Admissions by Kendra James

James describes her experience as a black high school student, boarding at an an exclusive, predominantly white private school. Her high school experience is book-ended by her work as a college admissions officer for culturally diverse students.

Through telling her story, you get a good sense of James the high school student – her likes and dislikes, her friendship group, and the lightweight shenanigans they get up to as boarders. But this is well-trodden ground, in both fiction and nonfiction. Toward the very end of the book, James gets to the crux of the issue – the impact of being in a minority in what was a very closed and ‘protected’ environment. There were points that she touches on – a blatantly racist letter written to the school newspaper that bore little consequence for the author; and a reference to impact of Trump and the perceived increase of racism (or rather, that people felt ‘comfortable’ being racist because it was seemingly more socially acceptable than it had been previously) – that I wanted to know more about, particularly how James felt. But it didn’t quite deliver.

2.5/5

Bear, Lion or Wolf by Olivia Arezzolo

Arezzolo examines sleep deprivation and insomnia within the context of chronotype. I picked it up because although I don’t consider myself as someone with a sleep problem, I do notice that I’ve fallen into some bad sleep habits over the past few years. And hey, who doesn’t want better/ more sleep?

This book does include lots of useful information about sleep hygiene in general. That said, Arezzolo’s prescriptions for each chronotype are full-on and include diet; vitamin and mineral supplements; other therapies (from reflexology to light therapy); sticking to a strict routine; habit-tracking; and even changing the layout of your bedroom. I’m sure if you were desperate, you’d throw everything you could at insomnia but my takeaways were minimal – I am going to try switching afternoon caffeine for sour cherry juice, and I’m also making a greater effort to wear my blue lens glasses from 3pm onward.

2.5/5

The Fell by Sarah Moss

Moss’s latest novel is described as a ‘slim, tense page-turner’. Yes, it was slim but failed to be particularly tense, mostly because just as the suspense was mounting, Moss would switch to another characters’ point-of-view. There were parts of this story that I enjoyed, especially the snapshot of the shame and judgement surrounding COVID restrictions. But there were elements that simply didn’t do anything for me, notably the inclusion of the magic-realism raven.

Ultimately, there’s little to differentiate The Fell from Moss’s other novels.

2/5