Tag Archives: Book Review

Review | Drop Dead Sisters, by Amelia Diane Coombs

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In Drop Dead Sisters, a trio of estranged sisters get embroiled in a murder while on a camping trip for their parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. The story is part murder mystery, and part comedy of errors, as attempts to cover up the crime are foiled by the fact that the body somehow keeps ending up missing. It’s a quick and entertaining read, and it reminded me a bit of Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties, but more sedate, and, dare I say, more realistic.

Overall, it’s an entertaining book. The dynamic between the sisters feels real, and Coombs lays plenty of groundwork for further development of their relationship in future storylines. Despite the rather over-the-top premise (who moved the body this time?!), the story remains grounded in youngest sister Remi’s journey of personal growth. As the narrator, Remi takes us through her dissatisfaction with her job, her frustration over how often she’s felt dismissed by her older sisters while growing up, and eventually, her realization about her own responsibility to shape her own future, both at work and with her sisters. There’s also a fun romance with a hot park security guy, and an adorable dog sidekick named after Buffy the vampire slayer.

A minor snag is that the book for me suffered from comparison to Dial A for Aunties. Sutanto’s book is hilarious! She takes the madcap premise, dials it up to the max, and gives us a crew of larger than life characters who defy caricature with their equally larger than life hearts and fierce love for each other. In contrast, while Drop Dead Sisters does feel a bit more rooted in reality, its relative sedateness also makes it feel rather bland.

Reading Dial A for Aunties felt like indulging in a buffet with a ridiculous array of dishes that shouldn’t go together, but somehow is so delicious that it works, while Drop Dead Sisters is peppery steak and potatoes–serviceable and a bit spicier than usual, but not quite as vibrant or memorable. Still, as Sutanto fans likely know, her Aunties series has recently ended, so for readers looking for their next misadventuring mystery fix, Drop Dead Sisters fits the bill just fine.

However, a much bigger snag for me is how the mystery here is resolved. The detective’s actions make sense–or at least, are adequately explained by Coombs–but also feel anticlimactic. While Coombs keeps the zaniness fairly low-key, she does do a good job at amping up the tension and the stakes, and the resolution just didn’t at all live up to the build-up.

Still, Drop Dead Sisters does introduce us to a family of characters that we grow to care about. The ending sets Remi up for some rather big changes in her personal life, and plants the seeds for her, Eliana and Maeve to have more misadventures together, possibly and hopefully with their hippie parents, misogynistic grandmother, eccentric aunt, and the rest of their eccentric family.

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Thank you to Firefly Books Ltd for an advance reading copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Another Girl Lost, by Mary Burton

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Ten years ago, fifteen-year-old Scarlett Crosby was held captive and tortured for almost three months by a man named Tanner. Trapped with her was another young woman named Della, who was also the person who’d lured Scarlett into Tanner’s van in an effort to save herself.

When Scarlett was given a similar task to lure another girl into their prison, she instead warned Tiffany away. On the drive back to Tanner’s home, Scarlett managed to escape, Tanner was killed by a cop, and the cops came to his home to find it burned down and Della vanished without a trace.

Ten years later, Scarlett is a successful artist who’s tried, and failed, multiple times to get her memory of Della onto canvas. She’s had so many false sightings of Della over the years that the police now firmly believe Della never actually existed. And yet this time, Scarlett is certain that a woman who keeps showing up actually is the real Della. Why is she back? What does she want? And can Scarlett actually trust her own instincts this time around?

Another Girl Lost is a gripping and page-turning psychological thriller. From the very first chapter, we see Scarlett through the perspective of Detective Kevin Dawson, the cop who’d killed Tanner and rescued Scarlett a decade ago. Except this time, he’s come to arrest her. Because Scarlett has “likely killed one woman and been caught trying to kill another.” She’s also “viciously attacked the arresting officer,” [page 2] a detective named Margo whom Scarlett keeps insisting is actually Della.

Lawson’s decision to begin the book from Dawson’s perspective is really smart. Because it sets up the possibility that Scarlett’s an unreliable narrator, no matter how sympathetic we find her character and perspective later on. And true enough, even when we do get into Scarlett’s mind, beginning from two weeks before her arrest, we see how uncertain she herself is about her sightings of Della, and how much trauma she’s still working through from her days of captivity.

