Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice (2018)

Dystopian Fiction | Adult

Almost everyone who returns this book to the public library where I work mentions how good it is, so when I was looking for something to read while coping with a cold, I picked it up. Rice’s spare but emotionally complex writing grabbed me from the start. Evan Whitesky is Anishinaabe, learning the old ways of hunting and paying respect to earth spirits as he does so, but enjoying modern conveniences like snowmobiles and flat-screen television with his young family. But when the satellite and internet go out, followed by power and then the phone lines, the family, and the rest of the First Nation community, are left cut off from the outside world, mystified as to what is causing the problem. Plus winter is arriving. Their community is several hundred kilometres north of any major Ontario city, and signs of panic soon appear, but the band leaders assure the residents they have the situation in hand. They start up the diesel generators that provided power before the hydro lines were installed, and as days go by, ask everyone to conserve energy, add to food stocks by hunting and fishing, and to watch out for those in the community who need help – the old ways. As the weeks go by, though, tensions begin to rise, and when a stranger arrives asking for shelter, the community is divided as to what they should do. I loved this indigenous story of survival in a difficult land, of a community finding its path again after decades of colonialism, of looking to its past to forge a new future. Evan and his partner Nicole are strong characters (I hope to hear even more of her voice), dedicated to their children and their extended family. There are moments of despair and frustration that add authenticity to this dystopian story, and the bitter Ontario winter landscape is well described. The use of unfamiliar Anishinaabe words and phrases gave me a discomfiting feeling of not fully understanding what is going on, brilliantly adding to the tension in the story. There is a sequel, which I look forward to reading, though I would have been happy with its ending as it stands, leaving me with just enough questions to make me imagine what happened next. My thanks to the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library for including this indigenous title in its adult fiction collection.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39082248

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The Library of Borrowed Hearts, by Lucy Gilmore (2024)

Romance | Adult

First, the book is set just an hour’s drive south of my town – cool beans! Second, it’s a romantic book mystery involving classic literature and marginalia – be still, my geeky heart. When Chloe Sampson finds a dusty copy of Tropic of Cancer in the discarded books stored in the basement of the Colville library where she works, she decides to sell the book in hopes of improving her disastrous financial position. At 24, she is the guardian for her three adorably troublesome siblings, after their mother abandoned them several years ago, forcing her to give up her college studies in Spokane. But leafing through the book, Chloe spots writing in the margins, and realizes the book’s value has just plummeted. She reads the marginalia and realizes it’s a flirty conversation between two people, J and C. When her cantankerous neighbour Jasper Holmes spots the book in her hands, he offers her an unsigned cheque in exchange. Chloe quickly realizes Jasper must be the J – who is the C? What happened to the sweet-sounding lover in the margins to turn him into the grumpy, lonely neighbour who terrifies her siblings? What happened to C? Jasper refuses to speak about it, of course, launching Chloe and her colleague Pepper on a literary scavenger hunt to find out. This dual timeline romance spans 60 years, as Gilmore, author of puppy-based romances and the book-themed The Lonely Hearts Book Club, slowly spools out the story from multiple points of view. The changing POV was distracting for me; I would have preferred a single omniscient narrator for both timelines. Additionally, I was disappointed in the too-convenient plot twists. I did like the pacing, however, and loved the way Gilmore wove in so many classics (she appends a list of them – more than 35!) from Lady Chatterley’s Lover to The Secret Garden. The library references are endearing for anyone who has toiled in the stacks, and I particularly appreciated the realistic approach Gilmore uses to describe struggling families and difficult personal decisions across the decades. Overall, a shade under 4 stars rounded up. My thanks to Sourcebooks for providing a digital reading copy through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/179947229

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Crow Talk, by Eileen Garvin (2024)

