botm Archives

Quiet Life, A

“We live so much of our lives without telling anyone.” Author: Ethan Joella Three lives, going on separately, are each occluded by the unrelenting pressure of grief. One winter, as the ice shines on the road and the cold seeps into the bones, three strangers find each other through the twists of fate. Together, they start to discover the next steps in a life that will not end, no matter how much they wish that it had. It’s weird to say that Ethan Joella’s A Quiet Life is cozy when the themes – death, pain, grief, separation, betrayal – are so [...]

Frances Carden2025-04-12T09:24:00-07:00April 12th, 2025|Tags: book review, botm, fiction, grief, read, reading|

Hera

A New Look at an Old Villian Author: Jennifer Saint Hera – the raging goddess of marriage – is a much-hated figure from Greek mythology. While it is her husband, the mighty Zeus, who tricks and rapes his way through both mortals and goddesses, it is Hera that catches our ire. Shouldn’t she, we reason, be gentler, know better, and stop perpetuating a vicious culture of victim-blaming? Shouldn’t her vengeance, her impotent rage, be directed towards the one who really deserves it (her philandering husband) instead of in fits of jealousy towards his often-unwilling paramours? Well . . . author Jennifer [...]

Frances Carden2025-03-23T08:40:21-07:00March 23rd, 2025|Tags: book review, botm, fantasy, fiction, Greek mythology, mythology, read, reading, retelling|

Bright Young Women

A Fictionalized Story of the Ted Bundy Murders Author: Jessica Knoll Bright Young Women is an ambitious attempt to tell a segmented story of trauma, misogyny, exploitation, resilience, and women fighting against a biased and broken system. While the true crime story it’s based on (the Ted Bundy murders) is interesting, Bright Young Women fails to capture the tragedy of those involved. Instead, it comes off as a caricature of what happened, an outline of complexity that fails to capture a deeper, bloodier story. It strives to do something honorable, to highlight the victims instead of the insidious, egotistical perpetrator, but [...]

Frances Carden2025-01-27T10:39:19-07:00January 27th, 2025|Tags: book review, botm, fiction, read, reading, true crime|