RaveForeword Reviews... [a] provocative, sometimes jarring book ... Each image is described in rich, defamiliarizing language, re-presenting iconic photographs and their contexts, cultural impacts, aesthetic significance, and commercial value ... In spite of the serious implications of its arguments, the book is timely, glib, and wry ... Humor mitigates the blunt impact of the book’s implications ... a whip-smart text—the kind of brain candy that never loses its sweet tanginess.
Tessa Lunney
PositiveForeword Reviews... a sumptuous spy romp with an irresistible heroine ... This sequel’s backstory is dispatched in an uncluttered, quick manner so that the book can maintain a brisker pace than Kiki’s satin shoes do ... Kiki describes Paris, from its flower sellers to amuse-bouche, with luscious, piercing images that only a gossip columnist or a spy might notice. Her moxie and sense of style permeate the story, in which each character retains a trace of shabby glamour from their former lives. While individuals’ motives are not especially complex, Kiki’s investigations are suspenseful and sustain a frisson of tension. Swoon through Autumn Leaves, 1922, whose mysteries are enriched with toothsome details of a bygone Paris in the glittering years before Hitler came to power.
Sarah Berman
RaveForeword ReviewsJournalist Sarah Berman brings her signature gimlet eye and impeccable reporting to the story of the NXIVM women in Don’t Call It a Cult, a chilling true crime account ... The book is a nuanced story that strays into big questions ... The book explores the subtle power exchanges and struggles within the group; it uses victims’ stories to explain how each person became enmeshed in NXIVM.
Chelsea G. Summers
PositiveForeword ReviewsIn a culture that fetishizes male power, the heroine of A Certain Hunger is a rapacious, bloodthirsty monster—a perversion of every male fear ... the book is sometimes overwhelming. Its layered descriptions distract from its plot: with so many images on the table, characters are lost ... A Certain Hunger is a hearty novel that, despite its graphic themes of murder, flesh eating, sex, and the dessert menu, is also quite funny. With direct jabs at toxic masculinity and razor-sharp awareness of feminist tropes, Chelsea G. Summers’s novel is a slasher-sexy, rich satire.
Rob Leininger
PositiveForeword Reviews... a gritty one-two punch of a PI mystery ... Fast moving, wisecracking, and deadly, each chapter features tight beats that build suspense. The landscape is incorporated into scenes with humor and wonderful physicality. Several slapstick moments are laugh-out-loud funny, especially when delivered in Mort’s deadpan voice ... For all its grisly crime scenes, the novel is also funny, and its humor sets it apart, making its extreme violence more tolerable. Its sex scenes happen off-stage, and while Mort’s relationship with Lucy is charged, its depiction leans on mutual playfulness instead of straightforward romance ... a knock-your-socks-off mystery with a healthy dose of graveyard humor.
Aoife Clifford
RaveForeword Reviews... a gripping, gut-wrenching thriller ... moves at a tantalizing pace ... Chapters alternate between Eliza’s present and her flashbacks to 1996, just before she left Kinsale for college. This device gives her depth, revealing a flawed and sometimes insecure individual. That she’s no golden girl raises the mystery’s stakes: Eliza’s memory of herself has to be reappraised. Characters from the past recur in the present, adding dimension and subtext to the tale. A deft authorial touch brings tension to a head with speed ... an excellent, tense, slick mystery that investigates a small town’s evil secrets.
Richard Chiem
RaveForeword ReviewsThe right amount of both dreamy and dark ... The novel is lush, packed with jarring details, and surprisingly tender ... Although sex and porn drive the plot, Chiem chooses to leave the act itself offstage; this puts the novel’s focus where it belongs and intensifies the characters’ connections. In King of Joy, everyone is either an actor or a voyeur, including the reader. Chiem’s command of perspective is excellent, and each sensory detail feels like a nail on the skin ... The novel is enticingly bitter at times, juxtaposing sharp images against pastel-sentimental landscapes ... The balance of acid and sweet is King of Joy‘s strength ... delicious, demonic novel that fades through adjacent, looping worlds in the magical early 2000s. Chiem evokes a lost decade and suggests the shape of the monsters that churned beneath its surface.
Michael Kaufman
RaveForeword ReviewsBoth timely and refreshing, placing the onus on men to amend their perspectives on women and check their male privilege. An appendix includes an action guide to engage men, and Kaufman’s experiences as a leader, ally, and organizer appear throughout the book ... Kaufman’s anecdotes about the significant ways men support one another in the fight against misogyny are incredibly touching and provide good examples of how men can be allies without centering their own experiences ... a reassuring, empowering guide for men who want to be on the right side of history and welcome a feminist, gender-equal future.
Gale Massey
PositiveForeword Reviews[A] gritty debut thriller ... Although many of the other characters, from a crooked judge to the sly good ol’ boys who crowd around the game table, feel overly familiar, there are a few twists and reveals that keep Blind River from falling into stereotypes ... Gale Massey peppers the text with authentic, chilling details: the texture of a marked card, the exhaustion of digging a hidden grave ... From corpses to counting cards, Blind River plays it close and smooth.
