Review of Sisters in the Wind, by Angeline Boulley

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Sisters in the Wind

by Angeline Boulley

Henry Holt, 2025. 367 pages.
Review written September 2, 2025, from an advance reader copy signed by the author that I got at ALA Annual Conference.
Starred Review

I was happy to actually get an advance reader copy read before the publication date – and then I’m writing this review on the publication date, so it was just barely before. However, today I purchased a copy of the eaudiobook for the library, and I put it on hold to listen to, even though I just read it. It’s that good.

Sisters in the Wind takes place in between the author’s two other books, Firekeeper’s Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed. There’s no plot overlap between them, so you can read them in any order, but you’ll find out a lot that goes on in Firekeeper’s Daughter, so I think it’s better to read that one before this one. (If you missed that one, absolutely go read it as soon as possible!)

I read this book on a weekend I’d meant to do a 48-Hour Book Challenge that kind of got stymied – but getting this one book read made the whole thing a win. Sisters in the Wind features Lucy, an 18-year-old part-Native girl who’s been in the foster care system for three years, since her father died.

As the book opens, she meets a man who turns out to be Jamie from Firekeeper’s Daughter. He’s now a lawyer trying to help Native kids who have been in the foster care system against the protections of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Lucy asks him why he’s been following her since New Year’s Eve, but that wasn’t him.

Lucy acts like she’s going to follow up, but she knows it’s time to run. She packs her backpack and goes to work one last time – but then a pipe bomb at the deli where she works puts her in the hospital.

Jamie and Daunis show up to take care of Lucy as she recovers. It turns out that she’s the half-sister of Daunis’s best friend Lily, who was killed in Firekeeper’s Daughter. (Not a spoiler, it happens fairly early. But there are other spoilers in the book.) The rest of the book takes two threads – one of her time in a hotel with Jamie and Daunis watching over her as her broken leg heals, and the other thread the story of how she wound up in foster care and why she’s certain that someone’s angry enough with her to plant a bomb.

Along the way, as with Angeline Boulley’s other books, we learn in a natural way about a current issue involving Native Americans. In this book it’s about how the Indian Child Welfare Act was established to try to stop Native kids from being exploited. However, being established is one thing and being enforced is another.

Angeline Boulley always tells a good story. As in the others, we get characters we love and a situation that builds to life-and-death danger.

At first, when I read Firekeeper’s Daughter and learned she’d been working on the story for over a decade, I thought no wonder it’s so good! But now she’s published two follow-ups that are just as wonderful that she didn’t spend even close to a decade writing. Nope, that’s not it – she’s simply a crazy-talented author.

angelineboulley.com

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Review of Not Quite a Ghost, by Anne Ursu

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

Not Quite a Ghost

by Anne Ursu
read by Eva Kaminsky

Walden Pond Press, 2024. 6 hours, 45 minutes.
Review written March 18, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Capitol Choices Selection

This is the second book I’ve read recently where a kid gets a mysterious chronic ailment with intermittent dizziness and weakness, and they try to please the adults around them and not be “lazy” and things get worse and worse – and honestly, it makes me cringe, but in a sympathetic way.

In this case, the kid in question is Violet Hart, who’s just beginning 6th grade and middle school, and whose family has just moved into a big old house where Violet’s sister sticks her with the creepy attic room with the hideous wallpaper.

Fortunately, Violet’s mother and stepfather believe her when she dares to tell them that she’s not feeling well, but they take her to more than one doctor who thinks she’s just got anxiety about middle school. And even her friends start wondering.

On top of that, her two best friends only have one class with her – and it’s gym class, where she doesn’t feel well enough to participate. And they want to expand the friend group to include two more popular girls, and things get awkward.

But while Violet is in the library during gym class, she meets a boy who’s not taking gym class at all, and is doing a project on ghost hunting.

So ghosts are in her head when she’s stuck in her attic room, feeling awful, and she starts seeing movement in the hideous wallpaper. Is all of it just in her head?

