Just Gone is easily among my favorite non-fiction reads for the year, though that’s a sad thing to say when the book talks about violent trauma and torture. In her masterpiece, DeLuzio speaks with nine brave individuals who survived persecution for their sexual orientation in their home country, seeking refuge in Canada.

The honor of reviewing Alvina Chamberland’s autofiction was all mine this summer. Hers is a book that makes you question the world. It makes you think, really think, it makes you step out of your comfort zone and into some of the realities that shape her life and that of so many other trans women who aren't seen for who they are but for their bodies instead.

White World by Saad T Farooqi is a book of violence. It is also a book of love, of family, of perseverance. Of a country divided, a country aflame in religious conflict, its reach ever increasing from Pakistan’s historical independence in 1947 to the dystopian future in 2083 that the book is set in.

Rubble Children is a clever collection of seven and a half interwoven stories on the historical trauma inserting itself into the day-to-day life of Jewish youth in Canada.