Review of Red Star Rebels, by Amie Kaufman

Audiobooks, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

Red Star Rebels

by Amie Kaufman
performed by Max Meyers, Jessica Almasy, and a full cast

Listening Library, 2026. 7 hours, 33 minutes.
Review written August 14, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred review

The audio production for this book is amazing. It’s to the level of a radio play. There’s even a music soundtrack throughout. Occasionally, when the music turned happy in the romantic parts, it felt a tiny bit hokey, but mostly it dialed my tension way up. At one point I turned it off a couple times to make sure that machine sound wasn’t coming from inside my own home. This was a good thing – you’re completely immersed in the story. This one was hard to stop at any point in the story, and had me so riveted, it maybe wasn’t the best background listening if I was trying to do anything else. (But I didn’t miss any turns or get into any accidents while driving, so it all worked out.)

Red Star Rebels is set in a United Nations station on Mars – one of the last and lowest budget bases that was built on Mars. We have two viewpoint characters. First is Cleo, who got to Mars as a hitcher when she was trying to escape debt collectors after her for medical debt from the illness that killed her father. Since Cleo isn’t registered to be there, she’s got tricks for places to hide and stashes of food. And a pressure suit in case there’s ever an evacuation – because the system doesn’t know she’s there and rovers won’t wait for her.

Our second protagonist is Hunter Graves. He’s the billionaire grandson of the man who got to Mars first and put a compound there, breaking rules, but also breaking new ground. Hunter didn’t let his mother and sister know that he was coming, and used his money to keep them from finding out. He has just arrived at the UN station and wants to arrange passage to the Graves compound, but is told that a dust storm will make it impossible to travel for a few days.

And then an alarm goes off. A voice repeats a message in several languages that everyone needs to get to the evacuation rovers because a toxin has been identified in the air, and the station is going to be vented. Trouble is, Hunter wasn’t registered yet, so the system doesn’t know he’s there, so the evacuation rovers for visitors don’t wait for him. Fortunately for him, after he puts out a Mayday call (blocked by the dust storm from anyone outside the station), a girl with red hair wearing a pressure suit comes to him bringing a second pressure suit. (And on the audiobook, her voice sounds like it’s coming from a microphone in a suit.)

But after Hunter thinks this girl Cleo has saved his life, the station doesn’t start venting after all. In fact, some Rovers pull up to the station on the opposite side from where the evacuees left. A group of people enter the station and come to the command center. Cleo and Hunter hear them say there are six hours left before everything blows, and they see them doing something with the computer system.

Hunter and Cleo don’t make their presence known right away. Can they figure out a way to escape the station before it gets blown up to erase the evidence? And what, exactly, are these people planning?

There are different phases to the story as Cleo and Hunter grapple with changing situations, revisions in their information, and a dawning knowledge of what the intruders are planning to do.

Meanwhile, Cleo has every reason to hate anyone from the Graves corporation, who produced the medicine that her father needed and couldn’t afford. And Hunter has every reason to hate hitchers, since a group of them from “Mars For All” killed his father. Nobody has ever been there for them before, but they may need to rely on each other to get out of this alive.

I don’t want to say much more than that except that the tension doesn’t let up for a minute. When you think they’ve overcome one obstacle, something new happens to threaten them. But as they’re working for survival, it turns out they’re both good at thinking on their feet. Cleo’s knowledge of the base – from living in secret for months – is crucial, and so is Hunter’s knowledge of the computer systems used by all the bases on Mars. And it’s an awful lot of fun to hear about.

The story was excellent and made me believe that could be what life on Mars is like in forty years, including the part about rich people not caring about the lives of others, sadly. I’m going to strongly recommend if you read this book, do it via audiobook. The production was that good. Be prepared for high tension, though!

amiekaufman.com

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Review of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, by Sangu Mandanna

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Paranormal, Romance, Starred Review 0

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

by Sangu Mandanna
read by Samara MacLaren

Penguin Audio, 2022. 9 hours, 59 minutes.
Review written June 12, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’m so glad that after I read A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, I looked for more books by the same author. This cozy paranormal romantasy is like a warm hug. Well, okay, it’s a somewhat sexy hug – but the main point of the book is feel-good warmth.

