One Last Thing Before I Go, by Jonathan Tropper

I’m obviously interested in characters at the lowest point of their lives, making the worst choice of their lives, but how could one possibly make that funny?  Incredibly, Tropper knows how, and his One Last Thing Before I Go was the most fun I’ve had with a story in a long time.  Silver’s life is […]

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

When Death tells you a story, you have to listen.  Especially when Death is also a poet and stuck in a dead-end job from which he can never take a vacation.  The story Death tells might be set in Nazi Germany and it might be about a little girl named Liesel who’s lost her brother […]

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon

Any book that opens with fork-stabbed poodle-death is story that must be read, if only to give the author the chance to redeem himself, which Haddon does, and much, much more.  With the creation of 15-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone—self-proclaimed poodle murder-solver, who uses an emoji chart to translate human emotion and quadratic equations to […]

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin

I was hooked on this book by the third page, and it’s because of this exchange: “You’ll notice I didn’t call you right away, Amelia,” he says. “I didn’t call you because I had met someone better, and when that didn’t work out, I decided to give you a second chance. So don’t be thinking […]