Review: Othergirl by Nicole Burstein

A teenage girl with a burning secret…(…and a lot of homework).
A worldwide network of superheroes looking for hot new talent…and a best friend left behind to pick up the pieces.
Louise and Erica have been best friends since forever. They’re closer than sisters and depend on each other for almost everything. Just one problem: Erica’s a freaking superhero.

When Erica isn’t doing loop-the-loops in the sky or burning things with her heat pulse powers, she needs Louise to hold her non-super life together. After all, the girls still have homework, parents and boys to figure out. But being a superhero’s BFF is not easy, especially as trouble has a way of seeking them out. Soon Louise discovers that Erica might be able to survive explosions and fly faster than a speeding bullet, but she can’t win every fight by herself.

Life isn’t a comic book: it’s even crazier than that. Continue reading “Review: Othergirl by Nicole Burstein”

Review: The Radio by M. Jonathan Lee

A comedy so black that you’d have to eat a lot of carrots to know whether George’s adventures are actually visible.
The Radio is a black comedy which centres around the decline of the lovable, yet hapless, George Poppleton, a middle-aged, henpecked father and husband who stumbles across an old transistor radio in his loft. Much to the fury of his demanding wife and daughter, his obsession with listening to the radio drives him on an unexpected journey, fueled by the painful memories of the suicide of his only son many years before…
This is a story of what it means to be a family, the perception of loving and being loved, and what it means to be sane.

Continue reading “Review: The Radio by M. Jonathan Lee”

Review: The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker

golemChava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic.  When her master, the husband who commissioned her, dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York in 1899.

Ahmad is a djinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.  Though he no longer imprisoned, Ahmad is not entirely free – an unbreakable bond of iron binds him to the physical world.

The Golem and The Djinni is their magical, unforgettable story; unlikely friends, whose tenuous attachment challenges their opposing natures – until the night a terrifying incident drives them back into their separate worlds.  But a powerful threat will soon bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice… Continue reading “Review: The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker”