Rachel Reads: Massachusetts Book Awards Nominees

The Massachusetts Book Awards recognize significant works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s/young adult literature published by current Commonwealth residents. As a judge for the 21st Annual Awards, I’ve been tasked with reading all fourteen fiction nominees. Read more reviews here and here. An interwoven set of linked chapters, Inheritors is also a generational saga…

Rachel Reviews: Ghosts – Dolly Alderton

Ghosts starts and ends on Nina Dean’s birthday but, in between, the reader gets to spend a year in the life of someone trying to figure it out. She falls in love and also out of it, she starts arguments and then reconciles them, she struggles and makes mistakes and realizes big things… and then…

Rachel Reviews: The Ex-Talk – Rachel Lynn Solomon

The Ex Talk—two rival coworkers pretend to be exes in lieu of unemployment!—is a fresh take on enemies-to-lovers with that certain charm I loved in Today Tonight Tomorrow. The addition of Shay’s personal life and her feelings of inadequacy, imposter syndrome, and lingering grief gave an otherwise tropey romance layers, but I especially enjoyed how Solomon…

Rachel Reviews: Rebel Girls – Elizabeth Keenan

When it comes to being social, Athena Graves is far more comfortable creating a mix tape than she is talking to cute boys—or anyone, for that matter—and her staunchly feminist views and love of punk rock aren’t exactly mainstream at her conservative Catholic high school. Then a malicious rumor that her popular, pretty, pro-life sister…

Rachel Reviews: Renegades – Marissa Meyer

The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies — humans with extraordinary abilities — who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone… except the villains they once overthrew. Nova has a reason to…

Rachel Reviews: Incendiary by Michael Cannell

Long before the specter of terrorism haunted the public imagination, a serial bomber stalked the streets of 1950s New York. The race to catch him would give birth to a new science called criminal profiling.   The most interesting chapter of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling was its epilogue, when…

Rachel Reviews: What Happened – Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Free from the constraints of running, she speaks about the challenges of being a strong woman in the public eye; the criticism over her voice, age, and appearance; and the double standard confronting women…

Rachel Reviews: Spill Zone – Scott Westerfeld

Three years ago an event destroyed the small city of Poughkeepsie, forever changing reality within its borders. Uncanny manifestations and lethal dangers now await anyone who enters the Spill Zone. The Spill claimed Addison’s parents and scarred her little sister, Lexa, who Addison provides for by photographing the Zone’s twisted attractions on illicit midnight rides. When an…

In Brief: Three Reviews from Rachel

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai All Our Wrong Todays is one of the few books where the actual story lived up to the book’s hype and summary. (Mastai’s ability to form letters into words into sentences doesn’t hurt, either.) We follow our bumbling protagonist Tom Barren – through his mother’s death, a string…

Reading List: Women in STEM

Reading List Curated by Rachel Although I picked up Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers who Changed the World for its charming illustrations, the content is fascinating and makes me want to seek out everything I can on even more rad women. Feel the same way? Here are a few to get started! Ada’s Algorithm:…

Rachel on TV Shows That Should Be Books

There are sooo many shows I watch (and with which I am OBSESSED) that would work really well as a stand-alone or multi-book series. Here are the ones at the top of my list! 12 Monkeys: This series has quickly become one of my favorite shows, and it makes me think of a trilogy filled with time…

Rachel’s Buy, Borrow, Bypass: On Grief

Book Riot does this great feature called “Buy, Borrow, Bypass” and I like it, so I’m going to do that here. A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold Sue Klebold is best known as the mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold – and she knows it. Although her memoir twists…

Rachel on Two “Modern Retellings”

Done right, book adaptations are one of my favorite things to read. What’s not to love about revisiting favorite characters in a different setting, or with different life experiences, or even just at different ages? Although breathing life into original characters is hard work, tweaking well-loved fictional characters so that the source material’s fandom doesn’t…

Rachel Reviews: A Gathering of Shadows

It has been four months since a mysterious obsidian stone fell into Kell’s possession. Four months since his path crossed with Delilah Bard. Four months since Prince Rhy was wounded, and since the nefarious Dane twins of White London fell, and four months since the stone was cast with Holland’s dying body through the rift…

Rachel Reviews: Between the World and Me

Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged…

Rachel Reviews: City on Fire

City on Fire is a behemoth of a novel – clocking in at over 900 pages – but it feels overwrought and excessive, as if author Garth Risk Hallberg simply wanted the world to know that he was capable of writing such an opus. The core action – which spans about seven months in 1977…

Rachel: “Buy, Borrow, Bypass”

Book Riot does this great feature called “Buy, Borrow, Bypass” and I like it, so I’m going to do that here. You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) Don’t recognize the name Felicia Day? Don’t worry – you’re not alone. You might be familiar with her face from such Joss Whedon-helmed projects like Buffy, Dr.…

Rachel Reviews: The Martian by Andy Weir

If it weren’t for the big-budget movie starring Matt Damon that just came out*, I don’t think Andy Weir’s The Martian would be flying off the shelves as much as it has – but that’s kind of a shame, really, because it’s super (ridiculously) good. And not just good in a hard sci-fi kind of…

Rachel Reviews Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy

Since seeing all three Swedish adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) as well as David Fincher’s Oscar-winning adaptation, I’ve felt no real need to read the books – until I kind of joined a book club and then quit after I’d already started reading the first book… and, man, I was hooked.