Literary Fiction Book Reviews

As a child, Michael Accordo longs for a balanced diet. As a young man, he seeks to balance mixed signals from his parents, his religion, and his culture in general.

The novel is structured as though we are reading a transcript of reflective conversations recorded in 1987 between an adult Michael and Ambrosia, a close friend. While Ambrosia is a psychiatric professional, she is not officially his therapist. This softens the story a bit so it doesn’t devolve into self-help pseudo-memoir territory.

Michael begins his reflections in the 1950s with a focus on food as it relates to his family […]

Clarity, a quaint, close-knit town, has one major problem – they’re suffering financially. So when Fluid Products comes into their town and promises them fat paychecks and local jobs in spite of the down economy, many citizens are eager to jump right into the deal.

However, there are a couple of citizens not so eager. Deborah, the town’s beloved and intelligent psychologist, speaks against Fluid. She believes that the trade-off for Fluid’s deal could be more harmful than helpful. Why let Fluid bottle and take control of Clarity’s water? Isn’t that too powerful a move? Though mayor Roger Trent wants […]

Ten years after moving to Ireland with her husband, Heather loves her family but realizes she’s at an impasse. As the novel opens we find her in a reflective housework session. While pining for the hills of her native North Carolina, Heather hits upon the idea of organizing a hillwalking group of just three members and her journey is under way.

The two women who answer Heather’s ad are also Americans. Jamie, married with two children, is from Texas and Christy, married with no children yet, is from Virginia. Gradually the three women learn to trust and care for one […]

What a pleasure this book is to read, thrilling without being a thriller, mysterious without being a mystery, of another time without being nostalgic.

We are introduced in this novel to many characters, large, small, and interesting alike, including “The Wooten Bunch” of Water Wells, Alabama, consisting of six students. Most of the focus is on four particular boys in this bunch as they transition from sixth grade in 1954 through the end of high school in 1961. While The Player Piano at times a coming-of-age story, it’s more than that. This is a tale of the very survival of […]

I look for clues within the first paragraphs of a novel as to what particular kind of story the author wants to tell me and how she intends to go about it. The first two sentences of this novel irritated me: “I don’t want to be a writer. I want to be a painter.” That doesn’t sound logical, I said to myself. Why fight reality? The Prologue soon continues with “as it turns out, being a writer in a coma leaves me with many more options than being a painter in a coma would.” Lilli Jolgren Day balances existential questioning […]

No doubt the kick-ass reluctant-hero-with-a-tortured-soul in this debut novel will achieve rock star status with readers. But let’s not leave the author out of the limelight. In his debut crime thriller Mark Samojedny kills it with mechanical craft, weaving metaphor and mysticism into the action in a mean, lean style guaranteed to leave the audience screaming for an encore.

The title sets the mood for us. The cover artwork shows a city turned on its side—a spiffy, enticing vision complementing the story elements. The internal design echoes the cover. The front matter doesn’t bother with chapter titles or a contents […]

The Truth About Us is about three women and how one vicious act led to another, changing the arc of their lives forever. Erica, Grace, and Jude probably looked like typical Canadian college girls living the good life — roommates in a townhouse Erica’s father owned, free to study or party, able to plan for their futures. But a book about normalcy would hardly be worth reading, and you want to pick up Truth About Us.

It takes nothing from the wonder of this book to say that The Truth About Us is about secrets and betrayal on many levels. […]