Review of Maggie; Or, A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar, by Katie Yee

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review 0

Maggie;

Or,

A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar

by Katie Yee
read by Emily Woo Zeller

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 6 hours, 48 minutes.
Review written March 17, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

If I had realized this was a novel about a woman whose husband had an affair, I think I would have been smart enough to avoid it. As it was, I’m pretty sure I put this book in my eaudiobook holds queue because a friend of mine read it and loved it. But then it just so happened that I began listening to it on the very day 21 years after I discovered my then-husband was cheating on me.

So I can’t give this audiobook a rational, balanced review. Instead, I’m going to put in brackets the things it brought up in me. And just go with that.

I did listen to the whole book. I did enjoy the characters. I do think the book is well-written. I do realize that unhappy marriages are all unhappy in their own way and that every divorce is different. But there were still some things that really didn’t ring true for me.

Our protagonist and narrator of this book is a Chinese American woman who met her husband in a bar. Ever since she realized that her two children think that she isn’t as funny as their dad, she has been trying to learn to be funnier and to tell jokes.

And then her husband takes her out to a nice place and says, “I’m having an affair.” The other woman’s name is Maggie.

[My first big contrast is that, on that day 21 years before, my husband confessed with the words, “I’m not having an affair.” You see, I had found out that he had been at the other woman’s house after he got home from a work trip at midnight. He confessed to that – but said it wasn’t an affair. That he “needed a friend” and was spending time with her, had watched a movie together at her house at midnight. I believed him! I was used to believing my husband. A year and a half later of gaslighting and lying and mind games, he confessed that it had been an affair all along.]

Our protagonist has a best friend she talks things out with. [Yes! This is vital!] Her obsession with the other woman – stalking her on social media – rings true. [Thank goodness my husband’s affair happened before Facebook was a thing.]

Shortly after, she learns she has cancer. That rings true. I know of many women who have come down with ailments after emotional trauma. [I had a “non-healing wound” on my cervix and had surgery to remove uterine adhesions. My husband reluctantly brought the kids to see me one time during my week in the hospital.]

She names the tumor “Maggie.” I did think that was funny. The book is supposed to be about finding humor in bleak situations, which I appreciate, but it still comes out a little bleak. She didn’t tell her husband or kids about the cancer, only her best friend – which she is fortunately able to pull off.

I do appreciate finding humor and hope in tough times, and the power of friendship and laughter. But I probably shouldn’t read books about affairs any more than I should read books about librarians – it’s too easy for things to feel a bit off.

For example, how was she not curious about when he managed to spend the time with Maggie? How did her mind not circle over and over again around what she now knew were thousands of lies he had told? An affair does require thousands of lies for a moderately connected couple. Even the fact that he told her about it when she wasn’t a bit suspicious doesn’t ring true. From what I’ve read about affairs, it’s more common for a man to say the marriage is bad and leave first – and then pretend that he met the other woman after they separated. [Some good books that could have added realism to the situation are The Script, by Elizabeth Landers and Vicky Mainzer; NOT “Just Friends,” by Shirley P. Glass; and Runaway Husbands, by Vikki Stark.] What’s more, statistically, only 3% to 7% of men who have affairs go on to marry the affair partner, and 75% of those marriages don’t last. But her husband is making plans to be with Maggie. Maggie, I don’t foresee happiness for you with that cheater!

The protagonist was also surprisingly uncurious about how she would survive financially. She was a stay-at-home mother and didn’t seem to worry about keeping that up. Her husband was rich and there was mention of a generous settlement and that she could keep the house. She did look into the fact that she could stay on his health insurance for three years. Maybe she was okay because she went along with everything and let the divorce happen quickly? [In The Script, I learned that my situation was common – early on, while he’s still feeling guilty, the husband says he’ll take care of you, but as time goes on that looks like less and less actual support.] The book ended only a year after the announcement, so we didn’t get to see how she was going to start answering those questions.

