About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Gina María Balibrera
Mixed Booklist Lush ... The narrative flow suffers from a lack of context for non-Spanish speakers and rambling story lines that minimize significant events in El Salvadoran history. Still, the young narrators provide irreverent commentary alongside dramatic storytelling depicting the hardscrabble lives of determined sisters yearning for better lives.
Jennine Capó Crucet
Positive Booklist Fast-paced and atmospheric ... Readers are in for a wild ride.
Annabelle Tometich
Mixed Booklist \"Tometich’s narration, interspersed with sardonic bite, feels a little clunky, switching time frames and subject matter at a frenetic pace. Tometich’s life is filled with frustrations and she frequently asserts that she is a nobody, even though, with her mom working as an ICU nurse, the family lived a comfortable life, and Tometich had strong family support from Filipino relatives who stayed with them (Tometich’s Yugoslavian dad died when she was nine). An American-born teenager living with an immigrant tiger mom—readers have seen this before as familiar fodder in family relationship dramas, especially in households with Asian matriarchs.\
Brandi Wells
Rave Booklist Darkly humorous and sharply observed ... Wells has brilliantly crafted an obnoxiously opinionated, delusional, yet sympathetic raconteur, tightly holding the reader’s attention while exposing existential dread gleaned from petty human drama. And it’s so inappropriately fun to read.
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
Positive Booklist Satire kicks in as readers follow Athandwa’s progress in her gifted fellowship program as she encounters discrimination, misunderstandings, and petty rivalries. She later discovers some uncomfortable truths that shatter her ideas about ambition and success as well as her fervent idealization of her father.
Agustina Bazterrica, trans. Sarah Moses
Rave Booklist These uncanny stories swirl with acuity, haunting and challenging readers with a mesmerizing and profound surety.
Gina Apostol
Mixed Booklist Apostol’s use of dialect, cultural references, and descriptive details may confound non-Filipino readers. The excessively meandering narrative vividly chronicles the Delgado family’s desires, idiosyncrasies, and preoccupations, while the minutiae of the land’s provenance and stories, peppered with side-wink remarks on Philippine political and historical events, will either tax readers’ patience or engage and amuse.
Claire Jimenez
Rave Booklist Witty ... Sympathetic and fiery Latina characters shine in this warm and moving novel portraying a down-to-earth family with deep loyalty and longing for closure.
Balli Kaur Jaswal
Positive Booklist Jaswal’s well-crafted novel blends mystery, social commentary, and human drama into a fascinating amalgam that highlights the plight of decidedly unseen women undertaking cheap labor that exposes them to all sorts of abuse. The story feels authentic and is timely as it portrays enterprising women and the unfortunate circumstances that galvanize them.
Will Jawando
Rave Booklist Candid and uplifting ... This book is a clarion call to families and communities to provide crucial support to young people, particularly young Black men.
Chantal V. Johnson
Mixed Booklist The reader discovers that Vivian embodies the titular \'post-traumatic\' to the fullest, setting the tone for this somewhat depressing novel with a wounded, difficult protagonist. Vivian ruminates endlessly about her interactions with others, from strangers to men she dates, and she is always hyperaware of her surroundings ... Readers get a glimpse of the root cause of her deep trauma when she goes to the extreme to avoid her immediate family. Vivian is high-strung, funny, and cynical, musing about social and racial injustices, the objectification of women, and the complexities of relationships. Johnson’s prose hurries along, embodying Vivian’s anxiety, intelligence, and vigilance, resulting in an uneven novel that veers between edgy entertainment and resonant drama.
Eloghosa Osunde
Rave Booklist This is an arresting and dazzling tale with a surprising elixir of lyricism and pidgin that leaves readers guessing whether or not Osunde’s metaphors convey the itinerant existence of those who are contemplating their next move in this life or in the next. A mixture of folklore and spiritual fervor plays narrative tricks on the reader while also providing searing social commentary ... Osunde’s inventive and unique story releases its message like a confetti of percipience, teasing out meaning and veering onto thought-provoking tangents and snippets of intrigue that initially feel familiar but which morph into something unsettling yet wondrous.