[As it happens, the love interest in both books was a handsome librarian. I can get behind that!]

As the book opens, Mika Moon is a witch who’s used to being isolated. The witches of Britain only get together every few months for a couple hours, and they change the location every time. Too much power in one place will attract attention, and that can lead to disaster.

But then she gets a job offer for a job she hadn’t been looking for. There’s a hidden house in the country inhabited by an older gay couple, a fifty-something lady caretaker, a handsome librarian – and three little girl witches. The adults are looking for a witch to teach the girls magic. They tend to have magical accidents and need to learn to control their power before a lawyer comes by the day after Christmas. The owner of the house is a witch herself who took these girls in, and she’s been in South America for quite some time. Or so Mika is told.

So there are all the ingredients of Mary Poppins or Maria von Trapp. Two of the girls are easily won over, as Mika shares her love of magic, but the other is more challenging.

And the romance part is difficult. All witches are under a curse, or at least a spell gone wrong, and become orphans soon after their birth. Mika had a witch as her guardian, but she was raised by nannies and tutors whose memories were wiped when they figured out what Mika was. So Mika has spent her life moving from one place to another, never getting close enough so that people will find out what she is and want to use their magic for themselves.

And if the head witch of the local society finds out that four witches are living under one roof, Mika knows they’ll be split up. So it’s better to try not to get too fond of this feeling of family and home.

The characters filling the house help make this book the delight it is. Each of the girls has a personality, and all the adults have built a loving family for them. Mika herself shines with her love of magic and a desire to do good things with it.

sangumandanna.com

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Review of Sabriel, by Garth Nix

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Sabriel

by Garth Nix
read by Tim Curry

Listening Library, 2002. 10 hours, 43 minutes.
Review written October 21, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
Original review posted January 20, 2004.
2004 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Fantasy for Young Adults

As part of #Sonderbooks25, celebrating 25 years of posting Sonderbooks, I’m rereading many of my Sonderbooks Stand-outs from previous years and writing new reviews for the ones written before my 2006 revision of the website. The project is taking me much, much longer than I thought it would, because I’m reading more of my old reviews than planned and rereading (or listening) to more of the books – but I’m having a whole lot of fun with it, so what’s not to like?

And I don’t think I remembered just how good Sabriel is. I wish I could define why it’s head and shoulders above your run-of-the-mill current romantasy – because then maybe I could write one myself. But I’ll try to put my finger on some of the things that make the book so excellent.

First, Garth Nix does an incredible job with world-building. The world and the magic system is unlike any other fantasy novel I’ve ever read, and is incredibly complex, but he expertly pulls you along without ever a boring exposition drop. Sabriel has been brought up in a school close to the border with the Old Kingdom – full of Charter Magic – but her father has been teaching her the skills of an Abhorsen – a necromancer on the side of good who can send dead things back into Death.

But one day Sabriel gets a messenger from Death bringing her father’s bells and sword. She’s told she is the new Abhorsen. So Sabriel goes on a quest into the Old Kingdom to try to find her father’s body and free him from whatever trapped him in Death. And it turns out along the way, she is trying to save the entire Old Kingdom from the Greater Dead creature that trapped him there.

We get information about what she needs to do and how to do it as she goes – but it’s not done in a haphazard way. Sabriel starts with basic knowledge of how to use the Abhorsen’s bells against dead things – which she has to use in her journey. She finds broken Charter stones and decimated villages in her travels, and there are many terrifying moments when she is chased by powerful dead beings.

Yes, there’s a little bit of romance. The romance is shown to the reader rather than told. Though honestly, they could have said a little more about it – but I happen to like understated romance more than overstated romance.

And the story pulls you in, from Sabriel’s first small venture into death to save a friend’s pet to her frantic stand against a creature of Destruction. This book was even better than I remembered.

garthnix.com

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Review of Homeschooled, by Stefan Merrill Block

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Homeschooled

by Stefan Merrill Block
read by the Author

Harlequin Audio, 2026. 7 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written July 6, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

Ouch. This true story had me doing lots of cringing for the author’s past self – as well as for some of my younger siblings who were homeschooled.

To be fair, he puts a detailed note at the end that every homeschool is different, as every family is different. He doesn’t at all advocate for abolishing home schooling, though he does think that for the sake of the kids, there should be more regulation and supervision to make sure kids aren’t sitting alone in their rooms reading comic books and not seeing other people – like he did.

This is his story of being homeschooled, from fourth grade through eighth grade. He went back to school in ninth grade, and after extremely difficult adjustment learning to take tests and write papers, he did well in high school.

His homeschooling happened in Texas when laws had recently been changed to pave the way for home schooling. His mother essentially wanted to keep him her little boy and have him with her at all times. She took him out of school ostensibly because school was crushing his genius. It wasn’t religious homeschooling, but the “unschooling” movement. The idea was that he would “follow his passions” and “learn to learn,” but in practice, the only curriculum he followed was math and Brain Quest cards.

To be fair, he did end up as an author – writing in his room, just as he had done in homeschool. But still, the picture he paints isn’t what you’d want for a child, and included long stretches of loneliness.

But the story itself is absorbing and compelling. It’s a story not only of being homeschooled, but also about his relationship with the complex person who was his mother. And trying to find out who he was apart from her – when him being apart from her was the last thing she ever wanted.

stefanmerrillblock.com

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Review of This Story Might Save Your Life, by Tiffany Crum

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

This Story Might Save Your Life

by Tiffany Crum
read by Julia Whelan and Sean Patrick Hopkins

Macmillan Audio, 2026. 10 hours, 39 minutes.
Review written July 15, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This audiobook had me riveted from start to finish. I was in the middle of things last night, and when I woke up in the morning, my first thoughts were about this book. I made sure I found times to snatch a listen until it was done.

The book is a tale of two best friends who run a podcast called “This Story Might Save Your Life.” One of Joy or Benny introduces a life-threatening situation, based on a true tale of survival, and the other one ad-libs ideas for what they would do to survive. With banter and lots of humor at the terrible ideas. They finish when the person who researched the story tells how the actual person survived or what experts say you should do to survive in such a case. The podcast is crazy popular because listeners can sense the spark of devoted friendship and respect between Joy and Benny, who met not long after college.

We can tell the book begins on a momentous day, because they call it “Day 1.” The sinister Santa Ana winds are blowing, and they do the start of a podcast together. Joy slips Benny a note to come back and talk with her alone, but we don’t find out why. The next day, Joy and her husband Xander, the producer of the podcast, are missing.

The mystery is this: Where are Joy and Xander? What happened to them? We’re fed information in an exquisitely suspenseful way. Alternate chapters go back in time by giving us excerpts from a memoir Joy was writing with Benny about their friendship. I don’t dare say anything about the crucial developments in the story, because the author so expertly feeds us background and current information at exactly the right pace.

I will say some things we learn right at the start. Joy has narcolepsy, and has had it since high school. She takes a wide variety of medicines to manage it, but she still is known to fall asleep anywhere. This human failing of Joy’s makes her all the more likable from the beginning.

We also learn that the previous year has been tough. Their podcast is wildly popular, and Xander’s trying to arrange a lucrative deal with a production company. But Joy has had a stalker. She hasn’t left her house in six months. There are references to difficult things that happened, but we don’t get the details right away.

And Benny feels terribly guilty about what he said to Joy when they met at her house the night before she disappeared. What did he say? Does it have to do with her disappearance? And where are they now? And why is he hiding Joy’s computer from the police?

