Underrated Reads

Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family – Mark Daley

Posted on February 18, 2024 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by Jay Gendron) Mark Daley takes us through a courageous, heartbreaking journey in Safe: A Memoir of Fatherhood, Foster Care, and the Risks We Take for Family. This book serves as an indictment of the foster care system in California. Mark, a foster parent himself, covers the obstacles created, and sheer incompetence exhibited, by…

Posted in Bios and Memoirs, Non-fiction, Reviewers' Top Picks | Tagged foster care, memoir | Comments Off

Goldenseal – Maria Hummel

Posted on February 15, 2024 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) Lacey and Edith, ages seventy and seventy-one respectively, have been estranged for forty-four years. It’s now 1990, and Edith decides to travel across the country to visit her one-time best friend. Lacey, born in Prague, now lives as a recluse in a Los Angeles hotel . The staff acknowledges that…

Posted in Historical Fiction, Modern Literary Fiction, Reviewers' Top Picks | Tagged friendship, Los Angeles, relationships, socio-economic class, WWII | Comments Off

An UnderratedRead Revisited:The Blue Is Where God Lives – Sharon Sochil Washington

Posted on February 12, 2024 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “If Satan is successful, the family’s history will end with the blue baby girl.” It is currently 2008, and Blue (referenced above) is grieving the murder of her daughter. She questions God’s existence, which leads her to travel from her home in Houston south to The Ranch, a retreat run by…

Posted in Revisited | Tagged Historical fiction, speculative fiction | Comments Off

My Killer: A Supernatural Crime Thriller – Gary Sherbell

Posted on February 8, 2024 by J D Jung

(reviewed by JD Jung) NYC assistant district attorney Joel Marcus has made a lot of enemies as a prosecutor. Add to that, he is unhappily married, but stays because he loves his young son. To get through all this, he’s in a love affair with a fellow prosecutor, Karen, whom he often works cases with.…

Posted in Crime, Mystery and Thrillers, Sci-Fi/Speculative/Fantasy/Mythology | Tagged Crime, prejudice, supernatural, thriller | Comments Off

Forest for the Trees & Other Stories – Mathieu Cailler

Posted on February 5, 2024 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by Christopher J. Lynch) I’ll admit that I have never been into short stories – or collections of them, but Mathieu Cailler’s Forest For The Trees, changed my mind. The writing here is fresh and poetic, the stories as varied as they come. Like many great writers, Callier knows how to tap deep into…

Posted in Short stories | Tagged short stories | Comments Off

Mission Churchill – Alex Abella

Posted on January 30, 2024 by J D Jung

(reviewed by JD Jung) 1933-Havana Cuba: Irishman Marcus Riley’s objective is to kidnap the visiting Winston Churchill and hold him hostage in exchange for IRA members serving time in London prisons. However former Detective Inspector Walter Thompson, now serving as Churchill’s bodyguard, thwarts his plans. Fast forward to 1940. London is under siege by Nazis…

Posted in Crime, Mystery and Thrillers, Historical Fiction | Tagged Cuba, London, Nazism, political fiction, thrillers, Winston Churchill, WWII | Comments Off

The Shining – Dorothea Lasky

Posted on January 27, 2024 by J D Jung

(reviewed by JD Jung) The Shining, a collection of over thirty poems, takes us to places similar to those that the Overlook Hotel made famous through Stephen King’s novel and Stanley Kubrick’s film of the same name. Though just as haunting, this journey is different. These eerie tales take a feminist perspective, as the protagonist…

Posted in Dark/Sordid/Bizarre, Poetry | Tagged artists., identity, poetry, relationships, self-destruction | Comments Off

Forgottenness – Tanja Maljartschuk, translated by Zenia Tompkins

Posted on January 23, 2024 by J D Jung

(reviewed by JD Jung) “I was an inconsequential being who had suddenly become deathly afraid of life.” Our present-day narrator suffers from mental/psychological disorders: frequent panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorder, substance abuse, and changing levels of agoraphobia. Eventually she breaks off all social contact and won’t even leave the house. Her most bizarre belief though,…

Posted in Historical Fiction, Slavic Literature, World Literature | Tagged history, mental illness, political activism, politics, Ukraine | Comments Off

How Not to Kill Your Plant – Magda Gargulakova and Lenka Chytilova, Hannah Abbo (Illustrator)

Posted on January 19, 2024 by J D Jung

(reviewed by JD Jung) For those of you who have thought about maintaining an indoor plant but don’t know where to start, How Not to Kill Your Plant is the book for you. This guide is comprehensive and will provide everything you will need, as well as choosing the right houseplant. This includes what to…

Posted in How do I do that?, Non-fiction | Tagged gardening, houseplants | Comments Off

Ilium: A novel – Lea Carpenter

Posted on January 16, 2024 by J D Jung

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “The game of espionage, at its essence, is observation, seduction, patience. And a fluid relationship with your sense of self. To commit espionage at the highest levels you have to be willing to forget who you are in order to inhabit someone else." Our protagonist, a young and single British woman…

Posted in Crime, Mystery and Thrillers, Reviewers' Top Picks | Tagged CIA, espionage, M16, Mossad | Comments Off