Diana Stevan

After reading Deadly Switch by Karen Dodd, I looked forward to her new novel. She didn't disappoint. Her ability to juggle multiple characters but not lose or confuse the reader is remarkable. Every character, whether they're lowlife or highly stationed, is well-crafted and distinct. Her vividly described settings are as well, which means that anyone who loves travel will appreciate the journey Nicholas Moretti, the protagonist, takes in his quest to solve the mystery of who killed the woman he still loves.

The author deftly delves into this world of corruption, where those who try to expose the criminals and bring them to justice put their lives at risk. And behind this story is a little boy, Nichols Moretti's son, the one he didn't know existed. Where he is and who has him is another layer that kept me engaged in this fast-paced thriller.

I didn't know what to expect when I began to read this memoir. I have a background in mental health so I was looking forward to reading what the author had to say about it. I found that she handled the challenges within her family tree with grace, kindness, and honesty. I loved how she sprinkled her family's truth with some historical asides, that gave the reader information about some of the sites, events and notable people of the day. Highly recommended.

What a fabulous collection of short stories! The author surprised me with every one. The love she has for her characters shone through. The one, titled a song for Nettie Johnson, was particularly memorable. Gloria Sawai wrote the scenes between Nettie and her lover so visually that I could see their interactions as if I was watching a film. This is a collection I want to read again.

The author, Patricia Sandberg, has done a fabulous job weaving personal anecdotes into the story of Gunnar Mines and the community of Uranium city. As it became the largest Urainium producer in the world, it attracted immigrants from many different nations, making for a rich and diverse community life. As a writer of historical fiction, I was amazed at the amount of research Sandberg did to bring to life what once was in Northern Saskatchewan. Sun Dogs and Yellow Cake is not only a well-researched book of non-fiction, but it's a tale of the resourcefulness of many Canadians in the 1950s to the early 1960s, and how they managed their loves and losses in this remote town. Highly recommended.

This was a labour of love. I cried and laughed at the computer as I recalled my mother's anecdotes about my grandmother. Though I'd shared a bedroom with my baba, Lukia Mazurets (the protagonist in my biographical fiction) from the time I was a baby until I was fifteen, I never knew the hardships she'd faced.

I didn't know her as that much younger woman who'd survived not only wartime but life in a refugee camp with six children while her husband was fighting for the Tsar. She never talked about it. When I grew older, I realized she was like the men who came back from war and never mentioned what they'd experienced. To bring up what they'd gone through would mean reliving that heartache.

Her road was hard but I also discovered her joy and humour in the midst of the turmoil. And today, on Canadian Thanksgiving, I feel so thankful that I was able to bring her story to life.

Beautifully written. I was carried away by the times and the characters, who made me believe all of what happens in this story is possible. The Knowledge Seeker is set in the future, six hundred years after civilization has fallen. All that was there was lost and only one leader seems to have access to this wealth of information. He entrusts an ancient memory device, containing that information to Eodain, a 16 year old boy, also known as Termite. His task is to take it to a specific location where it can be disseminated to the world. But along the way, all is not what it appears to be. There are others who have a different motive in mind. To say that Termite's life is in danger is an understatement.

This is a thrilling YA novel that will be cherished I'm sure for years.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. One of my YA author friends recommended this book to me because of my interests. It's historical fiction and covers the late 1930s in pre-WWII in Germany. I found the characters engaging. Katya, a young woman, whose family had been traumatized in the Soviet union, is a maid/housekeeper for a well-to-do German family. Her relationship with the young men in the house and a Jewish girl shows the challenges many faced when Hitler began implementing his policies. The author does an excellent job in showing us those times, when patriotism and fear of seeming unpatriotic influenced so many youth and their parents. There's also a love story that underlines the horrors of what was going on. Highly recommended.

I was intrigued by how skillfully the author depicted various family conflicts in this astonishing short story collection.

I don't typically read children's books but I took a workshop from Mahtab Narsimhan this past year and was curious about her writing style. I was impressed by her ability to keep me engaged chapter after chapter.

Avi, a young boy with an allergy to wasps, encounters an astrologer who tells him “I see grave danger in your aura.” And so the suspense begins. What will happen to Avi? Is the astrologer right? Following this opening, we find Avi in one danger after the other. What he believes to be true is challenged every step of the way. What I found particularly intriguing was a look into Indian culture, particularly the smells, food, and its caste system. Highly recommended.

What a delightful story! It's 1940, wartime, and Harriet Hall and her sick mother have been sent to Canada to live with relatives. But a challenging time in the household adds to Harriet's woes. Lonely, she's driven to hide out in the woods, where she meets a Sasquatch, an unlikely friend.

