Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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 Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)
Author Launch Kit is what happens when a real, battle tested book marketing team (like Book Launchers) decides to bottle their brains for authors. It feels less like a course and more like a mission control panel for your book, complete with flight plans, bright buttons, and a calm voice telling you what to do next so you are not just floating in space with a finished manuscript and a vague sense of dread. This is not another generic “30 tips to market your book” checklist. It is an actual system, architected in large part by Book Launchers’s Head of Digital Strategy, Shane Vigeant, that walks you from “I have a book” to “here is exactly what I am doing this week to sell it.” Shane’s fingerprints are all over the product in the best way. The whole experience feels like you hired a strategist and then asked him to stay inside your browser permanently. Inside, the whole thing is organized around clear outcome focused paths: Sell More Books, Grow Email List, Grow Business, and Keynote Speaker. Each path has a ten step roadmap that mirrors what a professional marketing strategist would do with you. First you identify your readers. Then you dial in your metadata and positioning. Then you build or shore up your platform. Only after that do you layer on sales systems, content, media, and partnerships. We love how explicit this is. Instead of dumping a pile of tools into a dashboard and saying “good luck,” the software keeps saying: start here, do this next, then do that. Every step sits inside a coherent journey. For overwhelmed authors, that kind of structure is worth its weight in launch day sanity. Book Launchers’s core clientele is non-fiction, and you can feel that. Many prompts assume you have a clear reader problem, a solution framework, and some kind of business or mission behind your book. For business, self help, prescriptive non-fiction, or life experience books, this is a dream match. The reader analysis, lead magnet ideas, email sequences, and sales systems are tuned perfectly to the “book as growth engine” model that the company is known for. What surprised us is how much of this still works for fiction if you are willing to translate a little. Ideal Reader Analysis still nails who the book is for, what they are craving, and where they spend their time. Metadata and keyword research matter just as much for a thriller as for a leadership book. The social content calendars and video ideas can easily be adapted into character spotlights, world building posts, and behind the scenes peeks. The podcast, influencer, and local media searches are topic and location driven, not hard coded to business niches. That means a fantasy author or YA novelist can still come away with podcasts, influencers, and local outlets that make sense. Some of the copy leans toward frameworks, clients, and programs rather than story worlds and fandoms. However, if you mentally swap “client” for “reader” and “framework” for “series” you will still get tremendous value. Non-fiction authors will feel like it was designed exactly for them. Fiction authors will feel like they have wandered into the non-fiction lounge and discovered most of the buffet is still fair game. The secret sauce is that Author Launch Kit does not only give you checklists. It gives you finished drafts. Over and over, the pattern is the same. You click a step, watch a short explainer from Julie Broad or Shane, fill in a few fields, and out comes something solid enough to paste straight into your website, your email service, or your pitch doc. “Do reader analysis” becomes a full ideal reader profile, complete with pain points, desires, and a solution framework tied to your book. “Know your metadata” becomes Amazon keyword ideas, SEO keywords for your site, and category suggestions with explanations. “Fix your book description” turns into multiple versions of a sales page style description plus a back cover blurb based on your own launch assessment answers. “Create a lead magnet” becomes ten tailored concepts such as joyful reflection checklists, mini video series, short story samplers, story challenges, or mindfulness calendars. “Write a welcome email sequence” gives you a full series of emails, written in a friendly, benefits driven tone, that you can lightly edit and schedule. “Generate blog posts” offers ten topics and can spin each one into a full draft article. “Plan 30 days of social media” creates a dated calendar with post ideas, goals, suggested visuals, and hashtags. “Brainstorm video topics” gives you titles, descriptions, and platform specific guidance for YouTube, TikTok, or Reels. The result is that you are never staring at a blank screen. The heavy lifting of “what do I say” and “how is this usually structured” is already done for you. You still need to refine, personalize, and prioritize, but the time savings are massive. Julie the Book Bot is the other half of the equation. If the kit is mission control, Julie is the voice in your headset. She is an AI assistant tuned specifically to book marketing and the Book Launchers ecosystem. You can ask her to clarify a concept, brainstorm new angles, evaluate your ideas, or point you to the right video or module when you feel lost. During live demos, Julie functions almost like an extra strategist in the room. You can say “my book has been stalled for months, what should I do first” and get not only a thoughtful list of options but also links to supporting resources inside the kit. It feels less like talking to a generic chatbot and more like a slightly tireless version of the real Julie Broad who never needs coffee. Outreach discovery is another standout. With a few inputs about your book and location, Author Launch Kit can suggest bookstores and libraries near you, complete with URLs and contact names from public information. It can list local media outlets such as TV, radio, and newspapers that might be interested in your topic. It can surface relevant influencers, including why they are a fit, what you have in common, and where to contact them. It can even generate podcast lists tailored to your audience. For author Wendy, who was based in Portugal during her hot seat session with Shane, the kit pulled Portuguese bookstores and libraries, proving it actually works internationally. That is a huge plus. So many “author tools” quietly assume you live in the United States. We appreciate that the team is clear about what these lists are and are not. They are smart starting points, not magic tickets. You still have to do your own vetting and send thoughtful, individualized pitches. Used well, these tools turn “spend three hours hunting on Google” into “start with twenty solid possibilities and refine from there.” Used badly, they could tempt people into spammy outreach. The responsibility ultimately sits with the author, but the time savings are undeniable. Education and execution are tightly woven together. Nearly every major step is introduced by a concise video from Julie or Shane. Those videos explain why the step matters, how it fits into your overall strategy, where most authors trip, and how to adapt the outputs Author Launch Kit just generated. That teaching personality matters. The whole experience carries the same mix of clarity, humor, and tough love that long time Book Launchers followers will recognize. When Wendy confessed that marketing felt almost as bad as dental work, both Julie and Shane acknowledged the pain while steadily showing her how each piece fit into a bigger picture she could actually manage. On a user experience level, the kit is surprisingly fun. The space mission theming is more than just cosmetic. Mission Control really does feel like a central hub, and the different paths feel like mission profiles for your author career. Earlier iterations leaned even harder into this with tool names like Rocket Research, Platform Planet, Media Meteor, and Social Media Supernova. Those names gave everything an extra layer of delight, and we miss them. The current version has simplified some labels for the sake of clarity, which makes navigation easier for newcomers but loses a bit of that quirky charm. Under the hood, though, the rockets still fire the same way. Only the stickers on the buttons have changed. The dashboard itself is organized and intuitive. Progress bars show how far you have come on each path. The checklist of steps on the side makes it obvious what you have completed and what remains. Considering how much is packed into the product, the learning curve is impressively gentle. Pricing is where the value really crystallizes. At the time of this review, annual access is around $149 and lifetime access is around $349. For a solo author staring at those numbers, the first reaction might be, “That feels like a lot for software.” The moment you compare it with real world alternatives, that feeling starts to evaporate. Trying to do this yourself “for free” is not actually free. Most authors DIY their marketing by binge watching webinars, buying the occasional course, subscribing to a few tools, and then spending dozens of hours trying to stitch it all together. The hidden cost is time, confusion, and opportunities missed because you never built a coherent plan. On the other side, hiring a freelance publicist or marketing consultant can easily cost thousands. A single serious strategy package often runs more than the lifetime Author Launch Kit license. You might get one book description, one media kit, one outreach push, and a launch calendar. You probably will not get a reusable system that you can refresh for every future book. Even a patchwork setup is not cheap. One solid course is typically $300 to $800. A keyword tool, email marketing platform, social scheduler, and PR database each add their own monthly fees. Author Launch Kit does not replace every tool on earth, but it does roll a large stack of high level thinking and asset creation into one cockpit that you can revisit anytime. The math gets simple very quickly. If you seriously use the kit for even one launch and pull out a strong book description, a welcome sequence, one or two solid lead magnets, a month of content ideas, and a handful of outreach lists, the effective cost of each asset is tiny. For an author with multiple books or a long term business, the lifetime option is almost a no brainer. It is roughly the cost of one decent ad test or one month of a high end PR retainer, in exchange for a reusable marketing copilot that grows as the team continues to update it. The emotional impact may be the most important part. Watching Wendy’s hot seat with Shane is like watching the whole author journey in miniature. She came in exhausted and demoralized. Her eight month old book felt like a fish lost in the ocean. Marketing felt nebulous and punishing. She had put her heart into writing and then stalled at the gate. Within half an hour of walking through the ten step roadmap, seeing her keywords, book descriptions, lead magnet ideas, email campaign, content plan, and local outreach suggestions, everything flipped. She started describing herself as excited. She joked that she would never leave the room again. She compared Author Launch Kit to a perfect dating app that finally matched her book with the audience it was meant for. That transformation is not just software. It is the mindset and support that Julie and Shane have built around it. The sense that you are no longer alone in the dark, guessing. The knowledge that there is a path, and that someone who understands book marketing has already walked it and left you a map. This product is not flawless and it is not for everyone. The sheer number of options can be overwhelming, especially for someone who likes to procrastinate by tinkering with tools. You still have to choose a path, commit to steps, and actually send the emails, post the content, or make the calls. The outreach data, while helpful, still requires human judgment and etiquette. And yes, those of us who adored the original over the top names like Media Meteor will always be a little sad that the labels have grown up. It's like with anything artificial-intelligence related: it still requires a human touch and someone to look over and tweak stuff. Even with those caveats, Author Launch Kit stands out as one of the very few tools that genuinely bridge the gap between “I took some notes from a summit” and “I have a concrete, asset backed marketing plan for this book.” For non-fiction authors building a business, platform, or speaking career, we would call it very close to essential. It encodes years of Book Launchers experience and Shane Vigeant’s strategic thinking into a guided, repeatable system you can use for every title. For fiction authors, it is a powerful Swiss army knife. It was not built primarily for you, but if you are willing to translate the language of clients into the language of readers, it can still give you better positioning, better outreach, and a much stronger platform than you are likely to create alone. Author Launch Kit will not sell your book while you sleep. It will, however, keep you from drifting endlessly in space with nothing but hope, and that is a very big deal. Modern authors do not just need encouragement, they need a flight plan and a crew. Author Launch Kit, powered by the Book Launchers team and spearheaded by Shane Vigeant’s digital strategy, comes remarkably close to being both. Get a 7-day free trial here!