This book immersed me in Violet’s world right from the start. Anne Ursu beautifully captures family dynamics and friendship dynamics and a kid who just wants to stay under the radar and find something she can count on when everything’s changing around her, including her own body.

The not-quite-a-ghost doesn’t really come into the story until late in the book, so it’s not necessarily what you want to hand a kid who simply wants a ghost story. But for a great story about the ups and downs of navigating changes of middle school, this book beautifully fills the bill.

anneursu.com

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Review of Kween, by Vichet Chum

Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kween

by Vichet Chum

Quill Tree Books, 2023. 343 pages.
Review written November 4, 2023, from a library book.

Kween is about Soma, a Cambodian teen born and brought up in Lowell, Massachusetts, dealing with things and learning to process it all and express herself. A poem she writes and performs online goes viral, but the essay she didn’t write, telling the teacher she was sick of writing about history from the perspective of colonizers got her an F.

Meanwhile, her father got deported back to Cambodia after decades in the U.S. and a green card. And her mother went to Cambodia to be with him, supposedly only for a visit, but she keeps pushing back her return date. They left her in the care of her much-older sister, and Soma resents Dahvy acting like her parent. But Dahvy’s planning her wedding to Ruben, and both of them are teachers at Soma’s school and get in her business. They encourage her to enter a poetry contest in which the finalists will perform their poems.

So Dahvy’s buzzing with things to do for the wedding, and Soma wants to wait until Ma gets back. Though at the same time, there’s this girl she’s had a crush on forever who finally notices her.

The book is narrated by Soma, who’s named after the first queen of Cambodia, and it’s full of teen slang, which put me off at the beginning. But I did get used to it as I went along (and will trust the author to know better than me what’s authentic), and I was pulled in to the many things Soma was juggling – missing her father while dealing with her stressed-out sister and trying to find her voice as a performance poet.

The many different threads are woven together seamlessly and keep you interested and I loved seeing Soma learn to be a Kween. (I can’t use the slang right and shouldn’t even try.)

vichetchum.com
EpicReads.com

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Review of Go to Sleep (I Miss You), by Lucy Knisley

Humorous, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Go to Sleep

(I Miss You)

Cartoons from the Fog of New Parenthood

by Lucy Knisley

First Second, 2020. 178 pages.
Review written March 29, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

What fun! Lucy Knisley, a noted author/illustrator of graphic memoirs, has had a baby! This book is the result.

My own babies are 32 and 25 years old, but I still couldn’t keep from laughing with recognition as I read this book. She nails the ambivalences of parenthood – all the way from the intoxicating smell of their hair to the desperation when they won’t stop crying.

She covers so much! The trials of nursing, the baby equipment, the inventions we really need, the outfits they go through (ours and theirs), adventures in eating, and so much else.

This might make a fun baby shower gift for a new Mom. Though I’m not sure if you really want to warn them! I am sure that as they’re going through it, the laughter will provide comfort, as will the knowledge that they are not alone.

And for an old mom like me, we get the delight of being reminded of that time with our precious babies – and why it’s also a relief to be done with that time.

lucyknisley.com
firstsecondbooks.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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48 Hour Book Challenge August 2025 – Finish Line

48-Hour Book Challenge 0

I did it! I completed this year’s 48-Hour Book Challenge!

As feared, yesterday was pretty much a wash-out for reading. I’m happy, though, because the family crisis was resolved in a surprisingly wonderful way, with me sort of coordinating and help from others, including my ex-husband. Instead of being resentful of spending my day off not reading, I’m happy I had the day off to help out. On top of that, the musical “Parade” at the Kennedy Center last night was amazing! The performance was astoundingly good. The topic was hard-hitting – antisemitism and racism in Georgia showing a Jewish man wrongly convicted and eventually lynched in 1915. But it was incredibly well-done with wonderful music.

