The Bell Jar   By: Sylvia Plath                      By: Emily Pike    October 2021

       Published in 1963, The Bell Jar is a revolutionary tale for its era. Depicting the life of a young woman struggling with mental illness, it has an underlying feminist narrative, that was never before seen. The book is strange and eccentric. The way in which it describes death makes the reader feel such a strong connection to its characters. Some may find this conflicting, others may find it comforting. It all depends on how you view death and how we choose to inflict harm onto ourselves and those around us. 

      Esther Greenwood is a protagonist who has been beaten down by the world around her. She hasn't yet received recognition for her writing and is slowly but surely giving up hope that her dreams will ever come into fruition. As she deals with this harsh reality, the blinding spotlight of adulthood is shone upon her. Expected to know what she wants out of life, Esther experiences an emotional crisis and is sent to therapy. 

   The Bell Jar mirrored many real life events in Plath's life and the rawness of Esther's life - and how it correlates to Plath's -  is so evident. It is Plath's story, but with a different name and place stuck on it. Although it is still technically a work of fiction, when reading it please keep in mind that these were the real struggles of a woman left alone to battle mental illness. It was not a battle that she won, but this book was left behind and has gone on to become one of the most revered works of fiction. 

Fountains of Silence   By: Ruta Sepetys                    By: Emma Douglas      October 2021

      As an avid reader of Historical Fiction novels I was deeply surprised that I had never come across the name Ruta Sepetys before, especially after having just recently finished one of her newer novels, The Fountains of Silence, whose brilliance and beauty astounded me. 

The Fountains of Silence takes place in 1957 in Francisco Franco’s post-civil war Spain. The novel seamlessly weaves together the lives of four very different characters, living in very different circumstances, in the very same city : Madrid. Daniel Matheson : the young American photographer and son of a wealthy oil company owner, Ana Torres Moreno : the beautiful but mysterious hotel worker, Rafa Torres Moreno : the aspiring schemer, and Puri : an aid at the orphanage who is perhaps too curious for her own good. 

Through the eyes of these characters, and many more who we meet along the way, Sepetys takes us on an incredible and emotional journey through a country which was experiencing terror and turbulence as it never had before. Ruta herself wrote of the research required to perfect the book, and it certainly shows as Spain itself almost becomes a character in her novel. Each page paints a new view of beautiful Spanish tradition and culture, immersing the reader in a very different world. 

Exploring themes like forbidden romance, familial relations, fighting for your dreams and even some dangerous mystery, The Fountains of Silence is an unforgettable ride.

   Six Of Crows   By: Leigh Bardugo                   By: Taj Rahman       October 2021

  Six of Crows is an extraordinarily popular book and has received an incredible reputation over the past few years. This can either encourage many more fantasy readers to pick up this novel but can make others reluctant to pick the book up. If you find yourself in the latter situation, this review will give you a brief overview of some of my personal highlights from this book!

   Six of Crows is one of the few crime and fantasy books that is able to execute multiple character storylines and developments while still being able to maintain a holistic approach to a well-organized plot. This style allows readers to know the story of each of the main characters and build a better connection to all of them. 

    This novel is part of a duology by Leigh Bardugo, author of the Grisha Trilogy. The story takes place in the same universe as the author of other books called the ``Grishaverse”, but on a different continent and with completely new characters. Even though this book is part of a bigger storyline, it can still be read and enjoyed as a standalone book.

   Six of Crows will take the reader on a rollercoaster of emotions through Bardugo’s  unique approach to unveiling her story. Here, Kaz Brekker and his team of young misfits find themselves with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to freedom by getting an unimaginable amount of money. The catch is, they have to break into the most secure building in the world to get their prize. With all members of the crew being in desperate need to acquire money - whether it is to pay off their debts or live a stress-free life - this leads them to commit one of the most heinous heists. However, this desperation leads each and every character to come together from previously being strangers to becoming a family they never knew they needed. Where each member learns of their individual strengths and weaknesses so that they can push each other to do better. The character development is tremendous in every character. As a reader, you will be able to experience this change as Bardugo dives into each character’s thoughts and feelings in their dedicated chapters. 

   One of the best factors to this novel is how wonderful the characters are. Each and every character is carefully and brilliantly crafted, where everyone brings something different yet essential to the story and has their own problems to work out. Not only are the characters extremely diverse in their ethnicities, but they are also written with detailed complexity and uniqueness that makes it impossible to confuse the characters with one another. Each character has something that makes them stand out and is a necessity to the plot. Everyone comes together to build the storyline. 

   This action filled book is packed with heavy emotions, complemented with an excellent dose of humor. There is never a dull moment in the story, with constant twists and turns that keeps you at the edge of your seat, it’ll be easy to devour this novel within a few hours! I personally enjoyed this novel and look forward to the future works of this author!

