April 20, 2022

Pump Up The Volume...

April 20, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Books For The Music Fan…

The Vinyl Underground - Rob Rufus

This Song Will Save Your Life - Leila Sales

The Music Shop - Rachel Joyce

Beautiful Music For Ugly Children - Kirstin Cronn-Mills

Destroy All Monsters - Jeff Jackson

The Vinyl Detective - Andrew Cartmel (A Series)

A Song For A New Day - Sarah Pinsker

Guitar Notes - Mary Amato

Suzy, Led Zeppelin & Me - Martin Millar

Every Anxious Wave - Mo Daviau

If I Ever Get Out Of Here - Eric Gansworth

Spin - Colleen Nelson

Impossible Music - Sean Williams

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

Reservation Blues - Sherman Alexie

We Sold Our Souls - Grady Hendrix

Solo - Kwame Alexander

Girl - Blake Nelson

Signal To Noise - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Hour Of The Innocents - Robert Paston

How to Kill A Rock Star - Tiffanie DeBartolo

Stone Arabia - Dana Spiotta

Sometime After Midnight - L. Philips

April 20, 2022

A Beautiful Mind...

April 20, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Neurodiversity In Literature…

Radiant Minds - Oliver Sacks

NeuroTribes - Steve Silberman

Odd Girl Out - Laura James

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Robin Black

Girl He Used To Know - Tracey Garvis Graves

Big Girl, Small Town - Michelle Gallen

Curious Incident Of The Dog & The Night-time - Mark Haddon

The Maid - Nita Prose

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completey Fine - Gail Honeyman

Convience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata

Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell

On The Edge Of Gone - Corrine Duvvis

Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem

Ginny Moon - Benjamin Ludwig

Still Alice - Lisa Genova

Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion

Pathological - Sarah Fay

Divergent Mind - Jenara Nerenberg

Normal Sucks - Jonathan Mooney

April 20, 2022

A Gut Feeling...

April 20, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Fiction To Devour…

Kitchens Of The Great Midwest - J. Ryan Stradel

Serving Crazy With Curry - Amulya Malladi

The Kitchen Daughter - Jael McHenry

Miss Cecily’s Recipes For Exceptional Ladies - Vicky Zimmerman

Sourdough - Robin Sloan

The School Of Essential Ingredients - Erica Bauermeister

Food Whore: A Novel - Jessica Tom

The Kitchen Front - Jennifer Ryan

Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler

Crescent - Abu Diana Jaber

A Moveable Feast - Anthony Bourdain

The Hundred,Foot Journey - Richard C. Morais

Recipe For Persuasion - Sonali Dev

Season To Taste - Natalie Young

A Certain Hunger - Chelsea G. Summers

Mistress Of Spices - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Gourmet Rhapsody - Muriel Barbery

Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg

All Four Stars - Tara Dairman

The Kitchen God’s Wife - Amy Tan

The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender

Little Coffee Shop Of Kabul - Deborah Rodriguez

Chocolat - Joanne Harris

The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe - Mary Simses

The Coincidence Of Coconut Cake - Amy E. Reichert

Taste: My Life Through Food - Stanley Tucci

Garlic & Sapphires: The Secret Life Of A Critic In Disguise - Ruth Reichl

Yes, Chef - Marcus Samuelsson

Notes From A Young Black Chef - Kwame Onwuachi

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History - Michael W. Twitty

Comfort Food Diaries: Quest For The Perfect Dish To Mend A Broken Heart - Emily Nunn

Our Lady Of Perpetual Hunger - Lisa Donovan

Book Of Eating - Adam Platt

April 19, 2022

Miss Cecily's Recipes For Exceptional Ladies - Vicky Zimmerman

April 19, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Fiction

Rating: 9/10

Besieged by men who don’t know what they want and have no idea when they might figure it out, Kate decides that’s enough indecisiveness for her. With a boyfriend flip flopping on commitment and a dead-end job meant only to pay the bills she finds herself keeping company with a cantankerous Cecily, a senior citizen with no shortage of opinions. A charming story of an unusual friendship.

April 14, 2022

Nine Lives - Peter Swanson

April 14, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Mystery

Rating: 4/10

Well, you can’t win them all. Continuing to shape his narratives as homages to classic mystery writers, in this case Agatha Christie, instead of leaving the threads of correlation for the reader to parse together, the author allows everything to be rather obvious. Excruciatingly so. The result being something that feels like more of a contrivance than a compliment.

April 12, 2022

Eight Perfect Murders - Peter Swanson (Replay)

April 12, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Mystery/Fiction

Rating: 9/10

An exceptionally cleverly penned book that summons the plots of unsolved homicides from the greats of yesteryear to unravel its own whodunnit. Go ahead and unpack that!

April 07, 2022

The Marlow Murder Club - Robert Thorogood

April 07, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Mystery

Rating: 7.5/10

Finding this charming amateur detective mystery was a happy moment. I loved these women and their hilarious antics, and the author did an excellent job of keeping the reader guessing right until the ending. And as an added bonus the reader gets the inside scoop on how crossword puzzles are created. A smell a new hobby on the horizon!

April 05, 2022

13th Hour: Chaos - Richard Doetsch

April 05, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Thriller/Sci-Fi

Rating: 7.5/10

Nick jolts awake a bit worse for wear, standing in the very place he stood at 5pm, but now its 4pm. Trying to clear the fog of his confusion, he remembers his dying friend handing him a bag and saying, “listen carefully, don’t let that bag out of your sight. He’s coming for you; he’s coming for your family.”

March 31, 2022

You Always Remember Your First...

