When the Curtain Falls is a cute and feel-good theatre-themed romance and ghost story. Olive Green and Oscar Bright are performing in the eponymous play, which was last performed in that theatre about 60 years ago. During that 1950s performance, the run was cut short when the lead actress, Fawn, was killed in a tragic accident involving a prop gun. Unbeknownst to Olive and Oscar, the actress’s ghost still haunts the theatre, and her lover, Walter, now a man in his 80s, still works there at the stage door.

Olive and Oscar’s romance is cute, if a bit repetitive. Because of his TV celebrity, Oscar prefers to keep their relationship on the down-low, and refuses to acknowledge the depth of his feelings for Olive. In contrast, Olive finds all the secrecy wearisome, and she is also feeling insecure about whether or not she’s even in Oscar’s league at all. Considering she’s the star of the show, and the cast members she’s jealous of as romantic rivals have much smaller roles, Olive’s insecurity is a bit hard to swallow. And when practically every other bit character tells both her and Oscar that they clearly love each other and that Oscar’s just being an idiot, the barriers keeping them apart feel flimsier than ever, and the will-they-won’t-they angle of their romance starts to feel a bit repetitive. Still, the pair is cute together, and it’s easy to wish them their happily ever after.

Somewhat more action-packed is the romance between Fawn and Walter in the 1950s when Fawn was the leading lady and Walter was the assistant stage door manager. The barrier to their romance was the play’s cruel and abusive producer, who was obsessed with making Fawn marry him. It’s a set-up straight out of a soap opera, or one of those old-fashioned movies — one can almost imagine the producer twirling a villainous moustache — and despite the tragic ending, it’s an absolutely entertaining tale.

The two love stories collide somewhat at the end, when ghosts manifest in the present-day reality. These ghostly scenes are too over-the-top to be frightening, and it’s just a fun, light-hearted read.

Overall, When the Curtain Falls is a cute, light-hearted theatrical read, and a fun way to spend a few quiet afternoons.

Kudos as well to the book designer. I love the cover design and the inside covers!

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

All That She Can See has a charming premise: Cherry is a baker who has the magical ability to see others’ negative emotions, and the power to create baked goods that can counteract those feelings. While her cakes and cookies don’t get rid of emotional baggage completely, they at least provide temporary relief, and even just spending time in Cherry’s bakery can make you feel good. Until she meets Chase, a man whose magical ability to see others’ positive emotions has made him bitter and cynical. When he and Cherry meet, Chase decides to sabotage her business, and things somewhat spiral out of control from there.

As I said, it’s a charming premise, and I was all set to enjoy this book like I did Chocolat and Like Water for Chocolate. Fletcher’s execution felt a bit stilted, and failed to pull me into a world of magical realism as the other two books did, but I still liked the characters in Cherry’s town and the stories they brought.

Unfortunately, partway through the book, the real villains appear, and what began as a charming small town tale of magic turned into a high-speed action thriller sequence. The shift in tone took me somewhat out of the story — the battle against these bad guys didn’t interest me as much as the gradual unfolding of the lives in the town. Worse, this part of the story led to a lot of heavy-handed pontificating about the importance of coming to terms with all your emotions, both good and bad. It’s a valid moral, and one the story was clearly moving towards even in the charming small town parts, and I only wish the book never got as heavy-handed as it did in driving it home.

The romance as well felt forced. While Fletcher does a good job in explaining the hero’s behaviour, I never quite bought into the appeal. It felt more like friendship borne out of some variant of PTSD than an actual attraction.

Still, overall, this is a light, easy read, with a likeable heroine.

Kudos as well to the book designer. I love the cover design and the inside covers!

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I once read a book about fashion designer Iris van Herpen’s work, where it said about one of her collections that the designer is interested in how natural forces can overcome the body. Basically, it’s about how nature can come from within the body and take it over, making wilderness out of the human form.

This description somehow seems fitting as well for Maria Mutch’s short story collection When We Were Birds. The stories are somewhat odd, somewhat esoteric, but there’s something indefinably powerful in them about the intertwining of humans with the animal world. Mutch’s writing is beautiful, and there’s an intriguing co-existence of the surreal and the organic in her stories.

When We Were Birds isn’t my usual type of book — I prefer novels to short stories, and straightforward, plot-driven stories to ‘lyrical’ prose — but I’m glad I gave it a chance. There’s something compelling, even haunting, about Mutch’s writing, that makes me think re-reading this collection will evoke different responses.

A couple of highlights for me were “The Bastard Notebook”, a disturbing and horrific story from the perspective of Bluebeard’s final wife, and “The Peregrine at the End of the World”, a modern fable with an environmental slant, about a peregrine-turned-human-woman with the power to kill humans with a touch. Some of the stories weren’t for me — “Very Old, Enormous”, about a Glenn Gould-lookalike in a cage, just left me scratching my head and moving on. But overall, I thought the stories were beautifully done.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.