Review of Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, by Mark Vroegop

Christian, Nonfiction Review 0

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy

Discovering the Grace of Lament

by Mark Vroegop

Crossway, 2019. 223 pages.
Review written July 25, 2025, from my own copy, picked up at ALA Annual Conference 2025.

Note: I’ve decided to post this review only on the blog, not on the main Sonderbooks site. Because although I love that he’s talking about laments, because of the caveats below, I don’t want to be seen as endorsing this book.

First, I love with all my heart what this book sets out to do – encouraging Christians to pray laments. But before I talk about that, I do have some strong caveats. Fair warning: one of the early examples in this book is about a young man with a “lifelong struggle with same-sex attraction.” A later chapter talks about same-sex marriage being legal showing the wickedness of the culture. Fair warning to LGBTQ Christians – this is probably not the book for you.

Another small quibble: The author says, “There’s something uniquely Christian about lament…” This wording feels unfortunate, completely ignoring that the Psalms of lament were literally written by Jews. I would have accepted “fundamentally Christian” or “profoundly Christian” – but “uniquely Christian” ignores that we share this way of praying with Judaism. I appreciate the point that it’s okay – and indeed deeply faithful – to pray laments, though!

I have written a book, Praying with the Psalmists, that I’m trying to find a publisher for, and the chapter on laments is one of my favorites. I’m also planning a follow-up book, Laments for Lent, that will look more deeply into laments. To be fair, I have a transgender daughter I’m proud of and mention her in Praying with the Psalmists – so those who share a viewpoint with this author will probably have their own caveats about my book.

But given the author’s non-affirming viewpoint, one that plenty of Christians share – I’m glad there’s a book for those Christians about Lament. I grew up in evangelical churches, and all too often got the impression that I was supposed to put on a happy face to come before God. This author talks looks at many Psalms of Lament and the book of Lamentations. My favorite point he makes – besides simply showing people how to pray their own laments – is pointing out that the church needs to make room for lament. If we can’t bring our negative emotions to God honestly, then we’re hiding ourselves from God.

Instead of the six-part form of a lament I present in my book, this author pulls out four elements and doesn’t worry about the order. It’s essentially the same idea – I still say you can’t pray incorrectly – though I still have a preference for my approach, again, I love that there’s another book about praying Biblical Laments.

I appreciate that this author also points out how expressing your pain in a lament leads you to praise.

You might think lament is the opposite of praise. It isn’t. Instead, lament is a path to praise as we are led through our brokenness and disappointment. The space between brokenness and God’s mercy is where this song is sung. Think of lament as the transition between pain and promise.

So I have mixed emotions about this book. On the one hand, I wouldn’t normally review a book that assumes that LGBTQ people are sinning. But the main message – that God can handle our pain, that turning to God through the dark clouds will lead us to deep mercy – that is one that all Christians can benefit from.

You don’t have to put on a happy face to come before God.

When dark clouds roll in, lament is the path to find mercy – even as the clouds linger. Lament is the bridge between dark clouds and deep mercy.

markvroegop.com
crossway.org

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Review of A Language of Dragons, by S. F. Williamson

Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Language of Dragons

by S. F. Williamson
read by Henrietta Meire

HarperCollins, 2025. 12 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written February 3, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

Here’s a historical fantasy novel set in an alternate reality 1923 in a London where sentient dragons live among humans, and the prime minister is a woman, having negotiated a peace agreement with the Dragon Queen after the dragons of Bulgaria rose up and killed all the humans there. However, written into the peace agreement is a strict class system. And staying in Second Class, with its privileges of being able to go to University, is conditional on passing exams at seventeen.

Vivian Featherswallow passed her exams and hopes to become a dragon linguist. She already knows six dragon languages. But when her parents are arrested as being part of the rebellion, and her cousin taken as well, Viv will do anything to save them – even set free an imprisoned criminal dragon to burn the prime minister’s office where they’ve got the evidence against her parents.

Well, that doesn’t work so well, and let’s just say that the rebellion heats up. Viv has a chance to redeem herself if she’ll work on solving a dragon code – at a place called Bletchley.

