Book Five in the messed up Hunger Games world ties together the characters from all the other books including The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (President Snow’s tragic tale) and lays the foundation for the uprising.
It begins on the morning of the reaping for the 50th Annual Hunger Games (The Second Quarter Quell). Young Haymitch is happy and madly in love with Lenore Dove, a singer from the Covey. (This echoes Snow’s love for Lucy Gray.) To “celebrate” fifty years of murdering children, twice the amount will be reaped—four per district so forty-eight in all. We already know that young Haymitch Abernathy, not only was chosen, but won (if you can call it that) so this book shows us, in vivid detail, how that came about.
Haymitch is chosen by rebels Beetee and Plutarch Heavensbee to sabotage the games along with Beetee’s son, Ampere, who was also reaped. This, along with trying to keep his team alive, becomes his mission. Each connection he makes in the arena and each subsequent death breaks him a little more. His descent into alcoholic madness is justified. The only other thing he could have done, given the horrific circumstances, was die. Since the story’s written in first person present tense, it’s very in-your-face. Nothing is held back and our hearts break along with Haymitch’s heart. Mags and Wiress also make an appearance, along with the brilliant Effie Trinket.
Collins brilliantly alludes to Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 narrative poem, “The Raven,” where the narrator descends into madness after losing his beloved, Lenore. “Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.” Haymitch knows of the poem because his own beloved, Lenore Dove, used to recite it to him. In the end, Haymitch becomes the mad narrator. You’ll have to read the story to understand why, and I guarantee if you don’t hate Snow now, you will forevermore.
The movie premieres this November 2026 in Canada, and I can’t wait to see this tragic love story hit the big screen.
Destined to become a Canadian literary classic, Finding Flora chronicles the bittersweet journey of twenty-four-year-old, red-haired, Scottish immigrant, Flora Craigie. Readers can’t help but root for this young, feisty hero whose first act of rebellion is to leap into the darkness from a moving train to escape her new, sick, predatory husband.
“Bracing herself against the jerk and pitch of the train, Flora leaped into the darkness” (3).
Hoodwinked by Hector Mackle, an unscrupulous land agent with the CPR, Flora marries in Scotland, only to discover his wicked nature four weeks later when he tries to strangle her for refusing his advances. Mackle’s been too sick to consummate the marriage, which is a blessing, as Flora learns when she lands in Alberta.
“The symptoms you’re describing sound like syphilis,” Nurse Godwin reveals. Wicked indeed.
This is a hero’s journey where allies and enemies appear at unprecedented times. A kind of feminist Gothic novel, it’s a tale of women helping women facing adversity. Besides confrontations with entitled men of power and privilege, the women struggle against the Canadian Prairie—as brutal an antagonist as the depraved husband who offers a reward for his wayward wife. She is, after all, legally his.
This plucky heroine continues to attract angels—her homesteading female neighbours—in what becomes known as “Ladysville”. At a time when women are deemed inferior and cannot vote (1905-1907) these rebellious women face the ire of the male-dominated community because they refuse to marry or stay silent. Allowed to homestead because the men assume they’ll fail, they face male ire when they make a success of their homesteads during the allotted two-year time frame. How? By helping each other through all the Prairie hurls at them—freezing winters, malevolent hail, sickness, politics, laws, even thugs intent on burning them out.
“Ignorance is fatal, especially out here” (150).
These are wonderfully realistic characters. Among them are a Welsh widow who’s immigrated with her children, so her son can escape the coal mine that killed his father; The Chicken Ladies, a couple of Boston teachers who’ve come to Canada to escape persecution when rumours circulate that they’re more than friends; and Jessie McDonald, a fiercely independent Métis woman who hunts and trains wild horses rather than put plough to land.
Finding Flora is an homage to all homesteaders, those brave souls who laid the foundation for the Western Canada that we know and love today.” —Eleanor Florence
Florence, who grew up in Saskatchewan, has Scottish-Cree heritage and is a member of the Métis Nation of British Columbia. She dedicates this book to her Métis great-grandmother, whose name, not so coincidentally, was Jessie McDonald. The story is one of adoration, and we find our ancestors in these resilient, fighting women who refuse to back down. Whether attacking the sod to plant a garden, chinking the log cabin bare-handed with horse manure and mud, plucking wild oat seed before spreading the precious wheat, or any other of her daily Herculean tasks, Flora finds herself persevering and falling in love with this land.
