Review of The Women, by Kristin Hannah, read by Julia Whelan

The Women

by Kristin Hannah
read by Julia Whelan

Macmillan Audio, 2024. 14 hours, 57 minutes.
Review written August 5, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I know, I know – I’m way behind most people on reading this book, but Wow! Now I see why it’s been so popular.

“The Women” the title refers to are the women who served in Vietnam. Even though they were often told after the war that “There were no women in Vietnam.” (And Kristin Hannah’s author’s note at the end tells us that was a detail she got from more than one woman she interviewed.)

She tells the story of many women by focusing in on one woman, Frankie McGrath. At her brother’s going-away party, setting off to serve in Vietnam, when they all thought the war would be over soon, she was told, “Women can be heroes, too.”

So Frankie trained as a nurse and decided to serve in Vietnam with her brother. But the very day she signed up and told her parents the news was the day that they got word that her brother was killed in action, no remains found.

When Frankie got to Vietnam, it was trial by fire. Kristin Hannah takes us through her bewildering first day when there was a mass casualty event, through her training in the neuro ward, watching over patients who were unresponsive, through her coming into true expertise as an Operating Room Nurse.

And the author shows us how this was the worst and best time of Frankie’s life. Besides the horrors that haunt her, she built friendships like cement. She fell in love more than once – trying to avoid the ones who are already married. And she watched people die. But she also saved many lives, and held the hands of the dying so that they were not alone.

Half of the book is about what happened after Frankie got back. She was not hailed as a hero, not even by her parents, who’d told people she’d gone to school in Florence. The reader can see her PTSD symptoms – before that was even named as an issue.

There were times as I was reading this book when I cringed because I was pretty sure another impossibly hard thing was going to hit Frankie. And I wasn’t wrong.

But this is ultimately a story of a woman who went through impossibly hard things and came out the other side. The book ends on a well-earned hopeful note. And I love that Frankie represents the actual lives of the thousands of women who served in Vietnam. Her story helps us understand their stories.

kristinhannah.com

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Review of Daughters of Shandong, by Eve J. Chung

Daughters of Shandong

by Eve J. Chung
read by Yu-Li Alice Shen

Books on Tape, 2024. 11 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written July 3, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Daughters of Shandong tells the harrowing tale of a mother and her daughters caught in the crossfire of the Communist Revolution in China after World War II.

Hai, the oldest daughter, tells how her mother’s life was difficult even before the Communists. Because she hadn’t borne any daughters to her husband, the honored son of a wealthy land-owning family, her mother-in-law made her life miserable, working her from dawn to dusk and forcing her to kneel for hours as punishment for her many imagined failings. So when they get warning that the Communists are coming, Hai’s mother and sisters are left behind, supposedly to protect the land, but with no way to do so.

Since her father and grandfather are not there for the Communists’ renunciation, Hai must take their punishment and almost dies after the ordeal. So her mother leads them to Qingdao, where they learn their family has already fled to Taiwan. For them to follow is tremendously difficult, needing connections and ingenuity. They live as refugees in Qingdao and then Hong Kong before finding a way to Taiwan, and all along the way, they learn that things can get even worse than they had imagined – and then even worse than that.

So it’s not an easy tale to listen to. But the author based it on the life of her grandmother, doing tremendous research to fill in the gaps, and overall telling a story of rising against incredible odds. In the end, she shows that yes, even daughters are people of incredible worth, capable of amazing accomplishments.

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Review of Under the Same Stars, by Libba Bray

Under the Same Stars

by Libba Bray
read by January LaVoy, Jeremy Carlisle Parker, and Major Curda

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2025. 16 hours, 31 minutes.
Review written June 10, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Under the Same Stars is a skillfully crafted historical novel about resistors in three time periods – 1941 Germany resistance, 1980s divided Berlin punk bands, and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. As the three stories progress, we learn that the stories are intertwined and there are returning characters.

One of those returning characters shows up early – the Bridegroom’s Oak, a tree in the forest outside Kleinwald Germany known for its magical matchmaking powers. We’ve also got a fairy tale about the tree, with forest magic woven through the tales.

