I Only Read Murder by Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2023 $24.99 / 9781443470766 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * I Only Read Murder is a zippy whodunit by Victoria’s Ian Ferguson and Calgary’s Will Ferguson with plentiful red herrings, comedic zingers, and miscommunication. If you’re looking for fun escapism with a satirical…
Read more 1925 Murder-mystery, where comedy prevails
Girlfriend on Mars By Deborah Willis Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2023 $34.00 / 9780670069583 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * With a nod and wink, Vancouver’s Deborah Willis titles her story about a preposterously engineered mission to terraform Mars Girlfriend on Mars. The wonderfully lightweight word “Girlfriend” plays with the discrepancy between the gravity of a real…
Read more 1919 Mars, mirth, metadata
New Millennium Boyz By Alex Kazemi New York: Permuted Press, 2023 $37 / 9781637583913 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * In some ways, Brad Seela is a typical seventeen-year-old white boy coasting through an apathetic life in the suburban North America of 1999: bored with school, indifferent about the future, disillusioned with his yuppie parents, susceptible…
Read more 1917 Teenage wasteland, Y2K bromance
Reuniting with Strangers By Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2023 $22.95 / 9781771623582 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio has written an engaging novel that tells the stories of the reunification of Filipino caregiver families over one Canadian winter. She has done this in an engaging and most unique way; not simply…
Read more 1916 Migratory Filipinos scraping by in Osoyoos, Sarnia, and Iqaluit
Laundering the Dragon–Black Renminbi By John D’Eathe Vancouver: Adagio Media, 2021 $17.99 / 9781999433918 Reviewed by Valerie Green * John D’Eathe has written what is described as “a contemporary melodramatic novel” set in recent times about a current day problem in the powerful, international financial business world. D’Eathe begins his book with an…
Read more 1915 Money laundering and melodrama
Bookworm By Robin Yeatman Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 2023 $23.99 / 9780063273009 Reviewed by Candace Fertile * It’s hard to understand why Victoria, the bookworm in Robin Yeatman’s debut novel, marries Eric. She doesn’t seem to have known him well before joining her life to his and is utterly miserable with him. Victoria spends most of…
Read more 1909 Regimented and tedious in Montreal
The Get: A Crime Novel By Dietrich Kalteis Toronto, ON: ECW Press, 2023 $26.95 / 9781770416840 Reviewed by Bill Paul * It’s 1965 and two street-wise Jewish hoods in Toronto, Lenny Ovitz and Gabe Zoller, hope to make bundles of money investing in a run-down tenement block near St. James Town. They’ve caught “wind that…
Read more 1906 The undoing of Lenny Ovitz
The Sum of One Man’s Pleasure By Danial Neil Edmonton, AB: NeWest Press, 2023 $22.95 / 9781774390788 Reviewed by W.H. New * The narrator of Danial Neil’s sixth novel, The Sum of One Man’s Pleasure, is an Irish-born Canadian named Finn Kenny, who has come to a point when he feels he must make his…
Read more 1904 Quiet detail within a stylistic mix
Time and The Place By Will Goede Oakville, ON: Rock’s Mills Press, 2023 $25 / 9781772442816 Reviewed by Joe Enns * Life in general can be depressing if you live long enough or think about it too much. In Will Goede’s novel Time and The Place, the main character, Junior, references the Latin tempus edax…
Read more 1898 Being and nothingness on a farm
Exit Strategies By Paul Cresey Calgary, AB: Freehand Books, 2023 $22.95 / 9781990601316 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * Paul Cresey’s Exit Strategies is the type of debut that arrives like a foreshock—a book that shakes things up just enough to know that something big is just around the corner. Exit Strategies collects 18…
Read more 1895 A ‘foreshock’ of a literary debut
Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality By Lindsay Wong Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2023 $32.95 / 9780735242364 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Probably the West’s most iconic piece of short fiction begins with a shock: an office clerk wakes up one morning to discover that he has been inexplicably transformed into “vermin” (usually taken to be…
Read more 1889 Wealth, family, and the ‘spectrum of female suffering’
A Shattered Calm By Bruce F.B. Hall Victoria: FriesenPress, 2023 $24.32 / 9781039134836 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Bruce F.B. Hall retired early to travel, to sail, and to become a storyteller while using a wide range of his own experiences to become an author of note. A Shattered Calm, Hall’s self-published debut novel, is…
Read more 1888 A ‘particularly spellbinding’ thriller
Quality Time By Suzannah Showler Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2023 $24.95 / 9780771003684 Reviewed by Bill Paul * Quality Time is a romantic comedy about a young couple madly in love and living in Toronto during Rob Ford’s era as mayor. Lydie and Nico (short for Nicolas) are discovering the myriad pleasures and worries that…
Read more 1887 Truly madly deeply
Landscapes By Christine Lai Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2023 $29.95 / 9780385684248 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * Landscapes by Vancouver’s Christine Lai is an ambitious, atmospheric debut novel, told artfully and often through art. The protagonist, Penelope, is dreading a reunion with Julian, her former love interest and rapist from twenty-two years ago, who is also…
Read more 1886 Artfully, maddeningly told fiction
Boy in the Blue Hammock By Darren Groth Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2022 $22.95 / 9780889714267 Reviewed by Jeff Stychin * If you’ve ever walked alone at sunset to a summit view of the place you reside and reminisced about your travels and experiences, imagine adding an ethereal mist with shimmering silvers and golds to…
Read more 1884 Dog and Boy
Troll By Logan Macnair Vancouver: Now Or Never Press, 2023 19.95 / 9781989689479 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * I used to work in an indie bookstore that would not stock Jordan Peterson’s books. At the time, I was miraculously ignorant about Peterson’s existence; life was 3.5% better. When I realized why my former boss staunchly…
Read more 1883 Like ‘signing a waiver to having your blood pressure raised’
The Malevolent Seven By Sebastien de Castell London: Jo Fletcher Books, 2023 $35.00 / 9781529422771 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * Full disclosure: Sebastien de Castell is a friend of mine. We met at a writer’s group several years ago just after he published his first novel, Traitor’s Blade, a swashbuckling, sword-fighting fantasy. I read it then,…
Read more 1882 Blood magic, rat mages, and righteousness
The Wild By Owen Laukkanen Toronto: Underlined, 2021 $13.99 / 9780593179741 Reviewed by C.L. Shoemaker * YA fiction by mystery writer and Vancouver resident Owen Laukkanen, The Wild is a third-person dive into the thoughts and ideas of Dawn, a seventeen-year-old drug addict living with a drug dealer twice her age. When Dawn comes home…
Read more 1881 Grief, detox, murder, and wilderness tips
Radio Jet Lag By Gregor Craigie Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2023 $24.95 / 9781770866713 Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy * Radio Jet Lag, a lightly satiric comic novel, is at once a paean to the city of Victoria, a detailed account of the fast-paced world of radio broadcasting, a portrait of the trials and tribulations of contemporary…
Read more 1878 Satiric comedy with ‘relevant themes and a compelling plot’
Someday I’ll Find You By C.C. Humphreys Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2023 $25.00 / 9780385690515 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Loosely based on his parents’ true story, C.C. Humphreys has produced an enthralling page-turner set in World War 2—it’s a novel you will not be able to put down. Someday I’ll Find You tells the story…
Read more 1877 Love, cloak-and-dagger espionage, and WW2