Review of Dracula in Love

Book by Karen Essex

Review by Rose Booker

A Book Worth Biting Into

I am going to be blunt here: I don’t have a taste for romances or vampires. In fact, I usually detest the very idea of pairing legitimate romantic inklings with the undead of any sort. The concept has become a cultural cliché. However, after reading just the first few pages Karen Essex’s novel, Dracula in Love, I was hooked in and I could not set the book done despite all my personal prejudices. Essex’s Dracula in Love caught me under its spell.

The novel is (on the surface) a retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula through the point of view of the genteel Mina Harker. Mina is the quintessentially pure Victorian heroine and her desires reflect this. That is, in the beginning. Through the course of her willing/unwilling seduction by Count Dracula (an affair that is rendered to the reader in such a way as to cause the flesh to become rosy red – i.e is hot as hell) Mina’s character morphs from an innocent Victorian woman obsessed with protecting her chastity and social image to an increasingly complex and sexually mature individual.

Which gets me to why I enjoyed this novel – the complex characters. Often times, novels such as these are largely plot-driven, leaving the reader with flat two-dimensional characters within a two-dimensional world. Yet, Essex’s takes the concept of Vampire-Human romance and adds emotional complexity, social intrigue, historically accurate depictions (my favorite being the asylum scandal), and internal conflict. All of this creates a world that is anything but flat.

Did I mention this book is hot? Essex has a way of making something as ethereal as a dream sensually stimulating and lusciously sexy. I don’t wish to spoil anything for the reader, but trust me when I say this: you will blush with pleasure throughout the love scenes.

I recommend this book to anyone who has a taste for the sensual, the Victorian-era, vampires, and surprisingly strong women characters.

Review of Synchronicity: The Art of Coincidence, Choice, and Unlocking Your Mind

Book by Dr. Kirby Surprise

Review by Rose Booker

You’re not feeling well and something is telling you not to go to class today, yet you go anyway because there’s a big test scheduled next week. The bus is late, there’s a traffic jam 12 miles long, yet you still go on ignoring the inconvenient events and your sniffling nose. You reach the class room door just to discover … the class is cancelled. Your intuition and the signs around you were right all along; you should’ve stayed home.

The above scenario is an all too common Synchronistic Event (SEs), often tossed away as coincidence, dumb luck, intuition, or simply a gut feeling during a specific moment in your life. Ever wondered if there was something more to them then just that? Well there is and you can find out more in Dr. Kirby Surprise’s Synchronicity: The Art of Coincidence, Choice, and Unlocking Your Mind.

One part science text book, one part metaphysical treatise, and two parts (non-fiction) story telling, Synchronicity is a book that will change the way you understand your own mind and the reality in which you live in. Through it, you will gain the ability to recognize your own SEs, create them, and recognize the SEs of other’s around you.

This book is written in such a way that anyone could easily grasp the concepts presented by the author. As an individual with an English degree (something as far away from the scientific field as Neptune is from the sun), I can vouched for this book’s accessibility. Moreover, it has changed my mind for better, and it can change yours too!

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in psychology, Jung, synchronicity, and, of course, to anyone who is interested in themselves.

Review of  Iona Dreaming

Book by Clare Cooper Marcus

Review by Rose Booker

Clare Cooper Marcus’s memoir, Iona Dreaming, is an inspirational account of personal survival and hope, in which Marcus shares her battle with cancer. This deepens into a contemplation of the events in her life and her physical, emotional and spiritual healing.

Recently retired with adult children, Marcus struggles with more than her cancer. The sudden stillness in her once fast-pace life, forces memories from her past into the forefront. Iona becomes a place were she confront these memories and learns to let go.

This work encourages the reader to search out for that one place on earth that allows one to heal. It doesn’t matter if there is nothing more than an inkling that pushes you toward a particular place. As Marcus wrote, “I cannot say why this particular place nurtures me as no other … Yet I know this is my place of healing. That is enough.”

Her work, however, does tend to lean on the pastoral. In this I mean that through demonstrating, first hand, the healing power of place, Marcus is taking part of a literary tradition as old as Middle English. This does not distract from the power of her message. On the contrary it adds to it through placing her work among some of the greatest writers in English history. I only mention it as a warning to those who sneer at anything that has the faintest hint of sentiment – this book may not be for you, at least not until you too find yourself searching for your place of healing.

I recommend this book to those in need of healing, to those with a deep yearning for a place in this big world (an axis mundi), and to those who love memoirs that let you into the author’s life the way a loving friend lets you into their home.

This review will soon appear on Writer Advice’s website.

Review of Diwata

Book by Barbara Jane Reyes

Review by Rose Booker

“Diwata,” Barbara Jane Reyes’s book of poetry, leads readers through a brief history of the Philippines, when colonization was just beginning to take hold of the archipelago and when magic was apart of each word and each breath.

One part story-telling, two parts rhythmic song, and all parts brilliantly written, Reyes’s poetry encapsulates the elements of Malakas and Magandá – the strong and beautiful. In “A Genesis of We, Cleaved,” a story of creation is told in a lovely voice that, despite the pain of separation that drips from each word, is strong and vibrant.

“Sea Incantation” and “Upland Dance” showcase Reyes’s lyrical and linguistically abilities; weaving Filipino and English words together without breaking from the rhythm. There is never a moment were the two languages sound jarring or out of harmony with one another.

Though gorgeous, each poem is not spared the horrors of colonization. Rape, murder, dismemberment, and exile are common themes throughout the book. “Visitation” and the “Eve” poems are just some that highlight Reyes’s honest treatment of this subject, which is clearly close to her heart.

If there is one negative thing to say about these poems, it is that they are so compact and filled with wonder that I was pleasantly compelled to read them over and over again (I lost count after the 10^th read through).

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Filipino poetry, myths, and history and to those who love magic and poetry.

This review will appear on Writer Advice’s Hooked on Books.

Review of Shahid Reads His Own Palm

Book by Reginald Dwayne Betts

Review by Rose Booker

Who knows how to make wine out of government mandated juice while behind prison walls? Who knows the ancestors that didn’t go to Heaven?

“Who knows the blues of life in prison?”

Reginald Dwayne Betts does. Within his collection of poems, Shahid Reads His Own Palm, Betts guides us through the jail cells of America, exposing the harsh realities of what the American prison system does to its people locked behind bars and what that, in turn means, for America as a whole.

The first thing that struck me when I encountered Betts’s poetry was the raw emotion and honesty that he embeds into each poem. He can take an idea, such as solitude in “The Spanish Word for Solitude” and make it so tangible that even in a crowded café I felt as if I was alone.

Betts use of traditional form, moreover, complements the tone of his poems. This is especially true of his ghazals, where the form lends itself easily to the themes of lost, redemption, and revelation.

Finally, the music within this work is reminiscent of a psalm one moment and blues lyrics the next. For instance, “Song,” when read aloud, sounds as if it should be accompanied by a guitar or a saxophone.

Though the topic is heart wrenching, Betts presents it to us in a startlingly beautiful way.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in African American poetry, the American prison system, and poetry about redemption.

This review will appear on Writer Advice’s Hooked on Books.

Review of Cat Striking Back

Book by Shirley Rousseau

Review by Rose Booker

Dried blood at the bottom of an empty pool, a series of unexplained break-ins with nothing stolen, and an oversized drainage ditch turned into a tomb: what is one talking tomcat to do? Tom Grey and company discover these and many more troubling signs of murder and mischief in Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s Cat Striking Back.

While on his way to deliver a meal of mice to some hungry kittens, Tom Grey stumbles upon a murder scene. Immediately, he dives into the case to help the police. The premise of the mystery is established by his discovery: no one knows who the murderer or the victim was.

Murphy’s style is engaging and thought-provoking. She lures the reader into believing they have solved the mystery early on in the book. I was so sure of whom the murderer and the victim were that I almost stopped reading. What egged me on were the small clues that the cats stumbled upon. What was that smell that resembled catmint? What in the connection between the murder and the break-ins?

Moreover, I wanted to learn more about each character. Murphy has a way of bringing character’s to life. From Clyde, Tom Grey’s housemate, to sweet cat-loving Charlie, each character feels like someone we all have met at the PTA or football game. These characters are familiar, despite being surrounded by talking cats.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in puzzle-solving, complex characters, or who simply loves cats.

This review first appeared on Writer Advice’s website.