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald             by Emma Douglas 

I may be calling myself out a little on this one, but personally I’ve always found it difficult to get into “The Classics”.  Not that novels like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice didn’t end up being worthwhile reads, because they most certainly did, but for the most part they’ve always been a bit of a challenge for me. Staying engaged in the plot, understanding the language and relating to the characters was made infinitely more tedious by the time that has elapsed between the writing of the book and my attempting to read it. The Great Gatsby, however, proved to be a very different beast.

Set in the summer of 1922, in West Egg Long Island, The Great Gatsby is the twisting tale of a man named Gatsby, terribly in love with a woman from his past and lonely despite the sheer opulence of the parties he throws to get her attention. 

The entirety of the novel is told from the perspective of Nick Carraway who, despite being the main voice of the novel, is more of a wallflower than a leading man. His matter of fact presence and middle class lifestyle is in stark contrast to Jay Gatsby’s palatial mansion, slightly strange behavior and mysterious methods of financial gain. This makes Nick the perfect voice to tell us this story. He is not intimate friends with Gatsby (at least not for the majority of the novel) , nor is he some sort of enemy. Nick views the events of the book with a sort of judicial impartiality, and F Scott Fitzgerald managed to pack three months of summer into a rather small book by choosing only to include important events, something I appreciate very much when compared with the often flowery prose of many other classic novels. 

At the end of the day I think that it is with good reason that The Great Gatsby is considered a classic. The story it tells is mysterious, exciting and timeless, with beautiful but often painful lessons about love and loneliness and living for others instead of yourself.

Brooklyn   By: Colm Toibin                     By: Alana Gale          October 2021

    Eilis Lacey is a young, rather naïve Irish woman whose mission in life is to make her mother happy, and nothing more. That is until she is given the opportunity to move to Brooklyn, New York and work. The story follows her journey across the Atlantic to the fast moving, utterly magnificent city where she meets the love of her life and finds a feeling of home. It is a beautiful depiction of what it means to risk everything, to change your life for the better and how perseverance in the face of immense struggle can lead you to things you never thought you’d experience. 

This rather short read (262 pages) is the perfect book to dive into on a crisp fall day, and will leave you feeling renewed and inspired to achieve your greatest desire. 

     There is a movie adaptation (starring Saoirse Ronan) that was created in 2015 which brought great success and a new generation of readers to the novel. 

The Secret Life of Bees    By: Sue Monk Kidd            By: Emily Pike    December 2021

      It's no secret that this book is one of the most influential of the modern literary era. The Secret Life of Bees follows the journey of the young girl named Lily Owens as she tries to orient herself in an everchanging world. After running away from home with her "Stand in mother" Rosaleen, she happens upon a trio of daughters who take them in. As she grapples with her murky family history, Lily must deal with the past she ran away from. 

    Lily learns how to take care of bees, and the art of honey. How just one hive is a microscopic lense into the world around us, and our respective places in society. As she is taught how to live off of the land, Lily also learns a lot about herself (and the family members she thought gone forever). 

   The Secret Life of Bees is a heartwarming tale, and a fairly short read. There's a good reason why this novel got turned into a movie, starring some of the biggest names in Hollywood today. I would recommend this novel to anyone who has ever felt lost in this world, and people who hear the buzzing of a bumblebee as so much more than a simple sound. This book dives into a lot of philosophical ideas, and has elements that everyone can enjoy. 

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles : Book Review 

By: Emily Pike        October 2022

  “I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.” 

  If you were to ask me to describe with precision the plot of this novel while I was reading it, it would’ve been nearly impossible. Six hundred pages later, and I still couldn’t tell you exactly what was going on. But this is the allure of a Murakami novel, and what makes him so intriguing as an author. His literary style is eccentric, eclectic, and by all means one of a kind. He is in my top five authors of all time, and for good reason. 

   The beginning of the novel drops you directly into the life of a man named Toru, and his wife Kumiko. Their marriage is an unhappy one, and their struggles on the surface level seem to be very realistic. Jobless Toru, overworked Kumiko, and a lost cat lead to a lot of turmoil in their household. But this is only the start of the decline in fortune in Toru’s life. Soon afterwards, Kumiko vanishes without a trace, leaving Toru to fend off boredom in his empty suburban home. This leads our protagonist down a slippery slope, as he befriends strange women, receives even stranger phone calls, and his enemy - Kumiko’s brother - has come back from his past to haunt him. 

  Yet this novel is about so much more than that. It’s about war and conflict between Eurasia, about dried up wells and corrupt government officials. It’s about a young girl trying to find purpose, and a man who has lost everything. It’s about two different worlds. The one we perceive as normal, and the subconscious world where everything is different - even the people we love. 

