Suicide as an epidemic and how society deals with it—perfect premise of a work of fiction for a sociology student like me. Perhaps then my opinions on this book are unfair because I am weighing them against my academic background. But I can’t help it; after years of studying sociology, it has come to influence…
ROOMIES by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando
Oh the liminality of the summer between high school and college! Sorry, I just had to use the term liminality outside of school. But it is an apt definition of where Elizabeth and Lauren are. A stage of in-between, of neither here nor there. It is also those in-between stages that tend to go unnoticed, so I…
DECKED WITH HOLLY by Marni Bates
Happy First Advent! What better way to get into the Christmas season than with holiday-day themed books? So I picked up Decked With Holly by Marni Bates to get into the mood. It was a little less Christmassy than I had expected because one of the main characters, Holly, is of Jewish descent, so Christmas wasn’t…
TAGGED by Mara Purnhagen
I present to you another book that grapples with graffiti. Unlike in Graffiti Girl by Kelly Parra, The Colour of Trouble by Gerry Bobsien and getting Up by SD Thorpe, here the main character is not the one involved in graffiti. She is an innocent bystander who comes to be embroiled in the whole issue when a piece…
INTENTIONS by Deborah Heiligman
Rachel, as with everyone else in the community, adored Rabbi Cohn. He was her role model and a seemingly charming man. Whenever he led services, she would lap up every single word he said. In her eyes, he was perfect and he could do no wrong. That is, until the day she reached the temple…
