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A Trojan Horse. That's how author Xochitl Gonzalez describes her debut novel, Olga Dies Dreaming (2022), a work of contemporary fiction set in Brooklyn and Puerto Rico, primarily in 2017.

This lovely and magical story features three book lovers who become entwined with a lost bookshop that spans 19th and 20th century Ireland. Opaline attempts to break the barriers that aim to confine and subjugate women as she runs from a forced marriage; Martha is running from an abusive husband; and Henry is trying to find an elusive break into the book world.

Meet Aubrey, a somewhat spoiled young girl living in Paris in the late 1800s, who one day comes down with a mysterious, life-threatening illness. She speedily discovers that if she keeps moving location, the illness disappears. And so, she begins her adventurous life of endless travelling around the globe, trying to outrun her unique disease.  

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a tremendous book that is an enjoyable read while having deep themes of racism, sexism, and pride.

When I read that Palace of the Drowned was set in Venice, Italy, off-season, and reminiscent of the novels of Patricia Highsmith, in that the prose is lush, the plot suspenseful in a kind of nagging, slow-burn way, I thought it sounded like my cup of proverbial tea.

The Gone series, written by Michael Grant, is a very interesting yet intense read. The author designs a society where the parents are removed from a town and put outside of a bubble.

The Fault in Our Stars, is very well written book.

In The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009), author Alan Bradley introduces readers to the charming and precocious eleven-year-old protagonist, Flavia de Luce.

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a difficult yet intriguing novel. The opinions may differ on this read, but I found it interesting. The author includes many uses of literary devices, one major one being symbolism that kept me reading the book.

Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds (2023) transports the reader back to a horrifying and fascinating time in American colonial history known as the “starving time” at the Jamestown colony in 1609.

Lord of the Flies is an exhilarating novel that demonstrates the reality of parts of human nature.