There's so much story packed into this novella - it's quite a feat! It was a lovely pairing of lovely writing and imagery with a plot that kept me turning pages instead of the navel-gazing one sometimes finds in more literary leaning books.
A novella set in post–climate disaster Alberta; a woman infected with a mysterious parasite must choose whether to pursue a rare opportunity far from home or stay and help rebuild her community
The world is nothing like it once was: climate disasters have wracked the continent, causing food shortages, ending industry, and leaving little behind. Then came Cad, mysterious mind-altering fungi that invade the bodies of the now scattered citizenry. Reid, a young woman who carries this parasite, has been given a chance to get away — to move to one of the last remnants of pre-disaster society — but…
This is an odd book, in the best way. At no point did I have any idea where the story was going - it was fresh and unexpected and amusing and yet somehow a comfort read? I can't explain it - the author did something entirely new. Some of the situations and dialogue had a Monty Python-esque tone which was a delight.
Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, he is a compulsive liar and a melancholy weakling. When Lucy accepts employment assisting the majordomo of the remote, forbidding castle of the Baron Von Aux he meets thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and a puppy. He also meets Klara, a delicate beauty who is, unfortunately, already involved with an exceptionally handsome partisan soldier. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behaviour is laid bare for our hero to…
This is a revenge story. It's a drawn out tense, suspenseful type of thriller but one with lovely, lyrical writing. Mysteries are unfurled as you go and it is all just very satisfying the whole way along. I enjoyed the sense of the tables being turned, of who held the power and who thought they held the power. It's a story that's stuck with me.
"This vengeful tale that pits artistic genius against mental health and happiness will captivate fans of dark suspense."-Library Journal, STARRED review A debut thriller for fans of Lucy Foley and Liz Moore, Dark Things I Adore is a stunning Gone Girl-esque tale of atonement that proves that in the grasp of manipulative men, women may momentarily fall. But in the hands of fierce women, men will be brought to their knees. Three campfire secrets. Two witnesses. One dead in the trees. And the woman, thirty years later, bent on making the guilty finally pay. 1988. A group of outcasts gather…
In a world flirting with climate catastrophe, a woman wakes up alone on a sailboat somewhere in the remote Pacific Northwest. She has no memory of who she is or of how she got there. But she does find a short note, which ends with the warning: Don’t look back. Should she heed the advice and move forward into a new life, or try to reclaim the person she once was? A galvanizing riddle that is just as unmooring as it seems, Adrift is at once a taut speculative thriller, a character-driven odyssey, and an unsettling picture of what our future could be.