But the other really big thing was that although this protagonist did have self-doubt because her all-American blond and blue-eyed husband found a woman who looked like him, there were no recriminations from her husband explaining how his affair was all her fault. [I personally would have thought that was just something that happened in my marriage because I was a just a bad wife, as my husband said I was – except that, thank goodness, I read The Script and learned it’s incredibly common for a man having an affair to convince himself and his wife that it is all her fault. That he had to turn to someone else. None of that in this book. Which made it less painful. But it also felt a bit unrealistic. They were nice to each other, as if an affair is just an unfortunate thing that happened to him – he got a woman Maggie, and she got a tumor Maggie. And maybe that’s healthier?]

[So, good grief, it’s been TWENTY-ONE YEARS!!! Am I not over this yet? Can’t I read a book blending a divorce with humor and not have it all come flooding back?

Added to the mix is that I’d been scheduled to actually see my ex-husband the day I started listening to the book. We’ve each been putting up our oldest adult child for a time and we were going to meet to have them switch homes. Something came up to put it off a week, but that had put the incident on my mind to start with.

But I have to add: I am in a VERY good place in my life. I love my job – feel like it’s what I was born to do. And I never would have gotten it if my husband hadn’t left me – I most likely would have never gotten my Master’s in Library Science and would have continued to work part-time. I have wonderful friends around me and meaningful pursuits and life is very good. At this point, I’m glad I’m not married to him anymore. But despite all that, reading a book about divorce on the anniversary of the day my life fell apart brings up some things.]

So for me, the initial breakup of my marriage was much, much worse than portrayed in this book, although at least I didn’t have cancer along with it. But I have surely gotten a happy ending out of it, and I’m confident this character will, too.

I know, this “review” wasn’t all that much about the book. You can consider this a trigger warning if you’re divorced. I do believe that good writing stirs emotions – and this book certainly did that for me. And here’s to coming through tough times with humor.

katieyee.net

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Review of Maybe Maybe Marisol Rainey, by Erin Entrada Kelly

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Maybe Maybe Marisol Rainey

by Erin Entrada Kelly
read by Amielynn Abellera

HarperAudio, 2021. 1.75 hours on 2 compact discs.
Review written October 16, 2021, from a library audiobook
Starred Review

Maybe Maybe Marisol Rainey is a delightful beginning chapter book with a memorable, lovable, and distinct heroine.

Marisol likes to name things. She lives in a house with a giant tree in the backyard, a tree that everyone else says is the best climbing tree in the world. She has named the tree Peppina, and has even named the two lowest branches, Booster Branch and Knobby Branch. But Marisol has not ever climbed Peppina, and she does not plan to.

Marisol is afraid. Marisol has a big imagination, and it is all too easy for her to imagine falling.

But Marisol has a best friend, Jada, who understands and doesn’t tease Marisol for her fears — unlike her brother and the girl from her classroom, Evie Smythe.

Marisol and Jada have adventures together, biking around the neighborhood together, passing the dog they’ve named Daggers, acting out a silent movie together, and doing other things best friends do.

This is a sweet story of an imaginative girl dealing with fears and joys. I listened to the audiobook, which was a lot of fun — and then noticed when I picked up the print book that I’d missed out on some very amusing illustrations. So in either form, you’re in for a treat.

erinentradakelly.com
harperaudio.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Neville’s Great Escape, by Sean E. Avery

Animal Characters, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Neville’s Great Escape

by Sean E. Avery

Walker Books, 2026. 32 pages.
Review written February 20, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Neville’s Great Escape is a follow-up to Frank’s Red Hat, which is about a penguin who is different than other penguins because he starts wearing a red hat.

I think the main reason I never reviewed Frank’s Red Hat when it came out was that the image on the page that showed what happened when Neville tried the red hat was simply too terrifying. I couldn’t laugh my way past it. Poor Neville!