I laughed when Bletchley was mentioned, because it’s the current favorite topic in children’s books. Last year, off the top of my head, there was Max in the House of Spies, The Bletchley Riddle, and The Enigma Girls. This time, the top secret folks at Bletchley were trying to figure out what the dragons were saying with their high-pitched squeaks and clicks (like bats or whales) above the pitch that human ears can hear, but able to be modified by a clever machine.

Okay, up to this point I was all in. I loved the nuances of the dragon languages Viv knows (because yes! It makes sense that dragons would develop their own languages). But I had a little trouble with the whole Bletchley code-breaking apparatus applied to it. They were trying to figure out what the dragons meant with “Trill #4” or “Tone #11” – and I never did understand how the codebreakers even learned which pitch was which, let alone what they meant.

Beyond that, though, there are bullies guarding them and more and more reasons to join the rebel side, but Viv has been promised her whole family (including her baby sister, now in an orphanage) will go free if she gives the prime minister the key to the “dragon code.” And it gets somewhat convoluted from there – who to trust, what’s going on. Mind you, this could be a case of I didn’t listen closely at a crucial point and lost the thread, but there was also a bit more Angst on the part of the main character about every decision than I care for in a novel, and her decisions did go back and forth, so it was hard to keep track of what she was trying to do. It was also a little bit hard to believe anyone would have accepted the dystopian society they were living in. And there was some awful violence portrayed. I mean, they’re fighting with dragons, so what did I expect?

All that said, I loved the idea of sentient dragons who are not exactly tame dragons, living together with humans in a fragile peace. The story did not end with this book, and things are very likely about to get much worse, but it did end at a satisfying pausing point. Despite those quibbles, I’m fascinated enough by this book, I’m sure I’ll want to hear more.

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Review of Jim! Six True Stories about One Great Artist: James Marshall, by Jerrold Connors

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Jim!

Six True Stories about One Great Artist: James Marshall

by Jerrold Connors

Dial Books for Young Readers, 2025. 72 pages.
Review written September 3, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

The perfect picture book biography exists, and I have just read it!

Jerrold Connors takes six stories that give us the essence of James Marshall’s life, and he relates them with words and art that perfectly mimic James Marshall’s style. The stories even have the punch of a George and Martha story!

I adore the George and Martha books, and this book borrows their format in a brilliant homage to their creator. The stories are numbered, as in George and Martha. They are: “The Book,” about creating Miss Nelson Is Missing with his friend Harry; “How Cute!” about how annoying it was to have his work called cute and his history as a classical musician; “Friendly Competition,” about his friends Maurice (Maurice wears a “Wild Thing” shirt.) and Arnold, who were also writers; “The Award” about how he would have liked to win an award but how his partner Billy reminded him that great art is about putting yourself in your work; “The School Visit” about his second-grade teacher who told him he’d never be an artist and served as the inspiration for Viola Swamp; and “The Hospital,” about how kids will remember him, because kids are really smart.

An Author’s Note ties it all together with more details about James Marshall’s life, but please be aware that my summary doesn’t begin to convey the charm of this book. Anyone who loves George and Martha (and who could possibly not?) will be absolutely delighted with this book.

jerroldconnors.com

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Review of Austen at Sea, by Natalie Jenner

Austenalia, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Austen at Sea

by Natalie Jenner

St. Martin’s Press, 2025. 304 pages.
Review written August 25, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Like the author’s wonderful earlier book, The Jane Austen Society, this book wasn’t so much a retelling of one of Jane Austen’s classics as it was a story about her legacy. In both books, something I loved was the characters discussing the fine points of Jane Austen’s novels as true aficionados. Other Janeites will enjoy that part as much as I did.

And we’ve also got Louisa May Alcott as a character in this book! That was a nice surprise. Here’s the set-up: In 1865, two sisters from Boston and two brothers from Philadelphia are on a ship crossing the ocean to visit the elderly Admiral Frank Austen, Jane Austen’s surviving brother. The two parties hadn’t known about each other, but both had written to the admiral about their love of Jane’s writings. And the admiral got some match-making ideas.

And another person traveling on the ship from Boston is Louisa May Alcott, accompanying an elderly friend to Europe to regain her health after the Civil War (as she in fact did). On the ship, the ladies decide to put on a theatrical production as a benefit to charity, with Lu in charge – as she had often done with her sisters, and as the characters do in Mansfield Park.