And today? Instead of using some of the time to blog and post reviews (which I didn’t get to yesterday, either) – I wanted to read, doggone it! And I was happy to be reading an incredibly good book – the advance reader copy of Sisters in the Wind, by Angeline Boulley. I haven’t written the review yet, but it was just as good as her first two – wonderful! I ended up with a positive experience of this year’s 48HBC because I got to take the time to devour that book.

My stats for the 48 hours are probably my lowest:

Time spent:
14 hours, 35 minutes total:
8 hours, 35 minutes Reading
30 minutes blogging (Starting line post)
5 hours, 10 minutes Listening to the audiobook James
20 minutes with details (spreadsheets and stuff)

I wrote 603 words and read 505 pages. I only finished one book, but made good headway on several. (The way I read nonfiction is to read one chapter at a time. I also started a graphic novel toward the end and got a lot of pages in.)

Now, I’m not quite sure how I’ll get those Mathical books read, but I did get one more book read that I got at ALA Annual conference, and my kid is having things work out great, so it’s been a good weekend so far.

Now, my plan for Labor Day is to make progress on my new website, prayingwiththepsalmists.com. I’m hoping those plans will go better!

48-Hour Book Challenge August 2025 – Starting Line

48-Hour Book Challenge 0

Woo-hoo! It’s time for this year’s 48-Hour Book Challenge!

I got the idea from Pam Coughlan when she was posting on her MotherReader blog. Pam was super creative and organized, and she got the whole kidlit blogging community joining in and even got sponsors to donate to charity!

As for me: I simply set aside a 48-hour time period when I will try to do as much reading and blogging as possible. I took Friday off this week, so I’m beginning tonight, Thursday, at 9:30 pm. And will see how much time I can spend on books between now and Saturday at 9:30 pm.

Honestly, I feel like I’m set up for failure this time – and then I remind myself I can’t “fail” at reading. It’s not a competition. Any amount of time I get to spend on this is good.

But first I agreed to go with some friends to a musical at the Kennedy Center tomorrow night. Okay, that will be worth it! And it will break up the reading and get me out and about. It’s a good thing! (And I could have said No if I didn’t believe that.)

Then tonight I learned a family member far away is having a crisis and I will need to work from a distance at helping to solve it. That will take some time. But here’s the bright side to that – 1) It’s good I can help. 2) Reading will help me not obsess and worry about the things I can’t do. I hope. Already tonight I put off dealing with it until tomorrow – but I hope I will be calm and able to be helpful.

Okay, so Reading!

The great thing about the 48-Hour Book Challenge, and why I keep coming back to them – is that they give me permission to read. And SKIP housework for a bit.

This year, I don’t want to get any further behind on posting reviews (I’m down to 56 reviews written but not posted! A couple years ago, there were 270.)- so I’m going to allow writing and posting reviews. In fact, I finished an Audiobook tonight, so one of the first things I need to do is review that book. So that will take more time from actual reading – but it’s all reading related.

Why do I want to get reading time in? Well, Book Award Season has started, and I have books to read for the Mathical Book Prize. On top of that, I promised myself that this year I would read all 24 books I picked up at ALA Annual Conference. I have read 8 of them already, mostly picture books – and I’d love to read the Advance Reader Copies before the books are published, but that will take some doing.

Which reminds me – I’m also going to count time spent reading old reviews as part of #Sonderbooks25, my celebration of my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks. My first plan was to reread all the reviews of Sonderbooks Stand-outs from every year, but I was having so much fun, I’m now reading ALL my old reviews. I believe there are more than 5,000 – and I am still only on 2003 reviews, Sonderbooks #62 – when I was still posting as “issues,” before I’d heard of blogs.

Time blogging also counts! So I just spent a chunk of time writing this post, and I want to get to reading – and listening. (Listening is what I do while eating and doing other basic life tasks.) We’ll see how I do, but any reading time is good. (And I’m afraid I’ve still got Monday off for housework and for working on my new website, prayingwiththepsalmists.com.

