The Best Book I Read This Month: Looking Glass by Christina Henry

The best book I read this month was a collection of novellas called Looking Glass by Christina Henry. The collection is the third book in Henry’s The Chronicles of Alice series, which are retellings of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books. The first book in the series, Alice, is one of my most favorite retellings ever. This one felt very similar.

Looking Glass is made up for four novellas. The first follows a young girl named Elizabeth. As her story progresses, we learn about her connection to Alice. Two of the novellas focus on Alice and Hatcher (Henry’s Mad Hatter character). The fourth introduces us to Hatcher’s life before Alice.

Of the four stories, the Elizabeth story is my least favorite—because Alice is peripheral to the story and Hatcher doesn’t appear at all. For me, the Alice series is the story of Alice and Hatcher, and that was missing from the Elizabeth story.

My favorite of the stories was the novella that portrayed Hatcher’s backstory. While the story did not include Alice at all, it did provide a deeper view of a beloved character—and revisited one of the villains from the first Alice book. It was a satisfying visit to the past.

I highly recommend this book and this series, but it’s a case where the series really does need to be read in order. So start with Alice. You won’t regret it.

The Book I Read This Month: The Forgotten Girl by India Hill Brown

The best book I read this month is a ghost story written for kids. The Forgotten Girl by India Hill Brown is a middle grade novel about two girls who feel forgotten, one of whom is alive and one of whom is not.

I bought the book to support the Black Publishing Power campaign, an effort to show publishing that there is a market for Black stories by Black authors. (Children’s publishing, especially, is overwhelmingly white and those authors of color who do break through rarely get the financial and marketing support that white writers get.) The book did not disappoint, and I hope publishing does a better job of publishing stories like this one.

Iris Rose is a Black girl who attends a predominantly white middle school. Despite her leadership in school activities, she is often “forgotten” when it comes to public recognition. One night, Iris and her best friend Daniel sneak out to play in the snow and stumble on a neglected graveyard—specifically the grave of a young girl named Avery Moore. Avery also feels forgotten, and she latches onto Iris, with dangerous consequences.

I am well outside the target age ranges for this book, so I can’t say that I found it scary. (I do think a kid would find it unsettling, at the very least.) I did find the story to be engaging and charming. The story is effective on another level, too. It’s a kid-friendly introduction to racism, both overt and subtle, and to the nation’s history of segregation.

I highly recommend it.

The Best Book I Read This Month: The Night Bell by Inger Ash Wolfe

The best book I read this month is a mystery by author Michael Redhill, writing as Inger Ash Wolfe. The Night Bell is the fourth book in his Hazel Micallef series—but you don’t need to have read the first three books in the series to follow and enjoy this one.

My friend Heidi recommended The Night Bell to me when I told her about my idea for my own next book. Her recommendation was spot-on. In addition to being a well-crafted mystery, the book gave me ideas for how to handle similar themes and plot events in my own writing.

The Night Bell is set in Port Dundas, Ontario, where bones have been discovered on the grounds of a new housing development—a development that was built on the site of a now-defunct boys home. The situation exacerbates existing power struggles in the town—between the local police and the RCMP, between Detective Hazel Micallef and her supervisor, between the developers and the residents of the new subdivision. It also raises ghosts not just from the town’s past but from Hazel’s past, as well. Can she trust her memories of her friends and family? On top of these challenges, Hazel must also deal with her mother, who has dementia, a missing colleague, and a colleague returning to work too soon after a catastrophic injury.

It all makes for an expertly-woven complex story.

The Best Book I Read This Month: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

The best book I read this month is one I finished about 5 minutes ago, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.

I’ll be honest. I haven’t been reading much the last couple of months. The social distancing and stay at home orders have messed up my focus and concentration. Instead of reading a book a week, as I am wont to do, I have been managing a book a month roughly.

This one, though, grabbed me by the throat and kept me reading. I finished in a matter of days. The prose isn’t rich or flowery. It doesn’t lull you into a sense of comfort. It is stark, and sometimes disconcerting, like the story it tells. And it is captivating.

The Nickel Boys tells about a young African American man sent to the Nickel Academy, a Florida reform school where abuse and corruption rule the day. The tale was inspired by the real-life events at the Dozier School for Boys. (If you’re not familiar with what happened at Dozier, please look it up. The boys who died there and the ones who survived need us to bear witness.)

The book jumps back and forth in time, telling about life before, during, and after Elwood Curtis’s time at Nickel. And the twist at the end caught me completely by surprise. I literally gasped.

This has none of the fantasy elements present in Whitehead’s previous book, The Underground Railroad (another good read). It is steeped in fact and truth, and that makes it incredibly powerful.