Dear friends Sophie and Hanna start out by sending their own letters through the tree – which makes a cover for later using the tree to pass along forged documents to rescue people from Nazi Germany.

In 1980s West Berlin, Jenny, the young daughter of a diplomat isn’t at all happy about spending her summer away from her friends in Dallas. But when taking pictures of the city, she meets some punks and starts playing with their all-girl band, behind her parents’ back. And then she starts falling in love with her band mate, which would also horrify her parents. This girl is originally from East Berlin, and Jenny learns that the band’s music is an act of resistance.

And then in 2020, Miles is in isolation while one of his mothers got stuck overseas and the other is working around the clock in a New York City hospital. When his friend Chloe – who hadn’t been speaking to him – gets in touch, he starts working on the mystery of her grandmother’s partial story about a magical tree. Thinking about resistance helps him break out of isolation when the Black Lives Matter protests start up.

As usual, my summary doesn’t convey how well these stories are interwoven and the strong message that resistance is a loving and hopeful act. It’s something you do not for yourself, but because you have hope of a better world. It also conveys the message that the need for resistance is unfortunately very common.

I wish that message weren’t as timely as it is.

Even without the powerful message, this is a set of three gripping stories of folks who put their lives on the line.

libbabray.com

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Review of The Antidote, by Karen Russell

The Antidote

by Karen Russell
read by Elena Rey, Sophie Amoss, Mark Bramhall, Shayna Small, Jon Orsini, Natasha Soudek, Karen Russell, and James Riding In

Books on Tape, 2025. 16 hours, 56 minutes.
Review written June 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Antidote is a historical novel of the Dust Bowl, woven throughout with magical realism. When I began the book, I wasn’t sure I liked it, and the pace is literary and more slow-moving than the young adult and children’s books I often read. But by the last several hours – well, let’s just say that I stayed up until 3 am and finished a jigsaw puzzle to also finish this book. (Would I have stayed up to finish the jigsaw puzzle anyway? Maybe. But wanting to finish this audiobook meant I didn’t even try to resist.)

The “Antidote” of the title is a person. She’s a prairie witch, and that’s the name she uses for customers. She’s a vault for things you want to forget, memories that trouble you or that you want to stop thinking about for a time. The Antidote goes into a trance and the customer talks into her ear trumpet and the memories get transferred to her to carry. The customer doesn’t remember what they confided, and the Antidote never heard it, but they can come back at any time, read their deposit slip backwards, and this time the transfer will go the other way, giving the memories back to the customer.

But the book opens on Black Sunday, the day an enormous dust storm went through Nebraska. On the same day, the Antidote went bankrupt. She can feel in her body that all the deposits were lost. What will she do when the customers fleeing the dry prairie want their deposits back?

There are other characters we follow. Harp Oletsky is a farmer whose wheat crop was miraculously spared. Even the scarecrow survived intact! He starts seeing lights coming from the land.

Harp’s niece, Asphodel, is living with him after her mother was found dead in a ditch. She tries to escape her nightmares about her mother’s body by playing basketball. But the folks supporting their team one by one are leaving Nebraska. And Asphodel wants to make some money by working for the Antidote.

Then there’s a government photographer. She’s a Black lady traveling alone. She tries to follow the instructions for the pictures the government wants to support the New Deal – but then her camera reveals images that she didn’t see when she took the pictures.

And through all of this, we learn about life on the prairie and the hard things that happen there – things people are willing to pay to forget. For example, the Polish settlers don’t want to face that they were offered free homesteads in order to secure land that belonged to the Pawnee people. And in fact, the Pawnee people are being treated exactly the way the Polish people were treated in Europe.

It also turns out that the no-good sheriff has been forcing the Antidote to receive deposits in order to hide evidence. And that comes to a head when the Lucky Rabbit’s Foot Killer – who supposedly killed Asphodel’s mother – has a botched execution on Black Sunday when the electric chair malfunctions. The election is coming up, and the sheriff intends to win on his record, never mind what is really the truth behind the murders.