Happy Reading!

Review of Drown Me with Dreams, by Gabi Burton

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Drown Me with Dreams

by Gabi Burton
read by Dami Olukoya

Bloomsbury YA, 2024. 12 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written August 17, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Let me say again that I love the new trend in fantasy books of publishing duologies instead of trilogies. Drown Me with Dreams completes the duology begun in Sing Me to Sleep (a 2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out), following the siren Saoirse, who’s the only one of her kind in the kingdom of Keirdre, after the king slaughtered them all as monsters. (An advantage to listening to the book is now I know how to pronounce that.)

Things have changed for Saoirse in this book – I don’t want to give too many details and give away the first book, but now Saoirse is living openly as a siren, and she finds a way to cross the barrier to leave Keirdre. But she won’t be able to come back if Hayes doesn’t bring the barrier down – and that could have terrible consequences.

In this book, besides doing some sleuthing and plotting for the good of the kingdom, Saoirse also learns not to be afraid of her power – and that she doesn’t have to use it to kill.

In the first book, I got a little bogged down with the world-building – a kingdom enclosed by a barrier that not even birds can get through? I have trouble believing it. But in this book, I was used to the idea, and the focus was more on how could they bring it down without starting multiple wars. There was also speculation about what makes a good ruler. Can a good man be a good ruler to a kingdom that was founded to reward ruthlessness?

I’m also a little skeptical of Saoirse’s ability to taste other people’s emotions. Because how does it get in her mouth instantly? I mean, if it were a smell, it could waft in the air, but these were described even as tastes in the back of her throat. Again by this time, I was used to the idea, and the descriptions were so creative, never mind details like that. The emotions weren’t described as simply salty or spicy or sweet, but through a wide range from cinnamon to orange to old stew going rancid. It turns out that with this power, Saoirse can tell when someone is lying, which did make sense.

For most of the book, Saoirse is across the barrier from the one she loves – but she can dream walk to see him. There’s another world-building detail that was a little hard for me – they can touch and feel each other, but it’s only a dream. So when Saoirse talks to Hayes in the dream walk – what is her actual body doing? Apparently nothing. It’s all a little murky – but the romance is beautifully done, and questions of trust are explored. And then the beads she uses to dream walk stop working exactly when it causes the most possible misunderstanding. (Which is precisely how coincidences should work in fiction – cause problems, and we’ll believe it. Solve problems, and it feels way too convenient.)

So – without giving details, this second book made me love the whole duology more. The first book was a debut novel I read when on the Morris Award Committee – and this second book is even stronger – full of tension and intrigue, and finishes off the story in a satisfying, but not predictable way. The author has already grown in her writing in just one book. I look forward to seeing what she will do next.

gabiburton.com

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Review of Are We There Yet? by Stacy McAnulty, illustrations by Elizabeth Baddeley

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

Are We There Yet?

The First Road Trip Across America

by Stacy McAnulty
illustrations by Elizabeth Baddeley

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2025. 44 pages.
Review written July 21, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

This totally fun picture book tells the true story of the first team – including a dog – to ride in a car all the way across America.

The caption on the first page sets the tone:

This is the absolutely true story of a ridiculous journey that started as a bet, turned into a race, and ended in a – well, hang on, and see how it turns out.

They start by explaining why the bet that Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson made in 1903 was foolish: not many paved roads, no highways, no cross-country road maps, and iffy quality of equipment. What’s more, Jackson didn’t even have a car or know how to drive!

He wasn’t daunted. He bought a used Winton Touring Car, and hired twenty-two-year-old Sewall Crocker to come along and teach him to drive.

It lacked the luxuries we expect in today’s cars – things like a windshield, seat belts, mirrors, doors, a trunk, or a roof.

