Like many people during the summer of 2020, I found myself searching for works created by black artists; music, films,…
Crystal Smith’s 2019 release Bloodleaf caught my attention as soon as I spotted it on the shelf and kept it until the moment I closed it with a satisfied sigh. The blurb on the back promised me a princess willing to risk everything to save her kingdom, a bloodthirsty and witch-hunting enemy, and love in the midst of chaos, and it definitely delivered. It didn’t take me long to fall in love with the characters and become invested in their good intentions and fast team work..
In these trying times, I have found myself yearning for the books and movies I used to watch and read when I was younger. I pulled my battered copy of “The Chamber of Secrets” from my bookshelf and was slapped with a wave of nostalgia. I remember the taste of butterbeer, the sound of the films’ soundtrack, the excitement I felt walking through Hogsmeade and exploring Diagon Alley, the feeling of a warm January day in Florida. I had forgotten how much of my childhood was built around Harry Potter…
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” is a spectacular mix of the science fiction and antiwar genres that comes as a response to Vonnegut’s own experience having been one of the few to survive the Dresden firebombing of World War II. It’s fairly often that the reader finds themself stuck trying to distinguish between the two genres as the book’s main character, Billy Pilgrim, repeatedly becomes “unstuck in time” or, in simple terms, time travels between events in his life…
My favorite genre is fantasy YA fiction. Give me a book with female warriors, kingdoms, plot-twists, and magical powers, and I am happy. Graceling by Kristin Cashore checks all of those boxes and is hands-down one of the best books I have ever read. Within the first few chapters, I was hooked…
If you’re into the Halloween season and you’re a fan of the classics, then you’ve probably seen Hocus Pocus at least a couple times. During the month of October I’ve noticed people talk about one particular book, a sequel to this movie. It continues the story with the next generation of Salem teens…
“Mexican Gothic,” written by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, is a “gothic suspense novel,” set in 1950s Mexico. We follow Noemí, an educated and spirited young socialite who’s been summoned to the High Place, which is the home of the Doyles, the family her cousin Catalina recently married into. The Doyles are strange…
“Twilight” is an easy punching bag, but somehow, despite all its problems, there is something about the franchise that keeps drawing me back. Maybe because these books are targeted directly at me, a teenage girl. Maybe it’s because every guy in a 50-mile radius of Bella immediately falls in love with her, despite her being the physical embodiment of wheat bread. Maybe it’s the edgy, bad boy persona that Edward adopts even though he really isn’t a bad boy at all…
Entertainment has not escaped the pandemic’s grasp, leaving every kind of creative field in some kind of disarray. Could the work of some artists, such as writers, have only sustained minimal damage in all the chaos?
“The Fountains of Silence” is both a simple story about a young man learning to grow up, and a tangled web of fear, deception, and pain that the characters, as well as the reader, must navigate in order to find the truth…