Woven among the fictional characters are well-described historical characters: Irene Parlby, Alberta women’s rights activist; larger than life figure CPR president William Van Horne, and Alix Westhead, a rich, powerful woman for whom the village of Alix, Alberta was named, and whom Van Horne allegedly had a dalliance with.
Frank Oliver of Edmonton, who served as the federal Minister of the Interior, makes a damnable villain—especially with his frat boy comments: “I jollied her along because she’s such a juicy little tart, with that mane of red hair. Some man will be lucky to get a piece of that” (281.) Ah, just what a woman wants to hear when she’s eavesdropping. It’s Oliver who pushes to expropriate all of Ladysville, and harasses Flora via his agent, Mr. Payne (the perfect name for this villain.) Several real life minor characters also pepper the pages, giving a sense of reality to the homesteaders’ plight. This is history as you’ve never read it.
But don’t despair, this is a feminist tale and there’s power in sisterhood. And for those of you who crave romance, there’s a hint of that too.
Florence is a brilliant writer, the story superbly structured—she plotted the whole thing before filling in the details—the pacing relentless, the drama so thick it will tie you in knots. Yet, it’s so well written, it flows quickly and easily. Her lyrical prose describes the Prairie, both its gifts and its scourges, with imagery so vivid and cinematic we can’t help but wish for Finding Flora to become a film or CBC special. Finding Flora is as much a tribute to the Canadian Prairie as Anne of Green Gables is to P.E.I.
The book is incredibly well-researched—Florence includes a two-page bibliography and a Reading Group Guide for book clubs. She read some sixty books about homesteading in Canada before beginning to write. Perhaps, this practice grew from her earlier career in journalism. Florence worked for newspapers from Manitoba to British Columbia and even published her own award-winning community paper. She also spent eight years writing for Reader’s Digest Canada. Bird’s Eye View, her first novel, was a national bestseller, and Wildwood, her second, was featured in Kobo’s “100 Most Popular Canadian Books of All Time.” This is a woman to watch, this book a pearl of perfection.
Elinor Florence was overjoyed when Finding Flora debuted on the national bestseller list for Canadian Fiction in the number one spot and remained on the national bestseller list for thirty weeks plus during 2025. It’s also a Heather’s Pick for the Indigo, Chapters, and Coles book chain and was recently named one of Indigo’s Top Ten Best Books of 2025.
Cold is a brilliant example of Indigenous literary fiction. A powerful storyteller, award-winning playwright, columnist, filmmaker, and lecturer, Drew Hayden Taylor infuses this mythical mystery with nuggets of knowledge, literary allusions, and humour (black and otherwise). He began his career as a standup comic. A handful of diverse characters, unknown to each other, combine to track and kill an unbelievable enemy that touches all their lives in Canada’s biggest city. Toronto.
“The profound lesson here is that even in the coldest, most desolate landscapes of our existence, it is these very connections that can keep our spirits warm and guide us through the storms.”
I met Taylor in the early 1990s at Trent University in Peterborough when he was publicizing his two one act plays for youth: Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock and Education is our Right. Taylor was born nearby at Curve Lake First Nation. Over the last thirty years, he’s won a host of awards while writing novels, plays, and documentaries, directing films, and touring the world.
The book is divided into three parts, with titles in Anishinaabemowin (and English). “The Storm Approaches” begins with the crash of a Cessna 2065 in Northern Ontario. A young Indigenous boy dies. A driven Caribbean journalist, Fabiola Halan, suffers a compound fracture in her right leg, and the pilot, an Anishinaabe woman named Merle Thompson, leaves Fabiola alone, intent on traversing thirty kilometres of ice and snow to find help. Here, in this tragic moment we catch a glimpse of Taylor’s comic relief in Fabiola’s thoughts: “No matter the amount of pain, people whose tortured command of the English language would and usually did cause her more discomfort than a mishandled Brazilian wax and a children’s first-year violin recital combined” (13).
