Review of How to Read a Book, by Monica Wood

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

How to Read a Book

by Monica Wood
read by Eileen Stevens

HarperCollins, 2024. 10 hours, 18 minutes.
Review written January 28, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

First, a great big thank you to my friend Eileen, who recommended this book. I loved it so much!

I mean, what’s not to like? It starts out in a book club in a women’s prison. Violet, who’s 22 years old and was in prison for manslaughter, is remembering how the meetings used to go. The women would find fault with most of the books, but got a lot of satisfaction out of even that.

Then Violet gets out of prison. Her sister picks her up, but shows her an apartment in the city, rent paid for with inheritance money after their mother’s death – which the whole family blames Violet for. Her family doesn’t want her to even come back to their small town.

But in Portland, Maine, Violet runs into Harriet, the lady who ran the book club, in a book store – and also encounters Frank, the man whose wife died when Violet was driving drunk.

One thing leads to another – also involving a job taking care of highly intelligent parrots – and I was super interested all the way, enjoying the company of these kind and wise people. (Well, Violet doesn’t always act wisely, but Harriet and Frank are there to help.)

And of course it’s a book about the power of books to connect people and transform lives. And a book about second chances. And standing up for yourself even after you make bad mistakes.

It’s also the sort of book that expands your heart.

monicawood.com

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Review of We Deserve Monuments, by Jas Hammonds

Award Winners, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

We Deserve Monuments

By Jas Hammonds

Roaring Brook Press, 2022. 375 pages.
Review written January 26, 2023, from a library book
2022 Capitol Choices Selection
2023 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent
Starred Review

We Deserve Monuments is about a Black lesbian teen named Avery who suddenly got uprooted from her home in DC at the start of her senior year of high school. Avery’s grandmother is dying of cancer in rural Georgia, and her mother decided that the family needed to be with her – never mind that the last time they visited was when Avery was five.

Mama Letty doesn’t even seem glad to see them. She calls Avery “Fish” because her lip ring makes her look like a fish on a hook. She’s prickly and isn’t exactly grateful for the family swooping down because she’s dying.

But other things go surprisingly well for Avery. The girl next door and her white friend take her under their wing, and she’s quickly got better friends than she had in DC, including the girlfriend she recently broke up with.

But there are complications. Avery learns for the first time about her grandfather who was killed by Klan members before her mother was born. And then it turns out those Klan members are related to her new white friend. And she is attracted to the girl next door, but has no reason to think those feelings are returned.

All this is going on while she’s trying to get to know Mama Letty, but learns about family trauma and hurt. And why can’t her mother and grandmother ever have a conversation without fighting?

I like the way the author shows us a family with lots of flaws but also lots of love.

Jashammonds.com
Fiercereads.com

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Review of All the Blues in the Sky, by Renée Watson

Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

All the Blues in the Sky

by Renée Watson

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2025. 182 pages.
Review written January 27, 2026, from my own copy, given to me at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.
Starred Review
2026 Newbery Medal Winner

I was happy when the Newbery Medal Winner was announced – and it was a book sitting by my bed in one of my TBR piles, signed by the author. And yes, I’d heard the author speak before I got it signed at ALA Annual Conference, and I was very excited about reading it.

I was disappointed in myself that I hadn’t read it yet. (So many books, so little time! I wanted to read it right away, but there are so many books in those piles, plus award reading, plus I just blew it.)

However, the good side was that it made perfect Snow Day reading. In between walks in the snow, I lounged by the fire, and as a novel in verse, it wasn’t long before I had this beautiful book read.

Here’s the first page of the text:

I didn’t know
best friends could die.

Yes, this is a book about grief. The narrator is Sage, and on her thirteenth birthday her best friend was walking to her house and was hit by a car and died.

Sage is in a grief group after school with four other kids. Two of them lost a loved one suddenly, and two lost a loved one slowly, after a long process. Sage feels like that’s not the same, since she didn’t get a chance to say good-by.

But there are ups and downs after loss. And sometimes the sadness and happiness come at the same time. Sage wants to be a pilot, and she’s going to a program about learning to be one, and she thinks about all the different shades of blue in the sky – and all the different shades of grief.

The poetry in this book is beautiful. We feel with Sage, grieve with her, but also rejoice with her. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself shedding some tears while reading it. (Especially at the rejoicing with her part.) And the book brings us to a place where we know she’ll be able to carry on, feeling all the emotions.