Sonia Garrett has written a story that not only engages the reader but surprises them with twists and turns. In Harriet's quest to save her mother, she discovers the unsavory experiments her mother's doctor is involved in. Will she be able to muster the courage to stop him? Can she get the authorities to believe her? And is the Sasquatch really a friend or another foe?

The author's sensitivity to childhood challenges and to the environment shines in this story.

It was certainly an original read with the author creating a literary dance between a couple, who after a few weeks of a lust-driven time, say goodbye. Hannah is off to Israel to immerse herself in the culture, to learn more about her Jewish faith, while Raymond stays at home to continue his studies.

As a reader, I kept wondering if their hot romance would endure the separation. They communicate frequently, giving us a good picture of what they're going through and the pulls on them. Well worth reading.

From the beginning, I was struck by the detail of the place and time of this epic love story. The author, Nina Romano, has done her research. As a reader, I was transported back to the nineteenth century in China, where Lian, a healer, falls in love with Giacomo, an Italian sailor. The chance encounter that brought the two together and left them both wanting is at the heart of this novel. Some say opposites attract, but here the odds of them making a life together seem insurmountable. Their cultural differences are further heightened during the Boxer Rebellion, a violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising around the end of that century. A beautiful story, brilliantly told. Highly recommended.

I wrote a review for the Miramichi Reader. Here is a sample of what I wrote.

The Rooftop Garden by Menaka Raman-Wilms is not a book I would normally pick up, but the plot intrigued me. The idea someone could be seduced into doing something out of character was an idea I wanted to explore. The novel promised to be a story of a young man or woman who's easily indoctrinated to go against their family values or the values of the society they've been raised in.
And here, the author doesn't disappoint. What I had hoped for, I got. Though the story of The Rooftop Garden is fictional, I'm reminded of something Salman Rushdie once said, “novels tell the truth.”

An excellent story of an unlikely pair.

This is the second novel I've read by Nina Romano. She doesn't disappoint. Her novels are well researched and her characters are well drawn. The story starts with a shocking scene, which I won't divulge, but it's one that haunts Cayo Bradley throughout his life, and affects his relationships with those who care deeply about him. Raised by the Apaches, he's a complicated man, who falls in love with Darby McPhee, a spirited young woman, who has dreams of her own, ones that come in conflict with Cayo's. An entertaining read and highly recommended.

Ghosts in a Photograph: a chronicle by Myrna Kostash, delights and inspires with her exploration of family lore through the old photographs her Ukrainian Canadian grandparents and parents have left behind. The author approaches her subject like a sleuth, leaving no stone unturned. Through remembered conversations, a tape of her mother speaking to a university student, visits to the land her grandparents emigrated from, and extensive research into their past, Kostash determines who is who in the photos and what they did during their time on earth. Given the turmoil in Ukraine today and its tortured history, it makes for fascinating reading.

As I read Ghosts in a Paragraph, I recalled the family album I viewed after my mother's death. With her passing, there was no one left who could answer the new questions I had about her family and life in the old country and Canada. This is a familiar problem, one many readers can relate to. Such is life, with its challenges of work and family obligations, that we wait too long to ask. And then when we have the time, or maybe I should say, when we have the interest, there's no one left to ask.

Kostash doesn't let the absence of family deter her from her quest. The author goes to great lengths to gather what information she can, and she goes even further by analyzing the nuggets she manages to dig up. She compares oral history with fact through detailed research and consultation with history professors. And in doing so, the author uncovers various truths that show how stories are handed down, and how they can be coloured by memory and emotion. It all depends on who is telling the story and to whom.

Politics raises its head more than a few times in this book, and given the current war in Ukraine, how could it not? Curious about one relative's murder, Kostash unearths more about this nasty business, one that pits the resistance against what is perceived to be the Soviet enemy. And what the author also deftly portrays is how difficult it is for immigrants to leave the politics of their forefathers' homeland behind when they immigrate.

As Kostash delves into her family's past and the hardships her extended family faced in their newly adopted land, she uncovers more of Canada's ugly history—how indigenous inhabitants were forced off their land in Saskatchewan and Alberta to make room for white settlers, like Kostash's grandparents (and other) immigrants, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The author has written about Ukrainian settlers before in All of Baba's Children, but in this book, she underlines the plight of the people they displaced. It's a good way to end this book, as it's a question Canadians are grappling with today. Truth and reconciliation. How we address the past and our role in it as descendants of white settlers or of people who were on this land before them. I'm not sure the author had this in mind when she began to write her chronicle. But it seems to me these are the ghosts Kostash is suggesting we address.

