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An utterly charming foray into the mysterious world of forest gnomes and their nature-loving culture. When new gnome Grolly Maru arrives in the mushroom circle of The Pocket, he’s unsure of his purpose and so must be shown the delights in everything around him and the jobs each gnome takes on that brings them joy. Whether it’s observing the moon, recognizing patterns in nature, foraging and making tasty treats or just enjoying the elements and other creatures in the forest, there’s something transformative just in following along on each little adventure.

Lauren Soloy imbues this picture book with a quiet love and appreciation of nature, in little scenes featuring a web being built, a snail travelling a leaf, time slows down in the perusal and hunt for all the details hidden on each page. She celebrates individuality in her diverse set of gnomes, each with their own distinct personality, and the gifts we all bring to the world just in being ourselves.

Her illustrations are dynamic and adorable, the story soft and simple but poetic. The Newest Gnome is a beautiful reminder to appreciate the quiet wonder in the everyday, all around us.

My thanks to Netgalley and Tundra Books for the ebook review copy. I’ll be purchasing this for my kids’ collection!

audiobook provided by Penguin Random House through the Librofm influencer program

I really enjoy a generational family saga. In Good Dirt we’re with the Freemans—one of the only Black families in a wealthy enclave in New England. Ten-year-old Ebby witnesses her brother get murdered during a home invasion and we see how that loss shapes her as an adult. Tracing the generations back through the passing of a historic jar handed down through their family, we’re introduced to the enslaved potters who made uncredited beautiful work, and used it as an instrument of escape; the newly free Black sailors that worked on whaling and trade ships always at risk of being captured again; the road to freedom and the legacy and trauma of the journey passed down through generations; how eventual affluence and generational wealth might insulate but ultimately can’t protect the Freemans from prejudice and violence.

This was a solid read, the history of enslaved Black potters and free sailors was fascinating, and I’d have like to stay with them even longer than the time we had. I liked main character Ebby but found her more romantic storyline centered around losing her white fiancé then running into him at a rental house in France kind of out of place to the rest of the novel. It almost felt as though I were reading two very different books but, not in a necessarily bad way. Enjoyable but constantly shifting wavelengths.

I found myself really enjoying this when I turned it on, but a bit forgettable when I wasn’t actively listening. And at times I got a little lost in the timeline. But, the audiobook is narrated by January LaVoy who is phenomenal so I was able to forgive any issues I had with the novel and just allow myself to be carried along for the ride.

I haven’t read Charmaine Wilerson’s other book Black Cake yet but feel like I definitely want to prioritize it now!

I’ll be dropping by some of my local libraries this month to read Snow Day and do snow-themed crafts with the kids! If you’re local, I’d love to see you!

This is the official cover, didn’t she do amazing?

I just can’t wait for you all to see the heart we poured into this story.

You can currently pre-order the book at our local independent bookseller Woozles.

The publisher’s synopsis:

A joyful, rhyming story in the vein of Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day, this debut children’s picture book follows an Indigenous family as they enjoy the magic of a winter storm.

All is quiet on the snow-laden street.
Not a single soul makes a teeny-tiny peep.
Then,
With a bound and a bang and a funny kind of twirl
Out comes a bundled-up joyful little girl.

Capturing the magic of a snowfall, Snow Day follows an Indigenous family as they experience all of the delights of a winter’s day. While Mom shovels the driveway and Dad cares for her brother by the fire, a young girl and her dog make snowflake tea, build a snow caterpillar, catch snowflakes on their tongues, and make snow angels. All while the snow continues to fall. At the end of the day, the girl is beckoned inside by the promise of hot chocolate, and regales her family with her adventures’ and dreams of doing it all again tomorrow.

Atmospheric, nostalgic, and full of winter fun, the debut picture book by mixed-Cree journalist, book reviewer, and podcast host Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird is a celebration of Indigenous joy and childhood wonder. Features warm, colourful artwork rendered in traditional gouache and coloured pencil from debut illustrator Ashley Thimot.

There was something deeply nostalgic in the newest Sally Rooney book, for me. Reminiscent of a time when I used to send long emails rife with insecurities and ideals like the ones that drove me crazy in this book between Alice and Eileen. Was I as annoying as this? I think I must have been, as we all are looking back at the decisions and inclinations that drove us in our twenties. That inner debate, do we deserve love? Am I sabotaging this relationship, or is it inherently toxic? Are we outgrowing our friendships, or are they just harder work when you’re not living together or seeing each other every day? When you choose what to work at—prioritize—does that mean you love everything else less?

I love Sally Rooney because even when her characters are so pretentious and annoying that I want to claw my own eyes out, I am still invested. They have that cringe factor, like what keeps you up at night, reliving every conversation and moment that you regret. On the surface, this is a book about two best friends and the men they are involved with, their own grappling of their lives, careers and what they need from a partner and a friend. With Rooney, the magic isn’t in the story, it’s in the details of the characters and their day to day. There’s not a moment that I step outside of them and question their motives as characters, the narrative is real, authentic. They’re a bunch of idiots and assholes and deeply ordinary. Somehow, that’s exactly where the magic is.