And it’s all wound together in a way that winds itself into your heart. I have to admit it got me thinking uncomfortable thoughts about my homesteading ancestors in a way I never faced before. The motto of the prairie in this book is “Better you than me.” And the book shows up the problems with that motto – and how deeply it’s embedded in the heart of America. Powerful stuff, and an engrossing read (once you get started).

karenrussellauthor.com

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Review of Rebellion 1776, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Rebellion 1776

by Laurie Halse Anderson

Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2025. 416 pages.
Review written June 18, 2025, from an Advance Reader Copy sent by the publisher.
Starred Review

Here’s a side of the American Revolution I had never heard. We’ve got Elspeth, an ordinary girl living in Boston in 1776 and working as a maid. Her mother and brothers had died of smallpox in Philadelphia, so her father took the two of them to Boston, and he found her a position as a maid. The book opens as cannons are firing from both the British, under siege in Boston, and from the Patriots, trying to dislodge them.

The British and Loyalists are driven out, and Pappa plans to evacuate at the same time. Elspeth doesn’t want to go, so she hides overnight – but Pappa never shows up! Did he leave without her? Did something happen to him? While she’s trying to find him, to get in touch with him, Elspeth works for the family that replaced the loyalist judge she’d been serving. But her position is precarious as a girl without her father there to vouch for her.

And then smallpox comes to Boston. Elspeth has had it, but now folks are being inoculated – given a light dose of the disease – which is still a dose of the disease. And still takes months to run its course! (And I thought being sick for a day after a vaccination was bad.) And her good friend wants to enlist as a soldier. And the 16-year-old ward of the family she serves has independent ideas. And there are nefarious characters making use of wartime to enrich themselves.

The whole tale pulled me in and made me think about ordinary people during wartime – and how most folks simply want to live their lives. But world events can make that difficult.

It was a delight to read about Elspeth’s resourcefulness and courage as she holds on when it seems like she’s alone in the world.

madwomanintheforest.com

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Review of Enter the Body, by Joy McCullough

Enter the Body

by Joy McCullough
read by a full cast,
including Joy McCullough, Valerie Rose Lohman, Annie Q, and Victoria Villarreal

Listening Library, 2023. 4 hours, 23 minutes.
Review written April 23, 2023, from a library eaudiobook

Joy McCullough’s debut novel, the amazing Blood Water Paint was published the year I was on the Newbery committee, so when I hear she’s written another book, I make sure to read it. This one has more of her innovative work, looking at history in a completely new way. Of course, in this case, it’s invented history — invented by Shakespeare.

The book is centered in a trap room beneath a stage. We’ve got Shakespeare’s tragic heroines spending eternity there. All of them died horribly.

Most of them go off into corners, but Juliet, Ophelia, and Cordelia get to talking. They tell their stories from their own perspectives. All of them died tragically, because of men.

But then the part I like is where they decide to make their own choices and rewrite their stories as they want them told.

I listened to this book, and the audio production is very well done, using separate voices for the different girls. But I suspect I would have enjoyed it more reading the print version, because it’s easier to notice the author’s craft — such as when the lines start going in iambic pentameter.

In the Author’s Note she mentions that Shakespeare was known for taking established work and making it his own, so she feels she’s following in his footsteps with this book.

joymccullough.com

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Review of Max in the Land of Lies, by Adam Gidwitz

Max in the Land of Lies

by Adam Gidwitz
read by Euan Morton

Listening Library, 2025. 9 hours, 6 minutes.
Review written April 16, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Max in the Land of Lies is the second half of the duology begun in Max in the House of Spies – and, yes, together they make one story, so you will want to read both parts in order.

In my review, I said that Max in the House of Spies is a whole lot of fun. This one? I wouldn’t use the word “fun” to describe it. Max is still super clever and outsmarts many of the people he’s up against – but now he’s in Nazi Germany. I do have to mention that Adam Gidwitz is still narrowly walking the line of believability – that the British would send a 12-year-old Jewish boy into Nazi Germany and that he could possibly get away with it. (This is a kids’ book – that’s not really a spoiler.)

