Tag Archives: favourite authors

Auto Buy Authors: Carolyn Slaughter

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My love affair with Carolyn Slaughter began in the 80s when I happened upon her novel The Banquet in a second-hand bookstore in Hamilton, Ontario. That book, which opens with the lines “I am waiting for them to come. I am not frightened at all”, was a sucker punch of a read and sent me on a treasure hunt for more of Ms. Slaughter’s books.

Slaughter was born in India in 1946, but the family moved soon after to the Kalahari Desert in what is now Botswana. She lived there until her family moved to London in 1961.

Every single book of Slaughter’s I have managed to find has felt like a stroke of luck because like Thomas H. Cook, you’re not picking up one of her books at the local big box book store. Sadly, everything I have read by Slaughter predates this blog with the exception of her memoir Before the Knife, which was published in 2002 and chronicles her childhood in Africa. It is the book she says she wrote to make sense of why she’d been driven to write about violence and murder up until that point. There’s a 12-year gap between The Widow and this memoir. Slaughter hasn’t published anything since 2007’s Dresden, Tennessee which, sadly I DNF. Although I suspect she may be retired, Slaughter became a psychotherapist in lives in (according to Wiki) New Jersey.

I have read and enjoyed several of her novels.

The Story of the Weasel (in North America it was called Relations), 1976

”This my third attempt to put my thoughts down on paper; in my mind they chafe mercilessly.”

This is the story of Christopher and Cathy, siblings in the late 1800s, whose relationship is, let’s just say, complicated. If you recall another set of siblings named Christopher and Cathy, you’ll have a clue as to why. This book floored me when I read it.

This was Slaughter’s debut and the second book I read. This is also the book that prompted me to write my first and only fan letter to an author and, miraculously, she responded!

Magdalene, 1978

”Today is my birthday, today I am thirty-seven. And look, here is my face floating in the polished silver mirror.”

This is the story of Mary Magdalene and her relationship with Christ. I remember this book as being as angsty as heck.

Dreams of the Kalahari, 1981

“The small girl sat on the sand under the thorn tree.”

An autobiographical novel of a young girl’s coming of age in the Kalahari.

The Banquet, 1983

This is the story of an architect called Harold who meets a young shopgirl called Blossom at a Marks & Spencer. She is the most beautiful woman Harold has ever seen and the two eventually fall in love. One of the most beautiful and horrifying books I have ever read.

A Perfect Woman, 1984

“A woman stood by her window looking out at the garden with the gaze of someone surveying the sea or a long sweep of hills and fields.”

The story of a love triangle.

The Innocents, 1986

“I’m being buried alive.”

A tale of South Africa during the Apartheid

My collection will be complete when I get my hands on Columba, 1977; Heart of the River, 1982; The Widow, 1989. I own, but have not yet read, A Black Englishman, 2004.

#31for65 – A month of books for my birthday

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I celebrated a milestone birthday in May and so I decided to share 31 influential reads with my friends on Litsy. I thought it might be nice to add those titles here as I think it offers a sense of who I am as a reader and what sorts of books shaped my reading life. In the order in which they appeared on Litsy:

Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery

It would be unCanadian not to love this character and this book and spending time with her on PEI is one of my earliest reading memories.

The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport – Laura Lee Hope

When I was a kid, my mom’s younger brother used to give me a couple Bobbsey Twins books for my birthday every year. Sadly, I don’t have all of them anymore, but I do have a couple really old copies that once belonged to my mom’s sister. I loved spending times with these mystery-solving siblings.

The Silver Sword – Ian Serraillier

I was in grade 7 when I read this book and it was one of those books that I thought a lot about over the years. I found a copy on Bookoutlet a few years ago and re-read it. Not as amazing as my 12-year-old self remembers it, but still an important part of my reading history.

A Little Princess – Frances Hodgson Burnett

This book might have been the first book to ever make me cry and I have read it a few times since I was a kid and I can confirm: still makes me cry. Sara Crew is one of my favourite protagonists ever: kind, resilient, and she understands the power of a good story.

