Tag: fiction (Page 1 of 13)

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley | Book Review

May 7, 2025 / Monique

Grounded in reality. Rooted in culture. The Firekeeper’s Daughter is a thrilling debut set in the heart of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.

In The Firekeeper’s Daughter, Angeline Boulley introduces us to Daunis Fontaine—a bright, science-minded Ojibwe teen navigating the fault lines of identity, family, and community.

Daunis is barely recovered from her uncle’s overdose death when tragedy strikes again. This time her best friend is killed by an estranged boyfriend. Are the two deaths linked? What’s the deal with the new hockey kid who Daunis has been showing around town? Is he involved? Who else is? Daunis suddenly finds herself connected to an undercover FBI investigation into a new, lethal drug that is threatening her community. Daunis must use her wits, her cultural teachings, and her fierce loyalty to protect what matters most. What follows is a suspenseful, emotionally rich journey of self-discovery, betrayal, and ultimately, belonging.

Most of my favourite passages include the French or Ojibwe words Boulley includes in the story. But there are also lessons in Indigenous medicine and healing. In one passage, Daunis reflect on love and control, “real love honours your spirit. If you need a medicine to create or keep it, that’s possession an control. Not love.” There is so much in this story about love and how relationships an be manipulated or used as a form of control. But there’s also a lot about how love can inform our actions.

Boulley opens the story with a gripping scene that sets the stage for Daunis’ complex, brave, and deeply rooted relationship to her family and her community. She struggles to be formally recognized by her father’s Indigenous community while also struggling with her connection to her mother’s prominent white family. There’s a ton of nuance to the story’s larger theme, which I see as the gap between how we’re seen and who we truly are.

The Ojibwe language and cultural references are expertly infused into the story, giving readers a better understanding of Anishinaabe traditions, values, and community structures. For example, in Ojibwe tradition, a Firekeeper tends the ceremonial fire that honours the dead and holds space for ritual. By the novel’s end, Daunis has claimed that role. She is her father’s daughter. She belongs. It’s a powerful reclaiming of heritage and agency.

The Firekeeper’s Daughter is a fierce, moving, and suspenseful coming-of-age thriller that challenges stereotypes and reinforces pride of place and identity. If you crave strong, justice-driven protagonists, this one belongs on your shelf.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson | Book Review

April 28, 2025 / monique.trottier

Case Histories is the first Jackson Brodie novel by Kate Atkinson, author of Shrines of Gaiety, Transcription, and Life After Life. She’s a marvellous writer but I have only read some standalone titles, not any of her series. In Case Histories, we are introduced to Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, who is following three 30-year-old cold cases, each unconnected but set in Cambridge.

In the first case, we read of a little girl Olivia who disappears in the night. In the second, a young office worker Laura falls victim to a maniac’s knife attack. And in the third, a new mother Michelle is overcome by anger and postpartum depression and brutally kills her husband with an axe.

Jackson attempts to unravel these unusual cases but as he pulls one thread, he realizes there is a great web at work. Olivia grew up in a house that shares a back lane with a current client, Binky Rain. Olivia and her sisters thought of Binky Rain as the witch. Are her missing cats linked to missing girls? Laura’s father Theo was the intended target of the attack, or was he? When Theo ends up having an asthma attack in a park, it is Olivia’s sisters who save him and call for the ambulance. In the same hospital, but in the ICU department, works Michelle’s younger sister Shirley, who has also come to Jackson for help. It’s an strange set of cases, not linked in the past, but with connections in the present.

The Man Who Saw in Seconds by Alexander Boldizar | Book Review

April 6, 2025 / Monique

The Man Who Saw in Seconds is an absolute thrill ride. The first hundred pages read like the single, continuous long shot opening of a Jason Bourne film. The novel is also packed with physics, philosophy, and intel on military and police procedures.