There’s a huge amount of tension in this book. Max is a genius with radios, and he infiltrates the Funkhaus – the radio station in Berlin, getting a job there. And during the course of the book he meets Herr Fritscher (the “Voice of Germany”), Goebbels {the minister of propaganda), and has lunch with Adolf Hitler.

So along the way in Max’s journey, it’s not so much about fun pranks he pulls, as the first book, as about the changes happening in Germany. We see that there are as many reasons to be a Nazi as there are people in Germany, and we hear some of the people tell their reasons. We hear about how Germany was humiliated after World War I and folks’ life savings were worthless and they simply hoped that Hitler could make Germany great again. And how people were willing to turn in their neighbors, but others look the other way.

We also learn about how people are more apt to believe the Big Lie than small lies – because everyone tells small lies, so they know to watch for those, but they don’t believe that someone would tell a truly Big Lie. Even if they don’t believe it at first, they will start getting used to the Big Lie if it’s repeated often enough. The author’s note says that Hitler never admitted to doing this – but this strategy is what he said Jews were doing, and Fascists then and now accuse others of the things they are doing themselves. In the radio station, Max learns about the invented “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and how this was used to blame the Jews for everyone’s troubles. He learns about the “science” of phrenology and how the shapes of Jews’ skulls show they are inferior – but funny thing, it doesn’t give him away. Another interesting propaganda thread that I hadn’t heard about before was about all the countries Britain had already invaded and colonized – so clearly Germany needed to defend themselves against Britain. (Never mind that Hitler started this war – how was he any worse than the British?)

Max is also looking for his parents – and let’s just say that the book doesn’t flinch from telling the reader about the cruelty of concentration camps. So yes, this book is sobering.

The author’s note at the back is fascinating. Max is fictional, but most of the characters he encounters are actual historical figures. Of course this book was written long before Trump was reelected, but there are plenty of things about Nazi Germany that resonate with America today. As the author says, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

So besides an intricate and well-written spy novel, in this book you’ll also get a history lesson and a timely warning.

adamgidwitz.com

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Review of The Door of No Return, by Kwame Alexander

The Door of No Return

by Kwame Alexander

Little, Brown and Company, 2022. 397 pages.
Review written January 31, 2023, based on an advance reader copy I got at ALA Annual Conference
Starred Review

Poet and Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander tackles a historical novel-in-verse with this book. He takes us into the life of Offin, a kid from the 1860 Asante Kingdom, in the part of West Africa now known as Ghana.

We get pulled into Offin’s life and family. We hear stories from his grandfather, Nana Mosi. We learn about the girl who makes him smile and his rivalry with his cousin and desire to prove himself.

But then at a wrestling match with Lower Kwanta, Offin’s brother fatally injures the wrong person. Now they have enemies.

And yes, Offin’s story takes him to the Door of No Return — a door that leads to a slave ship. He doesn’t understand until he’s on the ship.

But what’s wonderful about this book is the way it features Offin’s life in Africa, a rich and full life among his family and friends. Of course, that makes the abduction hit all the harder.

Because it’s in verse, this novel is a quick read. It doesn’t take us all the way to America, and I am wondering what happens next, so I was happy to hear that sequels are planned.

This book won a Mock Newbery vote I was part of, though not any of the official awards. But pick up this book to read a master poet at work, shedding light on a time and place you may not have “visited” before.

kwamealexander.com
lbyr.com

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Sonderbooks25: Looking Back at Caravan, by Dorothy Gilman

Caravan

by Dorothy Gilman

Doubleday, 1992. 263 pages.
New Review written March 31, 2025, from my own copy.
Original review written January 19, 2002.

