About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Isabel Banta
Positive PureWow In addition to the buzzy, conversation-starting themes explored, Banta is also simply a damn good writer ... An exciting read about the dark side of fame, early aughts pop culture and the transition from girlhood to womanhood.
Alexandra Tanner
Positive PureWow Not a ton happens by way of plot (save for an ending few will see coming), but thanks to Tanner’s conversational and darkly funny prose, it works. Plus, many readers will find that the monotony of Jules and Poppy’s lives mimics those weird late-20s feelings of floundering ... Encapsulates a uniquely millennial malaise and solidifies Alexandra Tanner as a writer to watch.
Sloane Crosley
Rave PureWow A tender, moving and whip-smart meditation on friendship and loss, and the latest in the rich tradition of brutally honest female-driven nonfiction ... By looking to unpack it, to explain it, all with her signature bite and humor, Crosley does come to a sort of understanding. Our circumstances may be different, she seems to say, but we all must learn to mourn.
Bryan Washington
Rave PureWow Moving ... In sparse but affecting prose (some chapters are single sentences, and it’s worth noting that there are no quotations marks), Washington explores self-destruction and self-discovery, queer love, what it means to heal and the power of personal connection ... A tender and vulnerable meditation on the ways our loved ones change us, and how we change them in return.
Emma Cline
Positive PureWow Alex is compelling if not exactly likable, and interestingly, Cline doesn’t assign her a stereotypical sob story childhood that would explain away her problems ... At turns languid and tense, Alex’s week-long odyssey—much like her life—is a trainwreck: hard to watch but impossible to look away from.
Kathryn Ma
Rave PureWow Ma has written an immigrant’s coming-of-age story that’s neither cloying unrealistic nor bleakly unhopeful. Rather, it’s a testament to the power of community and persistence—even if nothing goes as planned.
Monica Heisey
Rave PureWow Funny and relatable ... Throughout, Heisey’s experience as a sitcom writer is obvious ... Still, amid the dark and dry humor, Really Good, Actually is often deeply relatable and sneakily poignant.
Elyssa Friedland
Positive Pure Wow Friedland adeptly captures the conflicting feelings of excitement and dread one feels ahead of a reunion, as well as the weird in-betweenness of early middle age. Though frequently light and funny (the ‘90s references come fast and furious), the book doesn’t shy away from heavier themes ... a celebration of embracing all the ways your life derails—and the friends who help you along the way.
Celeste Ng
Rave PureWow ... heartbreaking ... a departure from Ng’s previous novels, but her talent is as apparent as ever. The novel shines when narrated by its innocent, precocious protagonist ... A poignant and timely commentary on anti-Asian hate, child separation and book bans, but also a celebration of the power of words and stories and the love between mothers and their children, Our Missing Hearts is a gut-punch of a novel that should serve as a cautionary tale.
Tess Gunty
Rave PureWow Ambitious ... Gunty’s writing is richly detailed and poignant.
Morgan Talty
Rave PureWow ... unforgettable ... Told in non-chronological order, the stories paint an often bleak, sometimes tender picture of contemporary Native life ... Loss and pain and inherited trauma aside, Night of the Living Rez manages to assert that hope and forgiveness are possible.
Cindy House
Rave PureWow ... powerful ... [House] writes with clarity and unflinching honesty about the tremendous lows of her years of active addiction and how she grappled with talking to her 9-year-old son, Atlas, about her past. She writes tenderly about Atlas, whom she describes as having the emotional maturity of a much older person ... Despite the heavy subject matter, Mother Noise manages to feel hopeful, thanks in large part to the sections about Atlas. There are also, unsurprisingly, echoes of Sedaris’s wit, as in a chapter about the hippy-dippy co-op she and Atlas visited in 2009 ... a powerful meditation on overcoming addiction, reckoning with the past and remaining hopeful for the future of our children.
Stephanie Wrobel
Positive PureWow Jumping from narrator to narrator and present to past, Wrobel explores themes of grief and guilt, and proves a deft chronicler of the language of trauma and recovery ... a tense psychological thriller with an eye towards larger themes.
Jen Winston
Rave PureWow ... fabulous ... The writing in Greedy is casual, self-deprecating and whip-smart (there are hints of Lindy West, Jia Tolentino and Kristen Arnett), and reading Winston’s essays is almost like scrolling through Twitter threads written by the funniest people on the app. That’s not to say it’s lacking substance. When they’re not \'diagnosing\' benign versus malignant girl crushes, Winston writes candidly about substance abuse, sexual assault and police brutality in essays that come with content warnings, for the record ... For the most part, though, Winston finds humor in the messiness of grappling with one’s identity ... There’s a frequent assumption that queer media is only for queer people. Greedy is proof that it’s not. Even folks to whom heterosexuality comes naturally will relate to the awkwardness of first dates and bad sex and shifting power dynamics in relationships.