Contemporary | Adult

I’ve been eagerly awaiting this second novel by Eileen Garvin, after the delight of The Music of Bees. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of her debut, it is a fascinating examination of family dynamics, growing up, and the science of crow communication, wrapped up by the spectacular landscape of southern Washington state. Frankie O’Neill is holing up at her family cabin on the lake, limited to boat access only, unemployed and with few prospects after a falling out with her master’s thesis advisor. Relations with her mother are strained, and she is still grieving the death of her father just a few months before. Also at the lake are Anne Ryan and Tim Magnusen, with their son Aiden. Aiden is five, a bright and talkative boy until his behaviour changed starting less than a year ago. Now he doesn’t speak, and is prone to violent tantrums, causing Anne’s heart to break as she struggles to understand what her son wants, and creating an increasingly wide rift between her and her in-laws, as well as her upwardly mobile husband. At the heart of this story is how these two women become friends as they work their way through their life challenges, figuring out how to regain control when they are feeling so powerless. In addition to the women’s alternating voices, Garvin offers an intriguing perspective on human relationship dynamics with information about the common American crow, its habits and characteristics, information that occasionally serve as a foreshadowing – “The American crow does not migrate.” While the book is slow to start, I found myself warming up to both women’s stories, growing to appreciate their struggles with identity, place, and voice. I’ve also grown rather fond of the rascally, noisy crow! I did find the ending disappointingly neat and tidy, but the journey is what matters, right? My thanks to Dutton Books for the advance reading copy provided digitally through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195430705

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Extinction, by Douglas Preston (2024)

Thriller | Adult

Take the premise of Jurassic Park, advance the timeline to the Pleistocene epoch featuring herbivores like woolly mammoths and giant ground sloths, and toss in a riveting and gory murder mystery. This is a wild ride of a thriller! The book opens with honeymooners Mark and Olivia on a guided hike in Colorado. Not just any hike; they are in the mountains of the Erebus Resort, looking to spot the resort’s “de-extincted” giant mammals at watering holes and in the trees. But when the two mysteriously disappear, leaving a shredded tent and a lot of blood, newbie Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Frankie Cash arrives on scene to determine what happened. Along with local sherriff James Colcord, the combative Cash quickly determines no animals did this (knocking my first guess of evil pterodactyls out the window) and starts looking for the responsible humans. More bodies pile up, and the clues start pointing to a weird eco-cult bent on closing the resort. Meanwhile, national media attention and moneyed stakeholders start adding pressure on her boss, who thwarts Cash’s efforts to bring in more help. Oh, and there’s a movie crew filming a western on site. The action never stops, with plot twists confounding every guess – this was so much fun to read! Cash is a bristly f-bomb dropping character who grows on you, and I really hope we’ll see more of her and Colcord in future novels. I found one plot point involving the uber-rich a bit unbelievable, but a fascinating afterword by Preston convinces me that with enough money, hubris, and good science, anything is possible. My thanks to Tor Publishing’s Forge Books for the advance reading copy provided digitally through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Grand Forks pals will find two copies already on order in the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library – put in your requests to get in line for this one!
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65213662

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Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton (2022)

Graphic Novel | Adult

Gosh I love helping adults discover graphic novels! They’re often hesitant, but a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, personal tale like this one, festooned with accolades and awards, is a great way to dip one’s toes into the waters of illustrated works. As I’ve mentioned before, graphic novels can be a challenge for the skilled reader. We can’t just whip through the narrative – much is told in the illustration, forcing us to slow down and figure out the whole story. (I like to point out that such travails are exactly those of kids who struggle to read narrative stories). This is a nonfiction memoir, and it won the 2023 Canada Reads contest, along with the Will Eisner 2023 award for best graphic memoir. In Ducks, Beaton tells a story familiar to so many East Coasters – burdened with debt after university, she heeds the siren call of a job out west – in Alberta’s oil sands, where the pay packet is thick but comes at a high cost. As a young woman working in a male-dominated industry (a ratio of 50 to 1), she experiences a culture shock that transforms her view of and trust in men and in corporate hierarchy. What would happen if her father, a man she knows to be kind and compassionate, had taken a job here? Would he have become one of them, she wonders. Beaton struggles with her own reactions, angry when she keeps quiet, defeated when she speaks up. Lonely, she encourages friends and family to join her, then regrets exposing other women to this place and subsequent assaults, both physical and verbal. While she touches on the oil sands’ impact on the environment and indigenous communities, especially in her afterword, the focus of this memoir is a personal one, as well as the community’s collective emotional and mental health. The black and white drawings are heavy on grey tones, giving it a gloomy feel that adds to the story. A powerful memoir of two impactful years from which she may never fully heal. My thanks to the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library for including this title in its adult graphic novel collection.
More discussion and reviews of this title: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59069071

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Nineteen Steps, by Millie Bobby Brown with Kathleen McGurl (2023)

