SPR’s book reviews of new self-published books
Long Plastic Hallway by Joyce V. Harrison
Twenty-somethings Ellis, Bax and Chloe set out for a roadtrip only to quickly find they have no money. Busking to get by, Ellis eventually makes his way to Los Angeles and into the cut-throat music business, and all the highs (literally) and lows you find there. A story as much about friendship as it is about the music industry, Long Plastic Hallway is a generation-defining book that’s as fun to read as it is for these characters to live.
Taking a listen to Harrison’s Soundcloud account, it’s obvious she knows the music industry very well, and her passion for music […]
Exile (Bloodforge Book 1) by Tom Stacey is an epic fantasy novel that heralds the beginning of an exciting new series. The Verian Empire is in shambles – on the edge of war, in the past and on the horizon – a land where heroes no longer remain. Out of this chaos, new heroes emerge to fight the Echoes, demons in a human facade, who want to claim this land for their own.
Celluloid by Holly Curtis feels like a novel written in black and white – the color of old movies, and especially Film Noir. It’s not a crime novel, per se, but it is a novel permeated with the love of old movies. This is a film freak’s novel through and through, and the veneration of film shines on every page.
My Daylight Monsters is the prequel novella to Sarah Dalton’s Young Adult Mary Hades series. Though the book is called a prequel, Dalton recommends in the beginning of the book to start with this short work, and it establishes Mary Hades as a riveting, exciting, and sensitive young adult heroine.
Golden Gloves: rap-novel is one of the most unique reading experiences you’ll have. Written in rhyming verse, it tells the story of a Jewish immigrant from Odessa who wins a Golden Gloves boxing tournament. The book covers heady issues such as anti-Semitism, immigration, poverty, and the cut-throat world of amateur boxing.
Brighton Make-Believe by Michael Salita is a charming children’s book about using your imagination. Really, there cannot be enough books stressing kids to use make believe. In the neighborhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, three six-year-old boys are sick of playing sports all the time and want something else to do. They start making up stories about different animals in the neighborhood – dogs that run along rooftops and birds that live underground – and they travel around the neighborhood making up more and more outlandish stories about the neighborhood animals.
Thirty Days to Thirty is a fun and emotionally-charged novel about a woman who’s just approaching thirty who loses everything: In the space of a few hours she gets fired from her job and then finds her boyfriend of six years has been cheating on her. Just when she thought her whole life was coming together and she was on the right track, everything falls apart, and instead finds herself living again with her parents. And so she gets innovative: she finds an old list of things she hoped to accomplish before she turned thirty, and with a few friends […]
Warning’s Wane by Jaclyn Little is an inventive and moving literary novel about a strange world where touching someone makes both people disappear. Paul Danniers and his wife, Colleen, move to the town of Praxia Island, off the coast of Maine, and finds the residents terrified of disappearing, and fearing each other. Warning’s Wane is a meditation on intimacy and alienation that’s at once shocking and cerebral.