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 Busted, by Dan Gemeinhart

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Busted

by Dan Gemeinhart
read by Mark Sanderlin

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 8 hours, 44 minutes.
Review written July 31, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Busted is one of those intergenerational caper novels that are fabulous when done well, and this one is exquisitely pulled off, with plenty of adventure and crazy situations for middle school students to enjoy, while simultaneously giving adult readers like me all the feels.

Oscar has grown up in a retirement community. Three days after his birth, he went to live with his grandpa at Sunny Days retirement community, and he’s got a huge set of unofficial grandparents who look after him. The book opens when Oscar is twelve years old and attending his forty-ninth funeral, for Mr. Howell, the kind man who owned the place.

When Mr. Howell’s son takes over, it isn’t long before Oscar and his Pops learn their rent is going to be quadrupled. So when a shady character down the hall offers Oscar money to do something for him, Oscar goes against his instincts and against everything he learned from the kind folks he lives with.

What Jimmy Deluca wants is for Oscar to bust him out of the nursing home. Mr. Deluca uses oxygen, wears a monitor, and is checked on every four hours. At first, Oscar thinks it’s enough to get Mr. Deluca out the door without the alarm going off, but next thing he knows, if he wants the money, Oscar has to come along.

And it’s not just Oscar and Mr. Deluca, whose mafia name turns out to have been Jimmy the Wrench. Jimmy the Wrench brought along his hairless cat, Mr. Buttercup. And then Natasha, Mr. Howell’s twelve-year-old granddaughter, inserts herself into the caper, someone much less uptight than Oscar about breaking rules.

They set off in Mr. Deluca’s classic car on what turns out to be a bucket list journey to some sketchy places, but starting with a mall, where Oscar has to buy clothes for Natasha to wear in place of the bathing suit she was wearing when she broke out of the retirement community with them. Including underthings.

Oscar figures they won’t get busted if they get back to the retirement community before a nurse checks on Mr. Deluca in four hours, but he didn’t account for Mr. Deluca’s plans.

The whole adventure is a wild ride from one thing to another. We learn that Oscar has some unusual talents as he gets to wrestle with when to worry about the right thing to do and when to worry about the good thing to do. The foursome (including the hairless cat) make an unlikely group, and this story is entertaining every step of the way – but comes to a conclusion so poignant, you might shed a tear or two.

I clearly haven’t read enough books by Dan Gemeinhart, because every one I have read has packed a punch.

dangemeinhart.com

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Review of The Crooked Places Made Straight, by Raphael G. Warnock

Christian, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Crooked Places Made Straight

Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America

by Raphael G. Warnock

Penguin Press, 2026. 187 pages.
Review written July 27, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I’m going to list this book by the senator from Georgia who is also a pastor with Christian books, but I could just as well put it in the Current Issues section (and that’s where it is on the library shelves). Because yes, Raphael Warnock talks about political issues, but they are also moral issues and issues the Bible speaks to.

This book looks at America as a great cathedral, 250 years into its construction. But like a cathedral, there’s still plenty of work to do. He uses verses from Isaiah to inspire, notably the one in the title, making crooked places straight.

He takes a more specific look at six crooked places that we need to work toward straightening: poverty, voting rights, money in politics, mass incarceration, gun violence, and climate change – and how the initial impacts are hitting minorities the hardest. All of these discussions come from a place of deep faith.

Here’s where he discusses voting rights:

We are in a rough place right now, fighting to save our fragile democracy. As a man of faith, I often say that I believe democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. It is the notion that each of us has within us a spark of the divine. Therefore, we ought to have a vote and a voice in the direction of our country and our destiny within it.

He explains his use of Isaiah’s writings to write a political book.

Isaiah’s words are so beautiful, so sublime, that they cut right through the hopelessness of a people awash in despair. How we need this kind of bold vision in a moment like our own! The truth is that the partisan and petty rhetoric of politics today is simply too puny a language for the magnitude of the problems we face. Instead, I urge us to look to Isaiah as a lens through which to view the problems that confront us and the possibilities within and around us. The goal of this book is to lay out that vision clearly so that we can work together to build the America that we want to see.