Historical Romance | 15-Adult

I’m a fan of this young artist’s television work, from Stranger Things to Enola Holmes to the brand-new Damsel. As she was just 19 when this was published last fall, I was intrigued to see what kind of writer she would be. I’m not surprised to learn that most of the heavy lifting was done by an established writer of historical fiction (McGurl). I’d love to know why her name isn’t on the cover … At any rate, this is an interesting premise, based on a little-known (outside of London) wartime tragedy. During the Second World War in Bethnal Green, the local tube (subway) station was still under construction, and served as a bomb shelter for the community, as it could hold thousands. But the steps down were dark and slippery in the rain and one evening in 1943, a stumble during a busy influx caused a subsequent crush, leading to the deaths of more than 150 East Londoners, most of them women and children. Brown’s grandmother Ruth lived in the area at the time, and her best friend Babs lost her entire family in the tragedy. Having grown up close to her grandmother, Brown decided to honour her nan’s personal history and make the tragedy the centre story, entwined with a wartime love triangle. The primary characters are 19-year-old Nellie Morris, her childhood pals Billy and Babs Waters, and an American airman named Ray Fleming, with Nellie’s family providing strong support in a story about resilience in the face of tremendous loss, and finding strength in a world that seems so senseless. The Bethnal Green tragedy is well developed and researched, providing a compelling and authentic plot. The love triangle is less successful – predictable and saccharine sweet, with an eye-rolling level of anguish and self-sacrifice. Out of five I’d give it 3 to 3.5 stars. Worth reading for the riveting Bethnal Green story, and you just have to put up with the sentimental agonies of young love. I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Brown. She did predictably well, given her profession, though I did notice a couple of missteps when it came to emphasis. My thanks to the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library for including this title in its adult fiction collection.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199214847

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A Short Walk Through a Wide World, by Donald Westerbeke (2024)

Fantasy | Adult

I requested a review copy of this one at about the same time I asked for The Other Valley, struck by their plot similarity and curious about the differences. Both involve solitary female protagonists who are moving through magical worlds, wishing they could go back through time, in a sense. But this one has a gruesome twist – when Aubry Tourvel is nine years old, living in 1895 Paris, she finds a wooden puzzle ball that somehow finds its way back to her when she tosses it aside. Beguiled, she decides not to throw it into a wishing well as she’d agreed to do with her older sisters. Soon after, Aubry falls ill with a terrible illness – she cannot stay in one physical place for more than three or four days or she bleeds to death. Thus begins a lifetime journey around the world, living lightly, finding and losing love, dodging death in more ways than one, and learning to love the world she finds and the people in it. How to describe this amazing, riveting story? It’s a travelogue that offers an historical perspective of the world from the TransSiberian Railroad to Africa to Alaska and everything in between. It’s a kind of fictional memoir, offering sad, comical and sometimes insightful musings as Aubry learns important life lessons, including the value of a skill and the general goodness of people. It’s full of magic and whimsy, from sleep-inducing pollen to hidden portals to a secret library. This one lingers, I have to say. If I had one criticism, it’s that Aubry’s growth as a person seems thin, given all she goes through. It seemed to me that most of her maturity happened in the first decade (which certainly wasn’t my experience!) – I would have liked to have seen more character development throughout her life. But that’s perhaps a reflection of where I am as a reader, rather than of the story itself. This is Westerbeke’s first novel – an impressive debut. My thanks to Simon & Schuster Canada for the digital reading copy provided through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. A copy is on order for Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library so watch for it on the New Books shelves.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176443045

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Quilter’s Scrap Pantry: The Grab-and-Go Approach to Organizing and Making Quilts from Scrap, by SusanClaire Mayfield (2024)

