Book of the Day Roundup: March 24-28, 2025
Pencil
Hye-Eun Kim
TOON Books
Hardcover $18.99 (48pp)
978-1-66266-553-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
This wordless picture book speaks volumes about conservation and the transformative power of art. Self-referential colored pencil illustrations follow the journey of a pencil from tree to pencil to tree again in the hands of an imaginative artist. As colorful trees are cut down, the animals who call them home are forced to flee; a girl’s care and effort creates a haven for them once more, silently encouraging a more thoughtful approach to consumerism and the environment.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (February 17, 2025)
Root Rot
Saskia Nislow
Creature Publishing
Softcover $18.00 (140pp)
978-1-951971-25-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Saskia Nislow’s thrilling and fast-paced horror novel Root Rot is about family dysfunction and the inescapable reality of returning to the earth after death.
The Crybaby, the Liar, and the One Who Runs Away explore their grandfather’s lake house over a weekend that starts as a traditional family reunion and ends in a complete devolution from reality. Their story told from the viewpoint of a ubiquitous narrator whose identity is kept secret, the cousins explore the strange inconsistencies and earthen decay surrounding the property. They also fight to keep their relationships and sanity intact.
The book’s descriptive imagery is captivating and compelling, as with “the sun before had been hidden by the milky skin of morning fog.” The persistence of such ethereal and horrifying descriptions adds to the unsettling sensation that drives the narrative. When characters begin to act in ways that are contrary to how they were before, and when the children start to notice odd tastes and visual disturbances, such visceral lines become ominous.
The lake house is a shifty place; the children navigate confusing jumps in time and memory. At various points, they find themselves with one cousin when just moments before they were with someone else. This sense of continual inconsistency is at first hard to piece together. It is unclear whether the narrator is unreliable or if the collective is descending into madness. While these leaps in space are discombobulating, the plot smooths out in time to reveal the truth about what the children are experiencing.
Root Rot is a horror novel filled with suspense and unsettling images as it traces the strange occurrences at a family lake house.
JENNIFER MAVEETY (February 17, 2025)
The Passenger Seat
Vijay Khurana
Biblioasis
Softcover $16.95 (224pp)
978-1-77196-630-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
The innocence of boyhood is eclipsed by a fraught world in Vijay Khurana’s coming-of-age novel The Passenger Seat.
From the first page, Teddy and Adam are described as “boys, or men,” as if even the narrator is uncertain about which side of adulthood the two high school seniors fall on. Both take boyish risks, like jumping off a bridge into the water below, but they also often spend their time playing a violent, suggestive video game, Patriot. Frustrated with their home and school lives and faced with uncertain futures, the friends drive Adam’s truck north toward Alaska with no idea what future lies in wait.
The novel is charged with enough momentum to break speed limits as the two friends learn to survive without baths or consistent food and through a series of mistakes: Impatient Teddy does not sneak up close enough to shoot a snowshoe hare for supper; Adam’s wrong turn leaves them dead-ended at a swamp.
The book depicts the road in all its freedom and reliability as “endless becoming, a color palette always and somehow never changing.” However, the road stands in contrast to the friends’ inner lives. The gun they carry with them haunts the space between words. Their faith in each other bends toward uncertainty. The dependability of the outside world is a mirror to the friends’ distrust of all that lies outside of themselves. This distrust is the catalyst for the major change that electrifies the latter half of the book.
A challenging novel that pushes against the elastic comfort of the expected, The Passenger Seat tests what makes a boy turn into a man and arrives in a territory both unexpected and certain.
NICK GARDNER (February 17, 2025)
Counting Backwards
Binnie Kirshenbaum
Soho Press
Hardcover $28.00 (400pp)
978-1-64129-468-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Binnie Kirshenbaum’s novel Counting Backwards, a woman is thrust into the role of a caregiver.
After Addie’s husband, Leo, is diagnosed with Lewy Body disease in his early fifties, he begins to lose touch with his former self. Addie grapples with the emotional toll of caring for someone she loves but no longer recognizes: “you have no way to predict when Leo will not be Leo. His episodes of irregularities have increased exponentially.”
Addie’s struggles unfold through moments that emphasize her guilt, exhaustion, and conflicted emotions. Her development—or lack thereof—reflects the stagnation that accompanies her prolonged caregiving. Leo’s decline is portrayed with equal consideration, capturing his transformation from a confident, capable man to someone who’s unrecognizable, even to himself. Outsiders like Z and Larissa add depth to Addie’s emotional state, though their inner lives remain secondary to her perspective.
The plotting mirrors the monotony and emotional toll of caregiving, sometimes revisiting Addie’s recurrent frustrations. Addie’s present struggles are balanced out with reflective glimpses into her and Leo’s life before his diagnosis, providing necessary context. The rawness of Addie’s emotions comes through in her conversations with Leo, which alternate between tenderness and tension. Addie’s repeated phrases mirror her state of mind, though they sometimes interrupt the book’s flow. The grounded prose makes room for touching moments, as with Leo fumbling with once-familiar objects that now feel foreign to him. The emotional weight of his disease is made resonant, and the novel honors the complexities of the human experience.
The sensitive novel Counting Backwards explores the hardships of caregiving, the resultant strain on relationships, and internal conflicts between loyalty and self-preservation.
KIANA CURTIS (February 17, 2025)
The Loneliness of Horses
Andrea Thalasinos
12 Willows Press
Softcover $16.99 (326pp)
978-1-961905-12-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Andrea Thalasinos’s novel The Loneliness of Horses follows two animal-loving women in Canada.
When Belle leaves Scotland in 1778 searching for a different life, she doesn’t know what she will find. Her horses bring her company even when her new husband and isolation in remote Nova Scotia do not.
Evie flees Arizona in 1972 seeking safety for herself, her son, and her animals. What she finds is far from safe. Still, she builds a life rehabilitating animals and people, even if it is at the expense of her happiness.
The book’s detailed descriptions of idyllic settings are immersive—and crucial to its characterizations. Indeed, the cliffs along the Atlantic Ocean and Four Winds Stables link Belle and Evie across time. Knowing that the air they breathe and that the domestic and wild animals that roam the land link them creates a robust understanding of time and place. Living in the same home adds another layer to their storied connections.
Both Belle and Evie build homes and relationships before they accept their realities, but these features don’t change who they are. Time is their only impetus; they are already the people they need to be. Their parallel stories, toughness, and stubbornness to survive are the book’s connective tissue. Further, their strength exists in stark contrast to the helplessness and abuse of the men around them. They stand up for themselves and speak up for others, including animals. At times, both women sink inward, but they always regain the strength to leave and fight for what they believe in most. Tied together by the land, these women are worth celebrating.
In the powerful novel The Loneliness of Horses, flinty, kind women forge their ways in the world, even when their surroundings make it difficult.
ADDISSYN HOUSE (February 17, 2025)
Kathy Young