The Bridges of Madison County – Robert James Waller

I mean, great literature this is not, but I distinctly remember reading it when I lived in the UK and sobbing my eyes out and then immediately mailing the book to my BFF so she could also sob her eyes out. I will never re-read this book because I know it’s schlock and I want the memories of that first experience to live in my heart forever.

Billy Dead – Lisa Reardon

I selected this book for my book club many years ago and everyone but me hated it. I get it, though. This is a dark, dark book but it is also so well-written and so unflinching. It remains one of the most visceral reading experiences of my life and I will definitely read it again at some point.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith

Francie Nolan is a friend of mine. She was when I first read this book when I was 12 or 13 and she was again when I reread this book a few years ago.

Flowers in the Attic – V.C.Andrews

I read this book in 1979, which is the year it came out and the year I graduated from high school. I mean, is there a person alive who came of age in the late 70s who didn’t read this book? It was shocking, scandalous even, at the time. Literature it is not, but it’s definitely a seminal book in my reading life.

The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak

I don’t think I will ever get over the experience of reading this book and spending time with Liesel, Max, Rudy and the Hubermans and, yes, our narrator, Death. It’s reading nirvana.

Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell

Not sure why this book has two different titles, but mine was called Hamnet & Judith. You could call it just about anything and it would still be an absolutely devasting novel about Shakespeare (unnamed) and his wife (called Agnes) and the loss of their son Hamnet which inspired the play Hamlet. The movie is also fantastic, if you haven’t yet seen it.

The Banquet – Carolyn Slaughter

Later this month, I will be talking about Carolyn Slaughter as part of my auto buy author series. I discovered this novel back in the 80s and it absolutely floored me. It’s about an intense love affair that culminates in a shocking and devastating event and, I gotta say, I had and have never read anything like it.

Our Daily Bread – Lauren B. Davis

This story about people in crisis and the sacrifices they make to save those they care about is absolutely phenomenal. I chose it for book club and we actually had a Twitter (back when Twitter was a thing) chat with the author, which was so awesome.

The Secret History – Donna Tartt

I read this book when it first came out, never stopped thinking about it, and then read it again a couple years ago. It absolutely stands the test of time and it’s hard to overstate how influential it is.

Atonement – Ian McEwan

Atonement, like most of McEwan’s novels, take a little bit of perseverance, but they are always, always worth it. This is, by far, my favourite (and I have read a few), and both of my adult children (who read the book in AP Lit in high school) would say that it is a perfect novel. Can’t say I disagree.

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

I read this book 25 years ago and I remember bawling so hard I couldn’t see the pages. I know some people get all icked out by the fact that sometimes these characters were at vastly different points in their lives (and also ages) but I just saw a love story that could not be restrained by the restrictions of time and I was there for it!

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

This was one of the first ‘adult’ books I ever read and I fell I love with Jane and the moors and Rochester. This is definitely on my radar for a re-read.

The World of Winnie-the-Pooh – A.A. Milne

My mom read Pooh to my brothers and me when we were kids and the 100 Acre Wood has a special place in my heart. There are lessons in this book which we could all stand to relearn, I think.

Possession – A.S.Byatt

I read this years ago and I recall it being a tough book, but I also remember feeling really smart when I finished so there’s that. A book about desire, and poetry, and dedication and academia.

This Time Tomorrow – Emma Straub

This book made me feel all the feelings and any book that does that is an automatic winner.

We Begin at the End – Chris Whitaker

Duchess, the main character of this novel, will stay with me forever.

Velocity – Kristin McCloy

My most read book for reasons that are deeply personal. Man, I hate this cover, but also, man, do I ever love this book. I think my review does a pretty good job of explaining my feelings.

The Paper Palace – Miranda Cowley Heller

I have read this book three times, and I have loved it every single time.

The Famous Five – Enid Blyton

Honestly, I don’t remember a single thing about these books other than the fact that they made me want to talk with a British accent and go to boarding school.

That Was Then, This Is Now – S.E. Hinton

Perhaps not as well known as her debut, The Outsiders, I liked this one more (and I loved The Outsiders).Kids still read and appreciate Hinton’s novels today, for reasons that are totally legit.

