The Overbooked Bibliophile

Rating:  4.25⭐ Oye  by  Melissa Mogollon  is an incredibly moving and immensely enjoyable coming-of-age story told through the voice of a Florida Colombian-American teenager as she navigates hurricanes, dysfunctional family dynamics the imminent loss of a loved one and much more over her senior year in high school. Luciana has a lot on her plate. As if her senior year in high school and concerns over her own plans for the future isn’t stressful enough, her mother’s reaction to her coming out deters her from being open about her sexuality and when her seventy-five-year-old Abue Emilia is diagnosed with a terminal illness, she struggles to hold her family together. Initially a reluctant confidante to her Abue, who knows exactly which buttons to push to get her own way, Luciana gets know significant facts from her family history gaining a better understanding of the women in her family and the generational trauma that has been passed down to the present day and how that...

Rating:  4.25⭐️ “I am on a peninsula, or to be more precise, the southern half of a peninsula broken in two. But in my mind, I am the land itself. I watch the waves, and when the tides come near, I will them to retreat, retract into their uncontained bodies.” Daegu, South Korea, 2011: Forty-six-year-old Eunju is visited by Narae, a Korean American woman in her thirties, who has come to return an item of hers that was in the possession of her recently deceased father Sangchul. Narae also expresses her desire to know more about her father’s life in South Korea and how he came to be in possession of something that belonged to Eunju. The narrative follows Eunju as she shares her story with Narae detailing a traumatic history she shares with Sangchul from three decades ago when they were both teenagers and inmates at The Stone Home, a state-sanctioned reformatory center. Inspired by true events,  The Stone Home  by  Crystal Hana Kim  is an intense and incredibly movi...

Rating:  3.75⭐️ "Here the idea persists that if you admit that you’ve done something wrong and then show remorse because you’ve had a difficult childhood, or a trauma, or are different from the rest, you will rehabilitate better. That’s a word I find really ridiculous, rehabilitate. As if there’s such a thing as a possibility that you could ‘return to a former condition.’ That’s what it says in the dictionary. Return to a former condition. As if time allows, as if time pauses and will wait for you while you get your shit in order. Time does what it wants and you fight against it.” Confrontations   by  Simone Atangana Bekono   (translated by  Suzanne Heukensfeldt Jansen ) revolves around sixteen-year-old Salomé Atabong, daughter of a Cameroonian father and a Dutch mother, living in the Netherlands sentenced to six months in juvenile detention for a violent act, the details of which are gradually revealed. The narrative follows Salome as she comes to terms with t...

Rating: 3.5⭐ Hermine “Herself ” Zook has spent all of her life on her little island in the Great Massasauga Swamp—an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of Whiteheart, Michigan. Herself is known for her skill as an herbalist and has made a living out of selling herbal remedies to those from nearby towns seeking her help. Her marriage of fifteen years ended after she threw her husband out after a scandal that is still fodder for gossip among the townspeople. Her daughters have grown up and have all left home, her eldest Primrose a lawyer, her middle daughter Maryrose (Molly) a nurse and her youngest Rose Thorn who lives in California with Primrose but has left her daughter Dorothy “Donkey” Zook with Herself to raise. As the story begins, we find out that Herself has isolated herself from her community, rarely venturing out of her home with only her eleven-year-old granddaughter for company. Donkey has questions about her family, has heard the whispers and has sensed the strained...

  My Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The story opens in 1914 in a residential public school in the English countryside. WWI rages on and many have their schoolmates and family members in service. The young students eagerly and impatiently wait to get their hands on the most recent issue of their school newspaper, The Preshutian, to peruse the lists of names of past students who have lost their lives or have been wounded on the front. Among the present students are Sidney Ellwood and Henry (Heinrich) Gaunt, who harbor feelings for one another but are unable to express the same. Henry is half-German and a pacifist but feels compelled to enlist for the sake of his family and to prove his loyalty to England. Being handed a white feather (meant to symbolize cowardice) in public by a young lady, despite his not being nineteen which was then the minimum age to enlist, prompts him to enlist as soon as becomes eligible. Ellwood, of Jewish descent, is a “poet” at heart but also signs up as soon as he is of age...