If you liked “The Queen’s Gambit,” this novel has a bit of chess in it and a lot of human dynamics, mastermind thinking, and an anti-hero prodigy. If you liked, the British science fiction mystery thriller miniseries “Bodies,” featuring detectives from different eras investigating the same murder, then you’ll appreciate that time is not absolute. Our main character Preble Jefferson, can see 5 seconds into the future. To paraphrase Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the past, present, and future is a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Preble finds himself in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare when his snarky comments to New York police officer in a subway car has him running through a hail of bullets to escape custody. Things escalate from there (truly possible). Preble, with the help of his paranoid, anarchist, Hungarian friend (and lawyer) named Fish, turns himself into police, which makes matters worse (truly possible).

Political thriller, spy novel, science fiction time travel, philosophy of time, police satire, revolutionary drama—this book is exciting.

The Adversary by Michael Crummey | Book Review

March 31, 2025 / Monique

Michael Crummey is shortlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award and this submissions is a stellar read. The Adversary has hints of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell (The Wolf Hall trilogy) in the character of Mr Clinch (also known as The Beadle). The Beadle’s formidable opponent is the Widow Caines and his charge, boss, and godson Abe Strapp is a thorn in the side of all concerned.

The Beadle effectively runs the show in his isolated corner of Newfoundland’s northern coast (Mockbeggar). He is second in command to Cornelius Strapp and after Cornelius’ death, then to his son Abe Strapp). The Beadle is a meddler and plots Abe’s marriage to a young woman who stands to inherit one of Mockbeggar’s largest mercantile firm. It’s a marriage to bring together two of the shore’s largest mercantile firms vs. one of love. And the wedding is sabotaged by the Widow Caines who is equally conniving (and the owner of Mockbeggar’s next largest firm). The Widow Caines is also the sister of Abe Strapp. What follows is a story of lies and betrayal, petty grievances, community gossip, and all the animosity, vendettas and violence you can imagine in a mid-18th century Newfoundland outport.

If you enjoy Michael Crummey novels, then The Adversary has the dark, quirky setting and superbly crafted characters you have grown to love from Crummey. I was a huge fan of River Thieves and The Wreckage. The Adversary picks up from some of the characters in The Innocents, and it’s a top-notch read.

James by Percival Everett | Book Review

March 18, 2025 / Monique

James by Percival Everett is a rewriting of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this time told from Jim’s point of view. The story follows the same general path as Twain’s book. But the central figure is Huck’s enslaved companion, Jim. The novel offers an unsettling reflection on race, freedom, and identity, while still paying homage to Twain’s classic work.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Jim has a wife and child. He is intelligent and perceptive, but also deeply aware of the dangerous absurdities of the world around him. Jim is not just intelligent, he is literate and secretly teaches his friends philosophy and grammar, as well as the accepted (by whites) slave speech.

When Jim learns he is about to be sold and separated from his family, he goes on the run. Jim is hoping to free himself and his family but a slave on the run does not have a lot of options. He has to work within the system in order to get out of it, but systemic racism has a way of being … systemic.

Travelling the Mississippi River with Huck brings its own challenges. The dynamics between the duo are heartily explored. Huck looks up to Jim. But he also knows he has to pretend to own Jim. Likewise Jim wants to protect Huck but not the world Huck represents. The depth of the dilemma is often encapsulated in Jim’s hallucinatory conversations with Voltaire and John Locke where Jim argues against oppression and slavery.

Everett’s writing is subversive and funny. Jim is not a caricature as he is in Twain’s novel, but instead is a blend of satire and social critique wrapped up in a man who has to act without dignity to get through the day safely.

The story is full of moral complexities. It’s a journey to the heart of darkness.

James is a great read with a notable nod to its predecessor. If you enjoy reimagined classics then this is for you. Or if you enjoyed Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, then give this a read.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

March 15, 2025 / Monique

This is a crazy book about a time when the Brits have discovered time travel and they are testing out whether they can bring people from the past into the present. They choose people who they know died in their original timeline so that if time travel does not work or they get sick from it and die then they would have died anyway. It’s a way, I suppose, to not alter history.

