A classic narrative that explores friendship, drugs, love, and the exacting price of fame The excesses of stardom. The Rock N’ Roll lifestyle. A winding and treacherous path. Perfect Cadence charts the meteoric rise to the top of Gunnar and Shep, two Nebraskans who relocated to Los Angeles to break into the music business. Gunnar […]
Category: Book Reviews
Flickering Lights by Skyler Boschen
Content warnings: Child sexual abuse, rape A heartbreaking, hope-filled memoir about overcoming debilitating trauma Skyler Boschen seemingly had it all: a loving family, a passion for gymnastics and animals, and good friends. No one could imagine that she was hiding a tragic secret underneath the surface: that from ages three to eleven, she was being […]
The Gray Sheep by S.M. Somerset
A resounding opening novel—an epic historical fantasy about a headstrong woman facing the complex realities of her beliefs and of war War has arrived in the port city of Marenburg. While Cosette Argant is certainly aware of it—money is tight and necessities are even harder to come by—she doesn’t bother to worry herself with the […]
Catch Her If You Can by Tessa Bailey
When love teeters on silence Hearts bound by unspoken truths Will courage speak first? The fifth installment of Tessa Bailey’s Big Shots series arrives with the emotional weight of a lifetime’s worth of longing, wrapped in the glittering facade of New York’s baseball elite. Catch Her If You Can by Tessa Bailey doesn’t simply conclude […]
A funny, engaging memoir of music and nostalgia At one point in Our Mixtapes, Ourselves: The Happy-Sad Story and Soundtrack of Generation X, David Grady writes that mixtapes in the 1980s were “the perfect mechanism for saying everything you couldn’t say yourself.” He lists examples: “the ‘sad breakup’ tape, the ‘angry breakup’ tape, the ‘I […]
A sweet, unexpected romance between a lovable giant and an Irish superstar Sam Miller is tired of being deployed. He’s missed out on too much time with his kids and his wife, so he’s stepping away from his position in the Marines to rectify that. Only problem is—his wife left him for Texas four days […]
A heartbreaking story of loss in a war-torn landscape Salma finds herself alone under the rubble. She’s calling out for her family but is receiving no response. Set against a dark backdrop, the opening of If I Must Go, You Must Stay mirrors the heaviness and fear Salma must be feeling. Loss is lingering in […]
Experiential and warmhearted—a gardening guidebook with a personal touch Ask any gardener their why, and you’ll hear a variety of reasons: it’s the dirt, the connection to earth, the meditation, the ability to grow one’s own food. For Theresa A. Markham, gardening brings peace and a portal to an almost-divine state of mind. Blending a […]
A haiku whispers through abandoned halls: Childhood ghosts return— Water remembers secrets, Love drowns in darkness. The Weight of Returning Home There exists a particular terror in returning to the place where your worst nightmares originated, where the walls remember your screams and the floorboards creak with unfinished business. Simone St. James understands this primal […]
The Poet Empress by Shen Tao
In a dynasty where poetry can reshape reality and women are forbidden to read, one desperate village girl must master the most dangerous spell of all. The Poet Empress by Shen Tao opens with Wei Yin burying her fifth sibling—a casualty of the famine ravaging the Azalea Dynasty—and closes with her rewriting the rules of […]