 My Year of Rest and Relaxation Written by Ottessa Moshfegh Review by Julie Carpenter and Jarad Johnson Jarad's Take:
This is a book that Julie lent me to read recently, and when I heard the premise I was immediately interested, but I didn’t know what to expect. I read the blurb and wondered how you could fill an entire book writing about a woman who was sleeping. So, I cracked it open this week and I was surprised. I didn’t like any of the characters, although they are objectively hilarious (Spoiler alert: not every character has to be likeable to make a good story), but I was still hooked.
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 Johannes Cabal, the Detective Written by Jonathan L. Howard Review by Jarad Johnson I reviewed and loved the first book in this series – check it out here. The protagonist, for whom these books are named is a man named Johannes Cabal, a necromancer and antihero. He’s diabolical in an endearing way, he’s sarcastic, and has a general dislike of people (I wonder why I like him so much?). He describes himself as a scientist on a mission to abolish death.
 High Static, Dead Lines Written by Kristen Gallerneaux Review by Roy Peak Lou Reed exclaimed in song that "Electricity comes from other planets," and he may be more right than he ever knew.
Reading a book should expand one's knowledge as well as entertain. It should take you to places you have never been to before, that you would not have been able to arrive at on your own. It should be a journey of openness, with mysteries revealed layer by layer as you read deeper into its pages. Once you have finished a book -- a really great book — you should be a different person than when you started.  Garment of Shadows Written by Laurie R. King Review by Jarad Johnson In another installment of Laurie Kings thrilling Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, King delivers an enthralling story. The twelfth book in this series opens with Russel having lost her memory, in a place she doesn’t recognize with armed police at the door. She makes her escape just in time, but for the next couple of days she wanders around a city in Morocco, with her detective skills still intact, before she is found by Holmes.
 The multigenerational novel takes us through five generations of witches, the Orchiere from 1821 France to England in WWII. The novel shows the reader a brief history of each woman, usually around the time she inherits her power, which is passed from mother to daughter. But, I have to say, for this to be a book about witches, there is surprisingly little magic in the novel, and the witches in the novel don’t seem to use their power all that much. I was curious about this, and after some googling, I found an interview in which the author called the sort of things we would normally associate with witches like cauldrons, broomsticks, spell casting, etc, “easy magic” and that “Their craft represents knowledge, and power, and the thing some people fear most in women—independence.” I actually really like this approach to witchcraft. (Of course, I still would have liked more magic to appear in the novel.) The novel has a strong feminist core, that comes to the forefront when the mothers insist that their daughters understand how their magic gives them power.
 There’s something light and clean about Flore’s poetry, even when he talks about stints in psych wards, homelessness, or other traumatic events. Reading one of his collections is like sitting at the beach watching the ocean wash over the garbage, cleaning the detritus wave after wave.
 In The Hate U Give, the protagonist, Starr, faces a series of heartbreaking challenges following the murder of her childhood friend Kahlil. Because Starr goes to a private school called Williamson, unlike most of the kids in her neighborhood, who go to the Garden Heights public school, she struggles with having censor herself around the different groups of people in her life. In the world of Williamson, Starr holds herself back, fearing casual racism from her peers. In the world of Garden Heights, Starr feels that she has to work harder to be accepted because she goes to a predominantly white school.
 The plot of this novel is multilayered, multidimensional, and fluid. This makes it hard to know where to start sometimes, so I’ll try to begin by give a general overview of the book. The main character is named Carmel, and the novel follows her as she moves from her parent’s house to a boarding school. The reader follows her as she struggles with anorexia and her studies. The plot moves from event to event, memory to memory, and in that sense is very realistic, because when you recount an even it doesn’t come to you in a linear fashion. The novel is in a sense like looking into the mind of someone else- literally. It deals with many issues, including eating disorders, depression, body dysmorphia and abortion. Really, I can’t say that this novel is about any particular thing; it’s just Carmel’s life. There is no message, no point, it just tells her story, and leaves interpretations up to the reader. Not to say that there isn’t meaning, but there’s no agenda.
 Sacred Chickens has, published Paul Brooke’s poetry and reviewed his chapbooks and before, and he’s one of our favorites. His verse is distilled into singular moments that are paradoxically extraordinarily narrative. This chapbook is no exception. It reaches the apex of this juxtaposition, containing whole life stories in the shape of a hand, or a sticky note on the refrigerator. Every poem is a tiny aperture into a widening depth of experience.
 Expansive in scope and plot formation, Homegoing details the stories of two sisters separated at birth on the Gold Coast, which is modern day Ghana. It follows them and their descendants, and tells the story of slavery, the horrors of a plantation, the abolition of slavery and how new forms of slavery took its place, the crack epidemic of the 80s, all the way up to the present day. The story begins when a mother starts a fire to save herself and her daughter. Throughout the novel, we see examples of just how far the mothers in this story, many of whom were slaves but not all, will go to save their children. We see mothers in impossible situations, where speaking out or rebelling means death, still they try to make sure their children are safe. T Various types of mothers – some abusive, some who killed their child, some who sacrifice their own lives for a child’s freedom, mothers who were trying to survive in abominable conditions – are the foundation of this novel. Gyasi illustrates how a mother’s love, and love in general, can overcome the most powerful hatred, the most ardent bigotry, and the vilest racism. Because, you see, even in the most degrading and dehumanizing situations, in the face of true evil, there was love, even dampened by fear and horror. And where there is love, there is hope.
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