I wish I could say more! But when the plotting is just so very good, I don’t want to risk messing it up. I read in Libby that there are some extras on the audio version – the podcast that came at the end of the book is a fun bonus. And there are some nice sound effects thrown in. They include different people’s voices calling in to a Tipline about the missing people. So I’m going to recommend listening to this book if you get the chance.

tiffanycrum.com

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Review of Let Them Stare, by Jonathan Van Ness and Julie Murphy

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Let Them Stare

by Jonathan Van Ness and Julie Murphy
read by Jonathan Van Ness and Jeremy Arthur

Storytide (HarperCollins), 2025. 10 hours, 5 minute.
Review written July 1, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

Let Them Stare is a light-hearted romp about a queer teen with a haunted handbag – with serious overtones about the history of how queer people were treated and how they fought back.

As the story opens, Sully is having a high school graduation party and looking forward to leaving Hearst – a small town near Pittsburgh – the very next day for the glamour of New York City as a junior assistant to an influencer. When their uncle misgenders and insults them while pretending to give them a gift, Sully is all the more ready to put it all behind them. They sell their car to Brad, the only gay guy in town, with a small last-minute make-out session to seal the deal.

But in the morning, the influencer decides to go to Tahiti and sends Sully notice that they won’t be needed after all. So Sully’s left with no job, no money, and no car – stuck in Hearst. However, when they go back to the thrift shop to try to get their job back, they don’t succeed – but they do score a vintage handbag worth potentially tens of thousands of dollars – enough to go to New York after all! Trouble is, when Sully takes it home and gets the lock open – a ghost comes out of the bag.

Rufus, the ghost, is a flamboyant drag performer (or, as he calls it, “female impersonator”) from Hearst in the 1950s. Rufus and Sully instantly recognize their similar ways of being. But Rufus doesn’t remember what happened to him or how he died young. And Sully can’t sell the bag with a ghost living in it. So Sully takes on the quest of researching Rufus and their history. Since they don’t have a car, they get rides with Brad, and Rufus is eager to give advice on Sully’s love life.

It’s all told with lots of humor. Sully has always been over-the-top, and they get into some comical situations when talking to the ghost in their bag. Rufus slowly remembers more and more of his life, leading them to various locations around Hearst to find out more. And along the way, the full story comes out of how queer people historically had to hide – and were punished severely if they didn’t.

The plot borders on melodramatic – complete with a nefarious politician who wants to sell off historical parts of the town. But the whole thing is as flamboyant as Sully, and this only adds to the fun. I appreciate how, even with such serious historical material to deal with, the authors keep it light and give everyone a happy ending. The good guys – or good people – win in this one.

jonathanvanness.com
imjuliemurphy.com

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Review of The Last Best Quest Ever, by F. T. Lukens

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Last Best Quest Ever

by F. T. Lukens
read by Lindsey Dorcus

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2026. 11 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written June 5, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

F. T. Lukens’ stories are always full of magic and full of fun. This one features 17-year-old Ellinore, who is known in the kingdom as Ellinore the Brave, and has been winning the kingdom’s quest competitions since she was thirteen.

It all started when she was twelve and a reckless knight lured a giant magical bear into their village. After Ellinore picked up the knight’s fallen sword, the bear fell on her – and luckily for her, impaled itself on the sword. At her next quest, when she was thirteen, she was supposed to get rid of the golden dragon that was plaguing a village. Well, Ellinore befriended the dragon, whose name was Dave, and convinced him to hide out in a different place, only fly at night, and take out his penchant for practical jokes on Ellinore.

Dave gave her a golden scale to take back to the king, and since then, he helped her win further quests – finding ways to make deals and talk reasonably instead of hacking and killing.

But the pressure of the lying was wearing Ellinore down, so after she earned enough bags of gold to move her parents to a nice cottage by the sea, she decided she was going to retire from questing.

But then her twin brother Zig foolishly made a bargain with a couple of mages in a tavern. In exchange for a big bag of gold, Ellinore had to bring them the horn of the Elderbeast. The catch: If she doesn’t succeed in sixteen days, the mages will take her brother’s heart.

Zig can be annoying, but Ellinore will do anything to keep him alive. So she sets out on a quest to find the Elderbeast’s horn. She usually works alone, but this time, she ends up gaining some companions: her brother, who insists on coming along; Aven, the attractive second-best quester in the kingdom; a royal young lady who wants to learn from Ellinore the Brave; and a young bard who has a map that shows the whereabouts of the Elderbeast.