Kyle Lucia Wu
Rave PureWow ... poignant ... Understated yet powerful, Win Me Something is about that familiar struggle of waiting for one’s life to begin, then suddenly suspecting it already has.
Chibundu Onuzo
Positive PureWow The bi-continental novel explores issues of power, corruption, racism, colorism, colonialism and more. Perhaps most compelling, though, is the way it explores Anna’s mixed-race identity; She is seen in England as Black and in Africa as white ... With echoes of Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Sankofa is a vivid exploration of finding one’s place in the world, while confronting the demons brought on by our parentage.
Zoe Whittall
Positive PureWow It’s..worth praising Whittall’s fearlessness in addressing the very real (but infrequently talked about) idea that not every person with a uterus is cut out to be a mother—and there’s no shame in admitting, or acting upon, that fact ... An occasionally melancholy, often darkly comedic story from a sharply talented writer, The Spectacular is a vibrant homage to living life on your own terms.
Helen Ellis
Rave PureWow Imagine your funniest friend—the one who can take make you laugh with little more than a sideways glance. The one who can make light of even the direst of situations. Now imagine that friend sitting you down and regaling you with 12 of her trademark wonderful stories. That’s pretty much what it’s like to read Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light ... Conversational, witty and often poignant, the collection is one you’ll blow through while ear-marking pages to send to your group chat with your friends ... Above all else, Ellis is an absolute joy to read.
Rachel Yoder
Rave PureWow ... fantastic ... Wildly (literally) imaginative plot aside, Yoder’s debut exposes her as a tremendous writer. She seamlessly blends dark comedy with astute observations on the state of modern motherhood and feminism in general that will make the reader feel both seen and enraged.
Claire Fuller
Positive PureWow This is not the romantic portrayal of the English countryside that readers—typically American readers—are used to. Fuller’s take on this occasionally over-sentimentalized locale is far bleaker, focusing on the marginalized factions of modern-day English society that are ignored by the establishment and progressives alike ... while it’s by no means a light, happy read, Unsettled Ground is a simple but powerful story of rural poverty, sibling relationships and, perhaps above all, resilience.
Claire Fuller
Positive PureWow This is not the romantic portrayal of the English countryside that readers—typically American readers—are used to. Fuller’s take on this occasionally over-sentimentalized locale is far bleaker, focusing on the marginalized factions of modern-day English society that are ignored by the establishment and progressives alike ... while it’s by no means a light, happy read, Unsettled Ground is a simple but powerful story of rural poverty, sibling relationships and, perhaps above all, resilience.
Laura Dave
Rave Pure Wow ... gripping ... The twists and turns, suspenseful as they are, take a back seat to the budding relationship between stepmother and stepdaughter. Hannah and Bailey’s path to defining their roles in relation to one another comes at an unfortunate time, but it’s a solid reminder that mother-daughter bonds (or stepmother-stepdaughter, as it were) don’t always fit into the cookie-cutter Gilmore Girls fantasy. As for Owen, though his mysterious vanishing is at the center of the novel, he fades into the background, allowing two strong women to direct the course of the narrative.
Sam Cohen
Rave PureWow ... strangely wonderful ... regardless of how far it dives into gender theory or strays from reality, Sarahland is still just a ton of fun to read—at turns thought-provoking, funny, strange and exhilarating ... With Sarahland, Cohen has asserted herself as a worthy contemporary of Ottessa Moshfegh, Elif Batuman and Carmen Maria Machado.
Nicole Krauss
Rave Pure Wow Though some stories seem worlds away, others hit uncomfortably close to home, as in Future Emergencies set shortly after 9/11 in a New York City where gas masks are distributed for free and the government warns of vague threats ... A few of the stories feel like excerpts of novels, which does leave you wanting—and occasionally needing—more information. (You won’t want to leave the subjects of Switzerland, about rebellious young women living in a finishing school slash rooming house in Geneva.) But overall, Krauss is incredibly adept at portraying novel-worthy characters in this much shorter form.
Michiko Kakutani
Rave PureWow ... a wide-ranging homage to the power of books and reading ... [Kakutani] lists more than 100 books of varying eras and genres that have shaped her life, alongside concise but illuminating essays about her connection to the work ... Her selections are as diverse as they are plentiful ... For each book, Kakutani touches on the plot (there aren’t spoilers, but if you’ve never read a certain work, you won’t be totally in the dark), and writes succinctly but eloquently about why these books matter. Whether or not you’ve read the titles in question is kind of irrelevant; Kakutani’s passion for these works is palpable, and her respect for their authors immense.
