🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 An achingly raw exploration of one womans attempt to relieve her trauma, and keep herself safe, through an unusual (albeit psychologically creative) set of behaviours. Minoo hurts. So much so that as we come to understand her, this frazzled and frizzy haired middle aged woman, through flashbacks told back…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 “We are a continuum of human experience, neither the worst, nor the best thing we have ever done…. We are all of it, all at once, all the time.” A moving story told in the voices of three people, this is a story about redemption, love, and rediscovery —…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ “How had she become so old, so young? … It was as if she had taken over the body of another character - and now was expected to play its part.” A book I absolutely didn’t want to end, (definitely topping the list of favorites read this year), this…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A searing and complex look at identity, sobriety, loneliness and longing — centering on the internal world of women, caretaking, motherhood, and the insidious push for disappearance into societal roles that, much as they may feel that way, do not ultimately define us. Between these pages we will follow…
A complex and intensely moving look at love, at trauma, at illness and the lengths a person may go to in their ultimate quest for belonging. Hannah is a desperate young woman with a traumatic past, a business and film major, living in Toronto. A social outcast of sorts, Hannah…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A sweet and heartfelt reminder that life is short, and the love of family and good friends a joy that must be captured, as quickly as it reveals itself. The fifth in the “Escape to the Lake” series by this wonderful and prolific author, I read this charming novel…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 What makes a ‘good’ day for a dysfunctional family? A family made so, in large part, due to unresolved trauma, seeping over time into life-altering mental illness. Betty and Greg Laramie made absolutely terrible parents, eventually forcing them to give up their daughter, Charlie, to foster care. With Betty…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Gordon Slee is a bit of a loser. Or, at least, he thinks he is. Bullied and taken advantage of by his cretin of a boss, Edward Creaton, and terminally disappointing to his awful parents, Gordon is forty-two years old and has never managed to live up to his…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ A cornucopia of all things Dog, I read this gem with a warm doggie on my lap, straight through on a rainy afternoon. And what a delight that was! Crisscrossing time (past and future), and covering myths, historical happenings, re-interpreted poetry, philosophy, Buddhism, science fiction — and all of…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Are we exposed by, defined by, the worst thing we’ve ever done? Do our actions teach the world how to label us, hate us, mistrust us — or are we better than that, all of us, people who are struggling, who mess up (often royally), who often mean well,…