1 Comment
 Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)
Johnny Vet is what happens when a Veterans Day assembly, a history textbook, and a superhero comic all decide to team up. It is part graphic novel, part civics lesson, part heartfelt thank you letter to everyone who ever put on a U.S. uniform. Created by a real life Major General and illustrated by Carla Millar, this book wears its mission proudly on its sleeve: explain who veterans are, what they do, and why their service still matters long after the last salute. The big structural choice is simple and brilliant. Johnny Vet and Jane Vet are not just characters, they are stand ins for every veteran from 1775 to today. They walk us from the Revolutionary War through Iraq and Afghanistan, narrating how each generation answered the call. Kids get clear, chronological snapshots of the War of 1812, the Civil War, the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, and the Global War on Terror. The tone is patriotic, energetic, and accessible. You can tell this was built to be read in classrooms, at kitchen tables, and maybe on the bus ride to a Veterans Day event. One thing we really appreciated about this book is how it explains the existence and necessity of the military as a fighting force and a defense force. To many kids (and adults), war can seem really scary, violent, and unnecessary. This book is a reminder that there are things worth fighting for: our freedoms, our sovereignty, our beliefs, our values, the safety of our friends and loved ones, and our country. It's like Sun Tzu said, "The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected." There's a reason why even neutral countries having standing militaries. Most people want peace, but the path to peace is strength. People tend not to invade and attack those who are strong. A bully doesn't bully a strong person, it prefers to pick on the weak and defenseless. Nuclear-armed countries tend not to want to fight each other directly for a reason (in fear of escalation). You need to be willing and able to fight when push comes to shove. And that makes sense to the average person. That's actually why the history lessons work. They showcase how there were times in our history when the military was heroic, valiant, and necessary such as when we achieved our freedom from Great Britain, when we freed the slaves, or when we defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Again, some things—truly—are worth fighting for, and you need people who are willing to fight: soldiers, and soldiers who become veterans. The book also does a good job at explaining the process of becoming a soldier and the structure of the military. It covers things like basic training, ranks, and the different branches. Later on in the book, the focus shifts toward the stories of actual real-life veterans who did extraordinary things in service to our country. For example: Jan Scruggs the Vietnam infantryman who turned nightmares into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Darlene Iskra the Navy diver and first woman to command a U.S. Navy ship at sea. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger the Air Force trained pilot whose steady hands gave us the “Miracle on the Hudson.” Carlos Torres the Marine who lost both legs to an IED and then climbed mountains and volcanoes on prosthetics. Reby Cary the World War II Coast Guardsman who became a pioneering Black educator and Texas legislator. Susan Helms the Air Force officer and astronaut who lived on the ISS and later commanded space operations. Taken together, they make the book’s core argument feel real: veterans are not just people who “used to” serve, they are community builders, trailblazers, and problem solvers in civilian life. We loved how the book pairs each bio with a visual arc. You literally see each person move from uniform to suit, classroom, cockpit, or mountain trail. For young readers, that quietly answers the question, “What happens after the war” in a hopeful, concrete way. Artistically, this is a busy, informative book. Millar’s illustrations are classic, clean, and slightly old school in the best way. Panels are packed with ships, planes, tanks, satellites, and crowds. Splash pages like “Veterans on Parade” and “More Heroes” are pure eye candy, rewarding slow, careful looking. The uniforms, insignia, and hardware are rendered with obvious research and respect. The creeds, charts, and infographics on the branch pages (Soldier’s Creed, Sailor’s Creed, ranks and insignia, combatant commands, Space Force capabilities) turn the book into something close to a visual reference guide. Teachers are going to love those pages. There is also a strong PSA spine. Profits support the Code of Support Foundation, and the last third of the book leans into action. We see caregiver “Hidden Heroes,” military families, National Guard and Reserve members, then a clear call to “support our veterans” with specific examples. The “Kids Can Help, Too” spread is especially smart. It roots youth volunteerism in a historical tradition of junior service corps and then shows modern kids writing letters, helping at home, and starting projects that matter. This is character education in full color. From a craft perspective, the strengths and weaknesses are tied together. The book is packed with information. That is great for adults, older kids, and classrooms, but younger elementary readers may find some spreads overwhelming. Several pages have more text blocks than a typical comic, and the font is fairly small. This reads more like a graphic history booklet than a fast moving superhero story, despite the title and cover. Some kids will be captivated, others might need an adult to walk them through. So, what we're saying is: the density of this book is both a strength and weakness. Yes, you're getting a lot of content, but you're also getting a lot of things thrown at you at once. It can be a lot to digest and process. It can honestly be overwhelming. The tone is also very reverent and idealistic. Wars are framed primarily in terms of defending freedom, answering the call, and protecting democracy. There are nods to hardship, loss, and post traumatic stress, but very little space for controversy, policy debates, or moral gray areas. That is a deliberate choice in a book aimed at kids and at honoring service, yet older readers may notice the absence of nuance around Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the costs of war. This feels, at times, closer to a recruitment friendly civics primer than to a complex graphic novel in the Maus or March tradition. That might bug some people. But we're patriotic and love our military, so we're ok with it. Still, within its chosen lane, Johnny Vet succeeds powerfully. It gives kids and adults a shared language for talking about veterans. It introduces real role models from every branch, including women and people of color whose stories are often left out of the standard narrative. It anchors patriotism not just in flag waving, but in specific values that the book names clearly as “superpowers” of character: commitment, courage, integrity, and selfless service. That page alone is a ready made lesson plan. In the end, Johnny Vet: America’s Original Superhero is less about capes and more about character. It invites readers to see veterans not as distant figures in uniform but as neighbors, teachers, pilots, engineers, athletes, caregivers, and community leaders. It is a richly detailed, unapologetically patriotic tribute that will shine brightest in classrooms, youth groups, and families who want to connect history, gratitude, and service. This is a densely packed, big hearted graphic primer on American veterans that turns real people into the kind of superheroes kids can actually grow up to be! Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
We've read a lot of vegan and vegetarian literature over the years, but none has hit quite like this one! This isn't a recipe book, a diatribe on cruelty to animals, or a rant on sustainability and the environment—no, this is different. This is a surprisingly solid, well-defended, well-researched argument in favor of whole foods vegan diets. It takes a very holistic approach, arguing from the side of compassion, integrity, and living in alignment with your values just as much as from lab results, risk reduction, and long term health outcomes. It dares to prompt questions like: What kind of world do you want to live in? What kind of ethics and values do you want our society and future generations to have? And how does the way we eat (and the things we eat) reflect those ethics and values? That's actually a phenomenal argument! We'll get to more rhetorical questions it prompts later... But we'll kick things off by saying this: we're an interesting bunch of reviewers to receive this. We have a vegan amongst us and an ketogenic dieter (eating pseudo-carnivor/mostly meat and animal products). We also have others among us who can't eat certain things (like pork), are diabetic, or are allergic to certain things like lactose and gluten. So, we understand how important the foods we put into our bodies is—it impacts us directly and noticeably every single day of our lives. And you know what? All of us thought this book made great arguments and was above-average overall. The Vegan Transformation is not just a vegan diet book. It is a guided emotional, psychological, ethical, and spiritual journey that just happens to start in your fridge and end in your sense of purpose. Crawford sets a very different tone than most plant based titles. Instead of shouting statistics about cholesterol or carbon footprints, she opens with questions: What kind of healing are you actually longing for? Do you want more energy, more authenticity, more meaning, more peace with yourself and the world? Then she makes a bold promise: choosing a vegan lifestyle can be one of the most efficient ways to move toward all of that, because it is a single decision that touches your body, your ethics, your relationships, and your relationship to the Earth. Structurally, the book is clean and intuitive. Part One lays the groundwork by explaining why our current animal heavy food system is such a problem ethically, environmentally, and medically, and why veganism has become an urgent option rather than a quirky fringe experiment. Part Two is the heart of the book: seven “transformative themes” that emerged from Crawford’s original research on vegans’ emotional and spiritual experiences. Part Three takes those themes and turns them into an action plan, addressing the practical psychology of lifestyle change and the messy reality of being vegan in a non vegan world. One of the book’s biggest strengths is how personal and grounded it feels. Crawford is not a detached researcher crunching survey data somewhere in a lab. She is the former Iowa junk food eater who once lived on microwave dinners and cheese and crackers, the introverted therapist who unexpectedly found her public voice after going vegan, and the mid life student who flew to New York to attend Main Street Vegan Academy