The Safe Place by Anna Downes seems like the perfect book for socially distancing amid a pandemic. It takes place at a beautiful French chateau, a mammoth home by the sea with a pool, stable, and outdoor kitchen. The main characters sit by the pool and drink wine, and if they're trapped, at least they're trapped in paradise. Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems, and underneath its ideal facade, this beautiful French chateau harbors not just a rank, rotting odor, but sinister …
Personify Me Poem
Personification is my favorite type of figurative language. There is just so much you can do with it, to create atmosphere or emotion. When I'm writing description, my first go-to strategy for "showing versus telling" is to use personification. I'm not much of a poet, but when I'm teaching my poetry unit to my creative writing students, I find that experimenting with writing sample poems for them helps me develop my prose writing skills as well. And, personification is always my favorite …
I Know Who You Are
I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney Format: Kindle I really enjoyed Feeney's first novel, Sometimes I Lie, and I admit to being a fan of the British psychological thriller with a flawed heroine and a twist ending (which her first novel totally was), so I climbed on board for her second novel. The story is about Aimee, a rising screen actress whose marriage is falling apart. At the beginning of the story, Aimee and her husband Ben have a fight, and then Ben promptly …
The Heir Affair
The Heir Affair (The Royal We Book 2) by Heather Cock and Jessica Morgan Format: Audio This second novel follows The Royal We, in which all-American tomboy Bex studies at Oxford, and falls in love with Prince Nicholas, who is second in line to the throne. Their romance is a roller coaster ride, made more complicated when Bex’s twin sister Lacey, and Nick’s younger brother Freddie, interfere. But (spoiler alert) Bex and Nick get married at the end, though their wedding was …
So Bad It’s Good- Analogies Written by “High School Students”
If you teach high school English, I expect you've seen this list before. I'll bet you even showed it to other members in your English department, and you all shared a good laugh one afternoon, as students left the building and you braced yourself for an hour or two of essay grading before you headed home. That's how it happened for me, when I saw this list for the first time, but that was toward the beginning of my teaching career, before there was Facebook. Since then I have seen it posted …