‘Wee Little Book Review: The Blondes by Emily Schultz

The Blondes by Emily Schultz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The premise for the story was equal parts outrageous and probable, and the multiple layers to the story worked well together with consistency. The characters were believable without needing to be over-explained, and the protagonist was easy to relate to without demanding that I crawl into her skin and see and feel everything that she was experiencing. The dialogue was very natural and went a long way towards giving me a good sense for the personalities of the characters, and the way the story unfolded and ended felt easy and open-ended without leaving me hanging. Having been to New York (and having grown up in Toronto), I had a good sense for the setting which always gives me a deeper reading experience. I didn’t passionately love this book—and really, who needs to be blown away every single time?—but I did like it very much.

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Continuing with highlights from my time with FriesenPress, I had to share another beautiful Canadian author. Deborah Roberts commissioned artists to produce some of the most breathtaking art that our design team has handled. My coworkers gathered around my computer when I first received these high-resolution illustrations. This project was very close to Deborah’s heart and it was an important milestone for her to see this book in print.

This children’s book about how to communicate with emotional intelligence with your friends featured exceptional and vivid illustrations by my author Jacqueline Newton-Kowalsky. That she both wrote and illustrated this book was exceptional, and being exposed to such creativity was an enriching experience. I have to admit that I loved referring to her title on a daily basis. To have a good reason to say “Itsy Bitsy” over and over in a business setting was one of those quirks of the publishing industry that I simply adore.

Books I’ve Published in the Last Year: Mushrooms of Autumn

Ah, Don Gardner—one of my all-time favourite self-published authors. This man has a great heart and a fantastic sense of humoor. He took the cover image himself over 40 years ago and rocked my world when he submitted it. And how could I not love a book synopsis like this:

“The saga begins when our heroine is ten years old and naïve. Forty-three years later, Glory Anne Grimes is still naïve and proved to be a slow learner. Angel Peters and Michele Dionne, being at opposite ends of the spiritual and moral spectrum, have a polarizing effect on Glory Anne. She considers herself somewhere between them, and throughout these years is pulled from one extreme to the other searching for a deeper relationship with God, while yielding to lust amid her Catholic fidelity instilled in childhood.”

Scandalous good times from a robust, good-humoured and engaging author.