because something in her conscience would not let this topic go. That story shows up early and often, and it gives the whole book a trustworthy backbone. Around that spine, she braids in dozens of participant stories. We meet people who reversed or dramatically improved health conditions, people who discovered a new vocation through activism, people who finally felt emotionally congruent once their plates matched their values. Bob and Fran, the “plant based foodies” who redirected their lives after cancer and now coach others on youthful aging, are one of several memorable case studies that make the health chapter feel alive rather than clinical. These stories are not presented as miracle cures, but as examples of what becomes possible when nutrition, movement, mindset, and ethics line up. The seven themes give the book a clear conceptual map. “The Courage to Live Your Values” and “Expand Your Circle of Compassion” tackle the psychological side of moving from quiet discomfort to overt change. “Connect with Deeper Meaning and Purpose” and “Create Authentic Fulfillment” make the case that veganism often functions as a spiritual or existential turning point, not only a health tweak. “The Power of True Connection” is particularly strong, walking readers through limiting beliefs about needing support and then offering concrete reframes and communication scripts for conversations with friends and family. “Take Charge of Your Health” and “Discover Your Interconnectedness with Life” round out the set by grounding the lifestyle in both physiology and a sense of ecological belonging. Another standout feature: the coaching elements. Each chapter ends with reflection prompts and action steps that feel like a workbook designed by a therapist who has actually sat with people in pain. When she invites you to assess your health, it is not just “eat more vegetables.” It is a sequence of questions about energy, lab work, stress, sleep, relationships, and self talk, followed by gentle suggestions to choose a few realistic changes and put them on a calendar. The same is true for relationships and purpose. Readers who engage with these exercises will finish the book having done real inner work, not just gathered facts. Crawford also deserves credit for her tone. The endorsements on the front pages talk about her “compassionate approach,” and that is accurate. She repeatedly acknowledges that vegans are a diverse group, that her research is exploratory and not statistically representative, and that there are no guarantees that going vegan will magically fix every health or emotional issue. She also does not pretend that the social and emotional challenges of this lifestyle are easy. Chapters Nine and Ten lean into grief, anger, isolation, and conflict and then offer tools instead of judgment. Where does the book fall short? Some weaknesses are built into its strengths. First, this is very much a book for the open minded or already sympathetic reader. The combination of qualitative research, spiritual language, and values driven argumentation is powerful for people who are already hovering near the vegan path. Readers who are aggressively defensive about meat, or who want a purely clinical manual with calorie counts and randomized trials, may bounce off the repeated language of compassion, purpose, and interconnectedness. Crawford does reference a “vast body of research” and clearly knows the science, but she mostly stays at the narrative and conceptual level rather than dissecting individual studies in detail. Second, the holistic focus sometimes leads to repetition. The seven themes overlap, and the core ideas of compassion, alignment, and mind body spirit integration appear in every section. That is intentional, and it fits the self help genre, but it can make the middle chapters feel a bit long if you read straight through instead of dipping in and out. Readers who prefer tight, minimalist prose might wish for more ruthless pruning of repeated affirmations and similar lists of reflection questions. Third, because the research sample is self selected and relatively small, there are moments when the enthusiasm of participants slides toward generalization. Crawford is honest about these limitations in the Introduction, which helps, but some claims about “what vegans experience” are really “what many of the vegans in this study reported.” Readers with a strong research background will mentally add that qualifier as they go. Finally, there are practical expectations to manage. Crawford is very clear that this book is not a nutrition textbook or a kitchen how to. The recipes and resource list in the back are well chosen and generous, but readers who come in expecting detailed menu plans, grocery lists, and cooking techniques will need to pair this with more nuts and bolts plant based cookbooks. On a smaller craft level, the writing is warm and accessible but not entirely spotless. There are a few tonal swings, that largely come from the number of angles the author approaches veganism from. Also, we do have a few effective counter-arguments to some of the claims in this book. For example, though this book argues well in favor of veganism, a lot of the benefits actually don't come directly or exclusively from veganism, but from the non-processed-food aspect of the diet the author proposes. A similar argument could be made for ketogenic diets, which are arguably the exact opposite in terms of the amoung of animal products. A ketogenic diet—like a whole foods vegan diet—can work, but not because of some magical thing, but because the amount of processed foods, simple sugars, and calories are limited, often by the monotony of the diet(s) themselves. One of the core arguments in this book is that plant-based diets reflect and reinforce a more peaceful and compassionate world-view. On-paper it does. However, there is a huge and uncomfortable counter argument. Perhaps the evilest man who ever lived, who caused both the most infamous genocide and war in human history, was a devout and stubborn vegetarian even in his last days in his bunker. Yes, it's a small sample size of one, but that's a pretty substantial sample size of one. Crawford cites familiar whole-food, plant-based heroes like Dean Ornish and others, but that evidence base is not as unassailable as it sometimes sounds in vegan circles. Ornish’s early heart-disease studies were small, highly controlled, and bundled multiple interventions at once: radical dietary change, exercise, stress reduction, and social support. Attributing the benefits primarily or exclusively to the vegan component overstates what the data can honestly carry. Long-term adherence to very low-fat vegan protocols has also been a persistent challenge in the literature, which raises questions about how realistic and generalizable these results are outside of highly motivated, medically supervised participants. Similarly, some of the broader whole-food, plant-based movement leans on observational studies and advocacy-driven interpretations that tend to downplay confounding variables like weight loss, reduced ultra-processed food intake, improved sleep, or simply eating fewer calories overall. In other words, the health wins Crawford celebrates are real and important, but the science is messier and more conditional than a quick tour of vegan success stories might suggest. Citing Ornish is no more or less reputable than citing Robert Atkins or Barry Sears. All three sold their diets and had commercial incentives to market them to people. Oh, and by the way, you could just as easily cite Gary Taubes over and over again as an argument for animal-based diets. So, while there's evidence for, there's also just as strong (if not stronger) evidence against. Similarly, pointing to a single ultra-disciplined vegan bodybuilder like Nimai Delgado does not prove that this way of eating is ideal, it just proves that it is feasible. What that really shows is that, under the right mix of genetics, training volume, supplementation, and meticulous dietary tracking, you can build impressive muscle on plants. It does not resolve the harder question of whether this pattern is the best, most realistic fit for the average, stressed, time-crunched reader who is not structuring their entire life around nutrition and performance. Delgado is a legitimate IFBB pro who proves that a well planned vegan diet can support high level bodybuilding, but he is not a Mr. Olympia or Arnold Classic champion. In fact, he's a pro in physique, which is considered several categories below. Physique competitors tend to be much smaller with significantly less mass than the top Olympia and Arnold Classic heavyweights like Phil Heath and Big Ramy. And, c'mon, let's be real: all pros pretty much use the same "stuff"--it's just how their genetics, diet, and how their bodies respond to them. In terms of other plant-based performers, we could point to Ryback, a former WWE superstar, with one of the biggest, hulking bodies in recent memory (among pro wrestlers). He claims to eat a plant-based diet and markets plant-based protein powders. However, we see him do these eating challenges on YouTube in which he clearly eats animal products, sometimes in abundance, on "cheat" days which seem to come more often than this book would probably endorse. Those caveats aside, The Vegan Transformation succeeds at what it sets out to do. It makes a compelling, heart centered case that veganism can be a catalyst for personal healing, deeper integrity, and meaningful contribution to a kinder world. It gives readers a vocabulary for the emotional and spiritual shifts many vegans quietly experience but struggle to explain. It respects the reader’s agency, offers concrete tools, and consistently ties individual flourishing to larger planetary and ethical concerns. And we wanted to say that we agree with the compassionate angle of this book. It's hypocritical that we treat dogs and cats like human children, yet are willing to treat cows, chickens, and pigs like trash. Human beings can be so cruel, especially to non-human creatures. It's wrong. It bothers us too. And it's true that serial-killers and sadistic psychopaths often start off acting toward non-human animals (like cats) before transitioning to other humans. It's like it desensitizes them to cruelty and nurtures their sadism. It's 2025, there needs to be a better, more humane way to live. The fact that most of the world hasn't figured something out by now is troubling. We would recommend this book strongly for vegan curious readers who feel drawn to the lifestyle but are intimidated by the social and emotional hurdles, for therapists and coaches working with vegan or plant curious clients, and for long time vegans who want their own inner journey reflected back to them with validation and nuance. It is a thoughtful, hopeful, and often moving addition to the vegan literature, one that treats compassion not as a slogan but as a practice that can transform both the person and the planet. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
