Skip to main content

Pamela Kramer

Biography

Pamela Kramer


Pamela Kramer began her obsession with books by reading the entire Wizard of Oz series when she was in kindergarten and first grade. She was a lawyer for many years and is retired from her job as a dual language gifted teacher in Highland Park, Illinois. Pamela enjoyed combining her love of books and her love of animals with her teaching. She got to read new picture books to younger students and used their reactions in her reviews. Through her website, she is able to recommend middle grade and young adult books to students. All the students and former students (and teachers) know where to go for good book recommendations! She served on the Illinois Bluestem steering committee (Illinois School Library Media Association Award) for several years.

Pam also loves to read adult books, and several authors whose books she has reviewed have become friends. She has rescued a variety of animals, from dogs and cats to rats and rabbits, and she loves nothing more than reading while cuddling with one of her four dogs or two cats. She always has a foster dog in her home as well. She has reviewed books online since 2010 and began writing about books for the now defunct Examiner.com website and later as a contributor to Huffington Post. She continues to review -- mostly on her blog, PamelaKramer.com. She spends school breaks reading as much as possible while also organizing and checking the massive piles of books in her home. Her favorite thing? Seeing a quote from one of her reviews on the back of a book!

Pamela Kramer

Reviews by Pamela Kramer

by Bonnie Garmus - Fiction, Humor

It’s 1982, New York City. Crime is on the rise, muggings are in the streets, and Batter Gray, a recent college graduate, is worried about his future. While his friends have real jobs, he’s folding T-shirts at the Gap. As for love? No. Not unless you count Sallie Mae, the student loan tyrant he hears from all the time. But when Batter gets a dream job at Peck & Peck, the most prestigious poetry quarterly in the world, his life moves into the literary fast lane. Soon Batter is knee-deep in the secret war between the two Editors in Chief, the famous Peck brothers --- twins and enemies --- as well as being privy to the private affairs of their 39 editors, whose professed mission is the same: Find originality. Reward creativity. Burn the rest. And by burn, they mean incinerate.

by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza - Fiction, Women's Fiction

When Simone Hartwell’s college ex and first love, Kwame, resurfaces in her life, her carefully constructed domestic bliss threatens to crumble under the weight of old feelings and new dramas. Kwame, who built the journalism career Simone once dreamed of, is investigating a decades-old mystery of a young Black man who disappeared from The Tate School --- the same elite prep school that her husband’s family has attended for generations. When he discovers a startling connection to the Hartwells, it sets everyone on a collision course that will unearth long-held secrets, test loyalties, and force a major reckoning between the past and the future.

by Lauren Willig - Fiction, Gothic, Horror, Paranormal Romance, Romance

Recently laid off and searching for purpose, Jess reluctantly joins her best friend on a supposedly fun nighttime cemetery tour. Separated from her group by accident, she discovers a bunch of terrified boys and a strange, ancient key. Both lead to Green-Wood Cemetery’s surprisingly handsome resident arborist, Adam Chervinsky. Still dealing with the loss of their mother, Adam’s children are acting strangely. A haunting is afoot, and Jess seems to know more than she’s letting on. Sparks fly between Jess and Adam --- and the unquiet spirits of Green-Wood rise from their century-long slumber. As Jess and Adam delve deeper into the cemetery’s haunted history, they uncover a Gilded Age curse, a ghostly socialite, and a demonic pact that stretches across generations.

by Charlie N. Holmberg - Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy, Historical Fiction

Owein arrives in England to marry Lady Cora of Leiningen, his dearest friend and confidante he’s known mostly through letters. However, Queen Victoria has other plans in store for the centuries-old wizard. The queen is obsessed with preserving magic, and she believes Owein is the key to pursuing her lofty ambitions. Torn from his family, his home and his betrothed, Owein is pushed into the Queen’s League of Magicians, where he learns that the Crown’s upheaval of his life is only the beginning of his problems. Meanwhile, Cora must push aside her broken heart and use her own spells and resources to uncover truths that the queen wants hidden. As new threats, former loves, untapped spells and even older souls than Owein collide, his next choice could be his last.