Well, that image from Frank’s Red Hat is exactly the image on the cover of Neville’s Great Escape – a giant killer whale looming over Neville, about to swallow him whole.

Hooray! Neville escapes! It’s right in the title! Now I can feel free to love both books.

So – this picture book is the story of how the penguin Neville escapes from the inside of a whale’s mouth.

His method is implausible and silly, involving lots of inexplicable furniture – but it’s also a lot of fun. Neville lives!

And he’s not eaten yet.

seaneavery.com

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Review of The Library of Unruly Treasures, by Jeanne Birdsall

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

The Library of Unruly Treasures

by Jeanne Birdsall
read by Sorcha Groundsell

Listening Library, 2025. 7 hours, 51 minutes.
Review written March 16, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

Like The Penderwicks series by the same author, The Library of Unruly Treasures is a sweet and old-fashioned story. There’s magic hidden in the everyday world that only the kids can see.

The Prologue starts with a tale of a girl going with her brother across the sea from Scotland to America, and convincing the Lahdukan of her clan to come along. The Lahdukan are small people with wings. Only children under the age of six – and the Calban of the clan – can see them. The current Calba is responsible for protecting them, and it’s passed down to girls of the clan on their 11th birthday.

Then we come to the present, and Gwen MacKinnon comes to stay with her great-uncle Matthew while her neglectful parents are off on separate adventures. There’s a library in town named after her family, and the small children there talk about small flying people. Before long, they show themselves to Gwen, too – and it looks like they expect her to be their next Calba.

But the Lahdukan are in trouble. The library is going to be renovated and upgraded very soon, and their nests are sure to be disturbed. They will find a prophecy to find out where they need to go next, and they will need Gwen’s help to get there.

Before I comment further, let me say this is a sweet and enjoyable story. Lots of fun, and Gwen and her Uncle Matthew – and the Lahdukan and other characters – are all wonderful people to spend time with.

However, many of the obstacles and trials in the book were based entirely on the prophecies the Lahdukan told Gwen about, and that felt pretty artificial after a while. I suppose it was a cute trait of the Lahdukan that they relied so much on prophecies, but the charm wore off for me. Also, I work in a library and am currently involved in reopening a renovated branch – and I simply could not believe the haphazard job portrayed in this book. The one librarian working there wasn’t even sure when the workers would come and apparently didn’t have a chance to move her own things, and there was no talk of a temporary location, and I just find the lack of bureaucracy over a major renovation extremely hard to believe. (It also gave me new appreciation for bureaucracy, as I wondered how safe it all was for children and other visitors to the library.)

However, most kids won’t care about these persnickety details and will simply enjoy the fun of Gwen helping out these winged people that only children can see.

jeannebirdsall.com

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Review of Revisionaries, by Kristopher Jansma

Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories, Writing 0

Revisionaries

What We Can Learn from the Lost, Unfinished, & Just Plain Bad Work of Great Writers

by Kristopher Jansma

Quirk Books, 2024. 320 pages.
Review written from an Advance Reading Copy I picked up at work.
Starred Review

Revisionaries is both fascinating and inspiring. It’s fascinating because it tells you about the lives of many great writers and gives you a look at their unfinished work. It’s inspiring because it takes you behind the scenes and shows you how very fallible those geniuses were. In fact, they were human just like us.

The author based this book on his long obsession with unfinished manuscripts – and his blog “Unfinished Business.”

An unfinished manuscript becomes a parting gift and a glimpse at what might have been. The discoveries I’ve made in reading them have shaped the way I write and the way I teach writing ever since. I’ve reconsidered my entire idea of literary merit – genius is not something bestowed upon a select few through gifts or talents, but something built up, over much time and effort, by those resilient enough to never stop testing new ways of creating.

What I’ve found, time and time again, is that these works show that every genius is also merely human, and subject to the same stumbles, flaws, blocks, and total failures as any first-time writer. To read these incomplete novels and to understand the stories behind them is to expose creativity as something far more interesting and accessible, even if in doing so we must dismantle the very notion of genius.