There are several civil servants who are assigned to be a “bridge” for the “expats”. Their job is to live with the expats and help them integrate into modern society. Imagine that. If you are Commander Graham Gore (1847), Royal navy commander, and part of the Franklin expedition that disappeared, what do you think about finding yourself in modern-day London? Well that’s exactly what happens. His bridge, our narrator, is an expat from Cambodia and falls in love with Gore. The story line is charming and funny, as Gore is shocked to be living with an unmarried woman, but towards the end things become very complicated. Gore becomes unsure of his purpose in the experiment and who to trust.

Gore’s expats are Captain Arthur Reginald-Smyth (1916), extracted from the Battle of the Somme, WWI, gay or bisexual (modern London is welcoming and he is good friends with Gore); Margaret Kemble (1665), extracted from the Great Plague of London (friends with Gore and Arthur); Lieutenant Thomas Cardingham (1645), Battle of Naseby (suspicious, untrustworthy); and Anne Spencer (1793), woman extracted from the French Revolution (she is not picked up by scanners and is deemed a problem).

The Ministry of Time is a great lark but also clearly about how perspective changes meaning. How do those from the past view the present? How do the modern characters view the lives and values of the expats? How do the expats look back on their lives and actions with a lens of today’s values? How does the Ministry view the expats? Their bridges? How is the Ministry viewed by both. Overall it’s an unforgettable tale with a bunch of hidden lessons.

If you liked The House in the Cerulean Sea then give this a read. It has the same bonkers look at bureaucracy and odd-ball characters.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt | Book Review

March 3, 2025 / Monique

Remarkably Bright Creatures is the story of the remarkably bright Pacific octopus, Marcellus, who lives at the Sowell Bay aquarium. Marcellus is counting down his days. He was a rescue, brought to the aquarium as a young octopus, and he’s on his last legs. Marcellus has charmed Tova, the aquarium’s night-shift cleaner, who is remarkably clean. She discovers Marcellus on the run from his tank (he’s quite the escape artist) and keeps his secret. But Marcellus has other secrets. For example, when he comes across Tova’s lost house key on the aquarium floor, he recognizes that it is a key he has seen before–at the bottom of the ocean near the pier, which is also where Tova’s son Erik disappeared years ago. Marcellus has clues and he’s dedicated to revealing them to Tova. The third main character in the story is Cam, who is in Sowell Bay looking for his estranged father. Cam is remarkably bright but makes remarkably stupid, short-sighted choices. In his case, it’s Tova who has clues to how he can get his life on the right track.

Remarkably Bright Creatures is a novel about charming creatures, some with 2 legs, some with 8. Each of them is dealing with loneliness and looking for a sense of family and connection in different ways. This is a quiet, gentle read with a few mysterious plot twists.

Deadly Game by Michael Caine | Book Review

February 11, 2025 / Monique

Deadly Game by Michael Caine (yes, the actor) is actually pretty good. Remember when Tom Hanks published his first novel? Well, this is kind of the same deal in that the guy writing is more familiar with being on screen. Both novels read like movie scripts in some ways. But again, both are pretty good, probably the name recognition helps too.

Caine’s novel is basically a cop drama with international intrigue around lost nuclear weapons. DCI Harry Taylor is the gritty copper who breaks the rules but is well loved. His team is always assigned the get-shit-done jobs, with a healthy dose of keep-quiet-about-it demands from the top. In this case, a box of uranium unceremoniously appears in an East London dump site. There’s a violent raid and the uranium disappears. DCI Taylor has a few suspects, each wild characters, and the trail takes him from London to the Barbados and back.