Nonfiction | Adult

If you are like me, a winter quilter, you are packing up the quilting supplies for the summer, and feeling just a bit overwhelmed by how much is in the scrap box. Or boxes. New Zealand quilter Mayfield offers some helpful guidance to organizing your leftover fabric so you can easily find colours, quickly put together a pretty scrap quilt, and gradually reduce the pile so it’s not so overwhelming. This is not a big book – it’s under 70 pages, but priced under $15 Canadian so it’s a thoughtful little gift for a quilter and a super resource to buy for your own use if you are overloaded by your scraps. Mayfield begins with a straightforward discussion on tools, equipment, and techniques for new quilters, then gets into the good stuff – organizing. She suggests some kind of drawer system – ideally see-through – so you can organize your scraps by size (1.5″ strips, 2.5″ squares, etc). Jars and clear bags also work nicely – whatever you can make work in your space. She explains how to “fill” your pantry, by cutting awkward leftovers into strips, squares, rectangles and triangles. These pieces can then be used to make units, which can be combined into various blocks. Along the way, Mayfield provides helpful tips, guidance in choosing a colour palette (it’s an American edition so it’s “color” in the book), and encouragement for those new to scrap work. The six units she lists are basic: a four-patch, a nine-patch, rectangles, the half-square triangle, flying geese, and a snowball. She then provides some lovely inspiration by showing how to combine units into various blocks, mixing up colours to tame them or turn up the scrappiness, turning blocks to change the pattern, and offering illustrations of finished quilt designs that will have you racing back to the sewing machine. I would have liked to see photos of actual quilts, but the illustrations are good inspiration nonetheless. Oh, and there’s a final section on how to bind the quilt, though she skipped completely over batting, backing, and quilting, which will be confusing to a brand-new quilter. While there is nothing particularly new in what you’ll find here, all in all, Mayfield has created a resource that puts it all together in one book – cutting your scraps, sewing units, making blocks and creating a quilt top. Despite its small size, there is a LOT here to look at, with plenty of illustrations and short text blocks encouraging you to dip in and out of the pages. My thanks to Fox Chapel Publishing for the digital reading copy in full colour, in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/184874536

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44 Scotland Street, by Alexander McCall Smith (2005)

Contemporary Fiction | Adult

Welcome to the Edinburgh apartment building on Scotland Street, and several of its quirky residents, a mix of snobby bourgeois and wannabes, struggling students, and old hippies. There’s 22-year-old Pat, who is on her second gap year after losing her passion for her studies. Now all her friends are graduating, and she’s working as an art gallery assistant. She takes a room in Bruce’s flat, and while she finds him distastefully cocksure (pun fully intended), he is quite attractive looking … Irene is determined to nurture her precocious five-year-old Bertie into becoming the best he can be; Bertie wants to play rugby and ride in cars, not learn Italian and play the saxophone. Watching all of this nonsense is Domenica, a sixty-something single woman who is a bit lonely, if truth be told. Also appearing are Pat’s father and her young boss Matthew, Bruce’s boss and his family, a café owner and Matthew’s coffee klatch buddies, art fiends, a famous Scottish author, Edinburgh’s finest upper-crust Conservatives, and a dog who likes beer. McCall Smith originally published these in serial form in The Scotsman, which explains the very short chapters and changing perspectives. Best described as a study of human nature, this is a character-driven story about small events in the lives of all the people connected to Scotland Street, and McCall Smith brilliantly skewers the rich, the arrogant, the narcissists, and even the unsure with sharp wit and satire, generating multiple laugh-out-loud moments. I listened to the audio version, narrated by Robert Ian Mackenzie, and it was initially challenging keeping up with the characters, but I’ve grown quite fond of a few of them. While this was originally written as a compilation of the newspaper serial, it’s become the first in a series as readers demanded more about these characters. McCall Smith cheerfully obliged and the 17th novel is coming out this spring. My thanks to the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library for including this novel in its adult fiction collection. There are also e-audio and e-book versions in the online collection.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1156935.44

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Marmee: A Novel of Little Women, by Sarah Miller (2022)

Historical Fiction | Adult

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott stands tall among my favourite childhood books, along with Black Beauty, A Wrinkle in Time, Anne of Green Gables, Gone-Away Lake, and the hilarious Henry Reed, Inc. There are others of course, but these are the ones I remember in detail. (I also keenly remember my deep disappointment in Jo’s decision to marry Fritz!) In this reimagining of Little Women, author Miller brings the sidelined Mrs. March to brilliant life using an epistolary device. The diary begins on Christmas Eve, 1861, while the American Civil War rages on and her husband serves as a chaplain for the Union Army. An educated woman constrained by the conventions of the day, Marmee wishes so much more for her four daughters, but both Jo and Meg must help earn money to put food on the table. The reason for the family’s financial straits isn’t revealed until near the end, and it weighs heavily on Marmee’s mind, along with stress over her husband’s safety, Beth’s health, and her own efforts to keep her temper in check. The diary is where she reveals her real self, and it’s a wonderful peek into a woman fighting convention, coping with loss, enjoying an unusually egalitarian marriage (including multiple references to an active sex life), and struggling to be the mother her daughters need, all the while giving readers a delightful new perspective on the March family’s antics and tribulations. The book spans exactly seven years, almost matching the original novel, and Miller provides an afterword explaining the inspiration, the sources, and where she deviated from fact or the original novel itself. My thanks to the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library for including this novel in its adult fiction collection.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60091367

