REVIEW: The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

Title: The Immortalists

Author: Chloe Benjamin
Genre: Literary/Magic Realism Fiction
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Release Date: January 9, 2018

Acquired: Print copy sent by publisher

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

If you were told the date of your death, how would it shape your present?

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.

Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

REVIEW: The Beauty that Remains by Ashley Woodfolk

Title: The Beauty that Remains

Author: Ashley Woodfolk
Genre: YA Contemporary/LGTBQ
Publisher: Delacorte Press

Release Date: March 6, 2018

Acquired: Print copy sent by publisher

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Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

Music brought Autumn, Shay, and Logan together. Death wants to tear them apart.

Autumn always knew exactly who she was—a talented artist and a loyal friend. Shay was defined by two things: her bond with her twin sister, Sasha, and her love of music. And Logan always turned to writing love songs when his love life was a little less than perfect.

But when tragedy strikes each of them, somehow music is no longer enough. Now Logan can’t stop watching vlogs of his dead ex-boyfriend. Shay is a music blogger struggling to keep it together. And Autumn sends messages that she knows can never be answered.

Despite the odds, one band's music will reunite them and prove that after grief, beauty thrives in the people left behind.

REVIEW: I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O'Farrell

Title: I Am, I Am, I Am

Author: Maggie O'Farrell
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Knopf (PenguinRandomHouse)

Release Date: February 6, 2018

Acquired: Print copy sent by publisher

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Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

We are never closer to life than when we brush up against the possibility of death.

I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter--for whom this book was written--from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers.

Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. In taut prose that vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, O'Farrell captures the perils running just beneath the surface, and illuminates the preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself.