The Massachusetts Book Awards recognize significant works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s/young adult literature published by current Commonwealth residents. As a judge for the 21st Annual Awards, I’ve been tasked with reading all fourteen fiction nominees. Read more reviews here and here. An interwoven set of linked chapters, Inheritors is also a generational saga…
Compared to both The Stepford Wives and Get Out, Harris’s debut is a tense psychological thriller that had me compelled from the start. Set over a few months, The Other Black Girl follows editorial assistant Nella after she’s introduced to her new cubicle neighbor Hazel, the eponymous Other Black Girl; receives threatening notes; and uncovers…
Ghosts starts and ends on Nina Dean’s birthday but, in between, the reader gets to spend a year in the life of someone trying to figure it out. She falls in love and also out of it, she starts arguments and then reconciles them, she struggles and makes mistakes and realizes big things… and then…
The Ex Talk—two rival coworkers pretend to be exes in lieu of unemployment!—is a fresh take on enemies-to-lovers with that certain charm I loved in Today Tonight Tomorrow. The addition of Shay’s personal life and her feelings of inadequacy, imposter syndrome, and lingering grief gave an otherwise tropey romance layers, but I especially enjoyed how Solomon…
I’ve been, shall we say… intrigued by the book cover for The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires since I first heard about it back in February, and then even more so when I realized that Grady Hendrix was the author of a handful of books that have piqued my interest on more than…
When it comes to being social, Athena Graves is far more comfortable creating a mix tape than she is talking to cute boys—or anyone, for that matter—and her staunchly feminist views and love of punk rock aren’t exactly mainstream at her conservative Catholic high school. Then a malicious rumor that her popular, pretty, pro-life sister…
In How the Internet Happened, Brian McCullough chronicles the birth of the internet era for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in the early nineties and ending with the introduction of the iPhone fifteen years later. Depicting the lives of now-famous innovators like Netscape’s Marc Andreessen and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough reveals surprising…
In the wake of a scandal, the Montrose family and their three daughters—Catherine, Lydia, and Emeline—flee Boston for their new country home, Willow Hall. The estate seems sleepy and idyllic, but a subtle menace creeps into the atmosphere, remnants of a dark history that call to both Lydia and Emeline. All three daughters will be…
For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area. Three decades later, true crime journalist Michelle McNamara was determined to…
The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies — humans with extraordinary abilities — who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone… except the villains they once overthrew. Nova has a reason to…
Born with the power to kill or resurrect at her slightest touch, Maisie Cothay has spent her childhood sequestered in her family’s manor at the edge of a mysterious forest. Maisie’s father has warned her not to venture into the wood lest she vanish like her female ancestors – but one day he disappears, and…
Summary: Once upon a time, Beatrice and her five best friends were the cool kids, the beautiful ones. Then the shocking death of Jim changed everything. One year after graduation, Beatrice is returning to Wincroft hoping she’ll get to the bottom of Jim’s death. But as the night plays out in a haze of stilted…
Summary: In the fall of 2010, Abby Norman was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain, but doctors insisted it was a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics. Norman ultimately dropped out of college and embarked on what would become a years-long journey to discover what was wrong with her, and it wasn’t until she…
Long before the specter of terrorism haunted the public imagination, a serial bomber stalked the streets of 1950s New York. The race to catch him would give birth to a new science called criminal profiling. The most interesting chapter of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling was its epilogue, when…
Hillary Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Free from the constraints of running, she speaks about the challenges of being a strong woman in the public eye; the criticism over her voice, age, and appearance; and the double standard confronting women…
This look at the near future presents the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, once the United States, an oppressive world where women are no longer allowed to read and are valued only as long as they are viable for reproduction. The Handmaid’s Tale feels like a fresh take on the…
Three years ago an event destroyed the small city of Poughkeepsie, forever changing reality within its borders. Uncanny manifestations and lethal dangers now await anyone who enters the Spill Zone. The Spill claimed Addison’s parents and scarred her little sister, Lexa, who Addison provides for by photographing the Zone’s twisted attractions on illicit midnight rides. When an…
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai All Our Wrong Todays is one of the few books where the actual story lived up to the book’s hype and summary. (Mastai’s ability to form letters into words into sentences doesn’t hurt, either.) We follow our bumbling protagonist Tom Barren – through his mother’s death, a string…
Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America came out last month and, let me just tell you, it is making me seriously think about my privilege as an upper-middle-class white lady, living in a liberal part of a liberal state. In an interview for The New York Times Magazine, Dyson states that the book’s ideal audience…
Reading List Curated by Rachel Although I picked up Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers who Changed the World for its charming illustrations, the content is fascinating and makes me want to seek out everything I can on even more rad women. Feel the same way? Here are a few to get started! Ada’s Algorithm:…
