TLC BOOK TOUR REVIEW: Playthings by Ilan Mochari

 A Review of Playthings in poetic form 

These poems arrive like riddles in disguise,

small locked boxes that beg for your eyes.
I turned them around, tried each clever key,
ruminating on what they meant to me.

The author writes love notes to life, to the wild and the weather,
finds the sacred in spiderlings, bubblegum, feathers—
the mundane gets lifted, given wings, given flair,
proof that wonder hides in the mundane somewhere.

Some poems made me laugh, some left me undone,
tragedy and comedy sharing the sun.
Every page beautiful, none of them thin—
an aperitif that leaves you wanting seconds again.

So, call it a snack, an amuse-bouche, a bite—
but I finished it hungry, and read into the night.

About the Author

Ilan Mochari is the author of the poetry collection PLAYTHINGS and the novel ZINSKY THE OBSCURE. His short stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Salamander, Hobart, Juked, J Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, The Louisville Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes, as well as the Derringer Award for crime fiction, and he has been the recipient of a Literature Artist Fellowship grant from the Somerville Arts Council.

PLAYTHINGS is now available on Bookshop.org and Amazon!

My Rating:

I would like to thank TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. 

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The Cerebral Girl is a middle-aged blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.

I received a copy of this book to review through TLC Book Tours and the author in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not financially compensated in any way, and the opinions expressed are my own and based on my observations while reading this novel.