Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R. Austin

A special thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Gilda, an atheist lesbian, cannot stop obsessing about death. Alienated from her repressive family and desperate for relief from her anxious mind, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church where she's greeted by Father Jeff who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is hired on the spot as the replacement of their recently deceased receptionist, Grace.

In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and trips to the emergency room, Gilda strikes up an unexpected email correspondence with Grace’s elderly friend, Rosemary. She simply can’t bear to ignore the kindly old woman, but she also can’t bring herself to break the bad news. In an act of desperation, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace’s death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence.

With deadpan humour, and pitch-perfect observations about the human condition, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is an exploration of what it takes to stay afloat in a world where the only thing that's certain is expiration.

Austin's sardonic wit is astounding. With its themes of mental health and queer identity, this novel is a multifaceted exploration of the life of a queer woman, one in which her her sexuality is not the only focus of her existence.

This heartfelt and hilarious character-driven debut introduces us to Gilda, a morbidly anxious twenty-something, who accepts a position as a receptionist in a Catholic church and becomes obsessed with her predecessor’s mysterious death. She is comprised of eccentricities and quirks—social situations handcuff her as does her anxiety-inducing panic attacks that make her a regular at the local hospital. Because she is so painfully honest and has a flair for sabotaging herself with what could possibly go wrong, Gilda struggles with forming relationships. But readers will fall in love with her. 

Told from Gilda's point of view, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is divided into five parts named after Catholic events. There are no chapters, but the narrative moves quickly with its short punchy paragraphs. Austin employs asterisks to change the scene and to break up Gilda's rambling. Her writing is witty and manic, touching and profound. She has brought to life some incredible and unconventional characters that are simply unforgettable. 

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EMILY R. AUSTIN received a writing grant from the Canadian Council for the Arts in 2020. She studied English literature and library science at Western University. Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is her first novel.

Austin currently lives in Ottawa.

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Q & A with Emily R. Austin*

GWR: Describe your ideal writing/reading experience. 

ERA: I am in the woods. I have been assured there are no bears anywhere nearby. (I’m afraid of bears.) There are also no bugs. I am drinking tea and reading a sardonic book that just made me laugh out loud. There are tears in my eyes. A friend hears me laugh, asks what I’m reading, I tell them, and they reply, “Wow, that sounds good, I want to read that too.” Then, they actually read it. We later get matching tattoos of our favourite line from the book. We tag the author in our tattoo picture on Instagram. The author “likes” the picture and comments “omg!” 

GWR: Which writers (novelists, playwrights, journalists, poets) do you admire most?

ERA: There are so many writers I admire. I love writing that manages to be simultaneously funny and dark. Jen Beagin and Ottessa Moshfegh are both good examples of that. Bo Burnham’s recent special on Netflix titled Inside is also a great example of dark yet funny content that I admire, and the show Fleabag by Pheobe Waller-Bridge is as well. I also love Steven Rowley’s writing; he manages to write books that deal with sad topics like grief and loneliness while also being very funny and heartwarming. I just finished his new book The Guncle. I loved Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier and Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. Outside of that, I love Leonard Cohen, Sylvia Plath, and also children’s literature like Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel.

GWR: Is there a particular author/work that inspired you to become an author, or the way that you write?  

ERA: Books I remember liking when I started taking an interest in writing were Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, and Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie McDonald. I also had a potentially worrying fixation on The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

GWR: How did you come up with the concept for Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead?

ERA: I came to write this book by deciding my approach to writing would be to draw inspiration from the experiences in my life that have been challenging or negative. I figured if I do this, I can turn those experiences into something positive or constructive, like books. This way, I will be grateful for every experience, and there will be a silver lining when things go wrong. I was raised Catholic and have had challenges with depression and anxiety since I was quite young. This book is set in a Catholic church, and the protagonist is struggling with acute anxiety and depression. In the same sort of way comedians do improv, I asked myself “what are bad things I’ve experienced?” and a voice in my mind shouted “Depression!” and then another voice shouted “Catholicism!” and I thought, “Okay, what can I do with these?” and I wrote this book.

GWR: What came first for you—the overall idea or the characters? 

 ERA: That is a sort of a chicken and the egg question for me. I came up with secondary characters after, but the main character, Gilda, and the overall idea came together at once I think. This book is very character driven, and the story is heavily intertwined with Gilda as a person.

GWR: Humour can be so difficult to write and yet you do it brilliantly. Did you find that the most challenging, or was there a particular scene that was the most difficult?

