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Month: August 2025

Clever Little Thing by Helena Echlin

Clever Little Thing by Helena Echlin

I really should examine the psychology behind why I, a childless cat mom, keep choosing to read mom-noir. I’ve read Zoje Stage’s Baby Teeth, Ashley Audrain’s The Push, and now Helena Echlin’s Clever Little Thing, all novels about mothers who think there is something disturbingly wrong with their daughters (it’s always the daughters). And I keep reading these books even though I know they are not going to be great, and Clever Little Thing is the worst of the three.

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The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

I feel like I was misled into believing that The Berry Pickers is a mystery novel. It is a mystery, for the characters in the novel, but for the reader there is no mystery as to what happened to a four-year-old Indigenous child that goes missing. I feel some disappointment with this novel because I love a good mystery, but The Berry Pickers turned out to be an emotional story about family and trauma.

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