So despite confronting some difficult problems in America today, Senator Warnock writes a book of hope and vision. He makes the reader want to play our part in building a grand and beautiful cathedral formed by “we, the people.” I hope many will read it and be motivated to take action.

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Review of Heronry, by Barbara Herkert, art by Gordy Wright

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

Heronry

by Barbara Herkert
art by Gordy Wright

Tilbury House Publishers, 2026. 36 pages.
Review written July 29, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Absolutely no one who follows me on Facebook will be surprised that I love this nonfiction picture book about great blue herons. There’s a small lake (or a large pond) outside my window, and a friendly neighborhood heron can often be found there, hunting. I’m sure it’s a favorite spot for many different herons, but they almost always hunt alone, and I can’t tell them apart. In my thirteen years living in my condo, I have taken thousands of pictures of herons. And I won’t be stopping any time soon. I am, after all, a heron addict.

This book captures the gangly beauty of great blue herons. The setting is a heronry – a nesting site for multiple heron pairs. The male herons arrive first, build up their chosen nests, and then attract females to join them. When the babies hatch, the parents take turns hunting for food for them. After three months, the young herons fend for themselves and the herons are solitary hunters again until breeding season comes around again.

I learned all this by reading this book, while enjoying the wonderful pictures of herons in the beautiful settings of wetlands. (The artist threw in nice sunrises and sunsets as well.)

The author has a simple text that young children can understand on the left side of each spread, with a more detailed paragraph on the right side giving more background facts. Combined with the beautiful illustrations, this book is a delight for heron lovers, and may produce some new ones.

As far as I know, there aren’t any heron nests by my lake – but I do think there are plenty at nearby Great Falls on the Potomac, where I’ve discovered they like to hang out on my birthday in June. However, I will continue to delight in spotting them on their hunting grounds, or rather, hunting waters. And now I know a little more about them and their life cycle.

barbaraherkert.com
gordywright.com

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Review of This Book Made Me Think of You, by Libby Page

Fiction Review, Romance, Starred Review 0

This Book Made Me Think of You

by Libby Page
read by Zadeiah Campbell-Davies

Books on Tape, 2026. 10 hours, 26 minutes.
Review written June 25, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I loved this book in so many ways.

Six months after her young husband died of cancer, Tillie gets a phone call from a bookshop. The man on the phone tells her he has a package for her – from her husband.

It turns out that Tillie’s husband Joe, before he died, purchased twelve books for Tillie. He wrote a note for each one and left instructions for the bookshop to give her one each month for a full year.

At first, Tillie is resistant. She asks them to give her all the books at once, but Alfie, the bookstore owner, refuses. Tillie has always loved to read, but since Joe got sick, she hasn’t been able to focus.

And then Joe’s first book gets her reading again. And the second book gets her cooking for herself. And later there are books about camping and about running and about going to Paris. And little by little, Tillie starts living life again. As well as evaluating what she wants the rest of her life to look like, now that her original dream has died.

And yes, the book is a romance. Tillie develops a friendship with that bookstore owner. But she is not over Joe yet, and it feels wrong to have feelings for anyone else. And naturally, there are several other complications and misunderstandings. At the same time, the bookshop, which Alfie inherited from his father, is having trouble staying in business.

It’s all wonderfully and beautifully done. As it happened, I started this audiobook on a flight to a vacation in France, where I learned that hearing aids make listening to an audiobook while dining alone a much less obtrusive pleasure than bringing a physical book. I just finished the book on the last day of my trip, and it has been a joy accompanying me. More than just the great story, it felt symbolic. While death is very different from divorce, and while my divorce is long past – on this trip, I revisited the Abbaye de Royaumont – a place where I went on a writers’ retreat with dear friends in 2005, one week after my husband told me he was divorcing me. On the writer’s retreat twenty years ago, I thought about writing, but also planned to get my Master’s in Library Science and become a librarian. It was satisfying and special to go back to the abbey and say to my past self, “That worked out really well.”

So this trip, in many ways, was celebrating how my life has gone after the death of my marriage, and celebrating how much joy is still left in my life, and how I’ve been able to chart my own course. So Tilly’s journey, while different, resonated with me.