    While I wouldn’t recommend this novel to people who’ve never read Murakami as a starting point into his works, for the avid reader, this novel is a journey. Obscure, and weird in every sense of the word, Murakami’s writing style draws you in and doesn’t let you escape until the final page. If you’ve never read surrealist japanese fiction before, I would recommend Norwegian Wood or Kafka on the Shore as a good starting point. 

Shatter Me : Book Review     By: Alyssa Stapleton-Earle        November 2022

 Shatter Me, by Tahereh Mafi, was first published in 2011. The novel follows the journey of Juliette Ferrars as she navigates the now corrupted world by the new government, The Reestablishment, after being kept away in an insane asylum for 264 days. With her unusual gift, The Reestablishment attempts to use her lethal touch as an alternative way to take control of the world. This is a series that has 6 novels and includes 5 novellas, which aren’t obligatory to read. But, in saying that, I’d recommend reading those as well. It gives a lot more insight into the characters throughout the series and a few other subplots. 

I enjoyed reading this novel, and the series, too, as a whole. Tahereh Mafi did an extraordinary job writing the books through the point of view of Juliette. Mafi made the reader feel as though they are right there with her every step of her journey out of the silence and self-hatred and into her confidence and ability to protect and take action against the corrupted government. The author included strikethroughs, numbers in numerical form and repetition throughout the series until it came to a stop to visualize the chaos that is Juliette’s mind. That part of the series made it seem much more realistic as the main character fought her battles and mental illnesses. 

The novel is a dystopian, supernatural romance. If you don’t like those types of genres, you may stay away from reading this, but this series will if not, eventually, change your opinions on the genre. As you go further into the series, you will become attached to the characters, and invested in how the plot is escalating. You must be warned, that the second trilogy can put you in emotional turmoil, but you may enjoy the interchanging emotions that come with the series. From the side characters to the humour, the romance, and even to the villains of the story, it is an amazing story for young adults and teens. 

Throne of Glass: Book Review     By: Alyssa Stapleton-Earle        January 2022

 Throne Of Glass by Sarah J. Maas was an incredibly emotionally impacted fantasy series that had plot twists and intriguing characters. It follows Celaena Sardothien, the most wanted assassin in the kingdom of Adarlan. But, she’s been detained in the salt mines as a prisoner and slave. To win back her freedom, she must serve the king for four years committing unspeakable crimes he’s tasked her to complete. Still, she has to win against twenty-three other skilled thieves and assassins. That’s how the series begins, anyway. As the series goes on, it focuses more on the rebellion against the corrupted king of Adarlan and the protagonist’s past. 

Although it was an incredible read, the methods of reading the series do get complicated. There are two ways: the Purist and the Romantic. The Purist follows the publication order, meaning you start with the prequel (The Assassin’s Blade) and so on into the series. Romantic, the only difference is reading the prequel after the third novel (Heir Of Fire). Myself, I did the Romantic reading order which does make reading the prequel more emotional. Many people say reading the prequel first is the best way to go, but if you’re reading for the first time, do the Romantic read. It will have the biggest emotional impact. I haven’t finished the series but so far, of the four books I’ve read, it’s really enjoyable.

Honestly, the first and second books are a bit slow. It takes time for world-building and may seem boring at times, but it is definitely worth it. Sarah J. Maas began writing this series at the age of 16 (really inspiring) and has made herself one of the most known fantasy authors in the world. Each character in the series has their own personality and feelings, making the readers become just that much more connected to them. So far, it’s been a fantastic story that allows you to get lost in the world of the protagonist, Celaena Sardothien, not to mention her own personal relationships and journeys. 

The Picture of Dorian Gray : Book Review     By: Isla Growns February 2023 

“The Classics” as they are called, are in my opinion some of the most beautiful yet the most challenging novels to read. I with no doubt enjoyed titles such as The Phantom of the Opera or Pride and Prejudice, and can proudly say that I managed to at least somewhat comprehend the plot and characters in said novels. Usually when I read these types of literature, my mentality is very much so to get through it as quickly as possible, and if I don't understand it after the first time reading a page then I never will fully know what's going on. The Picture of Dorian Gray, however, was a very different experience.

Set in 1890’s London, The Picture of Dorian Gray centers around a portrait of the protagonist Dorian Gray, and his desire for the painting to age instead of himself. The novel delves into the major theme of adoration of the young and beautiful. This concept is demonstrated repeatedly by many characters in the novel, along with ideas such as the negative consequences of societal influence, and the superficial nature of society. This novel is one that continually causes oneself to wonder what the outcome will be up until the very end, and once you finish you are left pondering what truly happened.

As an avid reader, I will admit that my understanding and what I take away from books is much deeper than the understanding of somebody who doesn’t read nearly as much as I do. Because of this, I knew that I would enjoy The Picture of Dorian Gray as soon as I started reading it. It is a deep, classic, and truly iconic bookshelf staple. Oscar Wilde writes complex and beautiful characters that oneself can’t help falling in love with, characters that the reader deeply relates to and understands. 

