The Seaboard Review: April 21st, 2025
Volume 2, Issue 16
Giveaways Galore!
Our one-year anniversary and poetry month continue! The icehouse poetry giveaway and the ECW Press giveaway concluded over the weekend, but we still have two more giveaways, these ones exclusively for our Substack subscribers. The first giveaway is of a six-book bundle from Penguin Random House for our paid subscribers (all paid subscribers are automatically entered). These are six of their top-selling titles from 2024 and a paid subscriber will win them all!
Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune
Who We Are: Four Questions for a Life and a Nation by Murray Sinclair
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
If you are not a paid subscriber, then let this be the incentive you need to sign up! If that’s not enough, we’ve discounted annual subscriptions by 50% for April, our anniversary month.
The second giveaway is sponsored by Breakwater Books and it is for our many free Substack subscribers:
Hides by Rod Moody-Corbett
The Weather Diviner by Elizabeth Murphy
Called by Mother Earth by Greg Naterer
Both giveaway winners will be announced Wednesday April 30th/May 1st. The winning subscriber must have a Canadian mailing address.
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(Note: clicking on the underlined link takes you to the book’s publisher page or Amazon.ca for more information or for purchasing purposes)
“and then he was GONE”
This is a 2016 novel by NB author Joan Hall Hovey, about a missing husband who the police are beginning to suspect was murdered, a wife determined to find him despite being the prime suspect, a young man who wakes from his 19 year coma and a psychic aunt who sees the truth. A thriller with a sprinkling of the supernatural, Hovey has penned a deliciously written, nail-biting, and thoroughly satisfying mystery. I rated it 5 stars and immediately picked up a few more from this talented and engaging writer. (Contributed by Heather McBriarty)
When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
It will be no surprise to those familiar with John Scalzi’s writing that premise of his most recent book is a bit out there. When the Moon Hits Your Eye follows on the heels of The Kaiju Preservation Society, which released in 2022 and Starter Villain, which came out in 2023, and is similar to both in the believable unbelievability of the story that unfolds. When the Moon Hits Your Eye depicts what happens after the moon turns to cheese. The book is presented in a day-by-day format, and each chapter explores the impact of the moon’s sudden change on a different person or group of people. Among the characters are astronauts whose planned moon mission is suddenly cancelled, cheese store owners, space museum workers who discover that moon rocks on Earth have also turned to cheese, and ordinary people trying to make sense of it all. Scalzi’s typical wit, and his ability to make the unreal seem real enough within the confines of the story, make this a fun read. Those who enjoyed Scalzi’s last two novels should get a kick out of this one, too. (Contributed by Lisa Timpf)
News
For folks out Toronto way, once a month The Caledonian Pub at 856 College St is home to Drunk Fiction, an irreverent night of readings, where readers, listeners, authors and those who love them can gather, drink and nosh! April 22 we celebrate Greg Rhyno's launch of Who By Water, along with Richard Scarsbrook, Hollay Ghadery and Sara Flemington, May 27 is Dennis E Bolan touring his new book, along with Marianne Miller, Aviva Rubin and Sydney Hegele. Check in at https://emilyweedon.com/drunk-fiction for more info!
…and in the Ottawa area:
TSR Subscriber Count
We now have 341 349 subscribers! That number includes our paying subscribers (thank you!) as well as our free ones. Being a paid subscriber (for as little as $5/month) allows us to give out hoSupport The Seaboard Reviewnorariums to our team of contributors, which keeps them dedicated to writing reviews of books we think are worthy of your time. Click the button to see all the Substack options. For the month of April, annual subscriptions are 50% off!
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Patreon: memberships from $3/month on up.
Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief












