Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter is a strange little book. It follows a dad and his two sons as they mourn the sudden and unexpected death of his wife. In the book, grief takes the form of a big crow named Crow. Thinking back on it, I'm not sure if he was a giant crow or a regular sized crow. For some reason in my mind I thought of him as a human sized crow, but yeah maybe that isn't accurate.

The writing in this book is poetic, which is fitting because the father is a Ted Hughes scholar. Many of the chapters share touching and insightful moments of a family dealing with the pain of losing a loved one. However, the chapters from Crow's perspective were often erratic and nonsensical. I'm not sure if I just didn't get it or if there was nothing to get.

This book is a quick read and I think many people would enjoy it. I did enjoy it, despite the Crow chapters being weird. It wasn't the idea of a talking babysitter grief Crow that was too weird... it was the writing in the Crow chapters that I didn't really enjoy.

I'll end this review with one of my favorite quotes from the book (not from a crow chapter) to give you a little taste of the beautiful parts. "I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her."

A Fatal Grace is the second of Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series. And it was fine. I liked it, but I didn't love it. I like the coziness of the characters and town now that they're more familiar, but... I don't know, I'm just not completely on board? I'll probably keep reading the series because I do at least like the books and people say they pick up after the fourth one.

The second book in the series, this book takes Gamache back to Three Pines to solve the seemingly impossible (but for real, this method of murder would never happen) murder of one of it's newest residents. As Gamache investigates, he uncovers old ties of the deceased to the town.

However... this book is kind of forgettable? But also predictable? It's been about a month since I finished it and I barely remember any details. I also predicted more in this book than I did in Still Life. The mystery wasn't as well crafted, in my opinion.

Anyway, I'll probably read more Lousie Penny, because now the characters are familiar but also because I already bought the third book when I bought this one. If you aren't in the LP club... I guess I still don't feel like I can tell you it's worth it. Maybe I'll feel that way in a few more books but for now I'm still not entirely sold.

You Will Not Have My Hate is a memoir by Antoine Leiris. Antoine's wife, Helene, was killed in the 2015 terrorist attack at Bataclan theatre in Paris. Antoine and Helene had a 17 month old son at the time. Antoine wrote the book about a year after the attack.

This book is short but his grief is so open and honest, it packs a big punch. He doesn't dwell on the attack or go into detail about what happened that night - his focus is on how life goes on afterwards. His words are devastating at times, like when the meter man shows up to read the electric meter, and he thinks "how dare the world continue to turn?"

His words are full of grace and suffering. He describes his dive into single fatherhood and his trip to identify his wife's body at the morgue. I couldn't stop reading. This book reminded me how good I have it.

The way Antoine goes on with his life is inspirational and heartbreaking. This book also took me under an hour to read. I would recommend this short, quick book to everyone.

Here it is... the review you've allll been waiting for! Not really, but this is my review of Bookstagram's hot book of the moment, The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. I think I'm in the minority on this once because I didn't love love it. I liked it. But it definitely had some weaknesses to me, which are what I will focus on because basically all the other reviews I've read of it have been ultra positive.

The Immortalists is about four siblings: Simon, Klara, Daniel (almost wrote Benjamin for some reason here... I'll get to that later) and Varya. As children, the siblings visit a fortune teller who predicts the date each of them will die. This book follows the siblings through their lives as they grapple with the consequences of "knowing" the date of their death. This book asks how knowing when you would die would shape your choices and how you lived.

The book is divided into sections for each character from youngest to oldest. However, because the book is still chronological, you skip over large parts of character development for the older characters. By the time you get to Daniel and Varya, you've missed half their lives. I wanted to see more of them. I feel like you miss all of their formative moments.

I thought Klara's section was the strongest. She was the most developed, and I feel like you got the biggest glimpse into her mind and thought process. Daniel's was forgettable for me - I almost forgot his name when I first started writing this review! Simon's part felt rushed and I thought it had so much potential to go deeper. I wouldn't have minded if this was a longer book if it meant getting to know the characters more. Simon's part also had some semi-graphic sexual details that felt out of place for the book (there were no other details like that for the other characters), and it made it seem like those details were there for the shock factor or the "look how open minded this book is" factor of gay sex. It didn't bother me, that's not what I'm saying - it just felt out of place considering there were no other sexual encounters described in detail. Also I don't think my saying Simon is gay in this review is a spoiler - you learn that very early on in the book.

Because you only see parts of each character's life, it felt like the book jumped around a lot. However, I think this could totally work - I just wanted to go deeper into each moment. Even fewer moments would have worked for me if they were more insightful. It kind of felt like, look at what happened to this character, instead of look at this character's thought process and view of the world. I don't know - this could have been better for me.

Overall, I did like this book - there were big ideas, and some parts did make me a bit emotional. I also liked the "will they all die on their predicted days" mystery, which had me wanting to keep reading to find out. I think I will read whatever Chloe Benjamin writes next, because this book had moments of insight and feeling that I really connected with, and I'm hoping that she can write more and more moments like that in her future books. This book was a solid 3.5 stars for me. I think it is worth checking out for yourself!

Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton is exactly my type of book. I love and all stories involving mysterious events turning the world into a post-apocalyptic one (The Road, Station Eleven, The End We Start From... all of them). I also loved The Martian, so basically I knew from the synopsis that this book combining a crew stuck in space and a researcher at the North Pole would be an auto-like. And I was not wrong.

In Good Morning, Midnight, we don’t know what has happened to the world, but all communication stops and both the researcher and his young companion (a child left behind) and the crew in space on their journey back to Earth are left wondering and alone. As the researcher tries to survive and care for a child he didn’t ask for, and as Sully, an astronaut, lives with a crew in various phases of denial/depression/hopelessness over their loss in communication, they reflect on their lives leading up to this point.

This is a pretty quiet book. I liked the writing and found the story to be entertaining enough, although I wouldn’t say it’s very plot driven. I enjoyed getting to know the characters, and the way that the author weaves everything together is skillful, although a touch contrived.


Although I liked this book every time I picked it up, it took me awhile to get through and I’m not sure why. This was a 3.5-4 star read for me, and I would recommend it to fans of the genre or anyone looking for an introspective read.

Finally getting around to reviewing Idaho by Emily Ruskovich! This book caught my eye a long time ago (when it was brand new) because of the gorgeous color, but I hadn’t heard ANYTHING (bad or good) about it, so I put off buying it for awhile. Eventually I caved and bought it anyway, and when I first posted it on Instagram, lots of people told me they loved it!

Idaho is about Anne and her husband Wade, and so much more than that. Wade has dementia. Ann is living with Wade in the homestead he built with his ex-wife Jenny, where they lived with their two daughters until (as the description says) something unimaginably shocking happens. Just a little bit of a warning, you find out what happens early on. This definitely isn’t a thriller. As Wade’s health and memory gets worse, Ann pieces together the story of his family. This book is told from multiple perspectives, including Anne’s and someone in prison with Jenny.

This book is a slow burn of feelings and I loved it. I felt like Ann was curious and relatable. The only thing I didn’t like is that to me, there was some confusion about what went down exactly or why something happened with Jenny. But, I think this was intentional.

The writing in this book is gorgeous and I will pick up anything Emily Ruskovich writes from here on out. I was totally emotionally invested... but this book is quiet. I don’t think I cried, but I did still feel like I was there with Ann. This book is definitely tense too... in a nuanced way.

I really loved this book, but I can see why some people weren’t entirely sold. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys books that are more of a slow opening into a character, instead of entirely plot driven. This was a 4-star read for me.