Book Reviews

Maria Dong

Liar, Dreamer, Thief is a mystery with a twist.

Katrina Kim witnesses a co-worker, seemingly enraged with her, jump off a bridge. It is her OCD that drives her to find out what secrets he is hiding. Katrina is a bit of an unreliable narrator because she is dealing with mental health issues. Although most unreliable narrators tend towards the unlikeable, Katrina’s voice is so engaging that you can’t help but love her despite her flaws. Her co-worker’s mystery is entwined with another, the reason that she fled college, her home, and her parents. Katrina needs answers as much as the reader does, and the hairpin twists in her mysteries carry you along to a forceful, yet still heartwarming, conclusion.

Iris Yamashita

The City Under One Roof is a fastpaced noir thriller set in an unusual location. Near an isolated Alaskan tourist spot, where all of the town’s winter inhabitants live in one building, body parts are washing up. Detective Cara Kennedy comes to investigate and find connections to another mystery in her own past. She finds a community of eccentrics, many running from something else, who do not want to open up about these mysterious crimes. Plot twists come fast and furious, and if you like police procedurals, this will scratch the summer reading itch.

Thistlefoot is a fantasy adventure that follows the Yaga siblings, Bellatine and Isaac. When they learn they are receiving an inheritance, they put old resentments aside, only to find that their inheritance is a house on legs called Thistlefoot. The siblings cross the country on Thistlefoot for a theatre show while a dark figure called the Longshadow Man follows them. This debut novel is enchanted with Jewish myth and rich prose, following the tradition of modern fairytales (think Neil Gaiman’s American Gods). This will delight long-time fantasy lovers and fans of mythology, but readers who enjoy family relationships and historical fiction will also find this intensely readable.

Rachel Beanland

The Richmond Theatre fire of 1811 was, at the time, the deadliest disaster in U.S. history. This historical novel examines the event and its aftermath through four figures: the stagehand who accidentally starts the fire; a well-to-do widow in a box seat; an enslaved young woman, attending with her mistress but confined to the colored gallery; and a blacksmith who rushes to the scene and rescues patrons jumping from windows. The bad behavior of the powerful becomes a theme: the theatre company attempts to pin the blame on a fabricated slave revolt, and men in the audience trample their wives in making their escape. Wildly entertaining.