Staff Picks : Jeltje

 Jeltje's November Picks

Switch by A.S. King

This book was a difficult read to get started into, but just make it through the first few chapters and I feel like you will get used to the train-of-thought writing style. You follow the thoughts and feelings of Truda Becker, a teenager in high school with a strange home life and in a world where time has stopped since June 23, 2020. The world is trying to cope with the time standing still and they add finding solutions to that issue to the school curriculum. Besides that, life does go on. At home, her mother has left the family, a sister who is never named is off to college but she apparently has made a very negative impact on the whole family, the brother is unable to work through his emotions related to the trauma done by their sister, Truda shows signs of anxiety and depression and their dad constructs larger and larger boxes around a switch that is in the middle of the house which no one knows what it does. The book is strange, but I think the underlying messages have to do with getting through emotional trauma, loving family, trusting people and living your own life as a teenager or even as an adult instead of accepting what other people expect of you or try to make you believe.

 

The Unkindness of Ravens by M.E. Hilliard

Apparently, a group of Ravens is called an Unkindness. In “The Unkindness of Ravens,” we follow the lead character, Greer Hogan, who is a librarian and it starts with her discovering the body of her only friend in the town of Raven Hill on the roof of the library. Not long ago, she also discovered the dead body of her husband, so she keeps this in mind and tries to solve the murder and other mysteries connected to the library so she isn’t considered a suspect and also justice for her friend. Most characters may just wait for the police to investigate, but she does her own investigating which also puts in her danger. As she is trying to piece together the mystery and the town’s inhabitants’ histories, she is still wrestling with her husband’s death, being an outsider, small town politics, and her own secrets.

 

The Printed Letter Bookshop by Katherine Reay

Madeline Cullen’s aunt, whom she was named after, was a free-spirited and caring woman who had a bookshop in a small town that she left to her niece. This is a surprise to everyone since, even though they are family, they hadn’t seen each other for years. Yes, this is another case of assuming something about a person and then losing the opportunity to spend time with them because you think they did something negative. Besides the bookshop, Aunt Maddie also left a note with a booklist which guides Madeline during this time, but the relationships she has with the two people left working at the bookstore (seemingly opposite women who we also get perspectives from), a new unexpected mentor, a man also in a crossroads situation like her, and the people in the small town of Winsome change her outlook on life and her relationships with the people she cares about. There is strife and bad things happen, but this book makes you feel good when you finish!