Each of the twenty-one chapters covers a different writer. They have titles suggesting a failing of that writer: “Geniuses Write Bad Drafts” covers F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Geniuses Get Off to a Bad Start” is for Louisa May Alcott. “Geniuses Often Quit” covers Jane Austen. “Geniuses Bite Off More than They Can Chew” is about Ralph Ellison. And “Geniuses Still Have to Do the Dishes” is for Sylvia Plath.

The chapters themselves are informative and interesting and give you the inside scoop on the lives of great writers. But I especially loved the page or two at the end of each chapter called “Fail Like a Genius.” It gave you something from each writer’s life that you could apply to your own writing. He suggests that, like Kafka, you change your environment if you’re getting stuck; like Louisa May Alcott, imitate the writing of others to learn the craft; like Virginia Woolf, try writing a book just for fun alongside the book you’re “seriously” writing, and like Shirley Jackson, try writing about something you hate.

I read this book slowly, because each chapter was self-contained and gave me something to think about. Since my advance reading copy is paperback, it made a good book to bring on trips and read a chapter or so in the evening to wind down – and then I didn’t always remember to unpack it. But I did love reading it (and got more consistent when I reached the final third.) It gave me both wonderful stories about the lives of great writers and the encouragement that all those great writers were human like me.

When I finished the book, I got to thinking how encouraged I was when I learned that the first novel L. M. Montgomery wrote was not the first one she published, Anne of Green Gables. No, the first one she wrote was Kilmeny of the Orchard – a book which, honestly, isn’t nearly as good. It’s a fabulous first effort, but it’s not the masterpiece of what was actually her later work. Somehow it’s good to know that even L. M. Montgomery had to learn and grow as a writer.

And that’s the effect of this book. We learn the ways that each of these literary geniuses was fully flawed and human. And therefore maybe it’s worth it to keep making an effort to make our own mark.

kristopherjansma.com

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Review of Soundtrack, by Jason Reynolds

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Soundtrack

by Jason Reynolds
performed by a full cast

Listening Library, 2025. 6 hours, 29 minutes.
Review written February 16, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2026 Odyssey Honor Audiobook

I always listen to Odyssey Award Winners and Honorees, because they are without exception excellent productions. Even knowing that, I was blown away when I listened to this book.

Jason Reynolds wrote this as an original audiobook – they’re coming out with the novelization next month, but the audiobook came first. It’s about a kid fresh out of high school forming a band in New York City and then playing in subway stations and gaining a following. And the audiobook production is incredible. It’s got a full cast (and a large one), with full sound effects. When they’re talking in a group, you hear them as if they’re talking in a group, there’s crowd noise and sounds of objects they refer to – and music!

Throughout the entire production this story about a young band is accompanied by the sounds of a band jamming to music. It’s astonishingly good.

For a minute there, I was astonished on this audiobook’s behalf that it had “only” won Odyssey Honor, because I was misremembering which one won the award. Then I remembered that the actual winner was Trans History, also with a full cast and full sound effects, and including the actual voices of present-day trans folks – and I understood the decision better. Still, this audiobook is incredible, and together these books have raised the bar on what an audiobook production can be.

Our main character in this book, Stuy, is the drummer, and his mother was a drummer before him, who dropped out of her band when she gave birth to Stuy and his father left. But now Stuy’s mom’s boyfriend throws his drum set into a corner, and Stuy goes to stay with his Uncle Lucky – where he meets a kid who plays the guitar. That leads to finding the rest of their band, and the whole adventure is tremendous fun – though with some serious undertones (fair warning).

