There is such a visceral sense of place in this book. The author clearly knows Northern Ontario's landscape well, and this small town's remoteness and isolation is as much a character in the story as the protagonist and her family.
Orphaned at a young age, the book follows Katie and her siblings as they struggle to forge a life together in a town where their tragedy is just one in a long line of them.
Paralleling the story of her youth, the book weaves in Katie's now-adult life in Toronto, where she has escaped into a life of academia. When her past and present collide, she has to face some truths about herself and the relationship she once shared with her beloved older brother, Matt.
Sibling relationships are almost always complex, whether viewed from a child's perspective or as an adult. This book combines the two in a way that is both heartbreaking and painfully real.
The Morrison siblings have been haunted by tragedy since the sudden death of their parents in an accident when they were young.
Kate found an escape from the legacy of their dark past in her passion for the natural world. Now a zoologist far away from the small farming community where she grew up, she thinks she's outgrown her three brothers, who were once her entire world.
But Kate can't seem to escape her childhood or lighten the weight of their mutual past.
'I've been trying to tell everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each one of…
I'm not ashamed to say I love Jeff Zentner. Every one of his books has kicked me in the feels and left me mourning after reading the last page just because I'm so devastated to be finished. And this book was no different.
Cash is a damaged kid living in a small town in Tennessee. His grandparents have taken over bringing him up since his mother OD'd when Cash was 13. He adores his grandparents, who adore him, making it harder for his grandfather to slowly die from emphysema.
Equally damaged is Cash's best friend, Delaney. The pair spend much of their time on the river in Cash's canoe. And it's on the river that Delaney discovers a fungus that may change modern medicine.
Off the back of this discovery, Delaney is offered a scholarship to an exclusive New England private school. And somehow, she manages to get Cash one, too, so she doesn't have to go alone. On the one hand, this is an opportunity of a lifetime for Cash, but on the other, how can he leave when he can't be sure his Pawpaw will still be alive when he returns? But how can he allow Delaney to go so far away on her own?
This is a remarkable book about the resilience of the human spirit. Cash's life has broken him time and time again, yet he somehow manages to keep going. And to keep loving despite the pain this obviously causes him. He's my favorite kind of character - a damaged boy who somehow manages to remain a good person who does his best to make things better for the people he cares about.
I've always loved when the light finds the broken spots in the world and makes them beautiful . . .
Cash's life in his small Tennessee town is hard. He lost his mom to an opioid addiction and his grandfather's illness is getting worse. His smart but troubled best friend, Delaney, is his only salvation. But Delaney is meant for greater things, and she finds a way for Cash to leave with her. Will abandoning his old life be the thing that finally breaks Cash, or will it be the making of him?
Set in two eras, The Smallest Color follows Coop through the summer in the 1960s when his brother disappeared and again when he's in his forties, and the trauma of that summer begins to haunt him all over again.
The two stories weave together seamlessly, capturing the voice of sixteen-year-old Coop as well as the older, more world-weary one without making the two seem like completely different people. The older Coop isn't the nicest guy, and some of his choices are seriously fucked up, but when viewed in the context of what happened years before, they are completely true to his character.
The depiction of the sixties and the counterculture movements that swelled in strength during this time is vivid. It feels wholly realistic, as does Coop's devotion to his brother, whom he's admired throughout their childhood. Together, they have survived and defied their overbearing father, and it is this that bonds them as they travel through that last summer together. The summer leads to the disappearance that continues to haunt Coop's life.
When his mother threatens to hire a detective to try once and for all to find out what happened that summer, Coop must face up to what happened before the secrets he's been holding for 30 years tear him and the life he's built apart.
Beautifully written and with an intriguing mystery at the center, this book will keep you turning pages long into the night.
The thirty-year-old secret about what happened to his older brother haunts Coop Henry, but when cracks begin to form in the family's tight facade, he will be forced to confront the truth.
Our secrets can come to define us, and sometimes after lying asleep for a long spell, a secret can awake frantic and hungry. Coop Henry's secret needs attention. His missing brother haunts his life and his life isn't holding up well under the strain. When his mother threatens to hire a detective in one last desperate attempt to discover what has happened to his brother thirty years before,…
Seventeen-year-old Stas Nonu has nothing more to worry about than looking like a pumpkin in the bridesmaid dress her mother picked out for her wedding to long-time partner, Mama K.
When Stas finds her mother’s body in a pool of blood, and evidence points to her father as the murderer, she realizes how uncomplicated things were. Especially when two aunts she’s never met fly from Russia and start talking about her coming to live with them. Then her father’s brother shows up with reasons why Stas should live with him.
If Stas can’t figure out a way to prove Mama K is as much her mother as the woman who gave birth to her, she might find herself banished to Siberia. Or somewhere even worse.