But there are multiple rivals and multiple obstacles, and as the clock is ticking (or rather the candle is burning), Zig gets weaker and weaker. But the trouble with going on a quest with other people is that she can’t let them find out she’s a fraud.

This book has all the fun things I’m used to from F. T. Lukens’ books – magic, adventure, friendship, romance, danger, a refreshingly queer-normative society, and characters I love spending time with. I think there’s still a couple of their books I’ve missed, so I will for sure be looking those up. Their books always leave me smiling.

ft-lukens.com

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Review of Spindle’s End, by Robin McKinley

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Spindle’s End

by Robin McKinley
read by Justine Eyre

Tantor Media, 2019. 12 hours, 30 minutes.
Review written May 31, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I was surprised to realize I never reviewed this Old Favorite on Sonderbooks. I was looking for Robin McKinley books the library has as eaudiobooks, thinking I’d be rereading books from the early years of writing Sonderbooks – and found Spindle’s End. It wasn’t until I looked for the old review on Sonderbooks that I discovered there wasn’t one. Amazon now tells me I purchased a hardcover copy of this book on May 5, 2000 – so I read it a year before I started writing Sonderbooks.

And I honestly hadn’t remembered how good it is! This time through was a delight. I loved the narrator – with a delightful English accent – much more than the narrator of my two favorite Robin McKinley books, The Blue Sword, and The Hero and the Crown. Am I so shallow that I require an English accent? I do think it seems appropriate for a fairy tale retelling. Anyway, I loved this narrator.

Spindle’s End is a very loose retelling of “Sleeping Beauty.” Very loose, with many significant details changed. I think the first time I read it, I couldn’t quite forgive those changes. This time, I knew they were coming, and I was simply caught up in the wonderful tale.

One significant change makes the story make a whole lot more sense – The evil fairy who curses the princess explicitly states that while she originally planned her curse for the princess’s 21st birthday, she could make it happen at any time. So this is why the princess must go into hiding.

I like the way the book begins by focusing in on 15-year-old Catriona, a young fairy learning from her aunt. She’s handed the baby princess and gets the responsibility of hiding her and bringing her home. Along the way, Catriona, who can talk to animals, gets help from animals who arrange to feed the baby.

And these are the sort of delightful details Robin McKinley has added to the fairy tale. The kingdom is packed full of magic, so much so that ordinary folks have ways of dealing with it to avoid the inconvenience of things transforming unexpectedly. First we focus on Catriona, bringing up baby Rosie as an ordinary village girl with the help of her aunt. Then as Rosie grows, the focus shifts to her, as her 21st birthday approaches and it appears that the evil fairy has finally found her.

The story is lovely, but you won’t find any princess passively waiting for a prince to save her. I like the way they subverted some of the fairy “gifts” bestowed at birth by, for example, not ever teaching Rosie to embroider, so her being supernaturally good at it wouldn’t be noticed. They didn’t have to worry about the magically perfect ringlets in her hair, because Rosie cut her hair short even as a small child.

So, yes, the frame of the fairy tale is there, but the delightful particularity comes entirely from Robin McKinley, who’s especially good at making characters who are far from perfect, but get you completely on their side. They work for their happily ever after, and you’ll be with them all the way.

robinmckinley.com

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Review of Heir, by Sabaa Tahir

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Heir

by Sabaa Tahir
read by Vidish Athavale, Esme Lonsdale, Joe Pitts, Marco Young, and Rachel Petladwala

Listening Library, 2024. 17 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written April 24, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

Epic fantasy is how Sabaa Tahir started out as an author. Her only book I’ve read is the incredibly good multiple-award-winning All My Rage, so when she started a new fantasy series that is wildly popular, I decided to check it out.

I have to say this book was great for a little road trip I did – keeping me intent on the story for the whole drive. It starts out with three main characters, narrated by three different voice actors. (The two additional narrators get some time, but they are voicing side characters.) At the start, we don’t know how the three characters will come together, and we’re a good way in before we realize the story of one of the characters is being told on a different timeline.

