I loved this book, from beginning to end — and it’s a book that stayed with me long after I put it down. In fact I recently re-read the last chapter, just to hear it one more time. I keep thinking about how moving this book was for a debut novel, and how beautifully written.…
You’ll have heard of this book because of the awards it won in 2020, including the Booker Prize. This story of a young boy growing up with an alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow is worth the read. It’s dark, but once I finished it, I missed the characters. By the time you finish it, Shuggie…
This is my second book by O’Neill, and while it wasn’t nearly as powerful as Asking for It, it still kept me thinking well after I put it down. O’Neill draws characters that feel very real, and her books leave an emotional impact. Only Ever Yours is set in a dystopian future where girls are…
I really got into this book about three generations of a family in small-town Connecticut, though I felt let down by the ending, for reasons I’ll try to explain without saying too much. The novel begins with Astrid, a widow, who sees a friend struck and killed by a speeding school bus. Astrid is so…
I loved the first book by Knecht, Who is Vera Kelly? so I was very happy to receive a review copy of its sequel. These books combine a couple of things I really love – a complicated main character, a mystery, and the history and politics of other countries. In the first novel, heroine Vera…
I wasn’t sure I’d like this book at first. I don’t love science fiction that focuses too much on technology at the expense of character development, and this book features a high-tech robot as a main character. I read it because I needed a winner of a Lambda Literary Award for the Reading Women challenge,…
The Great Believers was heartbreaking, but so good and very worth reading. I realize that reading a book about the AIDS crisis in the 80s isn’t a light read, but I feel like it’s really important to understand. It’s also a book for anyone who likes a long, layered, multi-generational story. Makkai tells this story…
Those who love a good gothic novel will certainly appreciate this one, as will those looking for more LGBTQ stories and characters in their reading. I’ve been wanting to read Sarah Waters, but I started The Paying Guests and it didn’t grab me. This book did, with its Victorian London setting and its reference in…
I loved this book by Irish author L.J. Sedgwick about a teenager who moves to Ireland with her transgender dad, her artist stepmother, and her younger sister Laura. It’s an unusual story, but one that’s told with humor and sensitivity. Jessie loves her family and her family clearly loves her. Yet she’s hit with a…
For the fifth anniversary of The Book Stop, I wanted to follow up with some of the authors who asked me to review their books. The authors I chose wrote books that really stood out — not only for the quality of the writing, but because there was something unique about the story told. The…
Yesterday I posted a review of Descent, a compelling debut novel by C.H. Zhu. I interviewed Zhu because I wanted to learn more about this book and how he came to write it. What inspired you to write this story? What parts of the story come from your own life? The character, Dr. Wu, first…
C.H. Zhu’s first novel, Descent, is a story about a young man from China who struggles with his sexual identity and the weight of his parents’ expectations. While Dr. Wu Rong has built a successful career as a scientist, he cannot come to terms with the fact that he’s gay, and what that will mean…
The Book Stop 