It was a truly engaging story – and the music and the cast made the whole thing into an experience.

jasonwritesbooks.com

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Review of A World Without Summer, by Nicholas Day with art by Yas Imamura

Award Winners, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

A World Without Summer

A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out

by Nicholas Day
with art by Yas Imamura

Random House Studio, 2025. 294 pages.
Review written February 17, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review
2026 Sibert Honor Book
2026 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist

A World Without Summer won Honor in the nonfiction award from both the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) and the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) – which highlights that here is a nonfiction book perfect for middle school students. It also gives me a dilemma where to post the review – on the Teen Nonfiction page or the Children’s Nonfiction page? Recently, I’ve started leaning toward putting any nonfiction longer than a picture book on the Teen Nonfiction page, but since I put Nicholas Day’s debut book and Sibert winner, The Mona Lisa Vanishes, on the Children’s Nonfiction page, and they are very much alike, I’m going to post this one there, too – but be aware that the sweet spot for this book is middle school and upper elementary.

Because I read an adult fantasy novel called Without a Summer, by Mary Robinette Kowal, I already knew that it snowed in Washington, D. C., in July 1816 because of a volcano that erupted in another part of the world. This book told me much, much more.

The author keeps the conversational tone he used in The Mona Lisa Vanishes and starts off by telling the reader about Tambora, a volcano in Indonesia that erupted in 1815 – and just how utterly enormous that eruption was. He talks about the people who died in that eruption – and the thousands who died in the aftermath. But the later thousands who died as a direct result of that eruption didn’t even know it was because of the eruption.

After talking about the original eruption, Nicholas Day takes us to Europe, where the oddities began with yellow and brown snow, which nobody knew was from the ash of the volcano. As it turned out, summer never came in places across the globe – and neither did harvest.

But besides talking about gruesome deaths that were a result of Tambora, the author also tells us the story of Mary Godwin, who became Mary Shelley – and wrote Frankenstein the same year the climate was all out of whack. We get the whole story of her elopement and trip to Switzerland – and just how much they complained about the weather.

Nicholas Day is exceptionally good at bringing the reader into the story, getting them thinking with questions, and helping them see the connections between that past world, disrupted by climate shock, and our present world, which has some new technologies (like forecasting weather) thanks to the disruptions of Tambora, but is still vulnerable to global events.

I’m going to go ahead and quote from a closing section, because it shows where he goes with this story, and I don’t think it’s a spoiler in nonfiction.

While Mary Shelley was writing the great novel of catastrophe, people across the world were working in wholly new ways to prevent catastrophe. These were governments, and they were ordinary people, too. They were working on behalf of a simple idea, a new idea: that those who were suffering could survive – that they should survive – that they deserved to survive.

That there were things that could be done and should be done.

When we remember Tambora, what stands out is the bleak and the strange: the skeletal figures, the sawdust bread, the boils on the face of the sun. The disease. The distress.

But we should remember this part, too.

Without this idealistic work – without the invention of this idealistic idea – far more would have suffered. Far more would have perished. Tambora was a warning.

But hidden inside it is this deeply hopeful truth: We can act.

Read this book to learn, to hear a good story, and to think about the ways we earthlings are connected.

bynicholasday.com

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Review of The Summer War, by Naomi Novik

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Summer War

by Naomi Novik

Del Rey, 2025. 127 pages.
Review written March 11, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is a novella by fantasy master Naomi Novik – so it’s about the same length as the children’s books I often read. Naomi Novik doesn’t need much time pulling you into her fantasy worlds. The book begins:

Celia was twelve years old on the day she cursed her brother.

The book reminded me of Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown [and this is a high compliment!], because it begins with a long section about the past, how Celia grew up alienated from others and didn’t have magic. But the day she cursed her brother – for suddenly leaving her, and not caring – was the day she discovered her magic. She hadn’t known her curse would be effective, but the emotion and passion behind the curse awakened the strong magic within her.

After the explanation of this incident, we hear about the Summer War between humans and the summerlings, who live in the Summer Kingdom. The war went on for a hundred years, but Celia’s father, a general, supposedly stopped it with his tactics. Now the king is wary of him, but Celia’s father is also mourning the departure of his oldest son, and Celia and her remaining brother must keep things going.