Sweet Savage Love – Rosemary Rogers

My mom loved historical boddice rippers back in the day and I think I read them because she read them. Authors like Rogers and Kathleen Woodiwiss definitely left their mark, though.

Forever – Judy Blume

I read this book as a teenager (it was published in 1975, so I was definitely the target audience) and I remember loving it for its realistic portrayal of young love. It’s probably pretty tame by today’s standards (YA has definitely gotten racier) but for the time it was quite graphic and also quite amazing.

IT – Stephen King

I have read a lot of Stephen King, but IT is my favourite. I was in NYC the summer this book came out and I carried it with me everywhere. The kids in this book are anything but losers and I loved them all. Say what you want, King can spin a yarn.

The Serpent King – Jeff Zentner

Not all YA is created equal, and Jeff Zentner is top of the heap for me. The characters in this book, three high school seniors – Dill, Travis, and Lydia – are some of the most vibrant, heartbreaking characters I have ever met.

The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank

Whatever I knew about empathy at a young age, I learned from reading this book when I was 12.

Brother – Ania Ahlborn

Maybe this seems like an odd choice for a “most influential” books list, but I’ll tell you this: Michael, the main character of this extremely graphic and extremely heartbreaking horror novel, is someone I still think about.

Our Town – Thornton Wilder

If Robby Benson hadn’t starred in the1977 television adaptation of Wilder’s Pulitzer winning play, I might never have encountered it, but 1977 was my Benson era so…This play has meant so much to me over my life, including being the subject of my undergrad honours thesis.

So, there you have it, 31 book that have meant a lot to me over the course of my 65 years. There are so many books that might have made the list on a different day, but I think this one does a pretty good job of showing you where I have been and what I am reading now.

Feel free to tell me about some of your most influential reads. I would love to hear about them!

Auto Buy Authors: Thomas Christopher Greene

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I decided last month to take a look at my auto buy authors. You know the ones, your ride or die authors whose books you know will deliver. If you want to look at my criteria and read about my first auto buy author, Thomas H. Cook, you can visit that post here.

This month’s auto buy author is another Thomas: Thomas Christopher Greene.

Thomas Christopher Greene is an American writer and co-founder and past president of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He’s the author of seven books, of which I have read four. There’s a great interview with him here.

My first experience with Greene was back in 2011 when I read his novel Envious Moon. About that book I said: “Love is the one emotion that drives people, especially young people, to reckless behaviour. Greene’s novel captures that love-fueled momentum and propels Anthony, Hannah and the reader on a journey that is both heart-felt and heart-breaking.”

Like I said in my review, I am a sucker for star-crossed lovers or any book that taps into angsty longing and Envious Moon had that in spades, so of course I was going to seek out more books by this author.

Here’s what I’ve read:

The Headmaster’s Wife: One of the delights of this books (if you can actually call a novel about grief ‘delightful’) is letting the pieces of this puzzle click together in their own time. This is a book that sort of reads like a mystery, but isn’t that what life is at the end of the day? An unfathomable mystery. I read it in one sitting.

The Perfect Liar: Max W. and Susannah meet at a fancy art party in New York City. They are drawn to each other almost immediately and soon after, they are married. Now they live in Vermont where Max has taken a job as a lecturer at a small liberal arts college. One morning, while Max is away giving a lecture at an art institute in Chicago, Susannah discovers a note pinned to their front door: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Couldn’t put it down.

If I Forget You: The novel opens in 2012. Henry, a poet and lecturer at NYU, sees Margot – for the first time in 20 years – on the street in Manhattan. When their eyes meet, “the face Henry sees travels to him from a lifetime ago.” Instead of speaking to him, though, she runs away. It is from this point that their story unspools – toggling between their college days and this point in the present. Lives lived and all that.

Greene seems to walk that line that I love so much between page turner and literature, often with a heaping helping of angst thrown in.

I still have some Greene books to look forward to: Mirror Lake, After the Rain, I’ll Never be Long Gone, and Notes from the Porch: Tiny True Stories to Make You Feel Better About the World. I can’t wait to track these books down.