Bridges of Words is a very unique and special poetry book by Esperanza Pretila! Bridges of Words is one of those rare poetry projects that feels both huge and tiny at the same time. Huge in scope, tiny in form. It tries to bottle whole nations inside three short lines at a time, then invites you to walk across those bottles like stepping stones. You are not just “reading poems about countries.” You are moving from Golden Gate to Taj Mahal to Sydney Harbour Bridge to Tower Bridge, carried along by rivers of image and sound. From the opening dedication and introduction, it is clear that this is a book about connection as a lifelong calling, not just a clever concept. The framing prose talks about words as bridges, haiku as “windows” into cultures, and poetry as something that does not lecture but listens. That idea becomes the guiding metaphor of the entire collection. The photos of famous landmarks and bridges in monochrome behind each section extend that metaphor visually, turning the book into a hybrid of travel album and global prayer. Formally, these are not strict 5–7–5 classroom haiku so much as haiku-inspired mini sequences. Most countries get a cluster of short three-line poems, each one focusing on a different facet of place: geography, history, food, music, faith, or struggle. The recurring three-line structure still preserves the “single breath” feeling of haiku, but the book uses sequence and repetition to create a longer musical line that runs through the whole project. Sound is one of this collection’s strongest qualities. Even before you unpack meaning, the alliteration, assonance, and internal rhyme do a lot of the lifting. “Maple melodies,” “Merlion melodies,” “Baltic breezes,” “Safari Serenade,” “Samba of Souls,” “Celtic Connections,” “Nordic Nights,” “Viennese Verse,” “Balkan Ballads,” “Brussels Ballads,” “Orinoco Odes,” “Archipelago Anthem” and “Abyssinian Anthem” are practically tiny poems just in their titles. The repeated m, s, b, and n sounds give each region its own little sonic logo. Those phrases feel like taglines you could put on postcards or tourism posters, but they also function as alliterative anchors around which each sequence is built. Anaphora and parallelism are used deliberately and consistently. Many stanzas begin with “In…,” “Through…,” “Amidst…,” or “Beneath…,” creating a grounded sense of place and movement: “In plaza’s embrace…,” “In the bush and beach…,” “Through seasons of change…,” “Through struggle and strife…,” “Amidst palm tree groves…,” “Amidst Viking lore…,” “Through ancient ruins…,” “Through time’s shifting sands….” Each repeated preposition acts like a drumbeat. You feel the poem stepping through landscapes and histories in a steady rhythm. That repetition is both a strength and, at times, a limitation. When it works, it gives the book strong cohesion and a chant-like cadence. When it is overused, some countries start to blend into each other in tone. Pretila leans heavily on a shared symbolic vocabulary: rivers, winds, songs, heartbeats, souls, legacies, lights, and bridges. Almost every country has a river that carries stories (“Ganga’s gentle flow,” the Nile, the Mekong, the Orinoco), a wind that whispers, or a song that embodies its people. Water becomes the dominant global symbol. Rivers are “lifeblood,” “pulse,” or “lifeline,” and seas “embrace” coastlines. This is textbook personification applied at scale: natural features are not just scenery, they are active storytellers and carriers of memory. Bridges, of course, are the core metaphor. Even when an actual bridge is not mentioned, the poems describe words, songs, or tales “binding hearts as one,” “weaving unity,” or “connecting souls deep.” The idea of verse as infrastructure runs through everything. A mariachi band becomes a “serenade of solidarity,” samba rhythms become a “samba of souls,” fado becomes a vessel for national unity, and Celtic folklore becomes “connections” rather than just entertainment. The metaphors keep translating intangible cultural expressions into tangible architecture: songs are bridges, tales are threads, poems are fabrics, sunsets are crowns. One of the nice subtleties is how each region’s imagery is tailored. Australia gets the kookaburra and eucalypts; India gets lotus, spices, mangoes, and the Ganga; Japan gets sakura petals and temple gardens; Kenya gets lions, zebras, and acacia silhouettes; Nepal gets prayer flags and monasteries perched on cliffs; Argentina gets tango, gauchos, and pampas; New Zealand gets geysers, fantasy landscapes, and the Kiwi’s call; the Philippines is the “Pearl of the Orient,” shining through storms. None of these are obscure symbols, but arranging them into gentle, haiku-like miniatures gives them a quiet freshness. If you are reading this collection as a craft exercise, it becomes a catalog of poetic devices in accessible form: - Metaphors and similes: Nations are “pearls,” “crowns,” “hearts,” “souls,” “lungs,” and “jewels.” Rivers are “lifeblood” or “pulse.” The Baltic is a “sanctuary.” Tango is Argentina’s soul; samba is Brazil’s heartbeat. Those metaphors are direct and clear, ideal for readers who are learning to identify figurative language. There are fewer explicit similes (“like” or “as”) than metaphors, which suits the compressed haiku style. - Personification: Landscapes and landmarks constantly act, speak, and feel. The Eiffel Tower “whispers” and “sings of hope.” The Great Wall “witnesses” history. Nordic nights “whisper secrets.” Maple leaves “whisper melodies,” deserts “sigh,” and Atlantic waves “echo.” This personification makes the book feel almost like a global chorus of nonhuman narrators. - Alliteration: As noted, the alliterative titles are standouts. Inside the stanzas, you get smaller strings like “snow-capped peaks,” “sun-kissed sand,” “Baltic breezes,” “desert dunes,” “fiery dance,” “gentle flow.” These give the lines a mouthfeel that young readers, especially, could latch onto. - Anaphora and parallelism: Repeated openings such as “Through…,” “In…,” and “Amidst…” give the lines a sermonlike cadence. In some countries, it almost reads like a litany: one image after another, each beginning with the same word, each layering another aspect of identity or resilience. - Idiomatic language: Phrases like “heart beats,” “spirit sings,” “soul rises,” “timeless charm,” and “rises strong” draw from familiar English idioms about identity and endurance. That makes the book extremely approachable to ESL readers or younger students who are still getting comfortable with figurative speech. Where the craft shines brightest is in the moments where specificity, sound, and symbol lock together. “Kookaburra’s laugh / echoes through the eucalypts” is a lovely little snapshot of Australia. The image of prayer flags “whispering” on the wind in Nepal, or Angel Falls tumbling from “heaven’s heights” in Venezuela, compresses postcard scenery into something closer to a spiritual icon. The emotional throughline is simple but sincere: cultures are different in color and texture, yet united by shared longings for belonging, resilience, and harmony. There is almost no cynicism in this book. Conflict, oppression, or political tension are largely absent; what we see instead are mountains, rivers, cities, music, food, and festivals offered as points of pride and connection. At first glance, that might sound overly idealistic, but in context it feels like a conscious choice. The book wants to function as a bridge of empathy, not a textbook of geopolitics. By repeatedly pairing each nation with images of heart, soul, song, and legacy, it nudges the reader to approach other cultures as living, feeling presences rather than abstract headlines. This is especially clear in places like Bangladesh and Uganda, where natural disasters and historical trauma are acknowledged briefly, but the emphasis lands on resilience and renewal rather than suffering alone. The closing prose reflection about whether seventeen syllables can “carry the soul of a nation” frames the whole enterprise with humility. The book does not pretend that it has captured each culture fully. Instead, it presents each poem as an “impression,” a “moment,” and invites readers to let those moments awaken curiosity and empathy. In that sense, Bridges of Words might be most powerful as a starting point: a set of poetic doorways into deeper exploration From a craft perspective, the main weaknesses are tied to the same choices that make the book accessible. Because unity, heart, soul, and legacy are repeated so often, the emotional palette sometimes feels narrow. The repetition of stock phrases like “heart beats,” “spirit strong,” “beauty knows no bounds,” or “legacy endures” across dozens of countries can flatten the distinctiveness of individual sections. A few lines slip into almost travel-brochure language, which slightly undercuts the haiku ideal of fresh, concrete imagery. Readers who are strict about haiku form might also bristle at how freely the book treats syllable counts and seasonal markers. This is very much haiku in spirit rather than in classical technique. You will not find sharp, Zen-like juxtapositions or surprising cuts; the poems are descriptive, reverent, and sometimes didactic. For many general readers, that will be a feature rather than a bug, but poets expecting formal rigor might see it as a missed opportunity. There are also a few small proofreading slips and occasional awkward wordings that momentarily jar the flow. Given the size of the project and its global scope, those feel minor, but they are noticeable to close readers. Here are a few minor errors we found: 1. A double period at the end of a line In the North Macedonia section: “North Macedonia's peace..” That extra period is a straightforward proofreading slip. It is tiny, but on the page it pops out and briefly distracts from an otherwise lovely image of Lake Ohrid. 2. An awkward comma after “to” in the Portugal / fado section In the Portugal sequence: “From Porto's shores to, Algarve's sun-kissed beaches, hear Fado's unity.” The comma right after “to” is grammatically odd and makes the line stumble when read aloud. Something like “From Porto’s shores to Algarve’s sun-kissed beaches” would flow more smoothly. 3. Slightly awkward phrasing in the dedication prose in the dedication to Nanay: “helped me in bagging a singing contest prize at the age of seven” “Helped me in bagging” is understandable, but reads a bit clunky in polished prose. Something like “helped me win a singing contest at the age of seven” would feel smoother and more natural. Maybe we should close with this: the poetry is exceptional. What's also exceptional are these lovely photos of these landmarks from around the world! This gives us two very strong points of comparison between this book and its direct competition in this contest (Exploring Beauty with Photographer Samantha Moller Lopez, Volume 1 by Samantha Moller Lopez, Dow Creative Enterprises with Poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson). The poems are original, arguably better applied to the photographs, and the photography is top-notch! Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 96/100 (9.6 out of 10)