When asked for book recommendations my first answer is always this novel, I truly can’t keep myself from speaking highly of it. It takes alot for a book to really impress me, as I’ve read so many that I’m prone to finish reading one novel and automatically choose another to start into. I very rarely actually sit and analyze the books that I’ve chosen to read outside of school, as I admit that I find the practice very reminiscent of English courses. This aside, after reading The Picture of Dorian Gray I found myself aching for more. I couldn’t help but sit and analyze every inch of the novel, looking deep within the characters and picking them apart in a way that I never really had. Overall, I adore The Picture of Dorian Gray, and could not recommend any other piece of literature more than I recommend this one.

The Phantom of the Opera : Book Review     By: Isla Growns    March 2023

  If my memory serves me right, I first read Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera when I was in 8th grade. Similar to as I am now, I was prone to approaching classic literature with what I call a one and done mentality. If I read a page of a book and didn’t understand it the first time I read it, there was a very good chance that I wouldn’t be going back to the start of the page to reread. Due to this mentality, when I read The Phantom of the Opera for the first time, I only had a very basic understanding of the plot, the characters, and everything else about it. After very recently revisiting my 13 year old self’s reading list, and in the process choosing to reread one of my favorite books of that time, I found myself finishing The Phantom of the Opera for a second time with a much deeper understanding of the novel.

Set in the 1880’s, The Phantom of the Opera follows the narrator’s investigation into not just the actions, but also the identity of the “Opera Ghost” or “Phantom of the Opera”. As odd events are occurring at the Paris Opera House, its staff and performers become convinced that the building is haunted. This book is a representation of a man’s descent into madness, and reinforces the universal theme of violence, revenge and redemption.

In terms of my own opinion of the novel, I feel that I must commend Gaston Leroux for his capability to produce such elegance through his writing, and not leaving me scared or anxious to read deeper but instead mystified. I found myself unable to fear the motives of Erik, better known as the “Opera Ghost”, and rather found myself pitying him. I could only sympathize with the characters in this book and resonate with their hardships, and I fell in love with their personalities more and more as I made my way through the book. The Phantom of the Opera is definitely one of those books that causes readers to fall quickly and incredibly hard for every aspect of it, and I with a doubt recommend it to anyone and everyone who enjoys a bit of deep reading!

A Good Girls Guide  : Book Review     By: Alyssa Stapleton-Earle  March 2023

 I’ve always really loved mystery books. The novel, A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder, by Holly Jackson, is, in my opinion, one of the best murder mystery novels ever written. It follows Pippa, a teenage girl, who investigates a murder from years ago of Andie Bell, a teenage girl who was allegedly murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh. He had committed suicide and the murder case from years ago was, without much investigation, closed and labelled as solved. To hide her investigation, Pip called it her capstone project. With the help of Ravi, Sal’s younger brother, she finds out the truth of what happened five years ago. 

I read this book a year ago, not yet having finished the series, and I loved it. Although, being completely honest, the first few chapters of the book were slow. I wasn’t entirely interested until things began to really happen. The truth behind everything could have been done a bit better;  it seemed a little mediocre. But, the journey to the truth was interesting. One of the best things of the series was the slow building bond between Pip and Ravi. It was nice to know that during her dangerous investigation, she had someone to lean on. 

With all the twists and turns and a little bit of heartache and humor, this book is an absolute masterpiece that should be shared. There are two other books in the series, this means that Pip’s journey as a junior detective isn’t over yet!

The Whole Truth  : Book Review  By: Alyssa Stapleton-Earle  

May 2023

Throughout my tween years, my favourite book was The Whole Truth by Kit Pearson. It follows the lives of Polly and her sister Maud as they move to their grandmother’s house on an island between Vancouver and Victoria. After the death of their father, they hold onto a dark secret that tests the bonds of family love and trust. Through the point of view of Polly, the youngest sister at the age of ten, the reader can read and understand the thoughts of a young child coping with trauma and heavy secrets. 

I was ten when I read this novel for the first time and I’ve read it at least three times or more since then. Along with its sequel, And Nothing But the Truth, they were both captivating. Yes, it is considered a children’s novel, but The Whole Truth will still always be one of my favourite novels ever written. Certain aspects of the writing style are a bit overly cheerful but it’s understandable, knowing that the novel is from a ten-year-old's point of view. 

The main character Polly is easy to sympathize with and the reader would definitely become attached to the characters because of how well the author portrayed them. When you read this novel, you will be ecstatic to read its sequel, which is just as impactful. It’s been one of my comfort reads for years and it’s too good to be left unrecognized by other readers.