Also, there are book recommendations from Alfie at the start of each chapter. I think I need to buy a copy of this book so I can try to read them all.

libbypage.co.uk

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Review of The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy

Adventure, Fiction Review, Historical, Old Favorites, Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

The Scarlet Pimpernel

by Baroness Orczy
read by Geoffrey Howard

Blackstone Publishing, 2006. 8 hours, 20 minutes. Book originally written in 1905.
Review written July 14, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
Original review written October 24, 2001.
2002 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #4, Fiction Rereads

As part of #Sonderbooks25, my celebration of my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, I’m rereading many of my old reviews – at least one from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs. I’ve also found that many of my favorites have an eaudiobook version with my current library – so I’m rediscovering a large number of them as audiobooks. In addition, when those books I’m rereading were reviewed in my first five years of writing Sonderbooks, I’m giving them a new review in the new phone-friendly format.

First, let me say that I love this book. Romance! Adventure! Cleverness! Strategic rescues! Outwitting the bad guys! Clever misdirection! I first read the book in high school and ate it all up. I have lost track of how many times I’ve read the book, but let’s just say that not one word of the audiobook was a surprise. It’s a novel about a band of Englishmen and their daring leader who rescue aristocrats from the guillotine during the French Revolution.

However, writing in 2025, I need to list a few caveats and warnings to other readers. The book was written in 1905. There are several issues.

The biggest one is some frightful antisemitism. A Jewish character is portrayed as despised and contemptible, and pretty much deserving of that. I do have to say that any retelling I’ve ever read and the movies I’ve seen have taken that out. But it’s in the book and is not pretty.

The author was a baroness, so it’s not really a surprise she has deep reverence for the nobility – and some veiled disrespect for the “lower classes.” English working-class are seen as maybe not so bright, but loyal and good-hearted, but French peasants are dirty and despicable for revolting against the nobility.

As for women – well, many things are said about the power of a beautiful woman. But such a woman is frail and delicate, and that power is about her beauty and wit. Yes, our heroine in this book takes action after she unwittingly causes danger to someone she loves – but she can only do so by enlisting the help of men.

At this point, let me note that both retellings that I have enjoyed and reviewed did a gender swap to give a woman the swashbuckling, adventurous role of the Scarlet Pimpernel: Across a Star-Swept Sea, by Diana Peterfreund, and Rook, by Sharon Cameron.

Who is the Scarlet Pimpernel? He’s a master of disguise and a brilliant strategist for rescuing aristocrats from the guillotine. At the start of the book, we don’t know who he is, but we get to see a daring rescue executed before the book ends, with the odious French official utterly fooled.

The writing is full of sentimentality, which I didn’t mind in high school, and have to admit I still don’t mind today. But it also brilliantly begins in the middle of the action, setting up the situation by starting the book with a scene of aristocrats being cleverly smuggled out of Paris. Then we meet the pertinent characters at an inn on the coast in Dover. Even the romance is shown to us in the middle of a misunderstanding that’s six months old. Baroness Orczy knew how to take us right into the middle of the action and shows us back story as it’s pertinent and interesting.

There’s a reason this book has lasted 120 years.

Now, at the time, Baroness Orczy wrote a multitude of sequels. I’ve reviewed several. I found four in a used bookstore one day – and then since their copyright has long passed, I found several more on Amazon print on demand. Most are not as good as the original, but they reliably give swashbuckling adventure and tender romance – and I should read some more before I’m done with #Sonderbooks25.

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Review of When I’m a Moshom, by David A. Robertson and Corrie Hill

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

When I’m a Moshom

written by David A. Robertson
illustrated by Corrie Hill

Tundra, 2026. 36 pages.
Review written July 9, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This beautiful, soothing, and inspiring book will leave you with a warm and happy feeling. It’s from the creators of On the Trapline, written after the death of the author’s father. Told from the perspective of his young son, it’s a wonderful homage to the boy’s Moshom (grandfather).

Each section is headlined by a word in Swampy Cree with the English translation in parentheses. [And I apologize – I put the Swampy Cree words with the correctly accented letters into this post, but my blog didn’t recognize those characters and when I came back to it, they’re replaced with question marks. Instead of getting it wrong, I will simply list what they mean in English.] Some examples are “teacher,” “love,” and “your home.” Then the text starts with these lines:

When I’m a moshom,
A long, long time from now, . . .

