Book Review
If someone were to ask me what it means to have a book with
a strong sense of setting I would 100% point to A Psalm For Lost Girls. New Haven, MA is a small
immigrant city where everyone knows everyone and some secrets just can’t be
kept.Callie da Costa wants to believe her sister Tessa, whose
untimely death she is still grieving , wasn’t the miracle making saint the
town and church think she might have been. That maybe the fortuitous voices her
sister heard where. . . just in her head?
But when a missing girl miraculously appears on a shrine to Tessa, Callie has to rethink what she truly believes. This is a great read for those who, like me, don’t think
contemporary is for them. While the story has hints of magical realism the
events in the novel are grounded in grief and loss.
Bayerl is a creative writing educator and I think it shows. Her writing is very precise, the story deals
in particular themes and it all felt very by the book. I’m curious to see what
else this author has up her sleeve. A great read-a-like for Vivian Apple At The
End Of The World.
Audiobook Review: Narrators Saskia Maarleveld, Julia Whelan, and Kyla Garcia bring to life a teenager’s journey to discover if her dead sister is truly the miracle-making modern-day saint everyone believes her to be. Maarleveld handles the bulk of the performance; her cool, casual voice is a perfect fit for the grieving Callie da Costa as she tangles with the death of her saintly sister, Tess. Garcia gives a bright and hopeful performance of Tess through the diary she left behind. Whelan ties it all together as she narrates the story of a missing child whose reappearance could be Tess’s posthumously sanctified miracle. The trio provides a performance that will awaken, or reawaken, listeners to the possibility of miracles. J.E.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2017]
1/2 of the blogging duo at Books and Sensibility, I have been blogging about and reviewing books since 2011. I read any and every genre, here on the blog I mostly review Fantasy, Adult Fiction, and Young Adult with a focus on audiobooks.