Independent Book Reviews for Independent Readers.
Written for middle-grade readers, TIMEFLIES takes the time travel trope in a different direction: the three children, Grizelda (Griz), Sam and his sister Alisha can only time travel to get answers to a question they pose. Once they get the answer, they are back in the present. Oh, and in their travels, they are three common houseflies. Different, isn’t it? And how do they get to perform this feat you ask?… Continue reading
Warning! Reading this book will leave you exhausted! I was only a few chapters in when I had to put down the book and wonder aloud: “How does a seventy-year-old manage to do all this in a day?” Let me back up and explain what Sandra Phinney’s Waking Up In My Own Backyard (2017, Pottersfield Press) is all about.
Basically “Waking Up” came about as an idea to do something different -each day- for 31 days straight.… Continue reading
Canadian author David Cozac was born and raised in Toronto. He works for the United Nations. In the past, he worked for several human rights organizations, including PEN Canada and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
Finishing the Road (2017, Tightrope Books) is Mr Cozac’s debut novel and it certainly augurs well for any future books he may pen. Set in Guatemala in the closing years of its Civil War (1960-1999), it involves three principal characters: Marc, a young man from Toronto who is in the country to learn Spanish, Sixteen-year-old Magdalena and her younger brother Jacinto, Ixil people now living in Guatemala City whose father was taken away by the military, and whose mother died while they were hiding from government troops in the jungle, and Claire, a French journalist who has recently learned of her Guatemalan father and has traveled to the country to meet him for the first time.… Continue reading
Wong is the author of five non-fiction bestsellers, including Out of the Blue and Red China Blues, named one of Time magazine’s top ten non-fiction books of 1996. She has won numerous journalism awards and is now a professor of journalism at St. Thomas University. A third-generation Canadian, Jan is the eldest daughter of a prominent Montreal restaurateur.
Apron Strings (2017 Goose Lane Editions) is a different kind of book.… Continue reading