Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Molly Aitken GENRE: Historical Literary Fiction PUBLICATION DATE: September 10, 2024 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A literary fiction about a woman in thirteenth century Ireland who was the first to be condemned as a witch. Inspired by true events. Excellent themes. Had tremendous potential, but certain writing choices make this less impactful than it could have been. Plot Preview: 1279. Kilkenny, Ireland. When little Alice Kyteler sees her mother wilt under the family responsibilities, she decides that she will not make the same mistakes and will keep control over her life. But can this be easy in a time and place where whatever men say or want is considered final? As Alice grows and matures over the course of the story, she is served well by her strengths: her propensity for business, and her calculating mind that is always focussed on survival. But with every increase in her social stature, the rumours about her private life grow worse. The story, spanning several decad

AUTHOR: Kirti Bhadresa GENRE: Short Story Collection PUBLICATION DATE: October 1, 2024 RATING: 3.55 stars In a Nutshell: An OwnVoices short story collection focussing mainly on BIPOC woman characters and their emotions and conflicts. Partly literary, mostly true to life, entirely character-oriented. A good read when in the right mood for something deliberate and realistic. This short story collection has fourteen character-oriented tales, with most of them coming from a woman’s perspective. There is no author’s note, but the publisher’s note at the end of the book says that it “charts the lives of racialised women as they navigate their relationships, aspirations, and the burdens of memory and expectations.” As this indicates, the dominant mood in the stories is not light and fluffy. The central characters range in age from child to adult, but the approach in every story is somewhat introspective. The stories have been divided into three untitled sets (Part One with four tales and P

AUTHOR: Georgia Summers GENRE: Portal Fantasy PUBLICATION DATE: January 30, 2024 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A dark portal fantasy with a magical but dangerous underworld. Amazing potential, average execution. The first half was still okay but the second half went haywire. Plot Preview: All young Violet Everly knows is that her mother Marianne left when she was two, and her maternal uncles Ambrose and Gabriel have taken care of her ever since. Only fourteen years later does she learn the truth. The Everly family has been cursed since centuries, and in every generation, the best and brightest Everly is taken away by a woman named Penelope, about whom no one knows anything except that she doesn’t seem to age. Marianne left on a personal mission to break the curse, but hasn’t been heard of since. Violet is the last of the Everly line. So she will be the last to suffer, unless she can break the curse herself. Thus begins her quest that takes her across the globe, encountering many ne

AUTHOR: Vonnie Winslow Crist SERIES: Shivers and Scares, #2 GENRE: Middle-grade Horror Short Stories. PUBLICATION DATE: October 7, 2024 RATING: 3.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A middle-grade paranormal short story collection intent on delivering shivers, scares, and chills to its readers. Meets this promise to a great extent. A good spooky season option for the target age group. This book comprises twenty-seven works: 24 stories and 3 poems. The collection pays homage to the Father of American Gothic, Edgar Allan Poe. (In fact, its release date, 7th October, happened to be the 175th anniversary of Poe’s death.) Every tale hence begins with a quote from a Poe classic that inspired the story. Many stories even contain a secret connection to Poe’s works, which is revealed at the end in a detailed note. I wish I were a Poe fan to appreciate all this better. Most of the tales contain some or the other creature. These range from ordinary animals such as dogs, toads, and spiders, to extraordinary

AUTHOR: Darren López ILLUSTRATOR: Bhagya Madanasinghe GENRE: Children's Picture Book. PUBLICATION DATE: August 1, 2023 RATING: 4.25 stars. In a Nutshell: A thought-provoking OwnVoices picture book about how tattoos do not necessarily mean something negative. Fabulous intent, great storyline, awesome illustrations. Much recommended! Plot Preview: For the first time ever, little Xavier has a male teacher, Mr. Mendoza. And horror of horrors, Mr. Mendoza has tattoos! Mama has always warned Xavier to steer clear of anyone with tattoos as they can only be bad men. But Mr. Mendoza doesn’t look like he has been in jail. He is a good teacher and a Yankees fan, and from New York just like Xavier. Could it be that Mama got it wrong? Could a good person also have tattoos? The story comes to us from Xavier’s first-person point of view. I recently saw this book on the Hear Our Voices Instagram page and loved the cover art so much that I borrowed a copy of this from my library. They had onl

  AUTHOR:  Ruth F. Stevens GENRE: Contemporary Fiction PUBLICATION DATE: September 26, 2024 RATING:  3.75 stars. In a Nutshell: A contemporary fiction about a woman who grabs a second chance at living life on her own terms. An atypical story structure, an interesting but somewhat unlikeable middle-aged lead, almost a “coming-of-age’ kind of arc, well-written secondary characters. This book took time to grow on me, but once it did, I enjoyed it. Recommended! Plot Preview: When Margaret’s husband of twenty-eight years divorces her for another woman, she decided to give up everything from her present life and begin anew. She changes her name to Mar and moves into a smaller home on the beachfront. This doesn’t mean that she has forgiven her husband. Au contraire, she is quite bitter about what happened and hence very judgemental in her behaviour towards everyone.  As her job offers flexible work-from-home timings, Mar joins a swanky health club to explore new adventures. Every month, she m