Auto Buy Authors: Thomas H. Cook

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At last count, I have 500 unread books on my bookshelves. I wish I could say that I am mortified by that number, but I am not. I am a mood reader and I like to be prepared for all contingencies. I also love buying books because books as objects just make me happy. Who knows what I am going to feel like reading on any given day, and it gives me a lot of pleasure to shop my shelves.

But then there are those tried and true authors whose books somehow make it to the tip top of that pesky TBR pile. Somehow, these authors always seem to move to the front of the line and even though I have many (many) books that have been languishing on my shelves waiting to be read, when these authors have a new book out–or in the case of today’s featured author, I stumble across a new-to-me book by them–I somehow forget my shelf and read the book straight away. (Alternatively, as is also true in the case of today’s featured author, I squirrel the book away for a rainy day when nothing else is floating my boat, and I need a guaranteed winner.)

What makes someone an auto buy author? That’s what I would like to write about today because I have several writers who meet my own very subjective criteria, my drop-everything-and-read-their-latest-book-asap crew.

  1. Writing. I love it when a book is well written. Sometimes the writing doesn’t have to be stellar for me to enjoy a book’s plot or characters, but when the writing is excellent, that is definitely a bonus. Auto buy authors always have, at the very least, prose that isn’t clunky.
  2. Plot. There are certain types of plots that I really enjoy. I love books that keep me guessing. I love angst. I love dark academia. I love it when the writer alludes to things that have yet to be revealed to the reader. I love to be surprised.
  3. Characters. I love it when I love the characters, when they feel as though they could be a friend of mine. When I root for their success (or sometimes their demise). I love characters that feel like real people.
  4. The feels. I love a book that punches me in the gut, makes my eyes burn with unshed tears, or a book that makes me sob. I love a book that grabs me by the throat and shakes me until my teeth rattle, a book that makes me read way past my bedtime, until my eyes are burning.
  5. The unexpected. I love a twist, especially when it’s not contrived. I love it when a book breaks my heart.

Somehow, auto buy authors always have the perfect combination of these things and there’s something about that first encounter that makes me want to dive into another book. When that book also turns out to be great, then they make my auto buy list. I thought it might be fun to take a look at some of the authors whose work I have enjoyed and whose books I will always buy.

I thought it might be fun to share these authors with you and, of course, I would love to hear which writers would make your list!

First up: Thomas H. Cook

Thomas H. Cook is an American writer of mysteries with over 30 titles to his name. It doesn’t look like he’s had anything published since 2018. He has won many awards over the years, including an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

I discovered Cook in 2007 when I happened upon his 1995 novel Breakheart Hill in a second hand bookstore. I knew nothing about Cook, but I was totally intrigued by the novel’s opening lines: “This is the darkest story that I have ever heard, and all my life I have labored not to tell it.”

Thus began my love affair with Cook.

Turns out, though, his books are not that easy to find. I can’t just head to Indigo and grab one of his books off the shelf. Tracking Cook books (haha) down is a bit like going on a treasure hunt. I was delighted when I went to a huge second hand book sale in Moncton (about 90 minutes from me) last summer and happened upon a title I didn’t own. If I am in a second hand book store, he’s the first author I look for. Over the years, I have managed to get my hands on 16 of his novels (two of which I am saving for that rainy book day).

Here’s why I love him.

First of all, he’s a brilliant writer. His writing is astute, and often lyrical (but not overly fussy.) He (mostly) writes what I would classify as literary mysteries. They are never just straight-up whodunnits. His characters are complicated and many of his novels deal with father/son dynamics. In virtually every book I have ever read by Cook, there has been some sort of mind-blowing/wait, what? twist that has made me want to go back and start again to see what I missed. While I have not loved every single book I have read, every single book I have read has been well worth the time and effort and has been heads and tails better than much of the dreck out there.

So, here’s what I have read:

Breakheart Hill – a leisurely southern gothic novel, filled with a real sense of place and time. The characters are interesting and flawed and I was 100% surprised by the ending, which wasn’t a cheat even though it felt like it should have been.

The Chatham School Affair – a richly realized mystery which unfolds as the book’s narrator, an elderly lawyer named Henry Griswald, recalls the events which transpired the year he was 15.

