Editorial Reviews

Destiny of Determination: Faith and Family is Cathy Burnham Martin’s engrossing true account of her ancestors’ escape from the Armenian genocide and the rebuilding of their lives in America. This multigenerational family saga, told mostly via backstories and history, is full of joy, sorrow, and the miraculous, including a startling miracle at the book’s end. The book reads more as a work of non-fiction than a novel, as it is mainly a chronicle of events with fairly straightforward prose, and would be better served by a first-person narrator, but Martin lovingly and emotionally preserves her family’s history, for an engaging […]

The Story of My Life: Childhood Never Lasts by Vaughn J. Samuel is a tumultuous memoir that gives heartwarming insight into how hope and hard work can pay off, despite terrible circumstances. For Samuel, this came through considerable hardships of her childhood, which no child should have to endure, as she worked hard to apply herself and excel, with no support. The style throughout her narrative is simple and unassuming, conveyed with straightforward honesty. Samuel is forthright about her struggles while crediting God for her successes in the economic booms of the eighties and nineties, bringing her story to a […]

Scott Allen Benkie delivers a candid legal thriller in his novel The Lawyer’s Angel. Attorney James Crosson is at his wit’s end with heavy gambling debt and a failing practice, which leads him to take a case involving a CEO despot who is doing everything he can to maintain his throne. Benkie accurately depicts the toxicity of wealth and power through his plutocratic characters, giving the thriller a sense of acerbic social critique. Some dense legal diction slows the novel down at times, and there is an overuse of ethnic stereotypes, but the resolution where characters reimagine their lives […]

Reflective, profound, and haunting, The Jukebox Kid by Loren Jakobov is a powerful collection of emotionally raw verse – a free-verse kaleidoscope of hope and regret, nature, and the mind. Visceral flashbacks shared in “Summertime Dance” juxtapose with dark musings like “The Flimsy Shape of Things” and enigmatic koans such as “Born in the Mojave,” keeping the true thematic heart of this poetry a mystery. Though some of the pieces could use a proofread, purely for spelling and word usage, the experimental form makes these small slips less obvious, allowing readers to lose themselves in the fractured memories and wisdom […]

With a sublime balance of heartbreak and humor, Judy Haveson shares her life story in Laugh Cry Rewind. Growing up in a loving Jewish family could not protect Haveson’s childhood from unthinkable traumas, including a random act of violence and the death of her adored sister, Celia. Her sister’s calm and wisdom stayed alive in Haveson’s memory as she navigated college, careers, dating, marriage and miscarriages, the deaths of beloved family members, and celebrated the birth of her son. Reading more like an autobiography with its strict chronology, Laugh Cry Rewind is intimate and mesmerizing thanks to Haveson’s conversational […]

A gritty, fast-paced, and sexy thrill, The Fragment Murder by Andrew Bonar is the latest conspiratorial installment of the Drew Law & Ashley Tinder mystery series. A young woman desperate to earn her place in a shadowy cabal, a steamy pair of nontraditional sleuths, a bit of mind control, conspiracy theories, and an epic McGuffin that pushes the boundaries of reality all comprise this multilayered read, which practically hums with tension and excitement. Leaping artfully through time and space, without straining credulity, the storytelling on display is impressive and refreshingly original, for a novel that defies genre and expectation.

 […]

A visionary novel of humanity’s ongoing struggle as we spread across the stars, The Bush Clinic by Stella Atrium is a character-driven drama that pits Hippocratic Oaths against hypocritical and patriarchal control. Addressing fears of recreating oppressive traditions on other worlds, this space colonization novel is far more than standard sci-fi, it is a femme-led examination of our societal ills, and a celebration of the strength found through open-mindedness and sisterhood. With diverse narrative voices, remarkably detailed world-building, and a strong coming-of-age theme for characters and communities alike, this is a powerful start to a new series.

 […]

In this powerful memoir, I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls, Mary Ellen Gambutti narrates the complicated journey to restoring her identity after adoption. Gambutti describes her upbringing, in turns idyllic and traumatic, through reconstructed memories, speculation, and vignettes, aided throughout by personal knowledge, letters, and other artifacts. While some generalizations dilute the memoir’s pointed focus on adoption, readers will be enlightened by Gambutti’s portrayal of an adoptee’s pervasive feelings of loss, impermanence, and abandonment. Gambutti explains how adoptees must stay hypervigilant, which takes center stage when she devotes herself to the search for her family of […]