The Glass Hotel

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel is a wonderful genre blending story.

The Hotel Caiette is on the northern edge of Vancouver Island. Vincent is working at the hotel the night someone carves a message into the front window, the same night a very wealthy man is due to arrive. 

What follows is a story hinted at in Mandel's novel Sea of Tranquility, the story of Vincent and the life she lives with the very wealthy Jonathan Alkaitis. 

This is a story of crisis and survival, greed and guilt, unintended consequences, and the search for meaning. Emily St. John Mandel is one of the great writers of our time. Read all of her books!

Mandel, Emily St. John. (2020). The Glass Hotel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 

We Deserve Monuments

We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds.

Mama Letty is very ill in the late stages of cancer. Though Zora left the second she was old enough, and has an unspoken of, decades old, conflict with her mother, she and her family are moving to Bardell, Georgia to help.

Avery know little of her grandmother. She and her mom visited once when she was five, but all she remembers of the visit is yelling. Now, at the beginning of her senior year of high school, she is leaving D.C. and her two best friends, moving to a town that looks tiny and run-down. 

Luckily, right away Avery meets Simone and them Jade. Finding two new friends is a blessing. But what Avery doesn't know is the history between their three families. The layers of secrets, racism and town history will slowly be revealed.

As friendships grow closer and time is spent in Bardell, stories are revealed that will both bring Avery closer to her mother and grandmother as well as reveal how racial violence can ripple through generations. 

Hammonds has written a story about family relationships set in a small town with big secrets. This is a beautifully written novel of our history as well as current day country. 

Hammonds, Jas. (2022). We Deserve Monuments. New York: Roaring Brook Press.