Places in the Dark – The story concerns brothers William and Cal who grow up in an idyllic seaside town in Maine in the 1930s. They are as different as night and day: William an energetic dreamer who rushes through life filled with hope and enthusiasm and Cal, the older more pragmatic brother. Still, despite their differences, they are close. Then Dora March comes to town.

Red Leaves – the story of the Moore family: Eric (owner of a camera shop), Meredith (teacher at a small community college) and Keith (their teenage son). They live in a small New England town and live, what Eric believes, is a perfect life. That is until eight-year-old Amy Giordano goes missing and the last person to have seen her is Keith, who’d been babysitting her that evening.

Instruments of the Night – the story of writer Paul Graves, a man who has spent his career writing about the horrible dance between serial killer and sadist Kessler (and his accomplice, Sykes) and the man who has spent his career chasing him, Detective Slovak. This might be my favourite novel by Cook.

The Cloud of Unknowing – David and Diana Sears were raised by their brilliant but schizophrenic father. Now they are adults and they carry all the baggage from that often difficult childhood. I have lukewarm feelings about this one.

Evidence of Blood – Jackson Kinley is a true-crime writer. His career has brought him close to unimaginable horrors: rapists and murderers and people who torture others for pleasure. Kinley (as he is most often called) seems somehow immune to these horrors. His armor is breached, however, when he gets the call that his childhood friend, Ray Tindall, has been found dead.

Master of the Delta – a book about fathers and sons, about the part luck plays in how our lives turn out, about kindness and cruelty.

The Fate of Katherine Carr – George Gates is a former travel writer who now writes features for the local paper and spends his evenings drinking scotch at his neighbourhood bar. He’s a broken man, but no wonder: his eight year old son, Teddy, had been taken off the street on his way home from school, murdered and the murderer had never been caught.

The Interrogation – the story of two cops, Norman Cohen and Jack Pierce. Each man has a heart full of demons (Cohen is haunted by his experiences in war; Pierce’s young daughter was a murder victim), but they are tenacious and accomplished interrogators. Since the story is set in 1952 they have to rely on the evidence they gather the old-fashioned way: visiting crime scenes, talking to people, chasing leads.

Mortal Memory – a story that begins when narrator Stevie Farris discovers, at age 9, that his father has shot and killed his mother, Marie, older brother, Jamie and sister, Laura. The knowledge of this horrific act tortures Stevie, mostly because he doesn’t understand why his father committed such a horrible crime. Wasn’t his family happy?

Peril – like a noir film, peopled with shadowy gangsters in crumpled hats, a beautiful, fragile heroine who earns the good will of the men she meets, and a bunch of guys who ultimately, turn out to be loyal and decent.

Blood Innocents – the story of NYC police detective John Reardon who, returning to work after the death of his wife, is given a strange case involving the slaughter of two deer in the Children’s Zoo in Central Park.

Into the Web – Roy Slater’s acrimonious relationship with his father isn’t the only difficult thing about returning to his childhood home. Just a few weeks before he was about to leave for college, Roy’s brother Archie was arrested for the murders of Lavenia and Horace Kellogg. Now he’s back in a town filled with ghosts – and then another dead body turns up.

And the two books I am saving for a rainy day: Flesh and Blood & Night Secrets.

I am on a mission to find all the remaining Thomas H. Cook titles that exist.

Crux – Gabriel Tallent

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According to Merriam-Webster, crux is “a puzzling or difficult problem: an unsolved question; an essential point requiring resolution or resolving an outcome; a main or central feature”.

Gabriel Tallent’s novel, Crux, comes nine years after his debut, the much lauded My Absolute Darling. Crux landed on the top of my must read pile based on my love for his debut and now that I have read it, it cements Tallent’s place in my auto buy list. (I hope I won’t have to wait another nine years for is next book!)

For Tamma and Dan, seventeen-year-old besties, a crux is a metaphor for the difficulties and decisions they face in their everyday lives, but also the very real problems they encounter every time they head out into the Mojave to climb boulders.