Most self-publishing books are one-trick ponies. They teach you how to upload to KDP or how to buy a few ads, then send you on your way to figure out the rest. The Self-Publishing with Dale Omnibus is not that kind of book. This is a full ecosystem. It feels less like one book and more like an indie author MBA in a box, taught by someone who has actually lived off his books and his brand for years. Dale L. Roberts is not a theorist. He is a working indie author, YouTuber, and self-publishing educator with a long backlist and a serious track record of helping other authors. What shines through across this omnibus is not just information but experience. He has tried things, failed at things, adjusted, and then turned those lessons into practical, no-drama guidance. You do not just get “how to publish.” You get “how to build a resilient author business that is not at the mercy of a single platform or algorithm.” The Self-Publishing with Dale Omnibus is built around several focused volumes that fit together like parts of a well-oiled self-publishing machine: Self-Publishing for New Authors Advanced Self-Publishing for Authors Wide Publishing for Authors Keywords for Books Marketing and Promotion for Authors Bestseller Book Launch Plan Networking for Authors YouTube for Authors Email Marketing for Authors Each book could stand alone. Together, they form a very convincing blueprint. Self-Publishing for New Authors can stand as the foundation Self-Publishing for New Authors is the “start here” volume and it is excellent at that job. It opens at the true beginning of the process, not at the “upload your files” stage. Roberts asks the unglamorous but essential questions first: - Who is your ideal reader? - Why should they care about you and this book? - Where does this book sit on the shelf and how does it compare? There is a strong emphasis on understanding your audience and your genre before you start throwing words at the page. When you try to write for everyone, you end up writing for no one. The book then moves into planning and outlining. Roberts pushes back gently on the romanticized idea that “real” writers just wing it. His solution is not a rigid, joyless outline but a simple, flexible guide that looks a lot like a detailed table of contents. The goal is to keep you from getting stuck or wandering in circles, not to crush spontaneity. We especially appreciate the attitude he brings to editing and professional help. He is very clear that you should not skimp on editing or covers, but he also knows most indie authors are on a budget. You get practical advice on vetting editors, asking for samples, and making sure they respect your voice. When he says “once you find a good editor, do not let them go,” you can almost hear the mixture of gratitude and hard-won experience behind it. The section on covers is similarly strong. Roberts treats cover design as a market test, not a personal art project. He talks about studying your category’s top sellers, recognizing visual patterns, and accepting that the buyer’s opinion matters more than yours. The anecdote about changing a cover he loved and then watching sales die is a perfect reality check. The buyers voted, and they voted no. That lesson alone could save authors thousands of lost sales. This volume also gets very practical about formats, paper types, trim sizes, KDP quirks, ISBNs, KDP Select, and even author finances and taxes. Two of his money rules become a sort of mantra for the whole omnibus: Never spend what you cannot afford to lose. Start low and go slow. Add in the reminder from his coach, Lance Storm, that “it is not about the money you earn, it is about the money you save,” and you start to see the real worldview behind these books. This is not about chasing lottery wins. It is about building something sustainable. Wide Publishing for Authors takes us beyond selling on Amazon and invites us to consider branching out into other outlets and revenue streams. Wide Publishing for Authors zooms out and tackles one of the most important and misunderstood strategic decisions in indie publishing: exclusive with Amazon or wide across multiple retailers. Roberts makes a compelling case that “Amazon is everything” is a myth that can hurt you long term. Yes, Amazon is huge. Yes, Kindle Unlimited is a powerful ecosystem. But there are entire regions of the world where Amazon has little or no reach, and other platforms like Kobo Writing Life, PublishDrive, and Apple Books can put your work in front of readers you would never otherwise reach. We were genuinely surprised by some of the distribution facts and examples. Apple Books reaches dozens of countries where Amazon does not. Certain aggregators offer access into markets like China that are invisible inside KDP. Every book that exists only on Amazon is missing those readers by default. The other big theme of this volume is risk. Roberts shares horror stories of authors who built their entire business on one retailer and then lost everything overnight because of a ban, a misunderstanding, or a sudden policy change. He also walks through the fine print and pain points on audio platforms like ACX, the long exclusivity locks on royalty share deals, and the backlash when Findaway Voices (under Spotify) rolled out controversial terms. The message is not “panic.” The message is “do not put your entire career in anyone else’s hands if you can help it.” The real value, though, lies in the practical breakdowns. Roberts walks us through: Barnes & Noble Press IngramSpark Apple Books Google Play Kobo Writing Life Gumroad Draft2Digital Audio distribution through Findaway Voices and Author’s Republic For each, he covers reach, strengths, weaknesses, royalties, and where they might fit in your overall strategy. If Self-Publishing for New Authors gets your first book made and published, Wide Publishing for Authors helps you think like a rights manager and distribution strategist, not just a hopeful uploader. Keywords for Books might be the driest part of this omnibus, but it is one of the most important. Keywords for Books is the metadata brain of the omnibus. If the previous two volumes teach you how to create and position a marketable book, this one teaches you how to help readers actually find it. Roberts explains keywords using simple, real-world examples. He contrasts a vague root keyword like “exercise” with longer, more targeted phrases like “back injury exercises” or “30 day exercise program for back pain.” You can feel the lightbulb moment he is trying to give new authors: a smaller, more specific pond is usually better than a huge, overcrowded ocean. There is excellent coverage of how Amazon’s search system actually behaves. Roberts talks about impressions, clicks, conversions, and how the algorithm constantly tests and adjusts based on user behavior, not your intentions. He warns against gimmicks like click farms and fake reviews and frames them not as “cheating the system” but as ways to get quietly suppressed or banned. The research process he lays out is extremely usable. You get: - Instructions for using an incognito browser and going straight to the Kindle Store. - Techniques for harvesting keyword ideas from Amazon’s autosuggest. - The “keyword alphabet” trick that multiplies your ideas. - A checklist for evaluating each phrase by product count, review competition, and bestseller ranks. The category discussion is another highlight. Roberts explains how deep browse paths work, how category placement implies certain keywords, and why so many KDP categories are ghost categories that do not even show up on the live store. He suggests verifying everything on Amazon itself instead of trusting the dashboard, which is very on brand for him: trust data you can see, not assumptions. If there is a single message here, it is that keywords do not sell your book by themselves. They simply bring the right eyeballs to the page. Your cover, your description, and your reviews have to do the rest. It is a grounded, grown-up way to talk about metadata. Marketing and Promotion for Authors takes some of those concepts and expands on them. Keywords are a large part of reaching your ideal audience via marketing, but there's more to it. Marketing and Promotion for Authors zooms out again and asks the bigger question: how do you keep reaching readers week after week without burning yourself out or going broke? Roberts structures this book around six pillars that hold up your author business: - Time and energy - Money - Audience engagement - Visibility and discoverability - Promotion channels - Analytics and the long game Some of the best parts of this volume come from his personal stories. The childhood birthday party with poor planning and the failed review mailing campaign, where he spent hundreds sending print copies to strangers and got a handful of non-verified reviews that later vanished, are both painful and funny. They make one crucial point. Effort that is not strategic does not count. The time and energy sections are especially good for overwhelmed authors. Roberts introduces simple tools like time studies, priority chains, and realistic word count math. A forty thousand word book becomes forty focused hours of work. Thirty to sixty minutes a day suddenly looks possible. He then applies the same thinking to marketing, treating small daily actions like outreach emails, YouTube videos, and social media posts as hygiene rather than heroics. On the money side, he stays true to his big rules: do not spend what you cannot afford to lose, and start low and go slow. There are detailed sections on zero-cost marketing, local events, libraries, community collaborations, and early experiments that cost time more than cash. Paid ads and bigger spends are presented as later steps, not mandatory starter packages. We also appreciate the emotional honesty running under this volume. Burnout, comparison, shiny objects, and guilt are treated as normal, not personal failures. Roberts consistently pushes readers toward consistent, sustainable action over frantic promotional sprints. When you zoom out, this volume is less about “how to be everywhere” and more about “how to build a marketing rhythm you can live with.” Bestseller Book Launch Plan almost serves as the "cheat sheet" volume for an author planning their book launch. Bestseller Book Launch Plan takes all that foundation and asks, “What would it look like to launch this book seriously, not just toss it into the store and hope?” Right away, Roberts cuts through the mystique around “bestseller” status. He gives real numbers for what it takes to top the Kindle store in a day and explains the difference between Amazon’s hourly, data driven bestseller lists and curated lists like The New York Times that apply their own filters. There is also a clear-eyed discussion of gimmicky category gaming, including the infamous “foot photo” bestseller stunt that abused a forgotten category. Roberts does not deny that tricks exist, but he is very clear that gaming an empty niche is not the same as proving real market demand. The heart of this book is in two places: laying proper