Oh dear. I am now embarrassed that Caravan, by Dorothy Gilman, has long been one of my all-time favorite books. It’s not that it didn’t hold up; it’s that my eyes have been opened to cultural stereotypes. And I’m a little bummed! Shout out, though, to Pam Margolis and the Cultural Competency Training that everyone involved with the Cybils Awards takes.
They opened my eyes.

Here’s the background. I’m running a series of posts I’m calling Sonderbooks25, celebrating my 25th year of posting Sonderbooks. As part of the celebration, I’m choosing one book from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs to reread. In the case of my 2001 choice, The Sand-Reckoner, by Gillian Bradshaw, I wrote a new review and posted it in the newer format. (The first five years of Sonderbooks were posted in a different format and you won’t find them listed in the current indexes.)

I’m afraid I’m not going to do that for Caravan, because although I still love the book, and, wow, it stirs up all kinds of memories from who I was when I read it (I’d read it more than once before reviewing it in 2002.), I’m afraid with opened eyes, I’m not going to recommend it so heartily. So I will add this explanation to the top of the old review and leave it there for those who dig deeply into my website. And on this blog post.

The book is the story of Caressa Horvath, who’s sixteen years old when the story opens in 1911. No, let me revise that – the Caressa telling the story is old, at the end of her life, and revealing secrets especially for her granddaughter, but the tale she tells begins when she was sixteen.

Caressa grew up in a carnival, but her mother wanted her to be a lady, so she saved money and sent her to a school for young ladies in New England. But while she was a student, she picked the pocket of a rich gentleman who was well-traveled – and he caught her. He kept quiet about it, but took her under his wing and eventually married her, despite being twenty years older – to “protect” her. And he took her with him on an expedition to Africa, beginning in Tripoli.

After some time in Tripoli, where her husband made arrangements for their caravan and Caressa befriended her Muslim guide, who showed her around the city, they set off across the desert. They’ve paid off the Tuareg to cross. But before long, they’re confronted by a different group of Tuareg, and Caressa’s husband gets very indignant when they want payment – and the entire caravan ends up getting slaughtered – except for Caressa, who had been playing with her finger puppets to calm herself (one of which is named “Mr. Jappy”) – and they think she is doing magic, so they spare her life and take her with them.

So that’s where the cultural sensitivity becomes questionable. Caressa is much, much more culturally sensitive than her husband, seeing everyone she encounters as actual people. She goes on to live in the desert, among different desert peoples, facing different dangers, for three years. For most of that time, she has a friend and companion in a boy named Bakuli who learned basic English from Christian missionaries and calls himself a Jesus-boy. He was a slave of the Tuareg, but he is the one who warned Caressa that when one of the villagers is on their deathbed, that will be enough to convince them that her magic – which saved her from slaughter – is actually bad and she should be killed.

So Caressa and Bakuli escape together and have more adventures, with time living among different desert people. Later, they’re in a caravan again, and Caressa witnesses a man getting assassinated. She’s afraid the assassin will kill her, but instead when she’s sick from lack of water and the long road – he sells her into slavery. She convinces Bakuli to escape while she is still too sick to leave, and now she’s ready for a major part of the story.

All of that is far, far more riveting than it sounds in my brief summary. And the author makes individuals with names and personalities out of the people Caressa encounters and lives with. However, there are strong shades of the “Magical Negro” trope in the many spiritual encounters Caressa has along the way, finding there’s something behind the villagers’ beliefs. They are also portrayed as superstitious and sensitive to spirits – but Caressa senses the spirits, too, so maybe it’s not superstition? And the slaughtering, enslaving, and assassinating give the feeling that the “savages” stereotype isn’t too far under the surface.

Okay, but that’s a little vague and general. I don’t know what life was actually like at that time in Africa, and at least the author did enough research to know about the different people groups and languages and where they lived, and Caressa sees and names individual people.

But then came the part that made me blanch after “Me Too”:

Caressa had been enslaved, and they were taking her to a harem in Constantinople, when a stranger buys her. And the first thing he does is order her to take off her clothes (in Hausa), and he rapes her.

But Caressa’s mind is blown by the sex. “I was played on like an instrument, reaching sensations never dreamed of.”

