Our Cut of Salt is Palestinian American author Deena Helm’s first novel and is a haunted house story about the traumatic effect of the 1948 Nakba on three generations of Palestinian women. Our Cut of Salt has the potential to be a very good story, but the storytelling is unfortunately hampered by not-so-great writing.
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If you read every novel written by a prolific writer like Silvia Moreno-Garcia, there is always the possibility that you will not like everything they have written. I certainly have been less impressed with some of Moreno-Garcia’s books than others, but I guess I am still floating off the high of The Bewitching because I am disappointed that The Intrigue, her latest noir novel, is just an okay book.
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Exit Party is the latest novel by Emily St. John Mandel. I have previously mentioned loving Station Eleven and I enjoyed St. John Mandel’s last novel, Sea of Tranquility. Exit Party has an intriguing premise that hooked me from the start, but I have spent a lot of time since finishing this novel ruminating over what it means to really get any enjoyment out of it.
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Dead Beat is the final book in Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy. Do I remember what happened in Ninth House and Hell Bent? No, not really. Did I bother re-reading both books before starting Dead Beat? Of course I didn’t. I just dove right into Dead Beat and hoped I would remember stuff from the other books along the way. Dead Beat is an enjoyable conclusion to the trilogy and ends exactly as I could have hoped for. I can depend on Bardugo not making me want to throw a book across the room.
WARNING: If you plan on reading Ninth House and Hell Bent, do not read this review just yet as it contains some spoilers.
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Last Night in Brooklyn is Xochitl Gonzalez’s latest novel and was published just this year. Like Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita de Monte Laughs Last, the focus of Last Night in Brooklyn is the Puerto Rican diaspora and the lives of Black and brown people in New York, but it doesn’t feel like a retread. It is an interesting story of the hedonistic lives of creatives living in a Brooklyn on the cusp of change.
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Old Soul is a horror novel that I had been waiting to come out in paperback, and to be honest I am glad I did not spend the money on the hardcover version because as much as I enjoyed the story, I was disappointed to find this novel not scary at all and the ending REALLY PISSED ME OFF.
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Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is one of those books I keep seeing on lists of books you should read and after many years, curiosity finally got me to the point of reading it. It is a strange little book that I don’t think is for everyone, but I really like it.
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The Marrow Thieves sat in my TBR pile for a long time because I wasn’t sure I was ready for another story that was going to make me sad as well as infuriate me. But my TBR pile recently got low enough that it was time to read The Marrow Thieves, and I am glad that I did. It makes sense that this powerful story has ended up on so many “best book” lists.
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There is something about the way the plot of this book is described on the inside cover that led me to believe that Wildwood is a survival thriller. It is more of a lighthearted survival story than a thriller. Kind of disappointing, but I still found myself engrossed by this novel for reasons other than plot and character.
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I was looking forward to reading Helpless because I really like Jessica Knoll’s Bright Young Women and grew to like Luckiest Girl Alive, but I don’t know what the heck this is. I am so disappointed with this novel because it is not at all what I expected from someone who wrote such an emotionally devastating and thoughtful story like Bright Young Women.
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