NPR

'Creatures' Examines The Heartbreak Of Being Human

Crissy Van Meter's debut novel is so assured, it's hard to believe it's a debut. It's the story of a young woman dealing with her mother and her difficult family history on the eve of her wedding.
Source: Algonquin Books

It's not what anyone who plans to get married soon wants to hear, but there are a million ways a wedding can go wrong. Missing rings, late-delivered cakes, drunken relatives: the potential for disaster is always there, just a slip of the mind or a bad decision away. But for Evie, the narrator of Crissy Van Meter's , there are two problems with her upcoming ceremony: A dead whale has washed up on the island where she lives, and the smell is less

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