I was really not a fan of Lumberjanes, Vol. 3: A Terrible Plan, but volume four, Out of Time, gave me the same warm and fuzzy feelings as the series opener, Beware the Kitten Holy. Was it because Brooke Allen was back illustrating my favorite five-some after one issue off? Or because the story felt…
Giant Days focuses on three friends as they navigate their first months at Sheffield University. Ostensibly, not much happens – but therein lies the beauty of John Allison’s creation. To focus such an exacting eye on the minutia of female teenagers experiencing adulthood feels refreshingly honest. It reminded me of what it felt to be…
So… I really wanted to like this. After loving Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal of T-Challa in Captain America: Civil War and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s memoir Between the World and Me, my senses prickled at the thought of two amazing things coming together. Except A Nation Under Our Feet, Book One is better suited to readers who are…
There are sooo many shows I watch (and with which I am OBSESSED) that would work really well as a stand-alone or multi-book series. Here are the ones at the top of my list! 12 Monkeys: This series has quickly become one of my favorite shows, and it makes me think of a trilogy filled with time…
Book Riot does this great feature called “Buy, Borrow, Bypass” and I like it, so I’m going to do that here. A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold Sue Klebold is best known as the mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold – and she knows it. Although her memoir twists…
“In a world beset by amassing forces of darkness, one organization—the Regional Office—and its coterie of super-powered female assassins protects the globe from annihilation. At its helm, the mysterious Oyemi and her oracles seek out new recruits and root out evil plots. Then a prophecy suggests that someone from inside might bring about its downfall. And now,…
Done right, book adaptations are one of my favorite things to read. What’s not to love about revisiting favorite characters in a different setting, or with different life experiences, or even just at different ages? Although breathing life into original characters is hard work, tweaking well-loved fictional characters so that the source material’s fandom doesn’t…
It has been four months since a mysterious obsidian stone fell into Kell’s possession. Four months since his path crossed with Delilah Bard. Four months since Prince Rhy was wounded, and since the nefarious Dane twins of White London fell, and four months since the stone was cast with Holland’s dying body through the rift…
Haunted by a failed love affair and the darkest of family secrets, Waldemar ‘Waldy’ Tolliver wakes one morning to discover that he has been exiled from the flow of time. The world continues to turn, and Waldy is desperate to find his way back – a journey that forces him to reckon not only with…
I don’t know how A Darker Shade of Magic got on my radar or really what I was expecting, but it honestly was amazing and had me, like, whipping through chapters.* Schwab – better known for her young adult fiction written under her given name Victoria – weaves early nineteenth-century England with (hard? high?) fantasy into an engaging…
Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged…
City on Fire is a behemoth of a novel – clocking in at over 900 pages – but it feels overwrought and excessive, as if author Garth Risk Hallberg simply wanted the world to know that he was capable of writing such an opus. The core action – which spans about seven months in 1977…
Book Riot does this great feature called “Buy, Borrow, Bypass” and I like it, so I’m going to do that here. You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) Don’t recognize the name Felicia Day? Don’t worry – you’re not alone. You might be familiar with her face from such Joss Whedon-helmed projects like Buffy, Dr.…
When Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Judy Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, Blume imagines and weaves together…
If it weren’t for the big-budget movie starring Matt Damon that just came out*, I don’t think Andy Weir’s The Martian would be flying off the shelves as much as it has – but that’s kind of a shame, really, because it’s super (ridiculously) good. And not just good in a hard sci-fi kind of…
Rachel reviews two graphic novels: Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Eillis; and Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson and Mark Waid.
Staff review by Rachel | First, though, I have to give props to Ransom Riggs: he created a seriously inventive atmosphere with Miss Peregrine’s setting, characters, and plot. With that said, however, something always felt lacking, like maybe a plot point could have been explored further or maybe a character’s motivation felt weak…
Staff review by Rachel | Here’s the thing: I really loved Station Eleven (to the point where my review notes included such helpful phrases as “ZOMG” and “more, please”). After being completely underwhelmed by another post-apocalyptic foray (which was a complete dud), Station Eleven felt like a breath of fresh air…
Staff review by Rachel Amy Poehler is a funny lady (and if you don’t think so, maybe this review isn’t for you). She’s smart and talented and unafraid to speak her mind or stand up for herself. And, boy, I did not know that I admired her until I started reading this book. I mean,…
Since seeing all three Swedish adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) as well as David Fincher’s Oscar-winning adaptation, I’ve felt no real need to read the books – until I kind of joined a book club and then quit after I’d already started reading the first book… and, man, I was hooked.
Rachel has been accidentally reading quite a bit of non-fiction in the past couple of months, so here are some thoughts on four newish real-life releases (and one not-so-new at all).
Reviewed by Rachel Fast Food Nation, a journalistic exploration into fast food – or what author Eric Schlosser terms the “dark side of the all-american meal” – turned 13 this year… and its age is showing. There’s no doubt in my mind that the book was a first of its kind, or that the information…