The Review Broads Bros + Paws

City of Thorns Author: Ben Rawlence In City of Thorns, a new book in real-time about the lives of nine refugees in the Dedaab Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya for Somalian and other refugees, Ben Rawlence performs the impossible.  Instead of sighing and saying oh who cares? Rawlence steers our attention where our hearts should be.  Mesmerizing, moving and monumental, the City of Thorns, a true story of real people puts the people back in What is Happening Over There is Not Important to Me.  It ... continue reading...

The Nowhere Man  (An Orphan X Novel) Author: Gregg Hurwitz   Jason Bourne’s balls and brawn, James Patterson’s staccato chapters that rip through a novel, and with an orphaned hero-assassin with a big heart, The Nowhere Man by Gregg Hurwitz assures an on the edge performance that strikes like a fully loaded clip on an automatic rifle: taut, safety off, and lethal. “Faster than a speeding bullet” accounts for The Nowhere Man’s dynamic drama, and ensures us a first seat on the bus to ... continue reading...

Only the Animals Author: Ceridwen Dovey To anthropomorphize or Not to anthropomorphize?  Ceridwen Dovey’s novel, Only the Animals, is a collection of very clever short stories with animal narrators. Each animal narrator is owned by a famous person in history that has been famous for talent and goodness (Tolstoy) or evil (Hitler) or the animal is present at a momentous historical event (the Western Front, Sarajevo).   Each animals tells its own life story and the story of its friends and ... continue reading...

The Big Green Tent  Author: Luidmila Ulitskaya(Translated from Russion by Polly Gannon) Sloughing through a Cold War, The Big Green Tent combines a sweeping tale of three Russian friends from Moscow with a panorama of the politics, ethics, literature and Russian experience as the characters all wind their way through childhood, school and adulthood.  The boys are Outliers of a sort; they are an orphan who is a poet, a talented pianist, and a photographer with passion.  Ulitskaya covers them ... continue reading...

The Crooked House Author: Christobel Kent Creepy, incestuous atmosphere spun to perfection, skewed characters that run true, a crooked house that seals the deal, and a bent horizon thrust Kent’s characters into a plot so thick and gooey that this novel stalks each reader with a brilliance that terrifies.  Brutal, somewhat gothic, narrowly noir, and with tendrils of Du Maurier and Bronte, The Crooked House, deserted on a bleak muddy estuary peripheral to the main village,  allows secrets to ... continue reading...