I was honestly a little disappointed that, although there is plenty of romance in this book, the admiral’s schemes don’t bear fruit. The book ends up being very much about women’s rights – and how women lost them when they married. Though it turns out that the laws were different on opposite sides of the Atlantic. But I’d never thought about what it meant that a woman marrying no longer had property rights.

So – I enjoyed the story, loved the characters (especially Louisa May Alcott!), delighted in the discussions of Jane Austen’s books and the visits to the places she lived, and learned things as well. This is definitely another good one for Jane Austen fans like me. (And do check out my Austenalia page while you’re at it!)

nataliejenner.com

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Review of Sisters in the Wind, by Angeline Boulley

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Sisters in the Wind

by Angeline Boulley

Henry Holt, 2025. 367 pages.
Review written September 2, 2025, from an advance reader copy signed by the author that I got at ALA Annual Conference.
Starred Review

I was happy to actually get an advance reader copy read before the publication date – and then I’m writing this review on the publication date, so it was just barely before. However, today I purchased a copy of the eaudiobook for the library, and I put it on hold to listen to, even though I just read it. It’s that good.

Sisters in the Wind takes place in between the author’s two other books, Firekeeper’s Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed. There’s no plot overlap between them, so you can read them in any order, but you’ll find out a lot that goes on in Firekeeper’s Daughter, so I think it’s better to read that one before this one. (If you missed that one, absolutely go read it as soon as possible!)

I read this book on a weekend I’d meant to do a 48-Hour Book Challenge that kind of got stymied – but getting this one book read made the whole thing a win. Sisters in the Wind features Lucy, an 18-year-old part-Native girl who’s been in the foster care system for three years, since her father died.

As the book opens, she meets a man who turns out to be Jamie from Firekeeper’s Daughter. He’s now a lawyer trying to help Native kids who have been in the foster care system against the protections of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Lucy asks him why he’s been following her since New Year’s Eve, but that wasn’t him.

Lucy acts like she’s going to follow up, but she knows it’s time to run. She packs her backpack and goes to work one last time – but then a pipe bomb at the deli where she works puts her in the hospital.

Jamie and Daunis show up to take care of Lucy as she recovers. It turns out that she’s the half-sister of Daunis’s best friend Lily, who was killed in Firekeeper’s Daughter. (Not a spoiler, it happens fairly early. But there are other spoilers in the book.) The rest of the book takes two threads – one of her time in a hotel with Jamie and Daunis watching over her as her broken leg heals, and the other thread the story of how she wound up in foster care and why she’s certain that someone’s angry enough with her to plant a bomb.

Along the way, as with Angeline Boulley’s other books, we learn in a natural way about a current issue involving Native Americans. In this book it’s about how the Indian Child Welfare Act was established to try to stop Native kids from being exploited. However, being established is one thing and being enforced is another.

Angeline Boulley always tells a good story. As in the others, we get characters we love and a situation that builds to life-and-death danger.

At first, when I read Firekeeper’s Daughter and learned she’d been working on the story for over a decade, I thought no wonder it’s so good! But now she’s published two follow-ups that are just as wonderful that she didn’t spend even close to a decade writing. Nope, that’s not it – she’s simply a crazy-talented author.

angelineboulley.com

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Review of Not Quite a Ghost, by Anne Ursu

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

Not Quite a Ghost

by Anne Ursu
read by Eva Kaminsky

Walden Pond Press, 2024. 6 hours, 45 minutes.
Review written March 18, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Capitol Choices Selection

This is the second book I’ve read recently where a kid gets a mysterious chronic ailment with intermittent dizziness and weakness, and they try to please the adults around them and not be “lazy” and things get worse and worse – and honestly, it makes me cringe, but in a sympathetic way.

In this case, the kid in question is Violet Hart, who’s just beginning 6th grade and middle school, and whose family has just moved into a big old house where Violet’s sister sticks her with the creepy attic room with the hideous wallpaper.

Fortunately, Violet’s mother and stepfather believe her when she dares to tell them that she’s not feeling well, but they take her to more than one doctor who thinks she’s just got anxiety about middle school. And even her friends start wondering.

