saltygalreads's reviews
306 reviews

Britannica defines magical realism as “narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction”. The Gifts is a work of magical realism in which otherwise ordinary women suddenly grow wings from their shoulders, often after having suffered traumatic events. It is set in the firmly patriarchal society of 19th century England in the infancy of medical science, where surgeons treated operations as performance and body snatchers did a brisk trade. There is particular focus on one ambitious surgeon, Edward Meake, who in the grip of religious fervour, becomes obsessed with these “angels”. He wishes to achieve acclaim and status by studying them and presenting them to the science community.

Although it is a well-written book, I cannot say that I really enjoyed this one. It has a number of strikes against it in my view.
• There are too many characters and overlapping plots.
• While it may have been a reality of the time period, I found the animal cruelty very disturbing.
• What the heck were the angels supposed to represent? I could speculate on various interpretations, but I don’t really know.
• There were multiple points of view which on a couple of occasions became muddled together and confusing to me.
• The character portrayal tended to be somewhat simplistic – no one is either all good or all bad.

It is a long book but I read through fairly quickly given the extremely short chapters. If you are a fan of magical realism and enjoy this time period then you might appreciate this novel, but for the reasons above it was not a hit with me.

In the Post-war era, two brothers are born and raised to a father who is a fanatical believer in determinism - the philosophical theory that all events, including the actions of human beings, are inevitable. It denies the existence of free will, propounding that people could never have made any other decision. In the 1990s/2000s a brother and sister grow up to be very close, until one day a violent and delusional young man attacks the brother, causing horrific injuries and psychological trauma. It doesn't seem like these storylines are related, however the lives do intersect and in very tragic ways, with long roots in the past.

When Celadon calls this book "deeply complex", they are not joking. It is a complex, multi-layered plot, with multiple points of view and multiple timelines. I confess I found it confusing and jarring at times, with the constant transitions from present to past in the various character storylines. There were some aspects I found a little tired - the weary cops always several steps behind and the husband who downplays the wife's fears - that elicited an eyeroll from me.

The brother and sister supposedly have great affection for each other, however we don't see much evidence of that. Some of the plot twists were brilliant, and the main antagonist is definitely diabolical to the very end, although I found the ending to be a letdown. It felt like a frantic tying-up of loose ends, with constant jumping around in time. I had to read it twice before it made sense to me.

Overall, I have to conclude that I felt indifferent to it at the end. I wasn't connected to the characters and I didn't feel like I had much of a stake in the outcomes. It felt a little wooden to me. That being said, I see many positive reviews and regular readers of Alex North seem to love it. Thank you to Celadon for an ARC to review.

Birnham Wood is a difficult book to describe. It is a drama. It is a character study. It is a thriller. It is about human character and relationships. It is about environmental carnage and greed. It is about the complex motivations behind special interest groups and their delicate relationship with private business sponsorship. It is timely and very of-the-moment.

I will vastly oversimplify the plot as follows: a young group of environmental activists in New Zealand, calling themselves Birnham Wood, utilizes vacant spaces – empty lots, unused public grounds, etc. – to plant a variety of crops. They consider themselves a “guerrilla gardening collective” – demonstrating the effective use of land to produce natural foods for public consumption, and pushing back against the private ownership of land. Money, as it always is for special interest groups, is tight and the group lives hand-to-mouth. A landslide in the Korowai Pass mountain region closes a large area, including a former sheep farm called Thorndike, and this presents a golden opportunity for the group, with a large parcel of land going unused and relatively cut off. However this same chunk of land, bordering on a national park, has also caught the interest of a shrewd American billionaire, Robert Lemoine, who is negotiating a sale with the farm’s owners so that he can build an end-of-days bunker and bolt hole, or so he says. Can the two sides navigate their differences and occupy the same land?

I was fascinated by the characters in this book – their public face versus private, their motivations and thought processes. Mira Bunting is the founder of Birnham Wood – wealthy, intelligent, arrogant, and idealistic yet conniving. Shelley Noakes is Mira’s right-hand person and a co-founder of the group, with a head for organization and logistics – clever, self-deprecating and disenchanted with Birnham Wood. Owen Darvish is the owner of Thorndike, and a caricature of the about-to-be-knighted, middle-aged white male who congratulates himself on his “self-made” success. Robert Lemoine is the charismatic, chill billionaire who created Autonomo, a drone tech company. He is a psychopath – charming, friendly, ruthless, manipulative and cold-blooded.
There are so many quotable passages in this book, in particular social, economic and political commentary, with heavy doses of satire that made me chuckle. Catton’s comments on the generational divide were especially insightful and amusing: “At Birnham Wood ‘Shelley’s mum’ had become a kind of shorthand for the many evils of the baby-boomer generation, a despised cohort of hoarders and plunderers from which Mira’s own parents, who had recently separated, always seemed mysteriously to be exempt”.

While some readers may find the first half of the book a little slow, this is where the reader understands the characters and what drives them; setting up the faster moving second half where the thriller aspect of the novel takes the reader on twists and turns. No spoilers here, but I will only say that the conclusion simultaneously blew my mind and broke my heart. You will not forget this book. A classic in the making.

This is Kaira Rouda's first book in the series about The Kingsleys- a wealthy dysfunctional family with plenty of skeletons in the closet.

The premise is that the patriarch of the family, Richard Kingsley, invites his adult children and their partners aboard his new super yacht for an overnight trip to Catalina Island. The invitation is supposedly to reconnect, but everyone knows the true purpose - to assess which one of the heirs is fit to run the billionaire family enterprise. All three siblings dislike each other and nurse personal grudges against their father. Their nearly 80 year-old father and his new 38 year-old wife Serena, his fifth, will host as the three siblings jockey for position and try to edge each other out. All's fair in love and succession. But the weather is stormy and so is the mood as carefully laid plans go wrong.

I always find Kaira Rouda's books fun to read, with characters you love to hate. Similar to your favourite trashy reality show, it's just fun to watch people behaving badly. This one was lacking however. The quality of the writing was just not there. The dialogue felt wooden and repetitive; there was just no spark in it. What could have been great fun, with snappy dialogue and underhanded scheming, just felt like a chore to read. Ted and John came across as whiny, immature and entitled. Sibley, who could have been a breath of fresh air, was just low class and rude. The wives are one-dimensional. And with about 10% of the novel left to go, there is a bizarre plot twist that made absolutely no sense to me.

Kaira Rouda can spin a tale, but this one wasn't her best effort.

The basic premise of this novel is that three teenagers - Wilder, Nat and Harper - meet at a seaside cottage destination during summer break and start a tense, awkward friendship. While beautiful on the surface, Whistler Bay has a sinister history of women going missing, often for some plausible cause such as swimming in the ocean. Moreover there is a rumour of a "dagger man" who creeps into the bedrooms of young children and takes photos of them sleeping, while holding a knife close to them. The novel follows the teens' relationships with each other and exposes the various ways they use and betray each other. As the novel progresses, Wilder becomes increasingly unhinged, while reality and fantasy blend together.

This was a strange and opaque book which was a struggle for me to finish. In a way, it is a book about writing a book - a novel embedded within a novel within a novel. I felt I was following reasonably well until the midway point in the book. After this I could no longer discern what was hallucination, dreams or actually happening. Neither could I be sure which characters really existed, with the jumping around in perspective from Nat/Sky/Skye/Pearl to Harper to Wilder/Wiley. I enjoy a good plot twist, but this was too much for me, with one reveal after another that had me going in circles. By the end I will admit to feeling quite exasperated. I know that there are many Catriona Ward die-hard fans who loved it, but this was definitely not for me. Thanks to NetGalley for the copy to read.

Josie Teed tells her own story of working at a national historic site in Northern BC, describing her experiences and interactions in concise and sometimes hilarious prose. She is painfully honest about her emotions, ups and downs, and the awkwardness of being isolated 24/7 with an eclectic group of strangers. Josie feels lost, a common feeling for her age. As a mother of two twenty-something women, I found her reflections on friendship, dating and finding yourself so relevant and endearing. More than once I wanted to give her a hug. This book is vulnerable, sweet and funny all at once. I look forward to reading more from Josie in the future. Many thanks to Dundurn Press for the copy, which I greatly enjoyed.

I have recently been drawn to books that take me outside my own experiences. This one is set in Montreal in the 1980s and relates the story of a Lebanese immigrant working at a hotline for a weight loss business. Muna Heddad and her son Omar have left their life in Beirut and come to Canada. They have lost husband and father Halim Khoury to the violence and lawlessness of the civil war and come to 1980s Montreal to start a new life.

Everything is an uphill battle - feeling welcome, finding a job, adapting to the language, finding a decent place to live. Muna cannot get a job teaching French, even though she is trained. The weather is brutally cold and nothing like the gentle climate of Lebanon. But Muna and Omar are survivors. Muna finds a job with a weight loss business and works the phone hotline while Omar makes an uneasy transition into the Quebecois French school system. While trying to guide clients through their weight loss, Muna hears the secret pain and heartaches of her clients over the phone line. It is a year of adaptation and discovery while Omar and Muna live cheque to cheque and try to establish a new stability.

I felt all the emotions reading this book. It truly deserves to be a finalist for Canada Reads as what could be more Canadian than the struggle to survive as an immigrant. Excepting our indigenous and First Nations people, everyone in Canada is from somewhere else in the world.

Muna's insightful observations on her experiences and new country hit home. Her raw and touching remembrances of her husband, and her loneliness for him brought a lump to my throat. Her determination to succeed at her job and provide for her son was inspirational. Without any trace of anger or blame, she points out the failures in the system to provide adequate support services to newcomers.

This is a wonderful account of the immigrant experience, which is more relevant than ever in today's unsettled and volatile world. A five star read and highly recommended. Good luck in Canada Reads Mr. Nasrallah!

In the small village of Lockdubh, Sutherland, Scotland, Kate Hibbert cleans houses...and snoops around. One day she is seen going through the village all dressed up and with a suitcase in tow, leading to rumours that she is off on vacation. However a couple of weeks later her cousin arrives in the village, stating that Kate is missing and demanding a police search. Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is on the case again as he chases down a murderer in the charming village of Lockdubh, uncovering blackmail and shameful village secrets during his investigation.

This was my introduction to Hamish Macbeth, a likeable and good-natured policeman living in a small Scottish village. While Hamish might be amiable, he is still very intelligent and shrewd. He understands human nature and is an excellent investigator. He simply isn't a worldly man and appreciates the quiet life in his part of the world. I did a little googling of Sutherland and it looks quite similar to Newfoundland - rugged and unforgiving in landscape and weather but incredibly beautiful.

This was an enjoyable cozy mystery with some fun characters and a refreshing change of pace from some intense reads I've had recently. If you are looking to escape into a fun mystery which won't stress you out, then this is the ticket. Many thanks to Grand Central Publishing for the copy!

A string of deaths of young, healthy people, including the athlete son of a US senator and a pop star/influencer, spurs a joint investigation by Canadian detective Anson Chen and his US counterpart Cari Garcia. The victims are dying with the same symptoms - extremely high fever and uncontrollable seizures leading to brain death. The common factor is a toxic substance called DNP which was never intended for human consumption but is now being marketed on the dark web as a weight loss miracle drug. Can the combined talents of Garcia and Chen, along with medical input from toxicologist Dr. Julie Rees, stop the spread of DNP and put an end to the carnage?

I always find Kalla's novels, with a blend of medical insight and detective work, an entertaining read. This one is no different - with quickly moving action, decent dialogue, and a few little plot twists to keep you on your toes. The one criticism I would make is that I think he could do more with the setting and creating a unique sense of place in this series. It is a picture perfect setting on the west coast and I feel he could do more with that. Otherwise this is a reliably entertaining book in this medical/detective series. Thanks to NetGalley and Simon Schuster Canada for the digital copy.