This Is How It Really Sounds by Stuart Archer Cohen

What if you had a chance to rewrite your life? What would you choose to keep, to throw out? The path not taken is a theme often explored in fiction but Stuart Archer Cohen gives it a spanking new update for our times through the lives of three men, all named Pete Harrington. If sometimes the moral of the story comes across as too pat, Cohen makes it up by layering the plot with plenty of high-voltage action and atmosphere. Despite an occasional discordant note, readers will enjoy unlocking the interlocking chambers of this Chinese puzzle box of a novel.

Review: Glaciers by Alexis Smith

Excerpt:

In Glaciers, Alexis Smith’s marvel of a novel, the protagonist, Isabel, points out that there is much joy to be found in the mundane:

It’s a strange product of infatuation, she thinks. To want to tell someone about mundane things. The awareness of another person suddenly sharpens your senses, so that the little things come into focus and the world seems more beautiful and complicated.

In her debut novel, Alexis Smith shines light on these “little things,” thereby transforming Isabel’s world into something more beautiful yet complicated.

The rest of the review is here.