SPR’s book reviews of new self-published books
Beyond Borders by Ngozi Iwuoha
Beyond Borders by Ngozi Iwuoha is a touching story of belonging, identity, and family. Borders can separate us and time can keep us apart, but what keeps us together, as shown touchingly by Iwuoha, is love.
Iwuoha tells the narrative with a distance and breeze that at first might catch the reader off guard, but it is clear the effect Iwuoha intended. By keeping the reader at arm’s length, the reader is able to feel what Valeria feels – almost as if life is experienced from behind a pane of glass – clear yet detached and devoid of some vital […]
Raptor Ray by Brent Reilly is an eccentric show of imagination. It opens on the strange birth of Ray, the poor scaly dino-kid doomed to ridicule, and it gets stranger and stranger from there on out, telling a story that blends together a huge number of sci-fi tropes (time travel, space travel, dinosaurs, cataclysms, the list goes on), as well as non-fictional elements, for a completely inventive read.
The Fat Girls Club: Paris Bound is the sequel to Lila Johnson’s Fat Girls Club, a fun and emotional novel about a group of friends who gather together to lose weight. As the title suggests, Paris Bound finds the group traveling to Europe, and all of the temptations it provides, as well as a scenic backdrop for the women to bond more deeply.
Writer Pat Muir shows us that missing person cases are rarely what they seem in the compelling police procedural, What Happened to Flynn.
Four foster sisters, on different life trajectories, are the focus in Hearts on Fire, a powerful work of women’s fiction by T. Renee.
In her debut collection of poetry, A Frostbitten Memory of a Stillborn Spring, Lindy Kennedy shows an admirable talent for describing life’s vicissitudes with sensitivity.
Jean B. MacLeod believes in using simple supplies, tools and devices to solve a myriad of kitchen and cooking related dilemmas, as revealed in her well-organized manual, The Kitchen Paraphernalia Handbook: Hundreds of Substitutions for Common and Uncommon Utensils, Gadgets, Tools, and Techniques.