Author Hank Garner interviews me on his podcast and we had a blast. Literally. There was an explosion during the interview and many died. But otherwise it was really fun.

http://hankgarner.com/episode-thirty-eight-with-armand-rosamilia/

[I received a copy of this book from its Canadian publisher Random House Canada/Tundra Books. This does not affect my opinion on the book.]

Susin Nielsen was one of my favourite discoveries of 2014, hands down. You may remember the weekend where I binge-read her entire backlist or this post where I got excited about the launch of We Are All Made of Molecules all over again. Or this post, where I proudly called Nielsen’s characters my old friends that could help get me out of a winter funk. I’m honestly sorry (not sorry) if you’re tired of hearing me swoon about this amazing Vancouver-based author. (Semi-unrelated fun fact: Nielsen wrote 16 episodes for Degrassi Junior High – amazing!)

Anyway, what you can expect to take out of this review is that I absolutely loved We Are All Made of Molecules. Here’s why:

It’s hilarious.

We Were All…

A Taste of Blood Wine, Freda Warrington

The copy on the front definitely captures a lot about this book. ‘Throbs with lush romanticism,’ says The Times. That’s a perfect description right there. It’s lush, gothic, romantic, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. I found it a compulsive read, and I found the way it treats the morality of vampirism very interesting. It doesn’t shy away from the implications of evil, parasitism, etc, but it doesn’t wholly embrace them, either: Warrington’s vampires have feelings, doubts, difficulties, according to the kind of people they are. The female lead worries about her amorality, and the book doesn’t disguise that there’s something monstrous about a love which demands this kind of sacrifice.

I found the relationships between the characters very well done: Charlotte’s relationships with her family, Karl’s with Ilona and Kristian, the ambivalent side-switching of the others. Kristian’s power…