An Author’s Note at the back tells us that Renée Watson lost fifteen people she loved, including her mother, in the space of two years. This didn’t surprise me, because she brings authenticity to the story. And ultimately, hope. She ends the Author’s Note and the book like this:

I hope this book gives every reader permission to feel real emotions, to admit when life is hard.
I hope this book reminds every reader that in the midst of sadness and grief, there can be joy and goodness.

And Renée models that – because out of her own deep loss, she brought forth this wonderful book.

reneewatson.net

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Review of The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Historical, Paranormal, Romance 0

The Lost Bookshop

by Evie Woods
read by Avena Mansergh-Wallace, Olivia Mace, and Nick Biadon

One More Chapter (HarperCollins), 2023. 12 hours, 1 minute.
Review written December 26, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

I put a hold on The Lost Bookshop because of how much I enjoyed the author’s The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris. This one was very similar, and I also enjoyed it. In both, we’ve got one historical thread combined with a romance in the present, and the perspectives of both the man and woman involved in the romance, plus the perspective of the character in history whose actions affect the present.

Our characters in this book start with Opaline, in the early twentieth century, whose brother was forcing her to marry a man she hadn’t even met after their father died. Opaline flees to Paris, and there starts working with Sylvia Beach in the famous Shakespeare & Co. bookshop. She later moves to Dublin and starts her own bookshop – until her brother gets her committed to an insane asylum.

In the present, we’ve got Martha, who’s fleeing her abusive husband and looking for a job in Dublin. She lands a job as a housekeeper for an eccentric old woman in a historic home. Then one day she sees Henry scrutinizing her windows and thinks he’s a peeping Tom. But he is looking for a bookshop with an address right next to her house – that doesn’t seem to exist. But Henry is a rare book dealer and has a letter that says that bookshop has Emily Bronte’s lost second manuscript.

One thing leads to another, and you can tell where it’s going – but it’s fun. Opaline’s story – in Paris and especially in the insane asylum – is riveting.

I have to say that this book had more paranormal elements than The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris – and for me this one crossed the line into unbelievability. It wasn’t only the bookshop that only appears to those who need it (or true believers? or something), but also mysterious otherworldly messages, and several more things.

However, despite a few too many paranormal bits for my taste – I still enjoyed these characters. Henry always seems to say the wrong thing, but he’s earnest and kind. Martha fleeing a truly horrible abusive situation had all my sympathy as well. (I saw my ex-husband for the first time in a decade when I was in the middle of listening to this book and was reminded of how we program ourselves to love someone, and that’s hard to turn off, even when their behavior means they don’t deserve or want your love any more. Not that mine was as bad as Martha’s husband. But still, she had my sympathy.) And Opaline’s situation was also fascinating in an awful way, tying in with what I’d read in Ten Days a Madwoman, by Deborah Noyes. It wasn’t all that long ago that men could lock women up in insane asylums.

Fortunately, this story ends happily for all our main characters. This is a feel-good romance, a little too enthusiastic with the paranormal elements, but you can be sure that all the stars align for them in the end.

eviewoods.com

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Review of Rain Reign, by Ann M. Martin

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Rain Reign

by Ann M. Martin

Feiwel and Friends, 2014. 226 pages.
Review written September 16, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Mathical Honor Book

It took me a long time to get around to reading this highly acclaimed middle grade novel, but I’m glad I finally did.

Rose is happy to have a name that’s a homonym (Rose, rows) and to have a dog Rain whose name is a triple homonym (Rain, reign, rein). Rose is in fifth grade, and she’s on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. She has an aide to help her remember not to shout when someone breaks a rule, and to remind her that not everyone is interested in homonyms.

Rain lives with her father, who has trouble getting impatient with her at times, but she also has her dog Rain to turn to. Her uncle Weldon lives down the road and drives Rose to and from school. But when a hurricane hits and her father lets Rain out without her collar, Rose is distraught when she can’t find her after the storm. Could she have been swept away down the swollen creek?

But Rose makes a plan and gets help from some new friends.