Aiz is the first character we meet. She grew up in an orphanage and plans to assassinate the ruler – who set the orphanage on fire ten years ago and killed many of her friends. She prays to Mother Div for help for her people, the Kegar, who live on a barren island and have to raid other lands using their magic to even be able to eat.

Next up is Quil, the Crown Prince of the Martial Empire, being trained by his Aunt to replace her as ruler. But when he’s in a foreign city, there’s a horrible attack on children, with their hearts torn out and dried up.

Sirsha is next. She has the magic of tracking, but has been cast out of her tribe and ordered never to use magic again. But when a man offers her enough money to escape the empire and never work again, she can’t refuse. The man asks her to track a monstrous creature who has been killing children horribly.

And yes, the characters’ lives end up intertwining, some sooner than others. There are attacks on the Empire – and the monster killing the children is hard to defeat.

It all adds up to an epic story – which, fair warning, is not finished when the book is done. In fact, something awful happens at the end, and the author just better straighten that out in the next book!

There is much suffering and many horrible deaths in this book, and some sex as well, not always consensual, so this isn’t one of the sweet fantasy tales I prefer. But it is an epic tale with skillfully interwoven storylines, about politics, power, magic, and deciding what you’ll do to help your people.

sabaatahir.com

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Review of I Don’t Wish You Well, Jumata Emill

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Mystery, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

I Don’t Wish You Well

by Jumata Emill
read by André Santana and five more

Listening Library, 2026. 10 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written June 9, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I Don’t Wish You Well is a novel about a teen journalist digging into an old murder case for a school project. When I realized that, I almost stopped the audiobook right there, because I’ve seen that basic plot before, and often it has felt like artificial motivation. I’m so glad I kept going. This book has lots of heart and plenty of layers of complexity in both the mystery and the multiple social issues behind the murders. Plus, the protagonist, Pryce Cummings, was a kid I grew to love – and his deeper motivation quickly became clear.

The novel opens as Pryce is on his way home after his Freshman year of college, where he’s a journalism major and has gotten some good articles published. He’s a little sore that he wasn’t chosen as a summer intern in the journalism department, even though that’s unheard of for Freshmen.

But he sees a comment on an article about a five-year-old murder case from his hometown – that maybe Douce, the Black gay teen everyone thought was responsible, didn’t murder the four football players after all. So Pryce pitches to his professor that he’ll investigate the murders while he’s home for the summer and do a podcast in the Fall.

Sure enough, when he interviews the commenter on his way home – he learns that the alleged murderer – who was found dead with a gun in his hand and evidence in his room – actually was hours away on the night of the first murder, but the police would never listen to his testimony.

Pryce has a personal interest in clearing that boy’s name. He is also gay, but not out to his parents. The whole town sees the murders as proof that being gay is depraved and sinful. Maybe if Pryce finds out the truth he can change the narrative.

And so Pryce begins asking questions. And begins finding things out. It turns out that the four football players who were killed had dark secrets in their pasts – and reasons many people may have wanted them dead. But if that happened, why did they kill and frame Douce? And why didn’t the police follow up other leads?

Since this is happening in a novel, we’re not actually surprised when Pryce’s investigation puts him in danger. The original killers wore a Trojan mask (used to celebrate the town’s football team), so it’s unnerving when Pryce starts seeing a shadowy figure wearing a Trojan mask.

Besides that, it’s Pryce’s brother’s senior year coming up – and he’s planning to lead the team to a winning football season. The football fans in town, which is pretty much everyone, aren’t happy about Pryce stirring up old ghosts.

The title? That’s because most people in town don’t actually want to know the truth. So they don’t wish him well in his efforts.

Once again, my summary doesn’t do this book justice. I was a little impatient with the set-up, but the book quickly got rid of all my skepticism. The case was much more than a class project to Pryce and besides the compelling investigation, he uncovered issues about power dynamics in a football town, about racism and sexism and marginalization of gay people. And it’s all woven together in a story about a kid you come to love.

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