groundwork and executing a structured launch. Roberts insists that a bestseller-worthy launch starts with a bestseller-worthy product. That means professional editing, clean formatting, a cover that belongs on the top shelf of its genre, and copy that is written for the reader, not the author’s ego. He frames the whole launch engine around three big levers: keywords, cover, and description. Everything else is built on those. From there you get an operations manual. There are chapters on: - Recruiting, training, and managing an ARC team that will actually read and review. - Planning and running a pre-order without abusing Amazon’s systems or sabotaging yourself. - Coordinating discounts, ad campaigns, and organic outreach so they feed into each other instead of happening at random. - Stretching launch activity over time instead of blowing everything on one day that the algorithm will forget tomorrow. The closing launch checklist really brings it all together. By the time you reach it, you feel like you have been drinking from a firehose, then suddenly all the moving parts resolve into eight clear stages you can follow and check off. It is one of the best “from theory to practice” transitions in the whole omnibus. YouTube for Authors is a volume that Dale L. Roberts is specially equipped to publish and present, being a very successful YouTube author himself. YouTube for Authors is where the omnibus steps firmly into creator territory. Instead of just selling books from behind a product page, this volume is about showing your face, using your voice, and building a public platform. Roberts is uniquely qualified to write this part because his own YouTube presence is a huge pillar of his brand. What is refreshing is that he does not treat YouTube like magic. He talks about VHS tapes, awkward early videos, and a channel that grew slowly over time because he kept showing up and answering questions. The book does a great job of smashing the usual excuses. You do not need studio gear to start. You do not need to be naturally charismatic. You do not even need to be on camera if you truly cannot stand it. What you need is clarity about your niche, a plan for your content, and a willingness to post imperfect videos and improve over time. We like that this book speaks directly to both nonfiction and fiction authors. There are concrete ideas for genre-based channels, from sci fi horror commentary and trope discussions to romance reading vlogs and fantasy worldbuilding chat. You are repeatedly pushed to think about what your ideal reader already watches and how you can show up in that feed as a natural fit. The pre-production and scripting guidance is very “Dale.” He maps the familiar plotter versus pantser divide onto video and encourages writers to lean into their outlining skills. Simple structures like “hook, core value, handoff to another video” make the process feel accessible. There is also a strong emphasis on audio quality and environment, which are the real make-or-break factors for viewer experience. As with the other volumes, the analytics talk is grounded in reality. Instead of obsessing over every metric, Roberts calls out a few that matter most, like click-through rate and retention, and shows how to use them to improve your titles, thumbnails, and hooks. The goal is not to turn you into a full-time YouTuber unless that is what you want. The goal is to create a steady, authentic presence that sells books and builds trust. Email Marketing for Authors, somewhat like Keywords for Authors, takes an aspect of self-publishing that would otherwise be dry and makes it applicable and somewhat exciting. Email Marketing for Authors is the relationship heart of the omnibus along. This volume argues that in a world of fickle algorithms and changing platforms, your email list is one of the only assets you can truly own, protect, and grow long term. Roberts uses a relationship metaphor throughout, comparing the gradual deepening of a marriage to the gradual deepening of an email list. Early messages are light and exploratory. Over time, you earn the right to go deeper and to ask for more. It is a simple comparison, but it frames the whole book in a healthier way than the usual “blast your list” mentality. There are strong sections on: - Why list quality matters more than raw subscriber count. - How to design lead magnets that are simple, valuable, and aligned with your books. - Different lead magnet ideas for fiction and nonfiction. - How to set up permafree books as powerful list-building tools. - Choosing email service providers based on features that matter to authors, not marketing hype. We particularly like the permafree case study. Roberts describes the moment he shifted from chasing immediate book sales to prioritizing list growth and how that one strategic change fueled his long-term income. The walkthrough on getting a book set to free wide and then coaxing Amazon to price match is something many authors would struggle to piece together on their own. Later chapters walk you through welcome sequences, ongoing newsletters, and automation in a way that feels human, not robotic. The emphasis is on conversation, value, and trust, with intermittent, clearly framed offers. List cleaning and unsubscribes are normalized as healthy maintenance, not a badge of shame. In the context of the whole omnibus, this volume is what keeps all your other efforts from disappearing into the void. The launch plans, the YouTube videos, the keyword wins, and the wide distribution all make more sense when there is somewhere for readers to land where you can keep talking to them on your own terms. What you have here is, perhaps, the best collection on self-publishing out there! Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)
Jamie's Journey is a raw, real, emotional, and heart-wrenching book about a sibling wrestling with her sister's battle with cancer and her personal struggles. It serves an educational and empathetic purpose, providing a voice for young people in situations in which they feel they don't have one. It allows us to see the often silent and overlooked struggles that families and siblings of cancer patients go through, letting them know that feeling negative things doesn't make you a bad person, an evil person, or an unloving person—in fact, it shows that you're human and that you care. Feelings like jealousy, guilt, animosity, shame, resentfulness, loneliness, longing, etc. are tactfully explored, not in a judgmental or condemning way, but in a way that leads to greater empathy and understanding. Sharon Wozny is able to draw on years of experience working with cancer patients and their families via the Children's Cancer Network (CCN), providing a genuine and authentic story. We've seen cancer's impacts on people first-hand, in our families and friend groups (we've lost a few good people) and in the hospitals we've worked and volunteered at. Cancer is a ruthless and destructive killer. It touches and hurts everyone in some way. Some children’s cancer books explain diagnoses and treatments. This one does something braver. It hands the microphone to the sister on the sidelines and says, “Your heartbreak counts too.” Jamie’s Journey is a heart-wrenching, necessary look at what happens to the sibling when cancer barges into a family, and it treats that experience with rare honesty and compassion. The story follows thirteen-year-old Jamie as her ten-year-old sister, Jordan, is diagnosed with a brain tumor and starts a long course of surgery, chemo, and hospital stays. We move with Jamie from “life was normal” to the night everything changes, sitting in waiting rooms, watching the machines, and riding that emotional roller coaster that flips from relief to terror in a single page. Each scene is distilled into a clear feeling statement at the bottom of the spread: “I was very worried,” “I was angry,” “I was feeling forgotten,” “I was jealous,” “I was feeling guilty,” “I felt helpful,” “I was happy again.” It is simple language, but the simplicity hits hard because so many siblings will recognize those same words in their own heads. Where this book really shines is in how unapologetically it names the “unacceptable” emotions that siblings are often ashamed of. Jamie admits she likes attention. In fact, the lack/loss of attention from others seems to be oppressive and crushing. Life starts to revolve almost exclusively around her sister. She resents missed softball and dance, the way her sister is treated like a “rock star,” the loss of one-on-one time with her parents, and the darkness that scares her when she feels forgotten. The text makes it clear that these reactions are not signs of being a bad kid. They are normal responses to a huge, unfair disruption. That is an incredibly important message in a space that usually focuses only on the patient. The illustrations are a major part of why those emotions land. Melissa Bailey’s art has that hand-drawn, soft pencil look with selective color that feels intimate and personal, almost like sketches from a family’s own journal. Jamie’s face does a lot of heavy lifting: the worry in the hospital room, the tight, hunched anger in the waiting area, the hollow sadness of sitting alone in a corner, the quiet pride as she hugs her bald little sister, the stunned tenderness when Jordan calls her a hero. Even without reading the text, you can see what each page is feeling. Paired with the expressive body language and small details (the stuffed dog, the blanket, the IV pole, the thought bubbles around Jamie’s head), the visuals pull you into the emotional climate of the family rather than just the medical facts. Seriously, Jamie isn't even fully colored most of the time, yet she's one of the most vibrant and expressive illustrated character in this contest! We actually love how her outfit changes and is a different color all the time, showing the passage of time and that Jamie is or represents a real person who is going through life like the rest of us, not just a cartoon character. The second half of the book turns into a guided journal, and this is where the project becomes more than a story. Siblings are invited to write, draw, scribble, and dump out their own roller coaster of feelings through prompts like “Worried,” “Anger,” “I felt forgotten when…,” “Loved and valued,” “Speechless,” and “Inspiration.” Speckles, a little spotted creature, pops up as a comforting mascot. It is not about spelling or neatness. It is about giving kids a safe container where feeling jealous, selfish, or confused is allowed. For parents, counselors, and child life specialists, this transforms the book into a practical therapeutic tool, not just something to read once and shelve. Jamie’s Journey is a compassionate, beautifully illustrated affirmation that the sibling’s pain, confusion, jealousy, and love all matter. It tells kids in this position, “You are not a side character. You are a survivor too.” For families walking through pediatric cancer, and for professionals who serve them, we would call this close to essential reading. The heart in the artwork, the hard truths on the page, and the interactive journal in the back easily make it one of the stronger works in the contest. It definitely packs a punch emotionally. And it has practical applications for children who find themselves in these tragic and traumatic situations. It's a reminder to them that their feelings and experiences are normal and valid--that they're not forgotten and that they're always loved. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 90+/100 (9.0+ out of 10)
