Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Lu Fraser ILLUSTRATOR: Kate Hindley SERIES: The Littlest Yak, #2. GENRE: Children's Picture Book RATING: 5 stars! In a Nutshell: So cute! Loved everything about this little gem. A great book for soon-to-be elder siblings. Story Synopsis: Gertie, the little Yak, is going to be replaced as the littlest yak of her community. She is quite excited at the thought of having a “brand new” baby sister and begins dreaming of the things they’ll do together. But soon, her thoughts raise a doubt – Will Mummy have enough space in her heart for both of her little yaks? Gertie does her best to estimate the size of Mummy’s heart, but her calculations leave her even more worried. To soothe her worry wobbles, she goes in search of the only person who can relieve her anxiety – Mummy. Will Mummy be able to soothe away Gertie’s fears? This picture book was the perfect package for me. It had everything I love in this genre, and it also had one thing I strongly dislike but that still delighte...

AUTHOR: Katya Balen GENRE: Middle-Grade Adventure RATING: 3.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A middle-grade novel focussing on a pair of eleven-year-old twins and their quest to look for their mom in the wildlands using a fox as a guide. Outstanding in nature descriptions, but the plot itself, being somewhat abstract, left me with mixed feelings. Story Synopsis: Fen and Rey are just two of many children staying in a crumbling house for ‘Found Children.’ Their caregiver Lissa has told them of how they were both found as babies, curled up amid foxes at the edge of the wildlands. Of all the kids in the home, they are the only two with no details about their birth mother. Fen and Rey are opposite in nature but share a strong bond, Fen has an especially wild imagination, and she always senses a pull from the foxes, wishing to return to the wildlands to search for her mother. When a fox appears at their house late one night, Fen interprets it as a call, and with Rey tagging along, embarks upon an ...

AUTHOR: Lucie Pagé GENRE: Literary Fiction RATING: 4.25 stars. In a Nutshell: A quirky book about a medley of individuals who are “lost dogs” in a sense. Impeccable in character development. Wanted more at the end. Recommended to literary fiction lovers. Story Synopsis: Contemporary Toronto. Brent : English professor and aspiring writer with low self-awareness. His pit-bull Gary is missing. After sticking ‘Lost Dog’ posters all over the neighbourhood, Brent isn’t sure what to do. Katherine : Brent’s girlfriend. Stage manager at the local theatre. Confident despite being the underdog of her family. Fed up of Brent’s self-serving nature and of always being strong for him. Becca : A fourteen-year-old with a self-absorbed mother Caroline. Becca thinks she’s depressed but has no one to listen to her woes. Karl : Works at a dead-end IT support job. Can’t control his addiction to porn and masturbation. How these characters are interrelated, you will need to read and find out. The story com...

Everyone knows how important translators are; without them, so many non-English works would have remained unknown to us. But today, I want to highlight a language that is growing in use but that most people of my generation just cannot process. We are in desperate need of translators to make sense of its intricacies. Simply put, without Google, most of us won’t make head or tails of what’s being said. What language is this, you ask? The language that Gen Z speaks. It is supposedly based on *our* English, but I can’t confirm this for sure. As the mother of a teen and a tween, I can’t tell you what tortures I have been subject to over the last few months. I used to be the cool Mamma who knew everything. Now I am the lost one, the person who can’t figure out what my kids are communicating. I have also gone from being "Mamma" to being "Bro!" or "Bruh!" ( And yes, there’s a difference between the two! ) You don’t believe me? Trust me, it is a serious issue. Fox...

AUTHOR: Heather Ferranti Kinser ILLUSTRATOR: Bonnie Kelso GENRE: Children's Nonfiction RATING: 4.25 stars. In a Nutshell: An informative picture book, using a story to depict the wonders inside a cave. Great content, great illustrations. The book has three characters – two children and their guide – exploring a cave. The guide explains to them the varied mind-blowing features and creatures in the dark cave that is lit up by their torches. From bats to troglobites, stalactities and stalagmites, cave popcorn and pearls, dripstone and shelfstone, the guide touches upon all the wonders seen while spelunking. When the children return home and go to bed, they dream of the beautiful things they saw that day in the cave. The topic of the book is quite unusual, and therein lies its biggest appeal. While most picture books focus on land formations such as mountains, beaches and rivers, hardly any venture into caves. In movies too, caves are always (and rightly) portrayed as dark and dang...

AUTHOR: Rea Frey NARRATOR: Brittany Pressley GENRE: Contemporary Romance, Magical Realism. RATING: 2.5 stars In a Nutshell: A sliding-door style story. Mine is an outlier review, partly because I expected something else altogether from this book. Some of the content is excellent, but the annoying main character (and her equally annoying daughter) ensured my disconnect and the dual love triangles guaranteed my dissatisfaction. Story Synopsis: Forty-year-old single mom Kate Baker is on a two-week beach vacation with her nine-year-old daughter Olivia. However, on the very first day of the trip, Olivia is caught in a riptide and she goes under the waves – a moment that sets Kate’s heart thudding. Now the story splits in two timelines. In Timeline I , Olivia resurfaces almost immediately and the vacation continues as a typical vacation would. However, with Olivia’s increasing tantrums, Kate’s ex-husband’s intentions to return in their lives for a second start, and Kate’s best friend Jason...

