PositiveEntertainment Weekly... as timely as it is unexpected ... Tookie\'s voice is genuine and humorous, her perspective rich with history, literacy, and quietly simmering fury. Erdrich\'s fictional account of Tookie\'s pandemic experience, as singular and as universal as anyone\'s, resonates with strange and familiar detail, but doesn\'t blend consistently with her tale of the phantom Flora. The world-altering events of 2020 did not, of course, mesh tidily with the happenings of anyone\'s life, but for the purposes of following Tookie\'s journey, the many layers of The Sentence, expertly stacked though they are, begin to obscure one another as the novel goes on ... The literature grappling with these latest demons may still be imperfect, but the writing — and reading — is part of the exorcism.
Lauren Groff
RaveEntertainment Weekly... readers will recognize [Groff\'s] stunning prose and grand, mythic perspective ... a tale that feels both ancient and urgent, as holy as it is deeply human.
Megan Abbott
PositiveEntertainment WeeklyAbbott\'s prose can lean toward high drama worthy of Tchaikovsky (occasionally to its detriment), and the sisters\' distorted psyches, unnaturally directed from their infancy toward an uncompromising art form, are rightly examined more in their dark depths than they are portrayed with excessive nuance ... The novel\'s greatest triumph is truly in its vivid, unforgettable setting. Abbott is a master of atmosphere, and in the blood, sweat, tears, bruises, ripped toenails, broken bones, rivalries, desires, and tutu-pink dreams that fill the studio throughout Nutcracker season, she creates a world of almost unbearable tension, pirouetting ever further into darkness.
Sharon Stone
MixedEntertainment WeeklyThe book includes almost no detail at all about her romantic history, and there\'s relatively little here, too, about her experience in Hollywood, except as being mostly incidental to the actress\' more spiritual evolution ... Stone has a sense of humor, especially about some of the more bizarre occurrences of her life, but the writing falls flat sometimes, too; more than one clearly intended mic drop fails to make an impact. In all honesty, I found some of her reflections to be needlessly patronizing, some of her commentary misguided (especially regarding a 2008 interview flub about China); in short, her voice didn\'t always speak to me. But she definitely has her own voice, and a strong one — she makes clear that she\'s learned in her life to insist on having it — and her story itself is undeniable, however any reader responds to her telling of it ... Stone\'s narration jumps between memories linked by feeling rather than chronology, and it can become disorienting, unclear who she was at the time of any moment she dives into, especially because of the diversity of her experience. She acknowledges that \'this book is but a bit of a full and complex life,\' but it could stand to be a rounder, more legible fragment. In many ways the memoir didn\'t bring me much closer to knowing who she is except to learn that she herself knows who she is — a hard-won privilege. After unfathomable trauma and pain and loss and disaster, she\'s still standing, sharing this story from her own perspective, and now looking ahead to a path of her own making. There\'s real beauty in living like that.
Fiona Mozley
RaveEntertainment Weekly... stunningly clever ... Mozley\'s vision of London, simultaneously ancient and deeply modern, is layered with mystery (pieces of which are perhaps too neatly solved) and packed with humanity — a deliciously spicy stew indeed.
Vendela Vida
PositiveEntertainment WeeklyAs consistently surprising as it is hauntingly resonant (not to mention often very funny), Vida\'s chronicle of female friendship is a fast, addictive read; while it\'s almost a shame to finish it so quickly, the novel\'s very brevity also feels somehow true—as fleeting as a memory.
Mariah Carey, with Michaela Angela Davis
PositiveEntertainment Weekly...there’s plenty in the 337-page volume that will surprise even the most devoted Lambs. Most surprising of all, though, is perhaps how elusive the chanteuse remains even when she makes herself so vulnerable ... Carey’s voice is as distinctive to read as it is to hear: She addresses her reader as \'dahling\' or \'baby\' here and there, and her constant, flexible use of the word \'festive\' reveals it to be a deeply held personal ideal rather than just a vaguely pleasant adjective. Even in describing her lowest lows (and there are some bad ones), the writing is never austere; like her narrative structure, Carey’s prose has rhythm and high dramsavoring moments and details with melismatic indulgence ... She is...better at starting stories than finishing them ... This applies to the memoir as a whole but was most disappointing in the case of her romance with Derek Jeter, the beginning of which makes for some of the book’s dreamiest, most hopeful moments ... It’s hard to begrudge her these omissions, though, when she’s recalled such great suffering and even greater survival. She’s already explained how pieces of her persona are armor, and in which moments she forged them; let her keep some stories. They belong to her.