I had read Tainted Amber by Gabriele Goldstone, and enjoyed it so much I decided to read its sequel, Crow Stone, to learn what had happened to Katya and the young man she loved. This novel shows the ugly truth of what happened to innocent civilians, both German and Russian like Katya, the protagonist, who were punished at the end of WWII by the conquerors. The author writes in such exquisite detail that readers will find themselves immersed in those times. An excellent read.

Though a short tale, this story about a 11 year old Jewish boy in Germany just before WWII breaks out, is beautifully written and leaves the reader with much to think about, especially at this time, when Israel and Gaza are at war. Anti-Semitism is on the rise, or maybe it's just more exposed now, like it was during Hitler's time. There are many published stories about the horrors Jews faced during the Holocaust. We need them, to remind us of not only what happened, but to stop another holocaust from happening again. Allan Hudson's short story is one of them.

In this engaging psychological thriller, S.M. Freedman deftly takes us inside a funadmentalist Mormon community in British Columbia, where girls are preyed upon by the elder males in charge and boys are left wanting.

When Grace DeRoche finds herself in an untenable situation, she decides to escape the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by two powerful males. She convinces others to escape with her. But her departure and collaboration with the police have consequences. To avoid jail, some of her family and others loyal to the community's extreme religious beliefs commit suicide. Overcome with grief and guilt, Grace is left to pick up the pieces of her life. She's further challenged because she's developed multiple personalities to cope with any new threat in her life. When she discovers that a few Mormons who escaped with her have died mysteriously, she wonders if she's next, or is she somehow culpable for their deaths.

The power of faith and community to support or destroy is the heart of this wonderful novel. A highly recommended read.

Found it engaging. Surprised to read about the mental anguish of such a wonderful actress.

They say opposites attract and they certainly do in this steamy romance by M.A. Clarke Scott. Clio, a reticent and anxious PhD student accidentally meets Guilermo, a charismatic but arrogant architect, who acts as if no woman can resist his charms. Though physically attracted to him, Clio senses the danger of falling for somone who could just as easily take advantage of her without thinking twice. Falling for him could also distract her from the studies she needs to complete in order to fulfill her father's wishes. Guillermo also has family troubles. Due to his brother's bad choices, his family risks losing the villa that's been in their family for centuries. When Guillermo acts as if the loss of his ancestral home is a foregone conclusion, Clio feels compelled to act. Will this unlikely couple get it together or are their differences too big of a divide?

I especially loved the author's description of the Italian architecure, art, and countryside. It brought the story alive and reminded me of my trips to Italy. Recommended for romance lovers.

Loved this memoir, a story about a man and his parrot and what they learn from one another. I had the pleasure of meeting Brian Brett, when he was writer-in-residence in Campbell River. He's an award-winning poet as well. A great read!

I thought this was an astonishing read, as it gave me some distance from the western perspective of what happened on 9/11 and the following wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The author, Danuta Hinc, illustrates in a senstive way what's at stake for all sides during conflict. And also how the actions of the west can easily radicalize those who want peace but feel they have no choice when their own are attacked or treated unjustly. In the end, it's the innocent who get caught fighting battles that others have started. A highly recommended novel.

Award-winning YA and children's author Shari Green's latest novel, Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams, is one that will appeal to adults as well. Her protagonist, Helena, a young music student, lets us know from the beginning what occupies her mind: “I've not been raised to speak of dreams–nor to dream at all.” And shortly after, she says “I'm not the only dreamer.” Her community is full of them.

It's 1989, in Leipsig, in the German Democratic Republic, before the wall separating East Germany from West Germany comes down. Green captures the times beautifully, both the heartache and the tension of those dreaming of the freedom to travel outside their borders. The title, Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams, speaks to the prayer meetings the citizens attend, a place of warmth, hope, and song, a place where they can share their frustrations and hopes for a better future.

Having been to the Ukrainian Socialist Republic in 1988, when Gorbachev was the Russian leader, I witnessed the fear people had about speaking openly against the government. Green, in her elegant and dynamic verse, shows the challenges Helena, her family and friends face living in a system where anyone can be an informant. Highly recommended.

I was literally blown away by Amanda Ward's craftsmanship. She wove a number of stories successfully, and kept the suspense up. I couldn't predict what was coming, which to me is essential for a good read. How she managed to integrate one family's story, a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions,with another of equal weight and come up with a satisfying conclusion was inspiring.

The story was compelling because of the subject matter and the issues that Dan Brown raised. To consider that females once had a higher place in the church and that that information was being suppressed made me turn the page and keep turning it to the very end.