On top of that, her two best friends only have one class with her – and it’s gym class, where she doesn’t feel well enough to participate. And they want to expand the friend group to include two more popular girls, and things get awkward.

But while Violet is in the library during gym class, she meets a boy who’s not taking gym class at all, and is doing a project on ghost hunting.

So ghosts are in her head when she’s stuck in her attic room, feeling awful, and she starts seeing movement in the hideous wallpaper. Is all of it just in her head?

This book immersed me in Violet’s world right from the start. Anne Ursu beautifully captures family dynamics and friendship dynamics and a kid who just wants to stay under the radar and find something she can count on when everything’s changing around her, including her own body.

The not-quite-a-ghost doesn’t really come into the story until late in the book, so it’s not necessarily what you want to hand a kid who simply wants a ghost story. But for a great story about the ups and downs of navigating changes of middle school, this book beautifully fills the bill.

anneursu.com

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Review of Kween, by Vichet Chum

Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kween

by Vichet Chum

Quill Tree Books, 2023. 343 pages.
Review written November 4, 2023, from a library book.

Kween is about Soma, a Cambodian teen born and brought up in Lowell, Massachusetts, dealing with things and learning to process it all and express herself. A poem she writes and performs online goes viral, but the essay she didn’t write, telling the teacher she was sick of writing about history from the perspective of colonizers got her an F.

Meanwhile, her father got deported back to Cambodia after decades in the U.S. and a green card. And her mother went to Cambodia to be with him, supposedly only for a visit, but she keeps pushing back her return date. They left her in the care of her much-older sister, and Soma resents Dahvy acting like her parent. But Dahvy’s planning her wedding to Ruben, and both of them are teachers at Soma’s school and get in her business. They encourage her to enter a poetry contest in which the finalists will perform their poems.

So Dahvy’s buzzing with things to do for the wedding, and Soma wants to wait until Ma gets back. Though at the same time, there’s this girl she’s had a crush on forever who finally notices her.

The book is narrated by Soma, who’s named after the first queen of Cambodia, and it’s full of teen slang, which put me off at the beginning. But I did get used to it as I went along (and will trust the author to know better than me what’s authentic), and I was pulled in to the many things Soma was juggling – missing her father while dealing with her stressed-out sister and trying to find her voice as a performance poet.

The many different threads are woven together seamlessly and keep you interested and I loved seeing Soma learn to be a Kween. (I can’t use the slang right and shouldn’t even try.)

vichetchum.com
EpicReads.com

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Review of Go to Sleep (I Miss You), by Lucy Knisley

Humorous, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Go to Sleep

(I Miss You)

Cartoons from the Fog of New Parenthood

by Lucy Knisley

First Second, 2020. 178 pages.
Review written March 29, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

What fun! Lucy Knisley, a noted author/illustrator of graphic memoirs, has had a baby! This book is the result.

My own babies are 32 and 25 years old, but I still couldn’t keep from laughing with recognition as I read this book. She nails the ambivalences of parenthood – all the way from the intoxicating smell of their hair to the desperation when they won’t stop crying.

She covers so much! The trials of nursing, the baby equipment, the inventions we really need, the outfits they go through (ours and theirs), adventures in eating, and so much else.

This might make a fun baby shower gift for a new Mom. Though I’m not sure if you really want to warn them! I am sure that as they’re going through it, the laughter will provide comfort, as will the knowledge that they are not alone.

And for an old mom like me, we get the delight of being reminded of that time with our precious babies – and why it’s also a relief to be done with that time.

lucyknisley.com
firstsecondbooks.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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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48 Hour Book Challenge August 2025 – Finish Line

48-Hour Book Challenge 0

I did it! I completed this year’s 48-Hour Book Challenge!

As feared, yesterday was pretty much a wash-out for reading. I’m happy, though, because the family crisis was resolved in a surprisingly wonderful way, with me sort of coordinating and help from others, including my ex-husband. Instead of being resentful of spending my day off not reading, I’m happy I had the day off to help out. On top of that, the musical “Parade” at the Kennedy Center last night was amazing! The performance was astoundingly good. The topic was hard-hitting – antisemitism and racism in Georgia showing a Jewish man wrongly convicted and eventually lynched in 1915. But it was incredibly well-done with wonderful music.

