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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors

Power plays

Cover of The Right Swipe
A review of The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai

The Right Swipe tackles the intersection of technology and modern love, where an app developer and a rival company's spokesman end up filming a series of promotional videos and fall in love in the process. Rhiannon, Gabe's sister from Rai's Forbidden Hearts series, returns as the creator of Crush, an app that works similarly to Bumble. She had a brief fling with Samson, a spokesman for Matchmaker that ended with Samson ghosting Rhiannon. When Rhiannon attempts to buy Matchmaker, she ends up reuniting with Samson, to Samson's delight and Rhiannon's reluctance.

Nov 21, 2022

Push up high

Cover of Tummy Time Friends
A review of Tummy Time Friends by Pat Brisson

Tummy Time Friends is a delightfully interactive board book, full of beautiful baby faces and simple, gentle text. It is extra special because it unfolds, accordion-style, in a floor-standing arc and can be set up around a baby during tummy time. The photographs of baby faces will encourage babies to lift their heads to see. And toddlers will love to look at the faces even after they’ve outgrown tummy time!

Nov 18, 2022

Personal demons

Cover of Dark Music
A review of Dark Music by David Lagercrantz

Micaela Vargas is a police officer in Stockholm. She struggles to gain respect from her mostly white, male colleagues. First because she's a woman, second because she's a Chilean immigrant whose family came to Sweden as political refugees, and third because she grew up in the projects and has a brother who is operating on the other side of the law. None of that stops her from trying. She's determined to move up in the ranks and thus is happy to be assigned to the team investigating the death of an Afghani asylum-seeker who had become a popular youth soccer coach.

Nov 17, 2022

Behind the gates

Cover of Lavender House
A review of Lavender House by Lev Rosen

In 1952 San Francisco, police detective Evander "Andy" Mills has been able to keep his sexual orientation, as a gay man, under wraps, until now. A raid on a gay nightclub has caught him in its web and he's lost his job and every "friend" he thought he had on the force. At a loss as to what comes next, he's contemplating a very bad decision while half-tanked in a bar, when he's approached by a glamorous woman named Pearl. She offers a deal he can't pass up. Pearl tells him that her wife, soap magnate, Irene Lamontaine has died and Pearl thinks her death was murder.

Nov 15, 2022

Fathers and their kids

Cover of Juna and Appa
A review of Juna and Appa by Jane Park

Juna has a big imagination, and it runs wild, even while she's helping her Appa (father) at his dry cleaning business on Saturdays. While searching for one of her Appa's clients' lost jackets, her imagination takes her on a journey through nature where she meets animals who are also fathers that are spending time with their children.

Nov 11, 2022

Not as they seem

Cover of No One Will Miss Her
A review of No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfield

Lizzie Oullette has been found dead and no one in her rural Maine town seems to care. It's only when it becomes clear that her husband Dwayne is the one who likely murdered her that people start to show an interest. Dwayne was an admired member of the community until he hooked up with town outcast Lizzie. So if he did kill her? Maybe it's for the best. At least that's what investigator Ian Bird is able to glean from the townsfolk. That and somehow Lizzie's death is connected to a Adrienne Richards, a glamorous blonde Instagram influencer who'd been renting a house from Lizzie.

Nov 10, 2022

Eyes that rise to the skies and speak to the stars

Cover of Eyes that Speak to the Sta
A review of Eyes that Speak to the Stars by Joanna Ho

A boy returns from school hurt that a friend drew a picture of their group and he has eyes like two lines stretched across his face. The others have big, round eyes with green, blue, brown or black irises. His Baba stood him in front of a mirror and said, “Your eyes rise to the skies and speak to the stars. The comets and constellations show you their secrets, and your eyes can foresee the future.

Oct 26, 2022

Racing to space

Cover of The Apollo Murders
A review of The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield

What if instead of canceling NASA's Apollo 18 mission, Nixon had instead turned the funding question over to the military? And what if that military had decided that the mission was critical in order to prevent Russia from beating the US? Not just to control of the moon, but to getting the first spy stations and satellite's into the skies above earth? Those are the questions former astronaut Chris Hadfield uses as a jumping off point for his debut thriller, The Apollo Murders.

Oct 25, 2022

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