These kids live next door to each other in the middle of nowhere. Their mothers, Alexandra and Kendra, used to be best friends until they had a falling out and now no longer speak. Alexandra wrote a best-selling novel when she was eighteen. She married Lawrence, a construction worker, and had Dan. Kendra is a diner waitress and, besides Tamma, is mother to Sierra (who has three kids of her own) and Colin. She lives with a dirtbag drug dealer ten years younger than her in a ratchety trailer. Neither Dan nor Tamma’s home lives are particular stellar. Dan and his father don’t really have much to say to each other; Alexandra barely comes out of her room. She had heart valve replacement surgery years ago, and the valve is now deteriorating. Although she did write a second novel, she’s been blocked ever since. Kendra is deplorable. Whether it’s the circumstances of her own life or she’s just an awful person, she is not kind to Tamma. On the rare occasions Tamma would be in Dan’s house, Dan would “catch Tamma eating orange peels. Chewing steak bones from the night before. She’d nab butter off the stick. […] “Dude,” he’d whisper, meaning, That bread is moldy, and “Dude,” she’d say back, meaning, Don’t worry, I scraped the mold off.”

Tamma and Dan spend as much time out in the desert as they can. They don’t have the right gear, but they climb anyway, spotting each other and egging each other on and challenging each other to climb more difficult rocks. “On the ground, Tamma was the clumsiest person he had ever met, but on the wall, she was breathtaking. […] Everyone he knew seemed to think Tamma was trash, but he thought she was some kind of genius.”

The teens have a dream, and that is to graduate from high school (although it is highly unlikely Tamma will graduate, Dan is a whipsmart scholar) and head to Indian Creek, “the last place on earth you can still dirtbag, the way the old-school climbers did.” The friends dream about perhaps going pro, making a living doing the thing that they love the best of all.

But life seems to have other plans for them.

Dan’s mother has a life-threatening medical issue. Tamma’s baby nephew, River, has a traumatic brain injury. Suddenly the pair find themselves having to reassess their lives and priorities. Their choices will have a profound impact on their lives.

Tamma couldn’t say that she’d never despair. All she could do was think, Not today. All her hope felt terribly insecure. And she could get to where she had this feeling of rage. I don’t want to be strong. I don’t want to have to try and find joy when it all feels so scary. And then she’d think: You can do this. You are a rad climber and people like you. You can show up every day and be an indomitable force for joy and hope and you can let everyone else fall apart without falling apart yourself.

Dan has his own struggles, but he knows that his parents “believed that it was possible for [him] to go out into the world and succeed. That belief was built into [his] worldview. No one had ever believed that about Tamma.”

Boulders aren’t the only things Tamma and Dan have to climb; life is going to shoot the motherlode of obstacles their way. How they ultimately handle these trials is what makes these characters people you want to root for. Their friendship is genuine and refreshing; their conversations often laugh-out-loud funny; their love and admiration for each other is real and beautiful.

There is a lot of climbing jargon in this book and that might not be to everyone’s taste. I don’t know a dang thing about climbing, but by the end of it I was invested in their pursuit of “sending” each climb they attempted. I loved Crux. It’s my first five star read of 2026.

Highly recommended.

In the Wild Light – Jeff Zentner

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Well, that’s three 5 star books for Jeff Zentner. There’s just something about the way he writes characters that breaks my heart and Cash Pruitt, the sixteen-year-old protagonist of In the Wild Light now joins the ranks of Dill (The Serpent King) and Carver (Goodbye Days) as one of my all-time favourites.

Cash lives with his Papaw and Mamaw in Sawyer, Tennessee. It’s a backwater town and Cash doesn’t imagine much of a future for himself even though it is a place he loves. His mother died of a drug overdose; he never knew his father, but his grandparents are just salt of the earth people.

Cash’s best friend is Delaney Doyle. They met at a support group for people with family members who are addicts. Delaney is a genius, and that’s not an overstatement. For Cash, trying to understand how her mind works “is like trying to form a coherent thought in a dream.”

When Delaney makes an important scientific discovery, it earns her a full ride at Middleford Academy, a fancy private school in Connecticut. Delaney has no reason to stay in Sawyer – and every reason to go – but she isn’t going without Cash. Cash isn’t sure he wants to leave his grandfather who has end stage emphysema.