March 31, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Literary Debuts…

There is a wealth of extraordinary reading to be found outside of the big name authors and endlessly repetitive best of and highly anticipated lists. Where you might be asking yourself, well look no further! Assembled here for you dear reader are debut novels; past, present and future! Mark my words, you won’t regret reading any one of these gems. Or all…

March 29, 2022

On The Books-Well, That Didn't Happen!

March 29, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

On The Books-Well, That Didn’t Happen!

As a voracious reader with decades of dedication to the cause of book loving under my belt, I love discovering contemporary authors brave enough to conquer the challenge of a retelling or reimagining of a long-known tale. Or a truth for that matter…

March 24, 2022

The Golden Couple - Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

March 24, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Thriller

Rating: 8/10

Imagine confronting all your demons, shaking the monkey on the back off for good and solving all the issues that may be plaguing your marriage in ten therapy sessions? You’d be crazy not to jump on board, right? Wrong. So, so wrong.

March 22, 2022

Goodnight Beautiful - Aimee Molloy (Replay)

March 22, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Thriller

Rating: 8.5/10

A funhouse mirror of a book, your likely seeing something entirely different than what you think you are with every reflection. This author executes spectacular feats of misdirection at every turn!

March 17, 2022

(Re) Imagine That! - Fan Fav Feature

March 17, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

A Literary Restoration…

This fan favourite feature is one that deserves a replay in case you missed it the first time around! If you delve deeply enough into the books we choose to read, more often than not you will reveal a connection to something recognizable. That in fact they capture contemporary narratives from the bones of centuries of storytelling. Mythologies, legends, classics and fairytales have all been plundered for plot in myriad of ways and a upon myriad of occasions that proves incalculable.

March 15, 2022

A Flicker In The Dark - Stacy Willingham

March 15, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Thriller

Rating: 8.5/10

An exceptional character driven thriller that you will think you’ve got all figured out and then the author unfolds twists and snarls you will never see coming. Twenty years after Chloe’s father was convicted of killing six young women, someone seems to be marking the anniversary by copying the crimes. Or was he innocent all along?

March 10, 2022

Notes On An Execution - Danya Kukafka

March 10, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Thriller

Rating: 8.5/10

This was a stellar deconstruction of the crimes that occurred, the man who committed them, and a mesmerizing examination on what makes people do such things. Leaving the reader to wonder how can bad so savagely devour good in certain individuals.

March 08, 2022

All Her Little Secrets - Wanda M. Morris

March 08, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Thriller

Rating: 8/10

A taut thriller that is also a searing story about the secrets we can never seem to leave behind. Every lie you tell, every secret you keep, is a fragile little thing that must be protected and accounted for. One misstep, one miscalculation, and your little prejuries can topple the perfect life you’ve built around them.

March 03, 2022

Decagon House Murders - Yukito Ayatsuji

March 03, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Mystery/Fiction

Rating: 8/10

On a remote island, seven members of a mystery club have gathered, summoned there under inscrutable circumstances. Told in tandem by a club member who didn’t make the trip and those on the island, this is a brilliantly crafted mystery!

March 03, 2022

No One Can Hear You Scream...

March 03, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Sci-Fi Horror Novels Are All The Rage!

Dead Silene - S.A. Barnes

Salvaged - Madeline Roux

Savlvation Day - Kali Wallace

Luminous Dead - Caitlan Starling

Girl With All The Gifts - Mike Carey

The Deep - Alma Katsua

Burning Dark - Adam Christopher

Infected - Scott Sigler

Intercepts - T. J. Payne

Hail Mary - Andy Weir

Feed - Mira Grant

Cold Storage - David Koepp

Gideon The Ninth - Tamsyn Muir

We Have Always Been Here - Lena Nguyen

Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu

Fireman - Joe Hill

Six Wakes - Mur Lafferty

Andromedia Strain - Michael Crichton

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

March 03, 2022

The. End.

March 03, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Dystopian & Post Apocalyptic Tales

The Stand - Stephen King

Leave The World Behind - Rumann Alam

Bird Box - Josh Malerman

The Passage - Justin Cronin

The Girl With All The Gifts - M.R. Carey

Parable Of The Sower - Octavia E. Butler

Severance - Ling Ma

Moon Of The Crusted Snow - Waubgeshig Rice

Afterland - Lauren Buekes

Book Of M - Peng Shepherd

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemisin

The Phlebotomist - Chris Panatier

Riot Baby - Tochi Onyebuchi

Lakewood - Megan Giddings

Songs For The End Of The World - Saleema Nawaz

The Warehouse - Rob Hart

Company Town - Madeline Ashby

Trail Of Lightning - Rebecca Roanhorse

March 01, 2022

The Dispatcher - John Scalzi

March 01, 2022/ Donna Sherwood

Sci-Fi/Mystery

Rating: 7.5/10

Imagine you are out for a walk with your spouse and as you stand at the edge of a cliff enjoying a spectacular view, all the irritations of day-to-day life flood in and you give them a push. Upon your return home, a newfound spring in your step, there they are. All the pieces put together again.

Blog

Books For The Music Fan…

Neurodiversity In Literature…

Fiction To Devour…

Fiction

Rating: 9/10

Mystery

Rating: 4/10

Mystery/Fiction

Rating: 9/10

Mystery

Rating: 7.5/10

Thriller/Sci-Fi

Rating: 7.5/10

Literary Debuts…

On The Books-Well, That Didn’t Happen!

Thriller

Rating: 8/10

Thriller

Rating: 8.5/10

A Literary Restoration…

Thriller

Rating: 8.5/10

Thriller

Rating: 8.5/10

Thriller

Rating: 8/10

Mystery/Fiction

Rating: 8/10

Sci-Fi Horror Novels Are All The Rage!

Dystopian & Post Apocalyptic Tales

Sci-Fi/Mystery

Rating: 7.5/10

Cracking the Spine

On My Nightstand