By Kevin Jared Hosein Overall: A tragic novel set in Trinidad in the 1940s, Hungry Ghosts introduces us to a small but complicated corner of the Caribbean. The reader meets the residents of a sugar cane barracks, once home to indentured servants on the nearby plantation but now home to entire impoverished families doing theirContinue reading “Hungry Ghosts”
Author Archives: Liz Helfrich
What the Wind Knows
by Amy Harmon Overall: “She must decide whether she’s willing to let go of the life she knew for a love she never thought she’d find.” This sentence from the blurb for What the Wind Knows, would normally make me take a pass on a book. I’m not big on romance, but enough people hadContinue reading “What the Wind Knows”
Murderbot Diaries 1-3
All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, and Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells Overall: Well, this is what happens when you hang out in online book communities. You end up trying a series that you’ve seen featured a million times on your library app feed, and you love it! Murderbot, the main character of these three quickContinue reading “Murderbot Diaries 1-3”
The Locked Room
by Elly Griffiths Overall: This is entry 14 in Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway mystery series, and I am pleased to report that I enjoyed it. As series lengthen, it can be difficult to maintain interest in familiar characters and come up with new storylines, and this book succeeds. This entry takes on the pandemic, which weContinue reading “The Locked Room”
The Trees
by Percival Everett I wasn’t at all sure I would be able to get into The Trees, as I don’t read a lot of satire. But after two readers I trust wrote glowing reviews on Instagram, I knew I would attempt to read this novel, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2022. And IContinue reading “The Trees”
The Mitford Affair
by Marie Benedict Overall: I’m fascinated by the Mitford sisters and have read several biographies about them as well as many of Nancy Mitford’s books. This work of historical fiction looks at the lives of three of the sisters, Nancy, Diana, and Unity, in the years leading up to World War II. Diana famously divorcesContinue reading “The Mitford Affair”
Yellow Wife
by Sadeqa Johnson Overall: Yellow Wife takes on one of the most thorny and difficult topics of slavery, forced marriage between an enslaved woman and her master. Pheby Delores Brown may have grown up as a favored child on an isolated plantation, illegally taught to read by her master’s sister, given piano lessons, and allowedContinue reading “Yellow Wife”
Winter Counts
by David Heska Wanbli Weiden Overall: Let’s not beat around the bush: I loved this book. Virgil Wounded Horse, like many a classic noir narrator, lives and works in the gray area between serving justice and being a criminal. He’s the guy folks on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota turn to when theyContinue reading “Winter Counts”
When Women Were Dragons
by Kelly Barnhill Overall: Yes, there are dragons in this book. But if you’re looking for a fantasy world with swords and sorcery, you won’t find it here. Set in an alternate mid-20th century, almost everything is familiar. Except sometimes women spontaneously turn into dragons. And in 1955, in a traumatic event suppressed by theContinue reading “When Women Were Dragons”
I Must Betray You
by Ruta Sepetys Overall: I knew almost nothing about Romania going into this book, which fortunately is the presumed starting place for the reader. Cristian Florescu, the teenage narrator, is an able guide, showing how a typical teenager (unsure about girls, trying to do well in school, figuring himself out through diary entries) attempted toContinue reading “I Must Betray You”
Liz Helfrich 