ERA: Thank you! I actually find it more difficult to write sincere passages. For example, it was hard for me to write the relationship between the main character Gilda and the girl she is seeing, Eleanor. I admire romance novelists for being able to write romantic relationships. I find that very difficult. 

GWR: If you could tell your younger self something about writing and becoming an author, what would it be? 

ERA: My younger self would think I was bullying her. I struggled in English classes until I was in my mid-teens. I would likely spend the whole interaction trying to convince young me that I wasn’t making fun of her. If I managed to convince her of that, I would tell her to stop deleting everything she writes. I wrote whole books as a teenager that I erased because I thought they were so terrible. I found one that survived recently in an old email and it was terrible; however, it was very funny to read as an adult, and I wish there were more.

GWR: This book takes a deep dive into other topics—mental health, religion, issues that face the LGBTQQIP2SAA community—why was it important to include these elements in the story?

ERA: Gilda is a lesbian and her character serves in part to show what the experience of being depressed and queer is like. Queer people are more likely to suffer from depression, and to die by suicide. Being queer is not inherently depressing; however, it is tied to homophobia, which is why queer people suffer from depression and anxiety at higher rates. Because of that, I meant to portray Gilda’s relationship with the girl she is seeing as one area of her life that makes her happy. It served to illustrate why it is so damaging to queer people to suggest their relationships are bad. Gilda also mentions in the book that it’s ironic that Catholicism was theoretically created to help people feel safe and meaningful when it takes away one of the few things that makes her feel like her life is worth living at all. 

GWR: If your book was a beverage, what would it be? 

ERA: Unconsecrated communion wine. 

GWR: What are you working on now?

ERA: I am writing something new, but I am not ready to share just yet! But don’t worry, I’m definitely anxious about it.

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.  

Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

A special thank you to Raincoast Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

You can save hundreds of lives. Or the one that matters most.

Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems of her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination. Someone who needs Mina's assistance and who knows exactly how to make her comply. 

It's twenty hours to landing. A lot can happen in twenty hours.

Ladies and gentlemen, Clare Mackintosh has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. We are going to experience severe turbulence. Please return to your seats and keep your seat belts fastened. 

Set over twenty hours on an inaugural nonstop flight from London to Sydney, Hostage is a pulse-pounding, claustrophobic, locked-room thriller. With themes of motherhood, morals, and activism this book is utterly electric and unputdownable.  

Hostage is told from alternating points of view between Mina and Adam with perspectives from other passengers interspersed. By getting deep into her characters' psyches, Mackintosh brilliantly executes her latest thriller. The incredible character development and passenger-centric chapters are what elevates the novel—this extra insight into the passengers is utterly captivating.  

This book is a union of a locked-room mystery and action thriller sprinkled with a bit of domestic noir. Hostage is an absolute blockbuster that delivers on so many levels. The fear of the passengers is palpable and the twists are believable with one exception—the motivation for the highjacking is completely contrived. But Mackintosh makes up for it with the explosive and shocking Epilogue. Highly recommend.

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CLARE MACKINTOSH is the New York Times and #1 international bestselling author of I Let You Go, I See You, Let Me Lie, and After the End. Her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages and have sold more than two million copies worldwide.

She lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children.

The Siren by Katherine St. John

A special thank you to Grand Central Publishing for a copy of the book.

In the midst of a sizzling hot summer, some of Hollywood's most notorious faces are assembled on the idyllic Caribbean island of St. Genesius to film The Siren, starring dangerously handsome megastar Cole Power playing opposite his ex-wife, Stella Rivers. The surefire blockbuster promises to entice audiences with its sultry storyline and intimately connected cast.

Three very different women arrive on set, each with her own motive. Stella, an infamously unstable actress, is struggling to reclaim the career she lost in the wake of multiple public breakdowns. Taylor, a fledgling producer, is anxious to work on a movie she hopes will turn her career around after her last job ended in scandal. And Felicity, Stella's mysterious new assistant, harbours designs of her own that threaten to upend everyone's plans.

With a hurricane brewing in the distance, each woman finds herself trapped on the island but united against a common enemy. As deceptions come to light, misplaced trust may prove more dangerous than the storm itself.

From The Lion's Den author Katherine St. John, The Siren is another sublimely escapist thriller: when A-lister actor Cole Power hires his ex-wife, Stella Rivers, to act in his son's film on an isolated island, he sets in motion a chain of events that will unearth long-buried secrets and unravel years of lies.