The plot of this story is fairly simple, but it’s heartfelt, and does take a surprising and poignant turn at the end. Rose tells her own story, and hearing things from her perspective, we don’t think she’s weird – and we feel pain when other people do. But we also feel joy when she finds that having a loving dog can bring people together.

mackids.com

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Review of Two Tribes, by Emily Bowen Cohen

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

Two Tribes

by Emily Bowen Cohen
with colors by Lark Pien

Heartdrum (Harper Alley), 2023. 252 pages.
Review written September 21, 2023, from a library book.

This graphic novel is about Mia, a middle school girl who has recently started attending Jewish school after her mother remarried and is getting serious about Judaism. Mia is enjoying many things about the new traditions, but she feels like an outsider because her skin is brown, inherited from her father. Her father is a member of the Muscogee nation. He left their family when Mia was 3 and now lives far away from them with a new wife and kids in Oklahoma.

Mia wants to find out more about her indigenous heritage. She checks out a book from the library and sees awful stereotypes.

So she comes up with a plan to use money from her Bat Mitzvah to take a bus to visit her father in Oklahoma. But she tells her mother she’s going to Shabbaton, a special Jewish camp.

She has a wonderful time in Oklahoma and learns much about her heritage. But it’s inevitable that her mother will figure it out….

Overall, this book is heart-warming. There are some tough moments for Mia, but most people she encounters are good-hearted and willing to correct when they make mistakes. It’s a lovely story about coming to grips with a dual heritage, and the graphic novel format pulls the reader right in.

emilybowencohenauthor.com
harperalley.com

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Review of We’ll Prescribe You a Cat, by Syou Ishida

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat

by Syou Ishida
translated by E. Madison Shimoda
read by Naruto Komatsu and Natsumi Kuroda

Books on Tape, 2024. 7 hours, 8 minutes.
Review written January 2, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

There seems to be a new genre of books being written in Japan: A quirky place where people from disparate lives go to receive something that changes their lives. It’s a charming and lovely genre, but since this is the third such book I’ve read in three months, I think I need a break from them to more fully appreciate the charm.

The first such book I read, at the recommendation of my friend Suzanne, who subscribes to Book Talking with Sondy, was What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, by Michiko Aoyama. I was utterly charmed. So when the reviews on Libby said that it was similar to Before the Coffee Gets Cold, I put that one on hold. Then my sister Wendy, who has lived in Japan in the past, told me she was reading What You Are Looking for Is in the Library and loving it – and that it reminded her of the book We’ll Subscribe You a Cat. So I immediately put this book on hold. I indeed enjoyed it very much – but do feel I need a break from this genre for a bit.

This one has a stronger paranormal element than the other two, even the time-traveling Before the Coffee Gets Cold. There’s a “Clinic for the Soul” in part of Kyoto that people can only find if they’re specifically looking for it (and sometimes not even then). It’s run by one doctor and one unfriendly nurse. And after the doctor listens to the patient’s troubles, he prescribes them a cat. He writes a prescription and they take it to the reception desk and get a cat in a carrier, and some gear and food to care for the cat for a specific number of days.

The book is about several people with very different lives who come to the clinic and whose lives are transformed by the cat they are prescribed.

I still like the book featuring a library the best of the books in this genre. Perhaps I was a bit defensive, because I no way no how want to adopt a cat myself. And rolled my eyes a little at how easily a spouse’s cat allergy was resolved with medication. But other than that, it was another delightful and charming book. I think cat lovers will love it as much as I loved the book about the mystical library.

There were some surprises – like the way the man who had trouble with insomnia and bad dreams about his new supervisor was cured by the cat keeping him up all night. None of the cat cures was completely predictable, in fact. And the different ways the prescriptions play out makes for interesting storytelling.

As with the other books mentioned here, this is a feel-good story that will certainly leave you with some smiles.

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Review of Kareem Between, by Shifa Saltagi Safadi, read by Peter Romano

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Kareem Between

by Shifa Saltagi Safadi
read by Peter Romano

Listening Library, 2024. 3 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written February 15, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner
2024 CYBILS Award Winner, Novels in Verse
2025 Capitol Choices Selection

Kareem Between is about a child of immigrants born in America who loves football and wants to play on his middle school team. But when his best friend moves away on the day of tryouts, he doesn’t do his best and doesn’t make the team.

So when the coach’s son – who did make the team – promises to put in a word with his dad if Kareem will do his homework, Kareem thinks it’s probably worth it just this once. But it turns out that it becomes an expectation.