My Rating: 3.75⭐ In 1940 as WWII rages on, London-based Reginald and Millie Thompson decide to send their daughter, eleven-year-old Beatrix to the United States, where she is placed under the care of Ethan and Nancy Gregory , a lovely couple who welcome her into their home and their hearts. She spends her time divided between Gregory home in Boston and their vacation home in Maine with their two school-going sons, William and Gerald, both of whom befriend Beatrix. Beatrix’s parents miss her dearly only deriving comfort from the fact that she is out of harm’s way. Millie , in particular fears that the geographical distance and her daughter’s growing emotional attachment to the Gregory family and the comfortable lifestyle in the US (as is shared through letters to her mother) will widen the chasm between her and her family in London. Five years later, the war is over and Beatrix returns to London, torn between her love for the Gregory family and the home calling her back, albeit with the...

My  Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ “My mother kept me, but she also tried passing me on to others, and that I won’t forget, despite her coming back. But when I needed her to let me go, begged her even, she wouldn’t. Not because she loved me, but because she needed company on her self- guided journey to misery.” Sixteen-year-old Lara Montoya- Borislava and her mother Yevgenia rent a home at Oasis Mobile Estates after driving up from Nevada. Lara’s life lacks stability. Her mother Yevgenia is eccentric and lives life as she pleases, often leaving her daughter in the care of others while she is off with a new flame. When she does return, Yevgenia is constantly on the move, uprooting Lara time and time again. This time Lara hopes that they can settle down but she knows deep down that Yevgenia cannot be trusted. Yevgenia is erratic and self-absorbed and does not hesitate to use sex to get her own way. She is superficial and does not share much about herself and Lara acknowledges that she truly doesn’t und...

My Rating: 3.5 ⭐️ Eighteen year old Maeve Murray has her future planned out. Waiting for her A-level results to be published, she decides to take a summer job in a shirt factory with her closest friends Aoife and Caroline to earn some money before she moves to London to pursue higher education with the intention of embarking on a career in journalism. She can’t wait to get out of her Northern Ireland town and start a new life. Her first step towards independence is getting a summer job (despite the fact that she has to deal with an unpleasant boss whose treatment of his female employees is disrespectful to say the least) and renting a flat with her friend Caroline near her (temporary) workplace. Over the next few months, we follow Maeve as she adjusts to life as a factory worker, meets new people and makes new friends all the while hoping for a better future. Michelle Gallen’s Factory Girls  is an entertaining novel. Maeve is spirited (a bit brash at times) and resourceful. She obs...

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “We didn’t know then that the practice of burying emotions created adults who’d struggle to build meaningful relationships; some of us would eventually completely forget how to access true feelings.” In the summer of 1999, our twelve-year protagonist Felicia "FeFe" Stevens spends her days jumping rope with her three friends Precious, Shania and Tonya whom she has recently befriended, attending summer school (though she does not really have to) and keeping out of trouble under the watchful eye of her mother, who is protective of her children, FeFe and her older brother Meechie. The friends live in the Robert Taylor Homes, the housing projects in the Bronzeville area of Chicago’s South Side. FeFe is sweet and kind to others around her, befriending those who she knows has a rough time at home.

My Rating: 4.5⭐️ “It was a summer in which death, in visitation, assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.” This is how Frank Drum recalls the eventful summer of 1961. Frank, a young boy of thirteen growing up in New Bremen, Minnesota with his Juilliard-bound older sister Ariel, younger brother Jake , his WW2 veteran father who is a Minister and artistically inclined mother who shares her love and talent for music with her daughter. When the body of a young boy they know is found on the railroad tracks the whole town is left in shock, with speculation about the nature of his death.