PositiveShelf AwarenessA penetrating, achingly honest novel of sexual attraction and self-discovery ... The sexy scenes and piercing insights will have readers madly flipping the pages to see how this Ivy comes out.
M T Anderson
PositiveShelf AwarenessAnderson humorously exploits the polar-opposite qualities of Tyun and Nicephorus, as well as the blind spots of power-hungry leaders ... Alongside the humor and tension, Anderson plumbs questions of what constitutes as faith, and the circularity of human history.
Louisa Treger
PositiveShelf AwarenessMadwoman, the third novel by Louisa Treger, is a compelling portrait of 19th-century journalist Nellie Bly...It re-creates in intense detail one of her greatest stunts: feigning mental illness to gain entry to the infamous asylum on New York City\'s Blackwell\'s Island.
Geraldine Brooks
PositiveShelf AwarenessEquestrians or not, readers will appreciate Brooks\'s invitation to linger awhile among beautiful and graceful horses, to see the devotion they engendered in her characters and in the author (a horsewoman) herself.
Holly Black
RaveShelf AwarenessBlack has a knack for heightening the tension between the world as readers know it and supernatural elements that infiltrate that world, bringing her characters face to face with themselves ... gripping ... Into her haunting mystery, with classic horror and gothic elements, Black injects a sizzling romance and a protagonist attempting to do the moral thing in an amoral world.
Natalie Hodges
RaveShelf Awareness... fascinating ... Hodges presents an accessible memoir in essays that bridge the time-space continuum in musical terms ... Her description of Johann Sebastian Bach\'s Chaconne invites readers to listen as a violinist would. She pays tribute to her Korean immigrant mother and posits an enlightening suggestion to think of cultural \'assimilation\' in terms of symmetry rather than equality. It\'s a book to savor. The ideas are dense; readers will want to pause and digest them. They offer a way to see the world anew, to reframe experience, the way Hodges has come to understand her own: from the inside out.
Lacy Crawford
PositiveShelf Awareness...propulsive ... The facts carry readers along as they would in a crime novel, with clinical details that force observers to imagine the motives and emotions of the perpetrators and victim ... By toggling between the timelines before and after the book\'s central event, she conveys the universal experience of survivors--the divide between the person she was and the person she becomes afterward ... precise, lucid.
Sahar Mustafah
PositiveShelf Awareness... skillfully nuanced ... Mustafah authentically portrays Afaf\'s enjoyment of her friendships, music and the limited independence her bike affords her, alongside her growing awareness of her mother\'s displeasure with American life ... With exquisite pacing, Mustafah builds suspense and also Afaf\'s quiet courage until--in the book\'s final chapters--Afaf must do her hardest work yet. She must confront the shooter in order to save her students and herself.
Abi Daré
PositiveShelf AwarenessThrough Adunni\'s perspective, Daré demonstrates how social strata matters little for women in Nigerian society ... Through Adunni\'s narration, Daré introduces readers to the full scope of the young woman\'s widening world. The narrator\'s attempts to make the unknown familiar often come across like metaphors in poetry. Readers leave Adunni knowing that she has the intellectual resources and the guts to face whatever challenges she must in order to attain her goals.