AUTHOR: Karen A. Wyle ILLUSTRATOR: Barbara Dessi GENRE: Children's Picture Book RATING: 3.75 stars. In a Nutshell: A bedtime story set around bedtime. Sweet and calming. Great for little ones to read and relax before nodding off to dreamland. Story Synopsis: A little girl named Molly and her dad are waiting out on the front porch on a warm summer evening. Once darkness falls, they both excitedly watch the flickering glow of the fireflies until it is time for Molly to go to bed. But Molly wants to do one last thing before she sleeps. This is quite an easy-going story, written in simple prose and with only two characters. There are no needless flourishes or complications. Just a straightforward plot that is perfect to help kids relax before their bedtime. I love how the book focussed just on the father and the daughter, without any justification for where the mother might be. Daddy-daughter bonds are anyway special, and this story depicts the closeness between Molly and her dad in...

AUTHOR: Soman Chainani SERIES: Faraway Collection, #3 GENRE: Retelling. RATING: 1 star. In a Nutshell: Yikes! Story Synopsis: Five female students of Chaminade High have been murdered within a few days, with their bodies positioned in a fairy-tale like tableau. To locate the killer, rookie detective Callum Penderson has been posing as a student at the school, trying to get intoi the inner circle of the popular boys, aka the ‘Princes’, in a bid to find more. But he soon discovers that the situation is far more intricate than he had assumed. This standalone short story is a part of the Faraway series, described on Amazon as “a collection of retold fairy tales that take the happily-ever-after in daring new directions.” As a reader, you can have mainly two kinds of experiences with this story: ➤ You will enjoy the portrayal of toxic masculinity as depicted through various male characters, reading the story like a kind of satirical comment on masculine behaviour, and applaud the au...

AUTHOR: Daniel Morden GENRE: Folktale Anthology. RATING: 3.8 stars. In a Nutshell: A really good collection of fantastical stories, but these are better described as retold folktales than as “strange” or “weird” or “bizarre”. The title and the cover establish wrong expectations. This anthology contains nine stories, all of which are retellings of old folktales and fairy tales. Actually, I don’t know if ‘retelling’ is the right word in this case, because the stories match the original tales to a great extent. There are only minor modifications, and these changes don’t even alter the core plot. Rather, they just add more details. The blurb, the title, and the cover – all seem to market this book as a kind of dark fantasy anthology, possibly venturing into horror. This does the book a great disservice. It works nicely as a folklore/fairy tale collection, but if you expect to get chills and thrills from any of the stories, you will be utterly disappointed. Furthermore, the blurb declares...

AUTHOR:  Samantha Wilcoxson GENRE: Historical Fiction based on Facts. RATING:  4.25 stars. In a Nutshell: The hard-hitting story of Catherine Donohue, one of the women who went against a radium corporation in the 1930s after suffering from debilitating radium poisoning. Nicely written, highly impactful, strongly faith-oriented. Recommended! Story Synopsis: 1920s. Ottawa, Illinois. Catherine Wolfe (Donohue after marriage) was just nineteen when she got a job with Radium Dial Company as a dial painter. The excellent pay package ensured that she could contribute to her family’s needs. What Catherine, and the other girls employed at the company, didn’t know was that they had signed their death warrants by accepting this job. The paint that made them glow in the dark created unknown and unforeseen health issues, which no local doctor knew how to handle. Catherine, supported by her husband and her colleagues, filed a suit against Radium Dial. This book is her life story. The story c...

AUTHOR: Dylan Newton SERIES: Matthews Brothers, #3 GENRE: Contemporary Romance-Drama. RATING: 3.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A romcom where I enjoyed a lot of the ‘rom’ and disliked a lot of the supposed ‘com’. USP: a male protagonist with a prosthetic leg and PTSD, thanks to his days as a marine. Worth a read especially for this factor. Story Synopsis: After her brother and sister-in-law lose their lives in an accident, Bryce Weatherford is given guardianship of her three nieces: June (11), Cecily (8), and Addie (5). As a chef, the only mess Bryce knows how to handle is the one in her kitchen. But to fulfil her brother’s last wish, she knows she will do whatever it takes to sort out teenage June’s moody grumpiness, Cecily’s determination to not have a bath, and Addie’s refusal to take off her fairy wings. Handling all this along with her job at PattyCakes, she has no time for anything else, least of all romance. Enter Ryker Matthews, a disabled ex-marine, who is focussed on his car rest...

AUTHOR: Clive Gifford ILLUSTRATOR: Good Wives and Warriors GENRE: Children's Nonfiction. RATING: 4 stars. In a Nutshell: Not a book you will read for answers but to discover more questions about the world around you. Welcome to the ‘Mysteryverse’! #CliveGiffordRocks! This is my fifth Clive Gifford book, and I am yet to be disappointed by his works. In fact, when I saw this book on Edelweiss, I grabbed it as soon as I saw the author’s name, without even bothering to read the synopsis. The content delivers, and how! The word ‘multiverse’ has become quite popular in the last few years courtesy some books and movies. Playing around with the same, Gifford offers us the concept of ‘mysteryverse’, representing the (as yet) unknown and/or unknowable elements of our world and beyond. As humans are inherently curious ( which is also evident in our habit of poking our noses in others’ businesses! ), we always want to find out more not just about ourselves but also about other creatures and ...