Really? She’s just been sold as a slave, raped by the guy who bought her, she’s scared and alone, and you want me to believe that he’s so good at it that she enjoyed it?

When she says “Good heavens” after sex, he discovers that she speaks English and is shocked – her skin was dark by all the time in the sun. He is a Scotsman – who has the Sight, which is what led him to Caressa, though we don’t find that out right away.

She does confront him when he exclaims over her speaking English and asks who she is:

What does it matter to you who I am? You bought me for four gold pieces and now you’ve raped me and you’d have done it whether I was Tuareg, Hausa, Fulani or Arab, so why should it make any difference who I am, and I hope you speak enough English to understand that I think you a vulture – an ungulu – a monster and a bastard.

His answer comes in a hard even voice:

I speak and understand English and I paid four gold pieces for you for reasons I don’t care to mention just now, and I took you fast to put my brand on you because if you were a Tuargia you’d think ill of me if I didn’t, and be out of here by morning.

So, hold on, he’s saying that if she were Black it would have been okay???!

The next day, although she “could not help but dislike the manner of his ‘taking’ me,” she realizes that as a slave, she could have had it happen with a Targui or by the Turkish sultan. (Again, it’s okay, because he’s white???) And then she starts remembering those new sensations she’d experienced – and they have sex again, and from then on, he’s basically her one true love.

And now I am embarrassed how much I’ve loved this book.

Mind you, the twist in the ending is fantastic, and that’s what I’m left thinking about. I am a romantic at heart, so I did love their undying love once it got started – pulled together by the Sight! By Destiny! (Not simply the Magical Negro stereotype, but also the Magical Scotsman.) Caressa’s not in a traditional marriage, and it felt subversive to me as a young married evangelical to love this book anyway. But reading it this time, the manner of their meeting takes my concerns about cultural insensitivity and multiplies them.

And I still enjoyed rereading this book! But when I finished it, I had a bout of insomnia because I kept thinking about young newlywed Sondy who first read it and how that worked out (or rather, didn’t).

So – I still love the book, but that love is dampened in my skeptical old age, and I no longer feel I can wholeheartedly recommend it. But reading it was still a trip down memory lane and I’m excited about the rest of the revisiting I’m going to do for Sonderbooks25.

Review of Most Ardently, by Gabe Cole Novoa, read by Harrison Knights

Most Ardently

A Pride and Prejudice Remix

by Gabe Cole Novoa
read by Harrison Knights

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2024. 7 hours, 30 minutes.
Review written March 1, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Stonewall Honor Book, Young Adult Literature

I have long loved Pride and Prejudice variants and everything related to Jane Austen. I even have a webpage devoted to reviews of such books – my Austenalia page.

I found this version of Pride and Prejudice completely delightful. The big switch? The second child in the Bennet family is actually a transgender boy named Oliver.

The scenes in the novel play out as Oliver is beginning to live as himself and stop pretending to be a girl named Elizabeth. His father is understanding and affirming, but he shudders at the thought of letting his mother know. And Oliver encounters Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy both when dressed as himself and when pretending to be a woman. It turns out that Mr. Darcy fancies men, but when appearing as Elizabeth, Oliver can’t let on that he knows that.

There were a couple of odd changes – Longbourne and Netherfield were much closer to London, for starters, as was, apparently, Pemberley and Hunsford. That did help the story speed up – this version got in most of the major scenes, but it was much shorter than the original novel. We also had Oliver not being much taken with Wickham right from the start – there was much less misunderstanding and later reversal than in the original, but it was kind of fun to watch Wickham try to flirt with Oliver, and Oliver having none of it.

Now, I was a little skeptical of how well most who learned about Oliver handled the news and accepted him as himself in that day and age. The historical note at the end did help me believe it could have happened – and regardless, it did my heart good to read about a young transgender man getting love and support from his family and friends.

All in all, it’s a delightful addition to Austenalia – with a new twist I haven’t seen before. Let me ardently recommend this book.

gabecolenovoa.com

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