Cash agrees to go with Delaney and it is a decision that changes his life. First of all, he makes friends with a Alex, a boy he meets on the rowing team. He develops a crush on Delaney’s roommate, Vi, and he takes a poetry class, and this experience (and the teacher, Dr. Adkins) blow his world wide open. She tells him:

“I have two intuitions about you. The first is that you’ve got in your hear that poetry has to be elaborate, and that’s what’s fueling your hesitancy.

[…]

Number two: that you’re someone who pays attention to the world around him.”

Dr. Adkins is not wrong. Cash notices everything: the way people smell, the way Delaney worries the skin on her thumbs, the way water looks. “Ever since I first became aware that the world contains mysteries and incomprehensible wonders, I’ve tried to live as a witness to them.”

In the Wild Light is a coming-of-age story about a kid who has had to grow up way too fast, who feels out of his depth, but who learns to trust himself. Like every Zentner book I’ve read, this one made me cry on more than one occasion.

Highly recommended.

Mercury – Amy Jo Burns

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When 17-year-old Marley West moves to Mercury, Pennsylvania with her single mom, Ruth, she has no idea just how much her life is about to change. At a baseball game she meets Baylor Joseph, oldest of the three Joseph boys, sons of local roofer Mick and his wife, Elise. She is soon pulled into the Josephs’ orbit, into rivalries and old traumas she doesn’t understand. She comes to understand that “The Josephs were the close kind of family that fought in equal measure but didn’t know how to make up.”

Amy Jo Burns’ novel Mercury is a family drama that covers several years in the lives of the complicated Joseph family and how Marley comes to love them. Although she initially meets them because of Baylor, it is her relationship with the middle son, Waylon, that cements her place in the family.

It doesn’t take long before Marley figures out that Baylor is “the flinty kind of young man … whom everyone feared and nobody liked.” Their relationship is short lived. Her friendship with Waylon, though, is worth keeping. Waylon is “easier, kinder, gentler”. This is the relationship that sticks.

Although Mercury opens with the discovery of a dead body in a church attic, and although this mystery is important, it isn’t actually what drives the narrative. The book uses the body as a jumping off point before it circles back to the beginning of the story of Marley’s arrival in Mercury and how her relationship with this insular and complicated family shifts loyalties and both frays and strengthens bonds. It’s a very character-driven novel, and all of the characters are complicated and beautifully rendered. There are no bad guys, just people trying to do their best for reasons that don’t always make sense. I really loved Waylon and Marley in particular, but I also loved the secondary characters including Marley’s best friend, Jade, and the youngest Joseph, Baby Shay.

Mercury is my second book by Burns (Shiner) and she is definitely an autobuy author for me now.

Great book.

The Devil Crept In – Ania Ahlborn

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If Ania Ahlborn’s novel The Devil Crept In had been the first book I’d read by her, I am not 100% positive that I would be adding her backlist to my TBR, but it was not. My first encounter with this author was her novel Brother and that book was both creepy and emotionally devastating and made my top books of the year list, pretty close to the top. This novels suffers only by comparison because The Devil Crept In is an objectively creepy book.

Ten-year-old Stevie lives with his deadbeat teenager bother, Duncan, his mother and his bully of a stepfather. Stevie has some weird ticks; his words jumble up in his head and come out sounding like nursery rhymes. And sometimes he’s prone to an overactive imagination, like that time he hallucinated and stuck his hand in the garbage disposal, losing a couple fingertips in the process.

Stevie’s best friend (and cousin) Jude, 12, lives next door. They are each other’s only friends and even though Jude is a bit of a hell raiser, was “tough [and] unforgiving”, Stevie worships him. Then one day, Jude vanishes.

Jude Brighton was gone, like he’d never existed; vanished as though he and Stevie hadn’t spent their entire lives stomping the pavement of Main Street and living the summer in those woods. To them, the ferns were landmarks. Each bend in Cedar Creek, a compass. If someone had chased Jude through those trees, he would have outrun them. If they had dragged him deep into the wilderness, he would have broken free.