With a layered plot, well-developed characters, and enough soapy insight into the entertainment world, The Siren is a perfect summer read. Told from the perspectives of the three leading ladies, the multiple points of view work exceptionally well to provide the backstories and motivations that are responsible for bringing these women to the island. Taylor most closely aligns with the reader, making assumptions about Stella—a washed up actress—and Felicity—her flighty assistant. But as the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that they are intelligent and complicated women, both victims of traumatic events in their past. 

Capitalizing on celebrity culture, St. John does an excellent job with pacing and fully fleshes out the narrative. She ratchets up the tension with the escalating storm which proves to be just as destructive as what is revealed.   

Reading like a Hollywood rag, The Siren is a bombshell of secrets, lies, and deceit. Purely entertaining. 

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KATHERINE ST. JOHN is a native of Mississippi, graduate of the University of Southern California, and author of the critically acclaimed novel The Lion’s Den. When she’s not writing, she can be found hiking or on the beach with a good book. 

St. John currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.

Instamom by Chantel Guertin

A special thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada/Doubleday Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It’s the influencer’s golden rule: know your niche. Kit Kidding has found hers on Instagram, where she gets paid to promote brands and share expertly curated posts about her fun, fabulous, child-free life. Kit likes kids just fine, but she passionately believes that women who choose not to become mothers shouldn’t have to face guilt. Or judgement. Or really hot chefs who turn out to be single dads.

Will MacGregor is aggravating, sexy, persistent, averse to social media, and definitely a bad idea. As soon as Kit learns his parenting status, she vows to put their scorching one-night stand behind her and move on. But Will and Kit are thrown together on an Instagram campaign, and the more time she spends with him—and his whip-smart, eight-year-old daughter, Addie—the more difficult it is to stay away, much less sustain what Will so cleverly calls her “Resting Beach Face.” Kit’s picture-perfect career path is suddenly clashing with the possibility of a different future—messy, complicated, and real. Which life does she truly want? Will she have to re-invent herself? And will love still be waiting by the time she figures it out?

Told through the lens of an Instagram influencer, Guertin's Instamom is a compelling look at modern relationships, perceptions, and the pressures women face with societal expectations. Kit Kidding is proudly kid-free and has made it her brand—she has created an envious career out of her unapologetic choice to not have children. But what happens when she's met the ultimate #dealbreaker?

At first Will is charming, wickedly sexy, and worth taking a chance on. But as the story progresses, he puts Kit into situations that are either unfair—in that she's set up to fail—or that are just plain awful. My only criticism is that the chemistry isn't quite to the level where it's believable that they would want to work on their relationship. 

That being said, Guertin is a wonderful writer—there are some truly beautiful passages where Kit is reminiscing about her mom and when she explores Kit's vulnerability with her secret bookstagrammer account. Also effective was the reminder of the pitfalls of social media and how life is curated to be envied. 

Funny, flirty, and emotional, Instamom is a perfect summer escape.

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CHANTEL GUERTIN is a Toronto‑based beauty expert and television personality, well-known to audiences of Canada’s number‑one daytime talk show, The Marilyn Denis Show, and a frequent guest of morning news shows. Previously, she worked as a beauty editor at fashion magazines.

Guertin lives in Toronto with her family.

Lucky by Marissa Stapley

A special thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

What if you had the winning ticket that would change your life forever, but you couldn’t cash it in?

Lucky Armstrong is a tough, talented grifter who has just pulled off a million-dollar heist with her boyfriend, Cary. She’s ready to start a brand-new life, with a new identity—when things go sideways. Lucky finds herself alone for the first time, navigating the world without the help of either her father or her boyfriend, the two figures from whom she’s learned the art of the scam.

When she discovers that a lottery ticket she bought on a whim is worth millions, her elation is tempered by one big problem: cashing in the winning ticket means the police will arrest her for her crimes. She’ll go to prison, with no chance to redeem her fortune.

As Lucky tries to avoid arrest and make a future for herself, she must confront her past by reconciling with her father; finding her mother, who abandoned her when she just a baby; and coming to terms with the man she thought she loved—whose complicated past is catching up to her, too.

With its clever premise, Lucky delivers a spirited thief of a heroine that readers will find themselves rooting for. Told in alternating timelines between a child version and a present day adult version, this is a novel about truth, the complexity of doing what's right, and of redemption. 

Stapley plays on the sympathy of her reader with ten-year-old Lucky. She is vulnerable yet competent and overall, a compelling lead. Lucky's father is both loathsome and charming, the quintessential con man.

Perfectly paced with shorty, punchy chapters, Lucky is a character-driven narrative that will hook readers until the very last page. It's smart, slick, and satisfying. And soon to be on the small screen—the TV rights to Lucky have been sold to ABC Disney. Congratulations, Marissa!

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MARISSA STAPLEY is a journalist and the author of three bestselling novels, including the acclaimed Mating for Life and Things to Do When It's Raining, which was published in twelve countries, and The Last Resort, which was optioned for television, and an Oprah Magazine Best Beach Read.

Stapley lives in Toronto with her family, and co-writes romantic comedies with Karma Brown under the pen name Maggie Knox.

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Q & A with Marissa Stapley*

GWR: Describe your ideal writing/reading experience (when, where, what, how).

MS: I don’t think I necessarily have one! I can—and have—read and written anywhere. But as far as reading goes, I can’t sleep if I haven’t read (truly, even if I have a really late night at an event, I’ll wake up my husband with my reading light because I can’t unwind unless I do a little reading!) so my perfect reading situation is when we’re having a quiet night, no one needs anything, and I can retreat to my room, put on PJs, light a candle and chill with a book. I enjoy this more than unwinding by watching TV and always have such a happy glow when I’m reading a book I’m super into and can’t wait to get to it that night. 

For writing, I used to say I needed to be alone to get my writing done, but the past year and a half has changed all that, since I can count the number of times I’ve been alone on one hand. Now I think my ideal writing experience happens when my office and house are passably clean, everyone is happy and acceptably quiet, I’m feeling inspired and have no time limit. I also like getting up early before everyone else is awake to sort of pretend I’m alone, writing…

But my absolute favourite writing experience happens during the retreats I used to go on and hope to again with a group of writer friends. We write all day, until the sun sets—then have wine and cheese and charcuterie and salad, basically anything we don’t have to cook, and talk about writing and life. We have a house we go to by a lake for four days at a time, once per season. It’s a dream. The perfect mix of productive and  restorative. 

GWR: What does your actual writing process look like? Are you a pantser/gardner or a plotter/architect?

MS: I’m both, depending on the project. When I’m writing on my own, I like to “pants” my way through a very messy and personal (as in I would die if anyone read it!) first draft. It’s usually about half the length of an actual draft, and contains a lot of “I will figure this out later!!” For me, so much of the joy I get from writing is in the mystery of what is going to happen next and where my characters are going to take me. That first draft is how I get to know them and let them do their thing—and how I identify where we’re going to have pitfalls and problems. Seeing that first draft as just mine and really more like a very freeform outline helps me write a good book in many ways. It helps the process stay organic. It also helps me identify if an idea I have truly has legs, or if I can only get through a few chapters before the whole thing just dies out on me. 

But when I write with my partner in rom coms, Karma Brown, we have to outline. I think Karma would have a heart attack if I forced her to pants her way through a first draft with me. She is definitely a plotter! And that’s ok because I don’t think you can partner up with someone on writing a book and not have a proper outline. We both accept that things are going to change somewhat as we go and we’ll have to communicate about that, but we definitely have a very solid road map in place. That’s also a good thing for genre fiction, where there are certain tropes you simply have to ascribe to. (As in, a happy ending! Light-hearted romantic moments! A bit of spice!) Having it all laid out before you start means you can keep all that in mind as you go and don’t have to do quite so much layering after. 

GWR: What comes first for you—the overall idea or the characters? 

MS: It is generally different for every book— for example, Mating for Life and Things to Do When It’s Raining were definitely characters first. But with my next two, The Last Resort and Lucky, the situations that came to me first. And I think I like it better that way. It’s a lot easier to have a great plot and then create the perfect character to fit into it than it is to have a character you are already in love with—this happens—who you just cannot figure out a story arc for. So, you have to let them go. It’s a heartbreak when that happens!

GWR: Do you have a favourite character in this book? What character did you sympathize with the most and did that change while writing the book?

MS: For a book like this, I think the only answer can really be Lucky. And this is new for me, since it’s my first book with just one POV/main character. I was so excited when I thought of Lucky! Finally, an uncomplicated narrative with just one person! Of course, books are never uncomplicated no matter what, and Lucky revealed to me early in the process that we needed to add a dual timeline and get to know her as a child, which definitely made things far more complex. But it also meant I got to share all the things I already knew about her with my reader (because I do generally get to know my characters from birth to death, even if half of that never shows up on the page). 