Of course, every good road trip needs a dog! So a little ways down the road, they purchased a dog named Bud. They got Bud goggles to match their own (remember, no windshields) – and the pictures get all the cuter from there on out.

The trip was completely different from travel today. Plenty of stories of breakdowns, getting stuck in the mud, and important things flying out of the car when it got up to high speed – thirty miles an hour or so.

Of course, when other teams got wind of it and tried to cross the country first, this added a nice dose of competition.

And the whole story is told in a thoroughly entertaining format with pictures that add to the fun. There’s some nice back matter to put it in context. Makes me want to take a trip to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and find Bud’s glasses.

stacymcanulty.com
EBaddeley.com

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Review of Good Dirt, by Charmaine Wilkerson, read by January LaVoy

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Good Dirt

by Charmaine Wilkerson
read by January LaVoy

Books on Tape, 2025. 11 hours, 27 minutes.
Review written August 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Good Dirt, from the author of Black Cake, is another sweeping saga that shows us a person in extraordinary circumstances in the present and weaves a tapestry of history around that person.

In Good Dirt, Ebony Freeman has fled to France in order to get some time to herself, nine months after the man she was supposed to marry didn’t show up for the wedding.

This wasn’t Ebbie’s first brush with notoriety, and the first time was even worse: When she was ten years old, her fifteen-year-old brother was shot in their Connecticut home when some thieves were trying to steal their family’s historic old jar. Ebbie was with her brother when he died and saw the jar in pieces on the floor.

The family was proud of that jar, and loved to tell stories about its history. It came to New England when Ebbie’s great-great-grandfather brought it along when he stowed away on a ship and made his way to freedom. Moses, the enslaved man who made the jar, carved an inscription on the bottom of the jar, at a time when it was illegal for enslaved people to read or write. That inscription has inspired the family for generations.

But now Ebbie’s managing her friend’s guesthouse in France – and the first people to show up are her ex-fiance and his new girlfriend, Ashley. It’s not as big a coincidence as it seems – Ashley had picked up an ad Ebbie’s friend had placed in a neighborhood cafe when she was in the area for Ebbie’s planned wedding. But the awkward situation forces Ebbie to think through a lot of things she’d been avoiding.

And that’s the situation that fuels the book. Ebbie decides to write the stories of the jar, and we learn its rich history while watching Ebbie deal with her own history and what this all means for the present with the man she’d planned to marry in front of her on the other side of the ocean.

As in Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson gives us multiple perspectives on events. I, for one, didn’t care what the ex-fiance thought about things – but she uses even that to help us get to know the whole family – all still dealing with the loss of Ebbie’s brother, and trying to go on with dignity in the present.

This is another powerful story that completely enthralls.

charmspen.com

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Review of Kismat Connection, by Ananya Devarajan, read by Reena Dutt and Vikas Adam

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kismat Connection

by Ananya Devarajan
read by Reena Dutt and Vikas Adam

Harlequin Audio, 2023. 8 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written October 7, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.

Kismat Connection is a sweet romance about two Indian American seniors in high school who have been best friends since childhood. We get the story told from both their perspectives.

Arjun is a lacrosse star who wants to be an aerospace engineer. His mother has traveled often for work since his dad left, and he’s learned not to count on her. Instead, he spends time with Madhuri’s family, who welcomes him as if he’s their own. He has long been in love with Madhuri, but doesn’t dare tell her because he doesn’t want to mess up their friendship.

But when Madhuri’s mother reads both their astrological charts for the upcoming year and Arjun’s forecasts great success but Madhuri’s outlines trouble – Madhuri thinks of a way to fight against fate. She devises a plan to date Arjun for their senior year – but plan in advance to break up the day after graduation. She thinks of course it will work because neither of them will ever have romantic feelings for their best friend.

Well, it surprises no one but Madhuri when things get more complicated than that.

This book is a delightful rom-com with thoughts about free will and destiny as well as finding who you truly are and following your heart.

ananyadevarajan.com

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