Now, I’m too much of a rule-follower to have a lot of sympathy for Kareem as he dug himself into a deeper and deeper hole. But then his mother goes to Syria to try to bring her ailing parents back with her to America. His doctor father can’t go, because any Syrian man will be conscripted into the army during war time. It’s the start of 2017, and I remembered what a bad time that was to travel to Syria.

Meanwhile, with his mother gone leaving the whole family on edge, a Syrian refugee family has moved to their neighborhood with a boy Kareem’s age named Fadi, and Kareem is asked to help him at school. But when the coach’s kid starts bullying Fadi, Kareem doesn’t want to get caught in that negative attention.

Well, thankfully Kareem does finally get pushed to the edge and figures out he needs to try to make things right. But as that is happening, Trump’s Muslim ban goes into effect, causing great pain and heartache, and they can’t even reach Kareem’s mother in Syria.

This book is far too timely right now, putting a face and heart to a story of a child of immigrants feeling in between both cultures – and being part of what truly makes America great.

shifasafadi.com

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Review of Reasons We Break, by Jesmeen Kaur Deo

Contemporary, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

Reasons We Break

by Jesmeen Kaur Deo

Hyperion, 2025. 406 pages.
Review written November 24, 2025, from a book sent by the publisher.
Starred Review
2025 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #6 More Teen Fiction

Good girl Simran tutored Rajan in math all through high school. She was the first math tutor he could tolerate. After high school, Rajan shows up in her life again as a mentee in a program for helping troubled youth with community service. The rumors in their Sikh community say that he killed someone. Rajan’s visiting his probation officer as scheduled and trying to stay clean.

Then his old gang picks him up to pull him back into the gang – and grabs Simran, thinking she’s his girlfriend, as leverage. But that ends up turning out the opposite of expectations, as Simran volunteers to replace the gang’s bookkeeper (who recently got arrested) just long enough to pay off Rajan’s debt, so he doesn’t have work for them and break the conditions of probation.

Of course, once Rajan finds out about that, he’s not going to stand by and let Simran be in danger. But Simran is already intrigued by the puzzle of trying to figure out a rival gang’s code.

One thing keeps leading to another, and we gain insight that everyone can have life events that break them and lead them to choices they might not otherwise have picked.

It was interesting reading this book at the same time I was reading Gregory Boyle’s book, Cherished Belonging. Gregory Boyle works with gang members in Los Angeles, and is incredibly good at seeing their good hearts – and showing those good hearts to his readers. This story was fiction, but it also takes a compassionate look at teens caught up in gangs and all the difficulties of getting out.

The book also gives insight into the Sikh religion and that immigrant community in British Columbia – while delivering a suspenseful thriller about people we come to care about.

JDeoWrites.com
HyperionTeens.com

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Review of Island Storm, by Brian Floca, pictures by Sydney Smith

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Island Storm

by Brian Floca
pictures by Sydney Smith

Neal Porter Books (Holiday House), 2025. 48 pages.
Review written December 29, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #10 Picture Books

This picture book story is told in second person, which I usually don’t like, but it works beautifully here.

The wonderful pictures start even before the text. On the title page, there’s a boy and little sister standing at a window looking out. Then the dedication and copyright spread shows a woman collecting clothes blown from a line, plus a cloudy sky and gray sea.

Then we’re looking through a dark hallway to a bright doorway with the kids now wearing boots. And the text says:

Now take my hand
and we’ll go see
the sea before the storm.

The pictures and text show what they pass along the way and the waves smashing on the rocks.

But after this, and after several other interludes, there’s a refrain:

And then we ask, is this enough, or do we try for more?
You pull on me, and I pull on you, and we decide to go on.

And so they keep going on, passing homes with boarded up windows, their neighbor finishing one last walk with her dogs, the town empty of people after folks have finished stocking up.

When the thunder finally starts, they run home, planning on a shortcut through the woods – which ends up being harder in the storm than they’d thought it would be.

You can see the relief on the face of the grown-up with the flashlight who finds them and hugs them. Then they watch the storm through the windows – and the book ends the next day with the sun shining and the sea calm – “And you and I go on.”

I have to say that the amazing pictures, combined with the immediate text, make this book feel like you’re walking with the kids in the storm. This one is much better than I can capture with words alone – so let me encourage you to check it out!

brianfloca.com
sydneydraws.ca

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