Too Long; Didn't Read

Emily Giffin’s  All We Ever Wanted  may seem genetically engineered to please middle class mom book clubs, where symbolism and foreshadowing are eschewed in favor of white wine and local gossip, but there’s an astute heart beating beneath this suburban story. Nina is a salt-of-the-Earth-turned-upper-class-housewife who fills her days shopping and attending fundraisers while her silver-spoon-born husband writes checks and closes significant financial deals. Her seemingly perfect world is shattered when, thanks to the immediacy and omnipresence of social media, her golden boy son, Finch (a little too on-the-nose for me) sends around a picture taken of a partially exposed “scholarship girl from the wrong side of the tracks.”  This picture throws Nina’s life into upheaval, dredging up her own repressed memories, and introduces us to her co-narrator and father of the victim, Tom, a hands-on single father/man’s man carpenter. The crux of the story is as subtle as a brick, bu...

I’ll admit it: The plot to Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn  sounds like a sci-fi adult movie that would play on Showtime at 2am. Earth and humanity have been all but snuffed out and the remaining humans were rescued by an alien race, only to learn their saviors demand a “trade” in return: To procreate with the aliens and create a hybrid species. *Cue the sexy saxophone music* I may have written it off as such and gone about my merry way if I didn’t know that Butler is a Nebula- and Hugo-Award-winning author. As it was, I went into Dawn  with the expectation of having my preconceived notions wrecked and my mind blown—and it came close. Our fearless hero is Lilith, a strong-willed but open-minded 20-something who spent the last 200+ years in and out of suspended sleep. More than once she “Awoke” in a variation of an inescapable plain room with little to no furniture, occasionally no bathroom, often no clothing, and no interaction beyond a disembodied voice demanding she answer ques...