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The Climate Change Resilient Vegetable Garden: How to Grow Food in a Changing Climate, by Kim Stoddart (2024)

Nonfiction | Adult

What a challenge it is to be a gardener these days! Here in the interior of British Columbia, summer drought is always the big issue, but in the last two years, grasshoppers have decimated my dahlias, rhubarb, beets and other leafy plants. This winter, as I’ve been reading this book, Canada went from an astonishingly mild December to a bitterly cold January. At least that brought some white stuff, which we desperately need to build the snowpack that will sustain our forests and grasslands and reduce the risk of wildfire. Oh right, the summer smoke! And the rising summer heat – the 2021 heat dome killed my blueberries and a young cherry tree. Sigh. Thus the need for this book, which is written by an award-winning gardening journalist based in Wales, where flooding and rising heat are the big threats, along with new pests and diseases. All topics are addressed in this 208-page illustrated book. Eleven chapters address everything from soil health (Building Resilience from the Ground Up) to saving time, effort and money by borrowing and repurposing materials to throwing out the idea of tilling tidy rows in favour of no-till mixed beds that thwart pesky bugs and disease. But not all bugs are bad – Stoddart makes a case for building biodiversity and using natural predators to manage the pests. (I adore that bug hotel!) She also provides guidance in planning ahead for flood and drought threats, designing your garden with climate change in mind, building your own structures to protect crops, water collecting and conserving, seed saving, making your own compost, and planting with a plan – from companion planting to including naturally resilient options like kale and arugula lettuce. There’s a short list of resources, and an excellent index. While there is a lot to like here, I particularly appreciate Stoddart’s emphasis throughout on the importance of the gardener’s resilience. She reminds us that gardening is an act of hope, a source of comfort and joy and a place of peace and strength. Gardening gives you joy as well as food. So dig in! My thanks to Quarto’s Cool Springs Press for the temporary reading copy provided digitally through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this title: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/173404031

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The Other Valley, by Scott Alexander Howard (2024)

Speculative Fiction | Adult

What an interesting premise – this is a town in a valley with a lake. To the west is the same valley, 20 years in the past; to the east, it’s 20 years in the future. It’s a repeating patterns, going back decades and going forward decades. Travel between the valleys is forbidden, except with permission of the Conseil (council), which as a rule grants visits only for grieving family members who wish to visit a lost loved one, or a future grandchild they will never see due to a pending death. That kind of thing. In this town lives 16-year-old Odile, in her final year of studies and about to embark on her apprenticeship. Encouraged by her mother, she applies for a highly competitive spot with the Conseil. Few applicants are successful, and Odile isn’t sure it’s the right fit, but her mother convinces her to apply. While waiting to hear, Odile spots two elderly visitors in the telltale masks – they are from the future, but when a mask slips, Odile is shocked to discover they are the parents of the boy she has feelings for, Edme. It can mean only one thing – his will be a premature death. Caught between her affection for Edme and the ethics of the role she is about to take on, Odile struggles to figure out what to do. I loved so much about this novel – written by a Canadian, it features a plethora of French names and words – chemin des Pins, Conseil, the Hôtel de Ville – giving it a wonderful sense of being a translation, set in a different world. It’s oddly timeless – there are trucks, but no cellphones or internet. It’s a melancholic novel – other than the odd teenager, no one seems joyful, more resigned than content. And while Part 1 feels very much like a coming of age novel, Part II jumps the story forward 20 years, without leaving this town’s timeline, giving a very adult and, as I said, resigned, perspective on where life has led. It reminds me of Lois Lowry’s The Giver – the role of the Conseil is to protect the community from the pitfalls of time travel, of course, but it’s also to keep them in check. Morality and ethics are on shifting sands – it really depends on whose perspective you are taking. An innovative debut from a Vancouver writer, it’s a bit of genre bender, essentially literary fiction featuring a speculative fiction device. It’s being published in a few days and is on order for the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library. Look for it on the new book shelf! My thanks to Atria Books for the digital reading copy provided through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176450755

The Bittlemores, by Jann Arden (2023)

