Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead’s work–from his debut The Institutionist to his Pulitzer- and National Book Award-winning The Underground Railroad (2016)–seems to evoke a number of descriptors: powerful, for one, moving and emotional, for another. The Nickel Boys meets this same criteria and beyond. Though it was my first experience with Whitehead, The Nickel Boys will certainly not […]

The Immortalists // Chloe Benjamin

Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists is one of my favorite kinds of books: smart but readable, thought-provoking but easy to follow. It tells the story of the four Gold children–scholarly Varya, caretaker Daniel, mystical Klara, and baby Simon–after they visit a fortune teller in their youth who predicts the day they will die. I absolutely whipped […]

The Marriage Plot // Jeffrey Eugenides

The Marriage Plot took me ages to get through, and didn’t quite seem worth it in the end. Here, Eugenides tells the story of three Brown seniors, Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell and their intertwined love lives as they graduate and move on into the real world. After a sex-charged relationship senior year, Madeleine and Mitchell […]

On My Nightstand: July 2019

June brought the return to work, a nasty summer cold, and, with it, a depressing reading slump. Instead of spending my days sprawled outside on the hammock, book in hand, I lounged on the couch with a hefty stash of tissues and ginger ale, re-watching Gilmore Girls at an alarmingly quick pace. Now that my […]

The Girls // Emma Cline

Emma Cline’s debut novel The Girls was the “it” book of summer 2016, and, yes, it did take me three years to finally pick it up. Moody and dramatic, very much like the first season of True Detective, it follows fourteen year-old Evie Boyd’s coming-of-age as she is drawn into a dangerous, Manson-esque cult. Told […]

Young Adult Shelf: Save the Date, Love & Luck, The Rest of the Story

With the beginning of summer comes the craving for sweet young adult romcoms that I can devour in a day! As a teenager, I was happy to let authors let Morgan Matson and Sarah Dessen rule over my summer vacations, so it only seems natural to crave their newest novels as the temperature rises. Save […]

An American Marriage // Tayari Jones

With An American Marriage, Tayari Jones presents one of the most tragic, complex love triangles I’ve ever read. We have Celestial, a thriving black artist in Atlanta, her husband Roy, wrongfully incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, and their neighbor Andre, Celestial’s childhood best friend who attended college with Roy. Andre is the […]