Chloe's Bookish Corner

  Keiko is a very unconventional 30-year-old woman. She has been working in the same convenience store for 18 years and shows no signs of changing. Her family wishes for her to get another job, and her friends are constantly asking her when she plans on getting married and settling down. But for Keiko these things are not important; her job at the convenience store is all that she needs to be happy.   Sayaka Murata crafts a book that is completely unique, and Keiko appears to be based on Murata’s own experiences as the author's profile reveals that she spent 18 years working in convenience stores before leaving to become a full-time writer. Keiko is a fun, quirky character who is unashamedly her own person. She cannot understand why people want to quit her job for something she wouldn’t enjoy or get married when she has no attraction to anyone as all she needs to be complete is her job at the convenience store. It just makes sense to Keiko, the way everything in the shop is ar...

  Girl in the Walls is a story about a girl named Elise who loses her parents in a car accident; unable to deal with the loss of her parents Elise leaves her extended family and returns to her family home, which she grew up in. The catch? There is another family already living in the house so Elise must adapt and occupies the wall space to avoid the family, only coming out when the family is away or at night when the family is sleeping. Elise is aware of all the creaky floorboards that may expose her position in the house, but a series of mistakes leaves Eddie, the youngest son of the family in Elise’s family home, unsettlingly aware that someone is watching him. As more things begin to go missing or things are misplaced with no explanation Eddie confides in his older brother about the girl in the walls and thus begins their attempts to expose the intruder living in their house.   When I began reading A.J. Gnuse’s Girl in the Walls it filled me with such anxiety of Elise getti...