Stephenie Meyer
PanEntertainment Weekly... the worst book of the series, which isn’t exactly Shakespeare to begin with ... Meyer’s prose has never been her strong suit; it continues not to be ... Bella is not an interesting character, but she comes from something of an authentic place. Edward should be the opposite, having a less accessible perspective but at least a fascinating one — and yet! Even having lived a century with unlimited time, extensive resources, and the actual ability to read minds, his narration is neither more erudite nor more insightful than Bella’s; Meyer repeatedly tries to tell us that Edward is these things, but when the novel is in his voice, the failure to actually show it is all the more conspicuous ... The degree to which Edward mentally tortures himself for potentially endangering his beloved is nothing compared to the punishment he inflicts on a reader. It’s hard to take his perpetual anguish over their future very seriously when we know exactly what ending this story will come to. It is staggeringly boring to read him go through the same spiral of desire/shame/self-doubt/weak resolve every single time he and Bella so much as make eye contact across the parking lot ... Who knew a love story could be so joyless? ... The details about the Cullens’ lifestyle and personal histories are the best new insight into this world that Midnight Sun has to offer, and a reminder of the sparkle (for lack of a better word) the story held when it first was told through Bella’s incredulous eyes ... His desperation to keep her safe and his fetishistic obsession with her fragility are even ickier than they ever were in the first four novels (which is saying something) ... I sincerely commend all Twihards who made it through what felt to me like an interminable 600+ pages. For those who have yet to crack the spine, though, a warning: Read Midnight Sun at your own risk. It just might suck the life out of you.
Chelsea Bieker
RaveEntertainment WeeklyDrawn in brilliant, bizarre detail—baptisms in warm soda, wisdom from romance novels—Lacey\'s twin crises of faith and femininity tangle powerfully. Fiercely written and endlessly readable, a novel like this is a godsend.
Lily King
PositiveEntertainment WeeklyAs intimate — and vulnerable — as the acts of its title players, King\'s novel follows a deeply relatable protagonist navigating a whole menu of crises (some better drawn than others) surrounded by a cast of genuine, vivid characters. Writers, lovers, teachers, waiters, brothers, daughters, posers, friends—the book occupies a small space, but packs it to the brim with humanity.
Amy Bonnaffons
PositiveEntertainment WeeklyWritten in piercing prose, this brisk exploration of love, sex, and loss will leave you feeling pleasantly haunted. But just as Thomas laments that a human body is a mostly inadequate vessel for a (half) life, this love story is an often frustrating vehicle for some truly grand ideas.
Salman Rushdie
RaveEntertainment WeeklyIt’s a long and lofty list, but Rushdie weaves together all of his subjects, sharply observed, with extraordinary elegance and wit (and, somehow, in fewer than 400 pages). With so many threads in place and such a bizarre journey to follow, Quichotte admirably stays on course; whenever the narrative might begin to go off the rails, Rushdie rights the Chevy Cruze effortlessly, always knowing where he’s going, and always having an extensive catalog of diverse cultural references to cite along the way. That said, what begins as a meandering journey seems to speed to its conclusion in the last chapters — though the final lines will make you gasp ... Cervantes’ hero, who is eternally modern perhaps because he is essentially anti-contemporary, couldn’t be a more inspired transplant into the mad reality of the present day, which Rushdie sends up in terms both universal and highly specific, tragic and hilarious, strange but hauntingly familiar ... At least here’s something worth reading as civilization crumbles around us, before we succumb to our fates. Right?
