp during WWII, it is one of the most unusual whodunits I’ve read. And now with Maigret and the Saturday Caller, I have a new […]
In Cari Mora, Thomas Harris’s first novel in thirteen years, two rival gangs have been after drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s gold stash for a while. With cartel gold worth of twenty-five million dollars at stake, the stage is all set for a murderous race between sadist Hans-Peter Schneider’s crew and Latino desperadoes to beat each […]
This time around, the Women’s Prize for Fiction judges surprised readers by advancing both Circe and The Silence of the Girls into the shortlist. This decision disappointed many Women’s Prize for Fiction enthusiasts who didn’t expect to see two Greek mythology retellings among the final six novels. However, while I’m at peace with both their […]
Wendy Walker’s Emma in the Night was one of my favorite thriller-reads last year. I read thrillers to keep things light, as there’s usually no takeaway for me when I read them, but Emma in the Night was an exception. It brilliantly explored the effect narcissist parents can have on their offspring, and gave me […]