And today? Instead of using some of the time to blog and post reviews (which I didn’t get to yesterday, either) – I wanted to read, doggone it! And I was happy to be reading an incredibly good book – the advance reader copy of Sisters in the Wind, by Angeline Boulley. I haven’t written the review yet, but it was just as good as her first two – wonderful! I ended up with a positive experience of this year’s 48HBC because I got to take the time to devour that book.

My stats for the 48 hours are probably my lowest:

Time spent:
14 hours, 35 minutes total:
8 hours, 35 minutes Reading
30 minutes blogging (Starting line post)
5 hours, 10 minutes Listening to the audiobook James
20 minutes with details (spreadsheets and stuff)

I wrote 603 words and read 505 pages. I only finished one book, but made good headway on several. (The way I read nonfiction is to read one chapter at a time. I also started a graphic novel toward the end and got a lot of pages in.)

Now, I’m not quite sure how I’ll get those Mathical books read, but I did get one more book read that I got at ALA Annual conference, and my kid is having things work out great, so it’s been a good weekend so far.

Now, my plan for Labor Day is to make progress on my new website, prayingwiththepsalmists.com. I’m hoping those plans will go better!

48-Hour Book Challenge August 2025 – Starting Line

48-Hour Book Challenge 0

Woo-hoo! It’s time for this year’s 48-Hour Book Challenge!

I got the idea from Pam Coughlan when she was posting on her MotherReader blog. Pam was super creative and organized, and she got the whole kidlit blogging community joining in and even got sponsors to donate to charity!

As for me: I simply set aside a 48-hour time period when I will try to do as much reading and blogging as possible. I took Friday off this week, so I’m beginning tonight, Thursday, at 9:30 pm. And will see how much time I can spend on books between now and Saturday at 9:30 pm.

Honestly, I feel like I’m set up for failure this time – and then I remind myself I can’t “fail” at reading. It’s not a competition. Any amount of time I get to spend on this is good.

But first I agreed to go with some friends to a musical at the Kennedy Center tomorrow night. Okay, that will be worth it! And it will break up the reading and get me out and about. It’s a good thing! (And I could have said No if I didn’t believe that.)

Then tonight I learned a family member far away is having a crisis and I will need to work from a distance at helping to solve it. That will take some time. But here’s the bright side to that – 1) It’s good I can help. 2) Reading will help me not obsess and worry about the things I can’t do. I hope. Already tonight I put off dealing with it until tomorrow – but I hope I will be calm and able to be helpful.

Okay, so Reading!

The great thing about the 48-Hour Book Challenge, and why I keep coming back to them – is that they give me permission to read. And SKIP housework for a bit.

This year, I don’t want to get any further behind on posting reviews (I’m down to 56 reviews written but not posted! A couple years ago, there were 270.)- so I’m going to allow writing and posting reviews. In fact, I finished an Audiobook tonight, so one of the first things I need to do is review that book. So that will take more time from actual reading – but it’s all reading related.

Why do I want to get reading time in? Well, Book Award Season has started, and I have books to read for the Mathical Book Prize. On top of that, I promised myself that this year I would read all 24 books I picked up at ALA Annual Conference. I have read 8 of them already, mostly picture books – and I’d love to read the Advance Reader Copies before the books are published, but that will take some doing.

Which reminds me – I’m also going to count time spent reading old reviews as part of #Sonderbooks25, my celebration of my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks. My first plan was to reread all the reviews of Sonderbooks Stand-outs from every year, but I was having so much fun, I’m now reading ALL my old reviews. I believe there are more than 5,000 – and I am still only on 2003 reviews, Sonderbooks #62 – when I was still posting as “issues,” before I’d heard of blogs.

Time blogging also counts! So I just spent a chunk of time writing this post, and I want to get to reading – and listening. (Listening is what I do while eating and doing other basic life tasks.) We’ll see how I do, but any reading time is good. (And I’m afraid I’ve still got Monday off for housework and for working on my new website, prayingwiththepsalmists.com.

Happy Reading!