The Overbooked Bibliophile

Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Miss Pauline thinks about the meaning of land. She knows it’s not eternal. If it can be owned, it can be stolen or sold and new owners can do as they please with it, excavate it down to bedrock and deeper, lay it to waste. Even weather wages war against land, land can shake and rend and tear itself apart. And once people arrive, land ceases to be itself. It becomes the place where human events unfolded, it becomes its memories, ghosts and tragedies.” Ninety-nine-year-old Miss Pauline Evadne Sinclair, a resident of the small village of Mason Hall, St. Mary parish, Jamaica, takes the noises she hears at night—whispers she believes are coming from the shifting stones her house is made of—stones extracted from the ruins of a white slaveholder's home—as an omen signaling that her time on earth will soon come to an end. Miss Pauline has led an eventful life and has braved many storms, but she has held her own and lived life on her own terms. Though she lives alone, she has a...

  Rating:  4.5⭐ “Leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.” Set in 2018 Dublin ,  Nesting  by  Roisín O’Donnell  revolves around Ciara Fay , former English teacher and presently homemaker and mother of two in her mid-thirties, who decides to take her two young daughters, Sophie and Ella, and leave her controlling and emotionally abusive husband, Ryan, after five years of marriage. This is her second attempt to escape her marriage to Ryan, who outwardly appears to be an ideal life-partner, having left him once two years before only to return soon after. Ciara’s family lives across the sea and she has no close friends she can turn to for support. Having given up her career after marriage, Ciara has only a bare minimum of funds to support herself and her children until she can find a job and is put up in a hotel room as waits for her turn on a long list of those awaiting social housing. Complicating matters further is Ryan, who oscillates between asse...

Rating:  3.5⭐ ”The world went on in spite of its prisoners.” Set in 2014, Florida  A Season of Light  by  Julie Iromuanya  revolves around a  Nigerian immigrant  family: Fidelis Ewirike- a barrister and former POW of the Nigerian Civil War and his wife Adaobi, an educator and their children sixteen-year-old daughter Amarachi, “Amara” and fourteen-year-old son Chukwudiegwu “Chuk". News of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping in Borno State, Nigeria, triggers a traumatic response in Fidelis, taking him back to the year he spent fighting the Civil War in Nigeria and the tragedy that befell his family and the disappearance of his younger sister Ugochi. His sense of past and present blurred, concern for his daughter’s safety prompts Fidelis to lock Amara, who bears a strong resemblance to Ugochi, in her room keeping her from leaving the house. Though he makes a point of attending to her needs, he offers no explanation or justification for his actions. We follo...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Rainbows are funny things, aren’t they? The harder it rains, the more beautifully they shine. Who knows? Maybe it’s a gift from God, for those who’ve endured the storms.” The Rainfall Market   by  You Yeong-Gwang   (translated by  Slin Jung ) is a fantastical story that revolves around a young girl named Serin who wins a “Golden Ticket” to a mysterious market that operates only during the rainy season – an experience that is rumored to enable one to change one’s life. Serin, a lonely girl with a fair share of troubles and though a tad doubtful, hopes that she will find a way to change her life for the better. The author weaves a fascinating tale with a meaningful message, combining elements of Korean myth and folklore, wit and wisdom, magic, mystery and adventure. I had a wonderful time following Serin’s journey and loved how the author describes the Dokkaebi and the magical market. I loved how Serin bonded with Issha, the spirit creature (in the form o...

  Rating:  4.5⭐️ “Indigenous women disappeared, they disappeared twice. Once in life and once in the news.” After a devastating personal loss, former Chicago detective Carrie Starr returns to the Saliquaw Nation reservation in Oklahoma, where her father was raised. As the newly appointed tribal marshal she has been tasked with revisiting cold cases of the disappearance of Indigenous women over the last decade - cases that have been largely ignored, almost forgotten over time due absence of local law enforcement presence on the reservation. With minimal resources at her disposal, Carrie has to juggle keeping peace among the community over proposed infrastructural changes to the area that have several entities involved who would go to any length to protect their own interests, look into the cold cases and investigate the recent disappearance of Chenoa Cloud, a local young woman reported missing by her mother. The narrative follows Carrie as she digs deep into the lives of the cl...