AUTHOR: Patti Calkosz ILLUSTRATOR: Xiao SERIES: The Magic Competents, #1 GENRE: Middle-Grade Fantasy Adventure. PUBLICATION DATE: October 15, 2024 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A MG/YA book with some animals, some witches, and a magical baby. Started off well but soon became too haphazard for my liking. Also didn’t like some of the story development choices. This is an outlier review. Plot Preview: Olaf the bear and his best friend Essex the red fox, among other animals, live in Central Park of an alternate-reality New York City. One night, Olaf ends up scaring away two witches by accident. While they fly away without any delay, they unintentionally leave behind a baby they had kidnapped to spit her father, NYPD’s Chief Magic Detector who is cracking down on the magic community. Olaf, who assumes the witches to be the baby’s parents, knows that he had felt sad when his mother had died many years ago, and so he must ensure that this baby doesn’t feel sad or lonely. He knows that Ess

AUTHOR: Lu Fraser ILLUSTRATOR: Kate Hindley GENRE: Children's Picture Book PUBLICATION DATE: October 15, 2024 RATING: 4.25 stars. In a Nutshell: The third standalone picture book of The Littlest Yak series. Quite cute, but not as ‘awww’-inducing as the earlier two. (To be fair, they were exceptional, so this book had some hefty expectations to live up to.) Plot Preview: Gertie the littlest yak and her herd are moving to a new mountain. Gertie is obviously not happy about the shift. How can she squeeze all her belongings onto her tiny sled? Her mother tries to tell her that a home isn’t about material objects, but Gertie cannot agree. Surely books and toys and all the other lovely things she owns cannot be left behind? Surely her mother is wrong this once? So Gertie does her best to pile up everything she owns onto the sled, making space for a special someone as well. However, midway the journey, something valuable goes missing, and Gertie realises the importance of what truly mat

AUTHOR: Kathleen Karr ILLUSTRATOR: Léonie Bischoff TRANSLATOR: Michelle Bailat-Jones GENRE: Graphic Novel PUBLICATION DATE: October 8, 2024 RATING: 4.25 stars. In a Nutshell: A graphic novel adaptation of the 1998 children’s book by the same name. Loads of fun, but also covers plenty of dark themes. Wild West setting, historical era, adventure, and turkeys! Great for middle-graders and younger teens. Plot Preview: Simon is not really the brightest of bulbs, so his class teacher (in whose class he has spent many years repeating grades) advises him to stop schooling and “explore the world.” His mother is dead and his father disappeared soon after, so Simon, who stays with his maternal aunt’s family, has no clue what to do next. That’s when an opportunity presents itself. When Simon hears from his neighbour Mr. Buffey that turkeys fetch a higher price in Denver, he decides to go into business. He borrows money from his teacher, bids a hearty goodbye to his uncaring guardians, purchases

AUTHOR: Jillian Forsberg GENRE: Historical Fiction PUBLICATION DATE: October 22, 2024 RATING: 2.5 stars In a Nutshell: A dual-timeline novel, with the historical plot based on a rhino being taken from India to Europe in the 18th century. Great story, average character development, good research for some of the content, too much telling instead of showing. Might work better for you if you prioritise the plot more than the writing style, because the (historical) storyline is amazing. This is an outlier review. Plot Preview: 2022. When American college student Andrea, studying abroad in Holland, discovers an old document in a secret compartment of her dorm desk, she is surprised to see it mention a rhino, which is not an animal found naturally in Europe. While working with her team exhuming some old graves because of a flood threat, she stumbles on to another unexpected rhino-related discovery. What happens next? 1740. Dutch ship captain Douwemout van der Meer (known as Douwe) has often

AUTHOR: Robin Waterfield, Aesop GENRE: Fables PUBLICATION DATE: October 1, 2024 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A compilation of 400 of Aesop's fables, with a scholarly introduction to the same by the author. Interesting to classic fable readers but gets repetitive if you read it at a go. One of the first books in my life was a tiny little paperback collection of Aesop's Fables purchased from the school book fair. I had read my copy so many times during my childhood that it soon lost its binding cover. Seeing this collection was a journey into nostalgia land, the time of simple stories with important-sounding morals. The first edition of Aesop’s fables in English was printed in as early as 1484! Aesop was a non-Greek slave who lived somewhere in Greece in the mid-6th century. It is impossible to know if he indeed was the author of all the fables attributed to him. As the introductory note says, “Just as authorship of numerous medical treatises that he certainly never wrote was