Some of the language feels dated. Some of DCI Taylor’s actions are dated. But overall it’s a compelling thriller. If you like Slow Horses the Shetland tv series, or police detective stories with some global issue/international intrigue, then set the bar lower but give this a go.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney | Book Review

February 3, 2025 / Monique

On the surface, Intermezzo is about two grieving brothers who are both struggling with their relationships. Peter is a 30-ish human rights lawyer in Dublin who presents as a successful human with strong inter-personal skills but who privately is sleeping with a 20-ish Only Fans star and pining over his college girlfriend who broke up with him after she suffered a life-altering accident. Peter needs to move on but is full of himself. Ivan is a 22-year-old competitive chess player, who according to Peter is awkward and talks in robotic monosyllables. Ivan is the most likeable loner imaginable, so likeable that he romantically charms the 30-ish host of a weekend chess tournament. Ivan needs to grow up a little and understand how his reactions can affect others.

On a deeper level, Intermezzo is an existential view of the healing and breaking points of life. The book incorporates quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstien’s Philosophical Investigations, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, several poems including TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation”, and James Joyce’s Ulysses, among others. The book is dark and moody, a bit academic, and awkwardly initiate, sometimes in a funny way. I thought it was a good read.

If you like Larry’s Party by Carol Shields or Less by Andrew Sean Greer then you’ll enjoy the struggles of Peter and Ivan. Intermezzo is a rumination on the human heart; it’s about retracing your steps, and looking for fulfillment.

Last House by Jessica Shattuck | Book Review

January 25, 2025 / Monique

Last House by Jessica Shattuck tells the story of one family over eighty years. It starts with Bet and Nick Taylor who fall in love just before he goes to the Pacific in WWII. Bet is working in intelligence and hopes to continue studying after the war. She is warned that marriage will curtail that plan, but she’s hopeful that is not the case. What Nick likes about her is that she is smart and keen on her work. Well, 1950s America has other plans for Bet.

Nick gets his law degree and is involved in the oil negotiations with Iran and the plans to reinstate the shah. His buddy Carter Weston is in the CIA and has roped Nick into the role. It’s America’s golden age and they are wheeling and dealing across the international stage. Bet is stuck at home folding napkins and editing the Mapleton ladies’ cookbook.

It’s not a rescue but Carter sells the Taylor family a house in rural Vermont. He has inherited a couple of houses in a valley and sells them to his closest friends and allies as part of the “End of the World Club”.

The middle part of the novel shifts to the Taylor kids. Katherine and Harry like the freedom of exploring the woods but by the 60s Katherine is living in New York and is caught up in the protests against the war and the race riots. She’s writing for a radical newspaper and struggling to reconcile her ideals with those of her parents. Nick still works for Big Oil. American youth are getting more and more restless in the face of unwavering government policies, the shooting of Martin Luther King, and the heavy fist of the government. There are groups that resort to violence and Katherine and Harry suffer the consequences of their own activism.

By the end, the novel sweeps along to the point where Katherine is in her eighties and Last House is still standing.

Having just finished The Women by Kristin Hannah, I am struck by the similarities of the political situation in the 1960s and today.

Both books portray the 1960s in the US as a turbulent decade marked by social upheaval and political shifts. The Women outlines how attitudes toward the Vietnam War shifted from initial support to widespread opposition, fuelled by rising casualties and the draft. Last House picks up from there with the racial tensions that led to major civil rights movements, but also to the violent race riots in cities like Detroit and Watts, and then Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in 1968. Underlying the story of Last House is how Big Oil expanded as an economic force, with rising global influence.

I came away from these books thinking that the central lesson is that social and political progress is neither linear nor guaranteed. The issues of today—war, inequality, and cultural divides—are rooted in unresolved tensions from the past, demanding vigilance, activism, and a willingness to learn from history. We are probably going to get things wrong, but we won’t make them worse by standing up for each other.

If you enjoyed, Long Island (role of women in 1950-70s America) or The Briar Club (different angle on the McCarthy era), then you’ll like Last House.

Give it try. Available at Indigo.ca and fine local booksellers.