I will say that now that I’m working on TV development for Lucky I’ve been required to take a harder look at some of the other characters and develop more sympathy/empathy for characters like Cary and John as we try to figure out ways to carry them through into other seasons. I’m happy to say I don’t wish I had thought of some of this stuff as I was writing the book. I think the book is perfect as it is! But some of these new ways of looking at the characters are definitely better from a TV series perspective, and it has been a cool experience to learn that. 

GWR: What was the hardest scene to write? 

MS: Lucky and Priscilla in the storage locker. It was so action-packed—very visual, like a scene from a movie or show! I really didn’t; want it to be too heightened or come off as cheesy or contrived, and I did want it to be really exciting and a bit scary. I had to rewrite it over and over. I also struggled with a later scene to do with Lucky and her dad and a conversation they had to have. I had to strike a fine balance between anger and sadness, and think about times in my life when I may have felt that way. When someone has done something that hurts, and there is absolutely no undoing it. But you still love that person, because your head hasn’t caught up with your heart yet. 

GWR: Lucky is very visual, did you set out to write it this way? 

MS: Definitely. I first imagined Lucky as a TV show, which has long been a goal of mine—to see one of my books make it to the screen. And having already had an experience with an option that didn’t go anywhere, I decided to learn what I could from all those conversations I had had. One of the things the producers and filmmakers always said was that for a book to be optionable there has to be a strong engine and that every scene has to be visual in some way. I knew I could make that happen—and had so much fun doing that with Lucky. 

GWR: Tell me about the research you did? 

MS: I started out by taking as many books out of the library as I could about con artists (books about Bernie Madoff and Frank Abagnale) and scams. I also read books about how to avoid being conned—with the sinister intention of trying to figure out how to BE a con artist. :) I learned so many interesting things during this process, and as I moved from reading books about cons to reading articles online and Googling the different types of grifts and scams there are out there: that the reasons scams works is because we are inherently trusting as a society. That’s beautiful! It’s also frustrating, because con artists seek to and very often do succeed at exploiting that. That’s why it was important for me to create a character with a moral compass. The reality about con artists is that they are often sociopathic type personalities; they just don’t feel things the way the rest of us feel them and are therefore able to breach the code of trust society has built into it without missing a beat. But Lucky is not a sociopath. She’s a criminal, yes, but she’s a loveable character, someone you want to root for—important for a story where the driving force of it is a lottery ticket. I needed readers to WANT to see her win that money! 

GWR: What made you decide to write the book from Lucky’s perspective as both a child and an adult? It is incredibly effective. 

MS: It was because of that idea that I needed my reader to want to cheer for Lucky, to want to follow her anywhere—and in order to accomplish that, she needed to be truly understood. The only way to get there was to start at the very, very beginning of her story. The moment I began to weave in those past scenes— starting with the baby on the church steps—was the moment the book started to take shape and feel like magic. 

GWR: If you could tell your younger self something about writing and becoming an author, what would it be?

MS: Go to law school! Just kidding. Persist. Don’t give up. It isn’t going to be easy, don’t kid yourself into thinking it is. And also, don’t fool yourself into thinking that because it isn’t easy, it isn’t meant to be. Having to work hard at something and experience failure along the way, especially when choosing to lead a creative life, is just part of it. Be tough, brave, and bold. (I like to think I have taken all of this advice already, and that makes me happy!)

GWR: What books are on your nightstand?

MS: I cannot type all those titles out, we’d be here all day! :) I always have a few books (and journals!) on the go. Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser is on my desk right now. I’ve been carrying it around with me all day, wanting to curl up and finish it. Heiny is a new discovery. I devoured all her books over the past few weeks. She’s exactly what I need right now: funny, incisive, romantic, witty, observant, sharp. 

GWR: Can you share what you are working on now?

MS: I’m currently working on the TV development for Lucky wth Carlton Cuse and his ABC/Disney team, and on the second rom com with Karma Brown (we write as Maggie Knox) called All I Want for Christmas. Our first, The Holiday Swap, will be out this October, and our second is due out the following year. It’s so much fun. There are serious Nashville vibes. It’s an enemies to lovers story about a pair of singers who win an American Idol-esque singing competition based in Nashville because of their on-stage chemistry. They end up having to pretend to be a couple for one year, even though the actually dislike each other. The final thing they have to do together to fulfill their contract is write a romantic holiday song and perform it at the Grand Ole Opry on Christmas Eve. You can probably guess what happens next… genuine sparks start to fly! But a scandal threatens to tear them apart. It’s so much fun! I already said that, but I’m leaving it because it’s so true. 

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.