Next, we’re introduced to the handsome, aging, “Ojibwa hockey ninja” Paul North as he awakens from a hangover. North’s team is part of the Indigenous Hockey League, and he’s in Toronto for a tournament, perhaps his last. The inclusion of Elmore Trent, Professor of Indigenous Literature, provides Taylor with a spokesperson for Canadian Indigenous fiction. With nods to dystopian writers, Waubgeshig Rice (Moon of the Turning Leaves) and Cherie Dimaline (The Marrow Thieves), Trent muses how Indigenous writers used to lament the past but now tend to explore future dystopian worlds.
Meanwhile, Detective Ruby Birch is investigating a trail of vicious murders by a serial killer leapfrogging across the country. The question that drives the plot and plagues the reader is who, or what, is this killer? As “The Blizzard Rages” these disparate characters connect. Trent talks racial politics with the brilliant journalist, Fabiola, who survived her cold ordeal and wrote a book she’s now publicizing. When Trent and North discover they’re both connected to one of the victims, they decide to work together. After all, this killer is hunting people they know. They could be next. The twists will tie you in knots.
Taylor reveals in his acknowledgements that Cold began its life as an Indigenous horror movie called Wendigo, based on a mythical Anishinaabe nightmare creature, which evolved in the frozen north where people were starving. “It’s a spirit. It doesn’t have a body, but it has horrifying hunger, a hunger so strong it eclipses anything else… It needs a physical body so it can eat” (305). Enough said.
I highly recommend this novel. Though Cold blends genres (murder mystery, horror, and thriller) it is something unto itself—not unlike the Wendigo. Fascinating and spellbinding, it will keep you reading far into the night. Who or what is the Wendigo? And how will they stop it?
If you’ve never heard of Cornelia Funke, you must find this book and read it. Funke has been called the German J. K. Rowling. Both women have written a fantastical series featuring a child protagonist. Funke’s is a trilogy: Inkheart (2003), Inkspell (2005), and Inkdeath (2007). The “ink” is a clue that these are stories about books and people who love books—people like me and you. This translation from the German by Anthea Bell is quite well done.
“Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness—and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn’t ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.”
Funke was working as an illustrator and social worker in Germany when her son asked her to write a story about people who come out of books. We readers love to slip inside stories ourselves—in a figurative way—but imagine having Hermione Granger or Katniss Everdeen suddenly standing beside you? Or worse, imagine the Death-Eaters hovering over your bed!
Meggie is a twelve-year-old girl Funke named after her daughter. She gave her a wonderful father, who Meggie calls “Mo” (short for Mortimer) with a fantastical gift. Mortimer Folchart is a Book Doctor, a bookbinder/restorer and great lover of books. These words are etched on a metal plaque on the door to his workshop:
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
But Mo is also something else. He was nicknamed Silvertongue by the characters he read out of Inkheart.
“Mo could paint pictures in the empty air with his voice alone.”
His gift comes with a price.
While reading Inkheart aloud nine years before, Mo accidentally pulled out three eccentric characters created by Italian author, Fenoglio. Capricorn is one of literature’s nastier villains. Basta is a superstitious, knife-wielding thug. And Dustfinger is a loveable fire-eater with a strange horned marten.
But, at the same time, Mo read Meggie’s mother, Theresa, INTO the book, and they lost her. After that horrific mistake Mo’s refused to read aloud ever again. He fears losing his daughter too. Capricorn destroyed all copies of Inkheart except the one he keeps for himself. He does not want to be read back into the book.
Like any good villain, Capricorn has his own agenda.
The tale begins in Germany where Mo and Maggie live. Dustfinger arrives with a warning: Capricorn is hunting Mo. He’s discovered another third-rate reader who’s read out some characters, but all have flaws. His reading is just not up to snuff. Capricorn has enough thugs and now wants treasure. Unflawed treasure. Pirate treasure. Gold. Mo and Meggie flee to northern Italy to take refuge at Meggie’s great aunt Elinor’s mansion full of books. Elinor is a collector and books are her world.
“A famous writer once wrote, ‘An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher, or a magician—but the magician, the enchanter, is in the ascendant.”
Mo is so obsessed with finding a copy of Inkheart and reading his wife home, they track down old Fenoglio to see if he has some stashed away. The charming old man joins them on their journey.