But the main action of the book happens when Celia is fifteen. [This book could very well have been published for young adults. The only reason I can think that it wasn’t was to attract Naomi Novik’s existing fans.] She gets drawn into the Summer Kingdom and there is danger of the Summer War starting up again, and many are in peril, and the mess requires great skill and cleverness to solve. And Celia would like to break her brother’s curse as well.

This is a quick read, but it’s full of magic and the otherworldly, and it showcases Naomi Novik’s magical weaving of worlds.

naominovik.com

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Review of You’re a Star, Lolo, by Niki Daly

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

You’re a Star, Lolo

by Niki Daly

Catalyst Press, 2020. First published in Great Britain in 2020.
Review written October 29, 2021, from a library book. 86 pages.
Starred Review

I love Lolo! These beginning chapter books written and illustrated by Niki Daly feature a young elementary-school-age girl who lives in Capetown, South Africa, with her mother and grandmother. The grandmother is called Gogo, which I think is delightful.

There are four self-contained stories in this book:

In “Lolo’s Special Soup,” Lolo makes soup for Mama, who’s out and about on a blustery day. Gogo is taking a little too much control of the process for Lolo, so she makes her own contribution.

In “Lolo’s Scary Night,” there’s a big fearsome sound interrupting Lolo’s sleep. Mama has a nice interpretation before they find out the actual source.

In “Lolo’s Snail Garden,” Lolo carefully follows instructions for a class gardening project, getting tomato seedlings started — but she has unusual results.

And in “Lolo’s Holiday,” Lolo and Gogo have a lovely vacation together in a nearby town, but then have an adventure getting home.

As other good beginning chapter books, I love the way these books are child-centric with concerns that mirror those of the target age group. There’s some extra fun that Lolo lives in South Africa, so it’s nice to see what’s the same and what’s different in everyday life.

catalystpress.org

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Review of I’m So Happy You’re Here, written by Mychal Threets, illustrated by Lorraine Nam

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

I’m So Happy You’re Here

A Celebration of Library Joy

written by Mychal Threets
illustrated by Lorraine Nam

Random House, 2026. 32 pages.
Review written February 25, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Hooray! Mychal Threets’ first picture book is here, and I’m so happy!

Mychal Threets was a viral social media sensation and offered the best stuff on Twitter back in the day. Now he’s the host of the new updated Reading Rainbow and a literacy ambassador for PBS. [And apparently very active on Instagram. I’m going to have to get back on Instagram.] The content Mychal offered when he was doing his own posts was all about library joy and wonderful upbeat stories about the wonderful library kids he encountered while working in a public library. His own joyful attitude – while at the same time acknowledging he suffers from depression – absolutely won my heart. And of course I completely agree with his message – that libraries are a place where everyone belongs. In fact, back about fifteen years ago when my own library was facing budget cuts (and I lost my job for six months), I started a blog series I called Librarians Help – trying to tell some heart-warming stories about people getting help in the library. Mychal did the same idea, but executed so much better! I was just happy to see it done. [Hmm. Hold on. I guess it was never a blog series, because there are only two such entries. Maybe I tried to make it a hashtag? Ha! That’s it. Search #LibrariansHelp – and I found tweets from as far back as 2012.]

But this book! It’s about how everyone is welcome at the library.

Hi, library kid!
I’m so happy you’re here!
Welcome to your library.

The library is here for you,
a place where you’ll always belong.

You belong here
with your mom.
You belong here
with your dads.
You belong here
with your abuela.

And of course all the pictures here show a wonderful, welcoming library, with Mychal himself welcoming people.

There’s more about how you belong just as you are. Then it goes on to talk about how the library has books and so much more, talking about library programs. And it continues by telling the reader how easy it is to get a library card.

You having your best day at the library – that’s what I call library joy.

We now have a perfect picture book for every time a librarian gives a preschool or elementary school library tour. Spread the joy!

Mychal’s Instagram
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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