Book Reviews by Ehlen Administration

All People Lives Matter by Billy McCoy My rating: 4 of 5 stars Holly is a 20 year old liberal student who joins the All People Lives Matter Movement as a matter of course - she’s destined to change the world after all. Unfortunately, the world she was destined to change was completely foreign and unintelligible to her, and she did not realize that until it was far too late… I picked up this with interest, as the title was certainly an allusion to the Black Lives Matter movement, and I wanted to know the author’s take on it. I lived roughly 10 - 15 minutes away from Ferguson, MO, during the Michael Brown shooting, and watched both local and national media (and the stark difference between the two) unfold during that time. I am a Missouri girl, and the state of race relations here really saddens me, especially as they have probably devolved since that incident rather than improved. I really enjoyed how the vignettes in this book explored some of the ways racism is structural in th...

An Enigmatic Escape: A Trilogy by Dan Groat My rating: 4 of 5 stars An Enigmatic Escape is actually three stories that intertwine into one tale of the three Blaylock brothers, who come from a less than ideal family life, and how they conquer their past - or don’t. From the very first story, Groat engrosses you with his description of a descent into madness and leaves you wondering exactly where that came from. You vaguely figure it out in snippets revealed in the subsequent stories, but as with most stories it’s the journey that will stick with you more than the destination. I found it interesting that all three stories were told from “outsiders” perspective but still weave you into the story of the Blaylock brothers more so than that of the actual story teller. All in all the writing was superb, and being a Missouri girl myself I was thrilled to read bits of the Midwest entwined in the descriptive narrative. I look forward to a full length novel from Groat, as I figure if his s...

Daisy Chain by Nancy Morgan My rating: 4 of 5 stars What happens when you challenge yourself to write a story based on the last line of the story you just wrote? What if you kept that up for 10 stories? Author Nancy Morgan has done just that with Daisy Chain. While some of the stories have similar elements, none of the stories are related to each other. Characters come in the form of a woman slowly losing herself, a man mourning the death of his best friend, a gambler who may be willing to part with her youth, a middle aged woman desperate for a baby, and woman recovering from a brain injury, among others. I love academic challenges like this, and I like them even better when they are good enough to publish, and Morgan’s certainly is. While she has a distinct writing style, all of the stories are independent and hold their own as short stories - although I think some could easily be turned into novellas or even full novels. There is a spiritual element to many, and I like the un...

Close Your Eyes, Sweet Angel by M.J. Winn My rating: 4 of 5 stars Close Your Eyes, Sweet Angel by M.J. Winn is a short story about a prostitute in the big city who keeps running into a child - at her “club,” in the stairwell of her apartment, and even somehow in her bedroom. She struggles to figure out why a child would keep turning up unexpectedly and who in the world would let their child into a strip club? WARNING: There is sexual content in this book. It was well written and very descriptive but is not for those who don’t want to know about the life of a prostitute. I have to admit just reading the first few pages took my breath away with the description of how main character Chandra endured her job. Clearly Winn has talent as an author and I could see this in an anthology/compilation of character snippets or back story in a larger novel too, although this story stands just fine on its own. It’s one of those stories where you kind of have the ending figured out but not exactl...