Fiction | Adult

How to classify this book? Cows are talking, so it’s magical realism. The main character is 14, so a coming of age novel, yes, but definitely not for youngsters as this deals quite graphically with issues of animal abuse, as well as psychological abuse and neglect. Oh, and plotting murder and kidnapping. Did I mention the talking animals? It’s also quite comical at times, though honestly, the book opens with the description of such a horrible couple that it took an effort to keep reading it. I’m glad I did; I loved it after only a few chapters, but it took persistence. Set sometime in the late 1980s or early 90s, the titular Bittlemores are a nasty couple living on a southern Alberta farm. They are bitter and self-pitying, convinced the world has dealt them a bad hand, with little empathy or kindness left. Willa is 14, and like so many teens, wonders how she could possibly be related to these two pieces of work. The world thinks they are her parents but she knows they are actually her grandparents, as her teen mother ran away hours after giving birth. Willa is desperate to know more about her mother, and suspects her grandparents are keeping something a secret. Indeed they are. At one point, Arden, a Canadian singer writer, comedian, and now actor, starts what might be a thread of sympathy for the Bittlemores, who somehow warped from young lovers into despicable killing machines. But that thread is quickly lost, as the bulk of the story is Willa’s survival, both physically and emotionally. The book finishes all too neatly, but that’s the way of fairy tales, which is another way of looking at this novel. It’s a mishmash for sure, and readers will either love Willa’s pluckiness or find the abuse too distasteful to finish the novel. And remember, it is a novel! My thanks to the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library for including this title in its adult fiction collection.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/178336506

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Mrs. Nash’s Ashes, by Sarah Adler (2023)

Romance | Adult

It’s February! The perfect month to delve into a contemporary romance, but this one also features a road trip (yay!), heartbreak, mourning, a broccoli festival, hot sex and a unlikely pair of protagonists in this opposites attract rom-com novel. Millie is on her way to Florida to reunite her best friend (the titular ashes) with a long-lost love who is dying in a care home. When an airline booking system fails and all flights are grounded, the ebullient Millie refuses to give up, and finagles a ride with an almost stranger – the pessimistic Hollis who used to be friends with Millie’s ex. The hilarious banter and squabbling between these two, over everything from Fleetwood Mac to broccoli facts, creates a sparkling novel that is entertaining, laugh-out-loud funny, and kept me eager to return to their world. There is plenty of complexity here too, tackling issues like gaslighting, trust, emotional fear and more. The parallel story of Elsie and Rose’s doomed romance also gives the novel added depth, though it is the contemporary story that is the focus. This is Adler’s first novel, and she poured her heart into it. Let’s hope she has some energy left for more stories! My thanks to the Grand Forks (B.C.) & District Public Library for including this novel in its adult fiction collection.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62296523

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Flight Plan, by Eric Walters (2023)

Dystopian Fiction | 14-17

Thirteen-year-old Jamie is flying home unaccompanied from Chicago O’Hare airport, after a visit with his grandmother. Because his parents are both pilots with the same airline, he’s invited to sit in the cockpit with Captain Stuart Daley and First Officer Doeun Kim. It’s a rare offer in this high security age, and he leaps at the chance. But just as the plane is taking off, all systems fail and the plane smacks back down on the runway, injuring some passengers but not severely. They use escape slides, and quickly discover there are no rescue trucks and no communication with the tower. Somehow even the emergency power is out, and vehicles are all stuck on the roads. It’s clear there has been some kind of major technological catastrophe, and society quickly breaks down. Most of the passengers make their own arrangements, but a diverse group of 14, including an athlete in a wheelchair, and Jamie, who sticks with Capt. Daley and Doeun, opt to hole up in the damaged airplane and eventually decide to head home, some 1200 miles away. How they prepare, find resources, and develop a plan for every scenario is a lesson in survival that will fascinate young readers who enjoy this genre. It’s quite realistic, as there is a constant sense of threat as the travelling group meets others on the way, some helpful and many quite sinister. It’s a kill or be killed situation at times, and that bumps this into middle-teen territory for me. There is enough violence that it is a solid YA novel, despite its potential appeal to younger teens. This is a companion novel to Walters’ popular Rule of Three series, and the ending leaves a sequel as an option, though it stands alone just fine. A riveting thriller from start to finish. My thanks to the Grand Forks & District Public Library for including this title in its young adult fiction collection.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/124135977

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