Marcial Gala, tr. Anne Kushner
Rave Booklist The appearance of mythical beings during opportune times, Raúl’s pitiless predictions, and the unfolding events of a fraught time in Cuban history contribute to the power of Gala’s creative spin on an indelible myth and imaginative, memorable, and heartbreaking tale of identity and fatalism.
Daphne Palasi Andreades
Positive Booklist There is a musicality in the prose that evokes a kind of Greek chorus as Andreades uses the collective pronoun \'we\' to portray ardent girls whose skin color is not white ... an immersive exercise steeped in 1990s references and awash in the characters’ yearnings and preoccupations ... These brown girls teeter between awe and contempt of their heritage in experiences that illuminate a central aspect of American life.
Dawn Turner
Rave Booklist Turner vividly recounts the neighborhood’s atmosphere and history, framing the ongoing struggles of Black women ... Turner’s candid memoir of entwined yet divergent lives is a probing inquiry into fate, frailty, tenacity, and ultimately, redemption.
Betina González, tr. Heather Cleary
Rave Booklist ... unsettling yet erudite ... Behind this baffling turn of events runs veiled social commentary on capitalism and the progressive mentality replete with astute observations on aging, death, and human nature that becomes most poignant when seen through Beryl’s eyes. The mystery of the hallucinogen and the lives impacted by it coalesce into a profound and much-needed tale full of hope and kindness.
Olga Grushin
Rave Booklist ... a reconceived and extended fairy tale that will delight domestic-fiction readers with its depiction of Cinderella ... Grushin achieves a fairy-talk style ... The mystery of how a woman who has everything would resort to drastic measures is at the core of the book and pivots the fairy tale back to its moral roots. An element of suspense is worked into a tapestry of new and modern backstories, while nostalgic story lines add a bit of fun; there is even a side story about Cinderella’s mice that deserves its own separate book. Surprising revelations and some snark provide the finishing touch in this richly imagined, genre-bending retelling of, at its heart, a tale-as-old-as-time.
Agustina Bazterrica trans. by Sarah Moses
Rave Booklist ... exquisitely dishes up an intricate tale of a systematized dystopian society ... The unsavory depiction is not for the faint of heart, as Bazterrica’s unflinching dissection of every detail is explicit and stomach-churning ... This is a sagacious and calculated exploration of the limits of moral ambiguity; it sears and devastates.
Yun Ko-Eun, Trans. by Lizzie Buehler
Positive Booklist Ko-Eun’s ecothriller skillfully explores the intertwined themes of tourism, livelihood, greed, and the value of human life.
Laura van den Berg
Rave Booklist ... a richly imaginative collection that skillfully exposes vulnerable women to grief, messy relationships, misogyny, and prejudices, while equipping them with a fiery tenacity ... In these 11 perceptive stories, Van den Berg displays her literary talents with acerbic acumen as she portrays indelible characters brimming with verve that is hungry and wild.
Chana Porter
Positive Booklist Porter’s gripping, subtly hopeful work of literary speculative fiction is shaped by remarkable world-building elements and acute observation of human frailties and impetus.
Kiley Reid
Positive Booklist In her smart and timely debut, Reid has her finger solidly on the pulse of the pressures and ironies inherent in social media, privilege, modern parenting, racial tension, and political correctness.
Isa Mazzei
Rave Booklist ... raw ... Mazzei presents a candid book that reveals a lot about sex workers and the consumers who indulge in these exchanges, exposing the complex emotions experienced on both sides of a scene.
Jennine Capó Crucet
Positive Booklist ... lucid and unfeigned ... Crucet’s essays are hopeful, though grounded in the recognition that the social systems in place will not shift anytime soon. Sympathetic and encouraging, Crucet’s observations and experiences offer a path toward learning how we can become less foreign to each other.