Scarlett’s chapters also give us a glimpse of the horrors she endured as Tanner’s prisoner (though thankfully without a lot of detail), and the complex hate/need relationship she has with Della. We see how Della suffers with Scarlett, but we also see how much more freedom Della enjoys than Scarlett, and how active a role she takes in shaping Scarlett’s perception of reality. So when Scarlett tells us that detectives think she may have made Della up as a coping mechanism, it’s hard to discount that possibility completely. And if Della is potentially a figment of Scarlett’s imagination, then perhaps her fears of seeing her being a sign of a mental break isn’t too far off the mark.

On the flip side, we also see the complexities of Detective Dawson’s character in his chapters. His life kinda sucks, and he’s immediately flattered by Margo’s obvious interest in him, and devil-may-care attitude that HR may frown on co-workers sleeping together. As his chapters intertwine with Scarlett’s, it’s eerie to see how similar Margo’s skill at getting under Detective Dawson’s skin is to Della’s skill at getting under Scarlett’s skin. Or so it seems. Could it just be that Scarlett’s paranoia is rubbing off on us?

There’s no easy answer, and Burton does a masterful job at keeping us off-balance and second-guessing ourselves right up till fairly late in the novel. And even when the actual truth starts becoming clear, the very final chapter shows a character doing something that forces us to consider, is justice being done? And once again, as is the mark of Burton’s mastery of this form, there’s no easy answer.

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Thank you to Firefly Books Ltd for an advance reading copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Stress Less: Managing Anxiety in a Modern World, by Noa Belling

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I requested this book for review a bit over a year ago, because I was feeling stressed out and in need of a toolkit to help. I only managed to finish it recently, ironically because once again I’m feeling under a bit of stress and in need of a toolkit to help.

The truth is that I’m not quite sure how to use this book effectively, and I fully admit this is likely a case of it’s me, and not the book. See, I tend to look for books like this when I’m feeling stressed, and for those moments, this book is filled with far too much content for me to easily find effective exercises to pull from. And when I do try dipping into this book in moments when I’m not quite as stressed, then it’s hard for me to pick out which category of information will be most useful for me to refer to in future.

The way Belling lays out the information feels almost academic. There are different types of stress, different types of stress responses, and different types of exercises that can help address each one. It’s a lot of information to parse through, and honestly a bit overwhelming for me to process, regardless of what point in the stress cycle I’m in at any given time.

However, this time, I did make an effort to read through to the end, and I’ve come to a conclusion: I wish this book were a class. I wish it were a series of workshops, where an instructor leads me and a bunch of other folks trying to get on a more even keel in a chaotic world, through each exercise in turn. I wish I had an instructor and a peer group to process all the information with me, and perhaps join in a discussion with me about which of the stress responses feel familiar from our own lives.

And that’s why I think this book not being quite effective for me is more about me than about the book itself. Because the bottom line is, this book does contain a lot of useful information. For example, I appreciate how Belling parses out the fight-flight-freeze response by distinguishing between anxiety freeze and dissociating/numbing freeze. I’m so used to associating the freeze response with the heart-thumping high energy of anxiousness that being able to situate within the spectrum my own occasional tendency to simply go blank and shut down actually felt reassuring.

I also found some familiar tools that I’ve used myself multiple times over the years and found effective. For example, there’s a somewhat simplified version of the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) thought record, where you write down the intrusive thought and reasons why the thought may and may not have basis in reality. From mindfulness, there are some breathing techniques like the 4-7-8 system (inhale through the nose for 4 beats, hold for 7, and exhale through the mouth for 8), as well as some grounding techniques to root oneself in the body and the present moment.

One new tool that I really like is called the SEW system: S – soothe and soften your body; E – Enquire “what do I need right now?”; and W – wish well for yourself and others. It’s simple, easy to remember, and actually rather comforting to think about.

Overall, I’m not sure if this book is quite right for me, as I think I would absorb/experience this content better in a facilitated setting. Or maybe even with the exercises in a podcast/audio format where I could close my eyes and really get into the practice. But I do think the exercises are useful, and the information about anxiety, depression, and stress responses are also useful. So I think this book could be a useful resource for the right kind of reader, perhaps one who learns better from the more structured and academic approach this book takes. As for me, I may do better sticking to my oldie but goodie resource Unplug: A Simple Guide to Meditation.

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Thank you to Firefly Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.