But then, one day, Jude reappears. He doesn’t remember where he’s been and although the adults are certainly glad to see him, Stevie’s concern soon turns to dread because Jude is “Like a corpse brought back from the dead.”

There is another narrative thread in this novel and that belongs to Rosie Aleksander. I wasn’t quite as invested in this part of the novel because it felt like exposition — although it is necessary to the whole plot.

The action really ramps up in the last third of the book and I read until the wee hours (on a school night, no less) so that I could see how it would all wrap up. One thing I have admired about Ahlborn is her willingness to draw the reader down a dark path without the promise of a happy ending.

The Devil Crept In is a solid read.

Those Across the River -Christopher Buehlman

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Those Across the River is my second novel by Christopher Buehlman (The Lesser Dead) and he now joins the ranks of my auto buy authors.

Frank Nichols and his soon-to-be-wife Eudora have just landed in Whitbrow, a backwater town in Georgia. Their life is a little bit in flux. Frank was essentially chased out of Chicago, where he’d worked at a college, because Eudora had been married to a colleague. The two meet at a faculty luncheon.

She was twenty, wearing a sweater the color of an Anjou pear. I was still built like the St. Ignatius basketball center I had been fifteen years before.

We were in love before the salads came.

It is 1935 and Frank is a WW1 veteran, prone to night terrors; Dora is a school teacher. They land in Whitbrow because Frank has inherited a property. The letter that tells him about this inheritance also cautions him to sell the property, that there is “bad blood” there, but with limited options, they decide to move. Frank is going to write the history of Savoyard Plantation, a derelict property owned by his ancestors.

As Frank and Dora settle into their new lives, they find it to be both secretive and charming. For one thing, the townspeople gather once a year to release pigs into the woods as a sort of sacrifice. But to what? Then there’s the plantation, which is located somewhere across the river, but Frank finds that no one is interested in taking him there. One of the locals tells him “Them woods is deep and mean.”

Just how mean? Well, it takes a while for Frank (and the reader) to figure out just what the heck is going on. Some readers might get frustrated with the slow pace at which the story unfolds, but I liked it. I really enjoy the way the Buehlman writes; he’s also a poet and it shows in his prose. One reviewer suggested that the main characters are wooden and the plot not that compelling, but I disagree. I was wholly invested in this story.

I won’t spoil the reveal. I did figure it out before the end, and while it isn’t a scary horror novel, it is atmospheric and a compelling read.

Goodbye Days – Jeff Zentner

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Oh, Jeff, what are you doing to me?

The Serpent King, Jeff Zentner’s YA debut, was one of my favourite books of 2024. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with reading his follow-up, Goodbye Days. Geesh. Who is this Jeff Zentner guy and why does he insist on breaking my heart?

Carver Briggs, aka Blade, would have been pretty excited about his final year at Nashville Arts Academy if he hadn’t just buried his three best friends: Blake Lloyd, Eli Bauer and Mars Edwards. Now, though, he has to navigate this last year of high school without the rest of the Sauce Crew and deal with the overwhelming guilt that he is, in fact, responsible for their deaths.

He doesn’t think he killed them on purpose. And he knows that no one thinks he “slipped under their car in the dead of night and severed the brake lines.” But he did text Mars, who was driving, and the authorities did find Mars’s phone at the crash scene with a “half-composed text” to Carver. That was right before his friends slammed into the semi.

Now Carver is having panic attacks and debilitating feelings of guilt which are compounded by the fact that he is growing closer to Jesmyn, Eli’s girlfriend. It’s all too much. And he knows that he is not the only one who is suffering.

When Blake’s grandmother suggests that the two of them share a “goodbye day” for Blake, Carver is initially reluctant. She proposes that they spend a day together, doing the things that Blake used to love to do, and sharing their stories about him. A ‘goodbye day’ of sorts.

“Funny how people move through this word leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what’d happen if all these people put their puzzle pieces together.”

Goodbye Days is my first five star read of 2025. In all the ways I loved The Serpent King, I loved this one just as much. Zentner is so gifted at writing teenagers who are thoughtful and funny and broken and hopeful. This book was profoundly moving and yep, I cried.

For the most part, you don’t hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.

I will read anything this guy writes.