The Safekeep is Yael van der Wouden’s debut novel. It was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and recently won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and I can understand why. It is an exquisite study in character, women’s desire and love.
…
I enjoyed reading Cherie Dimaline’s VenCo so much that I decided to read another one of her novels (I am sure I will eventually work my way through all of them). I do not like Empire of Wild as much as I like VenCo, but it is still an interesting novel inspired by the Métis traditional story of the Rogarou, a werewolf-like creature that is used to inspire fear in disobedient people.
…
Motherthing lured me in with its cover and its premise of being a “darkly funny take on mothers and daughters” as well as a ghost story, but this novel was not at all what I was expecting, and I did not enjoy it.
…
Julie Chan is Dead is Liann Zhang’s debut novel and a recent release that I noticed on the Indigo website. I enjoy novels that satirize the society in which we live, and I did enjoy this novel for the most part, but I feel like Zhang’s message with this novel is going to be lost on those readers that could benefit from it the most.
…
The Poppy War is a popular fantasy novel and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. I am not a huge fan of the fantasy genre, especially fantasy stories about war, but I really enjoyed reading Kuang’s Babel, so I thought it was time to give The Poppy War, her first novel, a chance. I do not like The Poppy War as much as I like Babel, but I think it is an interesting story with a compelling protagonist.
…
I decided to buy The Children of Jocasta because I have read Natalie Haynes’s other books, but I’ll admit that I am feeling fatigued with Greek mythology and took awhile to get around to reading this novel. I ended up finding Haynes take on the Jocasta/Oedipus myth very interesting, and I’m glad I decided to read it instead of letting it languish in my TBR pile perpetually.
…
What drew me to Tanya Talaga’s The Knowing is Kent Monkman’s incredibly vivid painting called The Scoop that is reproduced on the cover. It is a terrifying and infuriating image of Mounties, priests and nuns tearing Indigenous children away from their desperate parents in order to take them to residential schools. Talaga’s book is about Canada’s dark history of the segregation and forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples. This is an important book to read if you want to understand why residential schools have had a lasting, traumatic impact on generations of Indigenous families.
…
Not too long ago I was wandering around an Indigo store when I saw this author sitting at a table full of copies of her book. I wanted to be supportive of an independently published writer, so I bought a copy. Sarah Lane’s The God of My Art is a beautifully written novel, but unfortunately the story is not very interesting.
…
A Great Country is an Indigo Heather’s Pick and has an interesting-sounding plot, which is why I decided to read it, but this novel ended up falling flat for me.
…
The premise of Fruit of the Dead – a modern reimagining of the Persephone and Demeter myth – intrigued me, but I was worried that Fruit of the Dead was going to be too abstract for me to parse, or perhaps too pretentious to enjoy. This novel is neither of those things, but honestly, I do not know what to think of Fruit of the Dead. It is not bad, but I do not think it is very good either. It is interesting, but I was not really invested in the characters.
…