“Inkheart.” Fenoglio rubbed his aching back. “Its title is Inkheart because it’s about a man whose wicked heart is as black as ink, filled with darkness and evil. I still like the title.”
Eventually, they all end up imprisoned in Capricorn’s village in southern Italy. When Meggie reads Tinkerbell out of Peter Pan, she realizes she’s inherited Mo’s gift.
Unfortunately, so does Capricorn.
Allusions to classic literature paint the story along with much talk about books and reading. Wonderful quotes from our favourite children’s stories begin each chapter. This is a story to sink inside—not literally, of course—but to fall asleep with while you’re wrapped safely in words and soft quilts.
Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness, keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth … all those glorious words.”
Cornelia Funke with her children
Inkheart was made into a movie featuring Brendan Fraser in 2008. Although it was produced by Cornelia Funke, I really don’t want to spoil things by watching it. This story is all about the written word and I can’t see how a film could do it justice.
I recently found a used hardcover of Inkspell, with Funke’s illustrations, in my local Indie bookstore, and now, like Mo, I’m searching for the rest of the trilogy. I just read Inkheart on Libby so I’d be ready for book two. If you see any other hardcover copies in thrift stores, do let me know. Like Elinor, I’m beginning to build my library of book loves.
This terrifying twisted tale, set at a fancy boarding school in Virginia, USA, will keep you reading until the bitter end. Why? Because, well, you just have to know what’s really going on. Are these macabre monsters real? And if so, how will they be contained?
CG Drews has a talent for creating gruesome Young Adult stories. After reading Hazelthorn (2025) I was left wanting, so dug into this one (2024). The writing isn’t quite as lyrical but it’s still a strange, melancholy love song wrapped up in vines, thorns, flowers, blood, ink, and assorted greenery that invades the bodies of her adolescent victim. Drews must be a gardener or the child of one.
Andrew is a fragile, sensitive boy who writes dark fairy tales. Thomas—the wild, fierce boy Andrew loves—draws vile monsters, the creatures from Andrew’s stories. Dove, a studious young woman with her whole life mapped out, is Andrew’s twin sister. These three have been inseparable since Dove and Andrew arrived from Australia when they were twelve to study at Wickwood Academy. But this year, their graduating year, things are different.
Dove is keeping her distance. She’s preparing for a world beyond Wickwood, while Andrew seems to be fading into the forest. Feeling stuffed full of moss, he can’t eat. Thomas’s abusive parents were brutally murdered and everyone whispers that he killed them. When the boys venture into the off-bounds wild wood, they discover monsters everywhere—monsters created in Andrew’s imagination and brought to life by Thomas’ drawings. Feeling responsible, they take it upon themselves to keep the secret, destroy Thomas’s sketches, and kill the monsters. They must keep them from getting into the school.
Even as I turn the last page I’m left wondering. What really happened? The thing is: we see the story through Andrew’s eyes and he’s an unreliable narrator struggling with first love and his identity. Though he’s in love with Thomas, Andrew thinks he might be asexual. Yet he yearns for his first kiss. From Thomas. Only Thomas. And as the story progresses, Andrew hears other things from other people—things he doesn’t want to hear from people who don’t believe in the monsters, compassionate adults who want to send him home to recover.
It’s complex, twisted, and tragic. Note that the book comes with content warnings: “blood/gore, body horror, panic attacks, grief, eating disorder, bullying, and self-harm.”
The book itself—I read the hardcover— is an artistic creation with an entire page of editors and creative designers behind it, and obviously buckets of money. I love this trend to create pretty keepsake books. Full page sketches of Thomas’ monsters inspire chills. Yet the fairytale that weaves through the book—pale text embedded on a dark grey page—is printed in a font so fine and fancy, these old eyes can’t read it. Perhaps I missed something there. Artsy, but ineffective. This is a good reminder to always choose a legible font. Note: It’s easier to read in a digital image than on paper.
Psychological horror. A twisted love story. A feast of friendship and fidelity.
“His breathing evened out, but he made no move to get up. Andrew didn’t care, not while they still touched. He craved Thomas’s affection, with an intensity that left him dizzy. If he never had more, he had this.
It was almost worth being ripped apart by monsters” (109).