If Snoodles in Space was one of the weirdest, strangest, goofiest, silliest, most bizarre books we had ever read, Escape from Zoodletraz is that same energy turned up another notch. Sometimes that is delightful. Sometimes it is just exhausting. Once again, we are back in Noodleham with the Snoodlemans, the Croodlemans, and the endlessly multiplying Zoodle crowd. The first book already gave us rival inventors, noodle cars, kraut cars, renewable energy subtext, and a whole alien race with names that sounded like a phonics worksheet gone rogue. This sequel takes that already convoluted universe and piles even more on top. New threats appear, new gadgets and contraptions are introduced, and a new crisis sends everyone hurtling back into space, this time toward a prison called Zoodletraz where escape is supposed to be impossible. On paper, that is a fun hook. A space jail break in a world of noodle powered technology and cranky aliens has a lot of potential. You can feel the big kid friendly ingredients there. There is a wrong that needs to be righted, relationships that need to be repaired, and a dangerous place that needs to be infiltrated. In a more streamlined book, that could be a tight, satisfying adventure. The experience of reading it, though, is a lot more chaotic than that simple summary suggests. Just like the first book, Escape from Zoodletraz is obsessed with sound and word play. The long “oo” sound is everywhere again. There are more snoodles, poodles, noodles, roodles, and zoodles than ever. There are more tongue twisters and alliterative phrases that practically dare you to read them aloud without tripping. If you loved lines like “Prickly Peppered Purple Propulsion Powered Pickle” in the original, this book feels like the author saying, “Oh, you liked that? Here are ten more.” That is both a strength and a weakness. As a read aloud experience, this can be a riot. Kids who enjoy nonsense words and silly sounds are going to feast on this. You can almost hear a classroom of children repeating their favorite phrases, trying to outdo each other, and begging to hear the same sections again. There is a kind of musicality to the language that fits the over the top cartoon nature of the world. The price you pay for that, however, is clarity. The first book already had a “pretty convoluted plot with a plethora of characters” and two overlapping storylines. This one feels even more crowded. You still have the human families and their noodle and kraut energy baggage. You still have the Zoodle leadership and their various sidekicks and hench-creatures. Now you add another big crisis, more side characters, more running jokes, and a whole prison break scenario, often introduced in quick succession with almost no breathing room. There are entire stretches where it feels like something new, noisy, and slightly random is happening on every page. For some readers, that nonstop novelty is the appeal. For others, especially anyone who prefers a clear story spine, it begins to feel like work. You start asking yourself questions like, “Wait, who is that? Why are we here now? What are we even trying to accomplish in this scene?” If you find yourself confused and a little frustrated in the middle of this book, you are not alone. We were right there with you. The plotting feels more episodic and jumpy than the first book. In the original, we could still more or less follow the arc from rivalry to kidnapping to joint mission to resolve the conflict. Here, the emotional through line gets buried under the running gags, puns, and set pieces. The basic idea seems to be that an alien with hurt pride sets off a chain of bad decisions, the humans and Zoodles are pulled into another high stakes situation, and a daring escape is required. That is solid. We just wish the book trusted that core more and allowed everything else to orbit around it instead of competing with it. On the positive side, the themes that made the first book interesting are still here in spirit. There is still this insistence that people with differences can eventually work together (to make music and turn Zoodletraz into a tourist attraction that celebrates music). There is still a sense that invention, creativity, and science can be used to solve problems instead of make them worse. There are undercurrents about ego, jealousy, and what happens when a person cannot handle failure in a healthy way. All of that is incredibly relevant for kids, even if it arrives wrapped in a very loud package. We also want to acknowledge the sheer level of effort evident in the art by Andy Case, who makes his return to the series. In the first book, we admired how much work went into “60 pages of illustrations, most of which are quite good.” This sequel clearly required a similar or even greater level of visual labor. There are actually 80 pages of illustrations in this one, and they're arguably even better than the first! Every page is packed with character designs, backgrounds, vehicles, gadgets, and tiny visual jokes. You can tell that the illustrator was asked to imagine a whole universe’s worth of chaos and then actually draw it. That work shows. The world feels big, lived in, and consistent with what came before. Kids can spend a long time just pointing at things and asking questions. “What is that?” “Why is that character dressed like that?” “What do you think this machine does?” That kind of visual density does a lot to keep young readers engaged, especially those who love spotting details. And we wanted to say this: this book is genuinely hilarious at times. The Grand Doodle's whole plot and arc while being a pharoah-dressed infant is hilarious. It's even more hilarious that he has a whole stack of self-help books on getting revenge! What, you don't? The Grand Doodle also shows a bit of humanity and relatability. Heck, he might be the most relatable character in this book despite being "evil." He wants to be a successful, famous musician like a lot of people want to. Unfortunately, he gets a lot of bad reviews on his performances. It's extra sad because he genuinely looks happy and like he's enjoying himself while performing on his guitar. It's unfortunate that he's booed relentlessly. Hey, we can relate! Can't you? He just happens to take it too far in trying to get revenge. Oh, and by the way... It does kinda seem like his revenge plot is very loosely tied to what his henchmen actually try to pull off with the Zoodletraz plot. They almost seem like two separate evil plots entirely. It's also funny that it's mentioned that Evil Kidoodle is said to be "really not that evil. It is just the name his parents gave him." That's funny! We even got a kick out of the fact that the superhero/superheroine in this universe is a geriatric female named Swifty Swoodle, who kinda reminded us of the grandma from Grandma Yogini. And maybe we're a bit dirty minded, but it was kinda funny seeing Sour Croodleman holding his sketchy-looking purple propulsion pickle. Also, why is there a sign-language interpreter illustrated on these pages, which are already chaotic? We thought that was... interesting. Anyway, the art was the highlight of the book. At the same time, the art shares the text’s main flaw. It is very busy, almost all the time. There are very few quiet or simple spreads where the eye gets a rest and the story gets to breathe. Important story beats sometimes feel visually similar to side gags and throwaway moments, so it can be hard for a child to know what to focus on. In a book that is already verbally dense and conceptually chaotic, that visual busyness can tip things from “packed with fun” into “overwhelming.” Compared to the first Snoodles in Space, our sense is that the balance has shifted a bit in the wrong direction. The original was undeniably strange and convoluted, but it still felt like the heart of the story could push through the noise. You had the energy rivalry, the kidnapped relatives, the tension between the two families, and the larger question of whether they would set aside their differences to save the people they loved. It was a lot, but you could trace the line from start to finish. With Escape from Zoodletraz, that line feels more tangled. The stakes are still there, and the emotional core still exists, but it takes more effort to find it under all the word play and spectacle. The book seems to assume that “more is better” in every single category. More characters. More jokes. More gadgets. More crises. More pages. For some kids, especially those who already love the universe, that will be a dream. For others, it will feel like too much of a good thing. We want to be fair here. It takes courage to double down on a very particular kind of weirdness. It takes creativity and stamina to keep inventing new puns, new devices, and new twists in a world that already seemed maxed out. You can tell that the author and illustrator are all in. There is no half measure. That commitment is admirable, and it will absolutely resonate with readers who are hungry for something that does not feel like every other picture book on the shelf. At the same time, we also want to be honest about our reading experience. There were points at which this book stopped feeling “wonderfully weird” and just felt needlessly confusing and random. There were moments when we wanted it to slow down, focus, and let a single emotional beat land without immediately jumping to the next joke or contraption. There were scenes when we found ourselves flipping back a page or two just to reorient, and that is not ideal in a book that is presumably aimed at children. So where does that leave us? We think Snoodles in Space: Escape from Zoodletraz is a bold, energetic sequel that will absolutely delight a particular slice of readers, especially those who already loved the first book and want even more chaos, more sound, and more spectacle. It is inventive. It is packed with imagination. It has heart under all the silliness. It is also, at times, a confusing and overstuffed reading experience that asks a lot of its audience in terms of attention and patience. If you or your kids thrive on maximalist, over the top stories and do not mind feeling a little lost along the way, this may hit your sweet spot. If you prefer a clearer through line and a bit more breathing room, you will probably still appreciate the creativity here, but you may find yourself wishing that Zoodletraz had just a little less noise and a little more focus. Check it out on Amazon!  Audiobook: 91+/100 (9.1+ out of 10)