Anne Helen Petersen
Positive PureWow Regardless of the camp you’re in, you’re bound to find new insights ... Petersen proves herself to be an incisive cultural critic, though she also notes there’s not much of a solve for the current generation’s woes ... The book was written—obviously—before COVID-19 exacerbated many of these issues (specifically, the precarity of work, the absence of universal healthcare and the ever-mounting childcare crisis). Plus, although Petersen does her due diligence in representing a diverse group, she also notes that \'many of the behaviors attributed to millennials are the behaviors of a specific subset of mostly white, largely middle-class people born between 1981 and 1996\' ... In the end, Can’t Even feels cathartic no matter your age. After all, aren\'t we all susceptible to the pitfalls of of FOMO, side hustles and thirst traps? Aren\'t we all doing our best to—cringe—keep on adulting?
Brit Bennett
Rave PureWow Some novels are timeless—tied neither to an era nor a place. Others are timely—urgent for a moment, but not necessarily lasting. The Vanishing Half, a new novel by Brit Bennett, has the rare distinction of being both ... At a time when questions of identity and racial tension are at the forefront of the national conversation, Bennett’s novel is an important meditation on the possibility of a brighter future after trauma ... It\'s particularly poignant to read The Vanishing Half as a white person in 2020. Though the majority of the novel is set between the 1930s and 1980s, it\'s shocking (though it shouldn\'t be) that so little has changed in terms of racial equality and discrimination. Each of the main characters is part of the same family, but their individual experiences are so distinct and thoroughly drawn, an important reminder that there is no universal Black experience ... If The Mothers was a promising debut, The Vanishing Half cements Bennett as one of the most exciting talents writing right now.
Stephanie Wrobel
Rave PureWow ... incendiary ... It’s an intense and unexpected departure from the story we’ve become so familiar with ... These two intensely flawed characters couldn’t be more unlikable, but Wrobel’s portrayal of them is compulsively readable ... Darling Rose Gold is a psychological thriller you’ll stay up all night reading, even if it means going to work bleary-eyed on two hours of sleep. If you think you know this story, rest assured…you have no idea what these women are truly capable of.
Zadie Smith
Positive Pure Wow ...it mostly succeeds…though not without some missteps ... As is to be expected from a collection of length, some stories work better than others ... Fans of Smith’s work will appreciate her immense talent as a writer, but newbies are better off starting with one of her novels (specifically On Beauty or White Teeth), which are more consistently thrilling than these bits of hit-or-miss ephemera.
Kristen Arnett
Positive PureWow ...morbid, inventive and darkly funny ... an engrossing exploration of grief, love and family ... While it’s different thematically and tonally from Lauren Groff’s excellent essay collection Florida, Mostly Dead Things captures the essence of the Sunshine State through the eyes of Jessa ... she writes about Florida with equal parts adoration and curiosity ... As a reader, oscillating between empathizing with Jessa’s overwhelming grief and laughing at Libby’s absurdist art is a lot like being on a roller coaster at Disney ... It’s definitely one of those rides you want to take again and again.
Joanne Ramos
Positive PureWow Ramos covers a lot of ground, from the delicate yet transactional relationship between a mother and her nanny to the struggles and financial motivations of immigrants and ethnic minorities. The novel also examines the ethics of surrogacy and boldly challenges the idea that America is a meritocracy. The Farm is a timely investigation of how much control we really have over our own situations ... With glimmers of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and the dystopian eeriness of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Farm is equal parts entertaining and creepy.
Tressie McMillan Cottom
Positive Pure Wow Thought-provoking ... While the subject matter isn’t light, McMillan Cottom is subtly—and darkly—witty ... For fans of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage and Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad, Thick is frequently uncomfortable, but always compelling.
Anissa Gray
Positive PureWow ...vivid descriptions ... It’s clear that Gray took great care in creating fully fleshed-out narrators struggling to keep themselves from being defined by their pasts. (Translation: These are women you want to root for.) Gray\'s first novel echoes Brit Bennett’s The Mothers in its return-to-a-small-town vibe, as well as Mesha Maren’s Sugar Run in its references to women\'s imprisonment. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls is a moving portrait of a troubled family that would be an excellent book club pick.
Elizabeth McCracken
Positive PureWow In the traditional plot sense, there’s not a whole lot happening in Bowlaway. Sure, there are secrets and natural disasters and even a murder, but the novel’s strength lies in its subtler moments and McCracken’s knack for capturing the slog of day-to-day life. For fans of Elizabeth Strout and Fredrik Backman, Bowlaway...is just kooky and charming enough to work.
Sally Rooney
Rave Pure Wow ...an exceptional new novel ... Rooney’s second novel...is, on its surface, a will they-won’t they romance. Dig a little deeper, though, and it’s a fascinating examination of class differences and shifting power dynamics ... Rooney’s genus is in her ability to take a classic love story and make it fresh, largely thanks to her knack for characterization.