And we get gentle descriptions of the things the moshom will do with his grandchildren… “Because that’s what Moshom used to always do.”

When I’m a moshom,
A long, long time from now,
I will go to all my grandchildren’s activities,
Just like Moshom did.

Those activities will include dancing, swimming, gymnastics, playing hockey.

Because moshoms bring the best luck,
Especially when they watch their grandchildren play.

The child’s Moshom taught them things, like words in the Cree language. He did things with them. He told them stories. He showed them his community.

My favorite section is probably the one headed by the word for Love:

When I’m a moshom,
A long, long time from now,
I will tell my grandchildren I love them,
Just like Moshom did.

I’ll say I love you when I visit them,
And they’ll jump into my arms and knock the wind out of me.

I’ll say I love you when they visit me,
And I’ll swing them around in a great, big circle.

I’ll say I love you when they call,
And they’ll hug their phone tight to their chests.

When ever they say, “Moshom, I love you,”
I’ll say “kisâkâhitin.” I love you, too.

Because that’s what Moshom used to always do.

An incredibly touching book for talking with a child about their grandparents. What things will your child do when they are a grandparent?

darobertson.ca
corriehill.com

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Review of Together We See, by Ari Tison

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Together We See

by Ari Tison

Farrar Straus Giroux, 2026. 310 pages.
Review written July 24, 2026, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

I suspect the publisher sent me Ari Tison’s new book because I was on the 2024 Morris Award Committee that chose her debut novel, Saints of the Household, as a finalist, and they knew I’d love it. They were right. I was already a huge fan of Ari Tison’s work, and I think she’s gotten even better with her second novel.

Ulá lives with her mother in Wisconsin, making plans for after high school. She’s excited to see her brother, coming home from time in Costa Rica, but is less than thrilled when their dad shows up along with him.

Their dad lives on Bribri territory in Costa Rica after years as an activist. As far as Ulá is concerned, he’s got a long history of not keeping his promises, and that’s reinforced when he gets a flight back to Costa Rica after only two days.

But then they get the news that he died of a heart attack only a couple days after going back. Ulá and her brother go to attend his funeral, in keeping with the Bribri ways. But then things turn up that suggest maybe his death wasn’t from natural causes as the police believe.

We end up with a gripping mystery, and a story about family and community, with plenty of historical background information about injustices against indigenous people in general, and Bribri people in particular.

There are chapters interspersed from the perspective of Ulá’s ancestors, watching over her, seeing what’s happening on the land.

And all of this is told about characters you quickly care about, with relationships that are complicated, as in real life.

And yes, as the cover hints, there are venomous snakes in this book.

aritison.com

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Review of My Bicentennial Summer, by G. Neri, illustrated by Corban Wilkin

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

My Bicentennial Summer

True Adventures from the Most Epic Family Road Trip of All Time

by G. Neri
illustrated by Corban Wilkin

Candlewick Press, 2026. 88 pages.
Review written July 21, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

First, sorry about not getting this read before the Semiquincentennial.

As he did in My Antarctica, G. Neri makes his own travels the center of this nonfiction story, illustrated with plenty of photos, but also illustrations drawn over them. However, this time the travels happened when he was a kid. His family took six weeks and drove and camped all across America in honor of the Bicentennial in 1976.

Now, I was twelve years old in 1976. (It looks like the author is just a bit younger than me.) I remember all the hype about the Bicentennial. It makes me a little sad that not nearly as much happened for the 250th. But our family didn’t do an epic road trip like this, and it was super fun to read about and remember the hype.

I love the way the author points out the people and the cool things they saw as they drove through so many states. He talks about the history behind the Bicentennial, the ideals of democracy that we’re still striving toward, and brings it together with fun things about his own experiences in a pop-up camper with his family.

The end result is that as well as reading a fun story that’s surprising in many places – and true – you also come away proud to be part of this great big, quirky, and diverse country. We’ve come a long way in fifty years, but we’re still an incredibly diverse bunch of people with interesting local traditions in every part.

gregneri.com

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