Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Tochi Eze GENRE: Domestic Drama PUBLICATION DATE: August 5, 2025 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A dual-timeline domestic drama exploring the effects of contradictory beliefs on a marriage. Character-driven. Interesting exploration of the central theme and some other tough topics. Flawed but well-sketched characters. Thin plot with too many themes. Good use of the Nigerian setting. Slow-paced. Not everything settled at the end. Somehow a bit distanced in execution. Quite ambitious for a debut. A good one-time read. Plot Preview: Then in 1960s Lagos. Independent-yet-traditional Margaret didn’t expect to form a relationship with British-born half-Nigerian Benjamin. But their rapport is strong, and despite indications from both their families that they should separate and despite learning that their pasts are more connected than they knew, they get married in secret. But the burden of marriage and parenthood on a young couple without familial support is always high. Margaret’s wor...

AUTHOR: Jo Ellen Bogart ILLUSTRATOR: Maja Kastelic GENRE: Children's Picture Book PUBLICATION DATE: October 5, 2021 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A wordless picture book about a little boy and a gargoyle. Cute story, but leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Amazing illustrations. Recommended, but mainly for adult-child buddy reading. Plot Preview : Anthony lives with his parents in a house full of photos. One day, a “rock” in Anthony’s room cracks open, to reveal a strange but friendly creature inside. When Anthony asks his mother about the rock, she shows him the photo album of their trip of Paris. Anthony realises that his new friend resembles the gargoyles at the Notre-Dame Cathedral. He shows the photos to the little gargoyle as well. And when they get a chance to go to Paris to visit his ailing grandma, Anthony makes sure that they find the gargoyle who resembles the baby gargoyle the most. I am not usually fond of wordless picture books, but the presence of the word ‘ga...

AUTHOR: Frode Grytten TRANSLATOR: Alison McCullough NARRATOR: Colin Mace GENRE: Literary Fantasy PUBLICATION DATE: November 18, 2025 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A literary fantasy-fiction set on a fjord in Norway. Introspective, not morbid. Too many characters, too meandering and monotonous for my liking. Some unnecessary triggering and crass content. Better for those who are more about prose than plot. Recommended, but not to all. Plot Preview: One morning, Nils Vik, a ferryman, wakes up and knows that it will be the day he dies. He still wants to follow his routine, so after his morning routine, he looks around his empty house for one last time, walks out, and boards his beloved boat that he has been ferrying on the fjord for many years. As he sets off, his dead dog joins him, and one by one, several other souls also make their way to Nils Vik one by one across each of the ferry stops. Each, including the dog, discusses several things from the past, sometimes offering the ferryma...

AUTHOR: The Amazing Theatre of Physics GENRE: Juvenile Nonfiction, Science. SERIES: Science All Around Us, #2 PUBLICATION DATE: June 24, 2025 RATING: 4 stars. In a Nutshell: An illustrated book about the real-life examples of physics in a city. Practical and informative. A great option for STEM enthusiasts in the middle-grade and teen age groups. This is the second book in the interesting STEM series titled ‘Science All Around Us’. It does an excellent job of enlightening children about the practical aspects of two of the most dreaded science subjects: physics and chemistry. I have already read two books from this series: Book One: The Awesome Physics in Your Home and Book Three: The Amazing Chemistry in Your Home . Book Two maintains the same level of quality, though set in a different environment. As the title indicates, this book leaves the ‘home’ setting and focusses on applications of physics in the city at large. I appreciate how the places chosen are the ones that children actu...

AUTHOR: Jaclyn Desforges GENRE: Speculative Short Story Collection PUBLICATION DATE: RATING: Can't decide. In a Nutshell: A collection of somewhat absurdist short stories. Highly creative, but a bit too random in development. This collection has its merits but it wasn't the right book for me. A good option for those who don’t seek a destination but enjoy a meandering journey. The title and the cover called out to me so strongly that I had to try this collection. The description was also intriguing. Unfortunately for me (and the book), the stories had fewer babies and more weirdness than I would have liked. From the description, I understood this to be a speculative fiction collection. The thirteen stories herein are indeed speculative, but more towards the absurd side of the spectrum than the fantastical side. I don't mind absurd fiction when there's some rhyme or rhythm to the plot, but this set of stories was a combination of stream of consciousness and abstract bizar...

AUTHOR: Meg Shaffer GENRE: Fantasy-Romance PUBLICATION DATE: April 7, 2026 RATING: 1 star. In a Nutshell: A book-about-books fantasy featuring the titular book witch. After the super-interesting start, this absolutely didn’t go the way I expected it to. Too much of insta-love. OTT dialogues, absurd plot twists, and immature characters. I enjoyed this author’s first two novels but simply couldn’t connect with this one. This is an outlier review. Plot Preview: Despite her youth, twenty-five-year-old Rainy March has been a book witch for more than a decade. She follows all the rules of the profession seriously, including the one about ensuring that fictional characters and the real world do not intersect. But when she is sent on assignment into the book series starring the Duke of Chicago, her favourite book character, she forgets all the rules and ends up in a relationship with him. When this is discovered by the head witch, Rainy is forbidden from interacting with the fictional characte...