BOOK REVIEWS

A Stronger Home

By Katrina Chen and Elaine Su; Delphie Côté-Lacroix (ill.)

A Stronger Home is both a heart-wrenching and a hopeful picture book that addresses domestic abuse and leaving home to find safe shelter. A boy and his mother hide from the storm in their house ... Read More »

July 9, 2025 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

A Quiet Disappearance

By Rabindranath Maharaj

Leila Marshy’s collection of stories, My Thievery of the People, is full of incisive political commentary on people and how we interact with and hide from each other. In this new collection, the story settings ... Read More »

June 25, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Short, Reviews

My Thievery of the People

By Leila Marshy

June 25, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Short, Reviews

A Drop in the Ocean

By Léa Taranto

A Drop in the Ocean is the debut YA novel from Léa Taranto, a Paris-born, Burnaby, B.C.-raised writer, whose Chinese and Jewish heritage infuses this coming-of-age story about mental health with humour and tenderness. Drawn ... Read More »

June 25, 2025 | Filed under: Children and YA Fiction, Kids’ Books

What to Feel, How to Feel: Lyric Essays on Neurodivergence and Neurofatherhood

By Shane Neilson

In the early 1940s, an anonymous patron commissioned Anaïs Nin and several of her literary chums to write erotica for a dollar a page. This man, who Nin referred to as The Collector, gave ... Read More »

June 18, 2025 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Health & Self-help, Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ Endling

By Maria Reva

A malacologist, a bride, an interpreter, and a bride buyer meet on a romance tour on the eve of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is not the set-up to an off-colour joke told ... Read More »

June 11, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Reviews

Sea in my Cells

By Laura Alary and Andrea Blinick (ill.)

Laura Alary’s Sea in my Cells is a playful exploration of a precious resource we often take for granted – water. Alary’s storytelling is engaging and wonder-filled, anticipating the most pressing questions children might ask: ... Read More »

June 11, 2025 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books

★ Here

By Heidi Wicks

In “Bubbles,” the first story in Here, the new short story collection (more on that momentarily) from St. John’s, Newfoundland, writer Heidi Wicks, Brenda returns (in a vague disgrace) from working in Montreal to her ... Read More »

June 4, 2025 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Fiction: Short, Reviews

Jane and the Blue Willow Princess

By Catherine Little and Sae Kimura (ill.)

Written in commemoration of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, Catherine Little and Sae Kimura’s picture book Jane and the Blue Willow Princess introduces readers to young storyteller Jane, her supportive sister Cassie, and her large, boisterous ... Read More »

June 4, 2025 | Filed under: Kids’ Books, Picture Books