by Clare Mackintosh - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Nadeeka is certain Jamie is having an affair. She knows the tell-tale signs. She's been here before. When Jamie claims to be at work late, she knows he's lying. He's with another woman, and she's determined to catch him in the act. But when Nadeeka arrives home to confront him, Jamie can't explain himself. The house has become a crime scene. Jamie is dead. You think you know the people you love. You think you know who you can trust. You think you know how the story ends. It’s not what you think.

by Kendra Elliot - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

When a search dog locates a mass burial ground in the Oregon forest, Detective Noelle Marshall is plunged into a hunt for a killer who’s hiding in plain sight. The key to her case lies in a decades-old secret: a lone survivor who escaped and is still out there, living in fear. The murderer is a phantom who left behind a collection of victims with nothing in common but their final resting place. As pressure mounts to identify the bodies and find the killer, the investigation draws in FBI Agent Max Rhodes --- Noelle’s partner in work and in life. They’ve hunted monsters before, but this one has spent years preparing for this moment, and he craves revenge.

by Jodi Picoult - Fiction, Women's Fiction

On September 11, 2001, when Molly Fitzgerald was only two months old, her mother went to an appointment at the World Trade Center and never came home. Her father and the stepmother who raised her couldn’t have loved her more, but she still grew up with a healthy dread of disasters. Now an adult, Molly runs the Rhode Island Department for Emergency Preparedness, mapping out ways to save lives during storms, epidemics and airplane crashes. She and her husband, Jesse --- a police polygraph expert with his own history of crisis --- have found a love that is a solace in a dangerous world. But then the unexpected upends their new marriage, leading them both to question everything they thought they knew.

by Elizabeth Wellington Rollins - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Graziella, a 96-year-old former nun, spends her days running the parish’s food kitchen, convinced it is her responsibility to keep everyone fed in their working-class New York neighborhood. Her daughter, Grace, a respected psychology professor, appears accomplished and composed, yet she finds herself unmoored as her personal life falters. Ella --- Graziella’s granddaughter and Grace’s daughter --- is weary of defending her vegan diet and anti-capitalistic lifestyle. Blind to her own brilliance, she longs, above all, for a place to belong. Living together again, the three Graces reckon with the distances that have shaped them, and with what it means, at last, to be fully known.

by Ariel Lawhon - Adventure, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

As the only daughter of a powerful chieftain, Grace O’Malley’s role is to secure a strong alliance and bear children. But when she’s sent to foster with a nearby clan, she falls for a clever and open-minded second son --- a man she cannot have. Married off against her will to a brutal warrior, Grace performs her duty, all the while gathering followers loyal to her, and consolidating her husband’s power, only to be ousted from his lands. But this betrayal offers Grace the opportunity to return to sea, finally leading clan O’Malley’s mighty fleet. Just as Grace finds true independence, Queen Elizabeth’s incursions into Ireland grow bolder. She must fight to defend her land, her ships, and the people she loves most against the cruel and power-hungry English deputies.

by Dr. Jen Golbeck, PhD - Nonfiction, Personal Growth, Psychology, Self-Help

Like many of us, Jen Golbeck looked at her rescue golden retrievers and affectionately wondered what exactly was going on in their cute, fuzzy heads. But as a left-brained scientist, Golbeck set out to seek concrete answers --- research and data --- to back up the hunch that there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface of our pups’ funny looks and adorable, occasionally destructive, behaviors. What she finds is a surprising relationship between positive psychology and how we might learn to think about how our dogs think in a whole new light. She introduces a mold-breaking concept that shifts our focus from solving problems and scolding “bad behavior” to building on strengths based on qualities like focus, vitality and curiosity.