I put garlic to bed for the first time, separating cloves, the skin tissue paper thin and remind myself of futures where they might multiply, if I do it right.

My grandmother dies—complications related to Covid-19—we’re in a pandemic, still. They lay her to rest with ceremony and feast. My husband cooks a turkey dinner, the best we’ve ever had. And we feast, too. Don’t be ungrateful. I’m thankful and angry, too.

The last of my grandparents, and I feel older, more tired. “Just wear a fucking mask,” I tell people, post into the abyss, my echo chamber. While protestors gather in front of hospitals, because they can’t stand the inconvenience of a piece of cloth, a paper. Never mind the loss of our elders, our stories and histories, we won’t ever hear now because we never did call enough.

I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?

Well. I think I’ve reached my fill of the teachers preying on students themed books for maybe ever. Tampa was such a visceral read I hated myself for even finishing it, sick to my stomach the entire time because Alissa Nutting is such a talented writer I felt trapped in the mind of Celeste Price, an eighth grade English teacher who unapologetically preys on teen boys with the singular obsession of a shark sensing blood in the water. A massive trigger warning to anyone even thinking of picking up this intensely vile depiction of a sociopathic female sexual predator. Nutting does not pull any punches in her vulgar descriptions of Celeste’s sexual fantasies, her grooming and assaulting multiple boys, so be aware of that. If you have the stomach for it, Tampa is doing something very fascinating by turning the Lolita trope on its head from the POV of a woman, whose sexual appetite is as terrifying as any man’s and the way society can sweep away the assault of young teenage boys because if it’s perpetrated by a beautiful woman then how can it be abuse? What do we let beautiful people get away with? Why do we think monsters will show themselves willingly, marked, when they can so easily hide behind a good mask, a pretty smile? Once she gets caught, her experience in the system, her trial is something else altogether. For what Tampa is, it’s well done, but I can’t help but wonder why we need it. And much like Lolita, what does it say about an author that can live in such a depraved mind so seamlessly? Why would you want to?

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell was a much easier read, I’m not sure if it’s because it’s told from the victim’s POV or because for most of the book Vanessa is under the impression that she’s not a victim, that she’s entered this relationship willingly and allowed it to become the hub around which her life revolves. Which allows you as the reader to go with that, live in the same denial for at least a little while. Nutting does not give you the courtesy of denial, reading Tampa you have to stare the monster in the eye every second of the story. Given the choice, I’d much rather live in Vanessa’s head than Celeste’s, even if what she goes through is as vile as much of what Celeste does, it’s more familiar—her male teacher grooms and abuses her for years, gaslights her constantly and ruins her life—but like bleh this again, gross, but at least it’s not quite as punch you in the face horrifying as living in the mind of Celeste while she blissfully consumes boys like something delicious, licking her fingers clean after… My Dark Vanessa is just a much more palatable level of disgusting, which I guess is the whole point of writing something like Tampa—to point that inconsistency out. But, yikes, it was a lot reading in that hellscape: it took two months to get my mind right enough to even write about it.

Good Company by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (author of the wildly successful The Nest) was exactly my cup of tea, delivered lukewarm. It centres around Flora Mancini and her best friend Margot and the men they marry, build lives with and eventually come to know more differently than they could have anticipated. For Flora, it begins with the discovery of her husband Julian’s “lost” wedding ring deep in a filing cabinet of their lives’ paraphernalia. But why would he lie and say he lost it when it was here the whole time? This innocuous discovery unravels everything she knows and believed about Julian and her marriage, and the one person she might turn to, Margot, is implicated as well.

I found Good Company, an enjoyable, if somewhat anticlimactic read. All the characters are in various places of their acting careers and there’s a lot of time spent with the titular theatre company Julian founds with a friend and its trials and tribulations which honestly, didn’t hold a lot of interest for me. However, where D’Aprix Sweeney excels is the family dynamics that she did so well in The Nest, also on display here, through alternating perspectives of Flora, Julian, their daughter Ruby, and Margot. I love how she wove their stories through college years, to present middle age, how they all found and lost themselves in the friendships they formed with one another. I love a narrative that explores friendships that become family and the forming and breaking of intense bonds with people who know you and grow with you from a young age. Sometimes the stories of a friendship and how we betray and fail each other against our best judgments and despite our keen efforts are like a marriage without the vows. That’s where I think Good Company had the most promise and ultimately fell short. Although I did enjoy this book very much, it stayed surface level when I would have liked a deep dive into the dark, blind places where love and friendship meet and decay. If there’s a betrayal I want to feel it. This was more akin to a good story arc on a prime time drama, with little staying power. There will be something more interesting, more dramatic, drawing more ratings next season, and we’ll remember this one like a fleeting blip.

ARC provided from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.