NOTE: We don't have the paperback or ebook, so we don't have the exact spellings of names, places, and other concepts in the book. We're going by what we heard. Well, that was... an experience! Wetion is one of the most unusual and ambitious audiobooks to come our way! It's got a lot going on. Some things work, some things kinda work, some things... well... we'll talk about it. This audiobook is written and narrated by James Krause, who we presume also did the music production. There are maybe six to eight songs sprinkled throughout this book, we'll get to them later. Anyway, this book isn't your typical, throughline story with a main protagonist you follow from beginning to end. Yes, there is a main character in whose head/memories most of these events are happening, but he isn't particularly active in advancing a plot it or in taking on any great obstacle or villain, at least not in the conventional sense. Instead, he's taking on themes like his legacy and roots—the things that have already happened that are bleeding into the present. And, yes, we know this book goes on a side-quest about finding a cure for cancer from a prison spider bite experiment that Addy's grandfather ran, but... like, that was so out of left field and random, it felt like it was added in during post-production and a later draft when someone made the same complaint we made. We don't really consider that the "plot." This book sorta seems like a chronicle, a reflection, a history, a comedy, a musical, and an anthropological exploration all wrapped in one. It's tonally all over the place. Let's get that out of the way. There are times when it seems aimed at making the reader laugh and drop their guard. There are times when it's tragic. There are times when it's romantic. You know... they say that modern humans are just cavemen with suits, ties, and suitcases. Behind all that is still a paleolith. Human beings haven't really evolved or changed that much since those days before the written word. And that's made abundantly clear when Addy, in the modern age, tries to pull off an experiment testing the theory that the memories of our ancestors are passed on in our brain cells. He tries to eat an edible substance native to each of the places his ancestors came from. Then, with a beer in one hand, he starts talking like a caveman from one of those early 2000s Geico commercials. He seems self-aware about it too, until he drifts off to sleep and experiences what he comes to tell Evelyn is the longest dream he's ever experienced in his life, saying, "This dream extended for what felt like an eternity." This book seems to take the premise that memories are inherited and passed on just like written texts, oral traditions, and the genotypes/phenotypes that make us who we are. At least that's the theory that Addy and the author are testing. In fact, the book's description even says something along the lines of the author tracing his own personal DNA to find his roots. So, that's kinda interesting. Ok, back to the audiobook itself... We follow Addy's ancestors all the way from about 50,000 years ago, the Middle Paleolithic era or "Stone Age." This is the time when anatomically modern humans (homo sapiens) started using tools, fire, and migrating out of Africa. Ok, so maybe we should get this out of the way. This book is advertised as following Adam, Eve, and their ancestors to the modern era (or something like that). However, keep in mind, this isn't the BIBLICAL Adam & Eve. So, if you're a hardcore Christian, Jew, or Muslim, you've gotta brace yourself. This isn't consistent with your religious texts. Instead, this is what we would refer to as "Scientific Adam." There used to be a documentary on National Geographic about this exact thing. The scientific version of Adam ("Scientific Adam") wasn't created in the image of God as the first human being, instead he was a very lucky and evolutionarily gifted male member of his tribe—a tribe amongst other Stone Age tribes that often competed over food, territory, and women. This book presents a lot of the things that made these people and tribes different. It's kinda presented in a humorous or comedic way. For example, there's a tribe in which men form buffalo horn signs with their hands on their heads to attract women. There's a tribe in which the girls and women practice "lip stretching." There's a tribe which doesn't bury its dead. It's left sorta vague if they actually just leave their dead because they don't understand the hygienic/sanitary practice of burial, or if they're practicing some kind of above-ground burial. Addy's progenitor, who we think was just named Adam (or something really close to it—they all are), finds this disgusting. A part of us kinda felt like this book was poking fun at these practices and making the other tribes seem as foolish and goofy as possible. That's odd because we can tell that the author really cares about this subject and is passionate about it, so you'd think he'd be extra tactful and respectful about presenting these people this way. You could argue that he treats modern humans the same way (Addy and Evelyn are kinda goofballs too) and that a little humor isn't bad, especially in what could've been a dry overview of history. Anyway, there's a huge flood that destroys the settlement and forces the few survivors including Addy's progenitor to have to pick up their remaining belongings and move. Oh, one thing this book seems highly critical of—and is one of the reoccuring things throughout the book—is how religion and superstition are used to manipulate and control people. A lot of the strange practices the tribes practice are due to the religious beliefs and superstitions they've created for themselves. And by "they" we mean those in power. Those in power seem to weaponize religion and supersition throughout this book. There are times they use it to stop incestial marraiages, and times when they use it as an excuse for them. The narrative continuously points to how conveniently religion is twisted to fit what the rich and powerful want. Later on, the Egyptians use it to solidify the power of the Pharoah and that of his family, presenting them as divine. The Babylonians and pretty much everyone does something similar. During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church claims to derive its authority from the divine. Oh, and this book talks a lot about how the narratives and histories of these civilizations are twisted and embellished by those in power. The victors write the stories. There's even a moment when one of the kings has to have his death story twisted to dying in battle with a hippo (representing Egypt's ancient enemy) to support his son's claim to the throne. There's a ton of exposition in this book. The author seems to be trying to educate readers about how the world was changing over the course of 50,000+ years. There are a lot of flowery descriptions of the terrain, the mountains, the wildlife, etc. On one hand, it's somewhat beautiful and a bit educational. On the other hand, it kinda draws the focus away from any semblance of a plot. There are a lot of parts of this book that just describe the different civilizations in excruciating detail beyond what the character(s) on the ground would probably know (like from a semi-omniscient perspective). So, it often reads like a college textbook, or like ten lectures pasted together by somewhat-human stories. And there are human stories, don't get us wrong. Characters fall in love or have crushes, sometimes unrequieted ones. It kinda reminded us of Kings of Stone by R Jay Driskill,which talked about how even people 3,600 years ago (among the Hittites) still experiences the same romantic, loving, and amarous feelings we do today. It's easy to forget that. So, there is a human element to this and even some drama. Oh, by the way, there are a lot of people named after (or who probably gave their names to) important historical and mythological figures, at least in the narrative of this book. There are a bunch of Adam and Adam-adjacent names (like Edom/Edun, Adama, Aram etc.), a lot of Eve and Eve-adjacent names (like Eva, Evelyn, Ava), Seth/Set, Tiamat, etc. We think these are supposed to be "AHA!" moments, like huge reveals, but we weren't that impressed by them. Oh, yeah, Nephritite is here, so is King John, Simon/Peter, Charlemagne, William Wallace, and a bunch of other people you probably know. It kinda seems like window dressing, but... ok... We do get one good quote form the William Wallace section: "Unity is only as good as there's bread to feed us." We also get the Code of Hamarabi, which was discussed in Kings of Stone. It's nice to get a little intertextuality, reading books about the same things. Ok, so let's talk about the music. The music was a very ambitious and commendable addition to the book. The first two or three songs are actually decent. They're a bit off-beat, but they're decent. It really sounds like the background music and the singing were produced at two separate times, and you can tell they don't quite mesh 100%. They don't match a lot of the time. With that said, there's a certain charm to them. You know what they reminded us of? The jazzy little tunes that would play in those Bible cartoons. They have the same hokiness to them. And it's not like the child voice-actors who sang things like "Somewhere Out There" in American Tail were always on-tune. At the same time, there's a part of us that wanted to ask: why are these songs even here? They largely seem to bloat and already-bloated project. And they aren't particularly good. Gosh, there's a song that keeps repeating "We're all related in some way" and that line, while somewhat true, sounds so cringe. It all goes downhill after the "Belly Dancer" song, which was honestly kinda jazzy, although a bit random and awkward. Once we get to Crete, we hear this song about Aphrodite (we think) that's just... what? We could barely tell what the singer was trying to say. The background music in that song was annoying and flat. The lyrics were indistinguishable. It sounded like someone strangling someone with an accordion in D-minor. The song before the "Belly Dancer" song was decent. It was upbeat and groovy. The "Mary Magdelene" song had a lot of the same weaknesses as the "Belly Dancer" song. It's a little better, talking about the Roman legions and stuff, but the voice still sounds like it's being artificially amplified or run through some filter. It's all fuzzy and staticky. A lot of the music in this audiobook is like a Temu version of Peter, Paul, and Mary. It has that same pop-folk vibe. Alright, we didn't really like the music, but we commend the effort in including music. Ok, then we find ourselves talking about the Alabama Crimson Tide in the 20th century and Addy's grandfather's spider-bite-prison-experiment. And this is so tonally different from the rest of the book. It becomes almost like medical sci-fi or something. We didn't really like that so much. The narration does what it's supposed to do. The narrator did what he was supposed to. There are times he steps up his game to do the accents and stuff. He does an Irish/Scottish accent pretty well. Look, we have mixed feelings about this audiobook. It seems messy and chaotic at times. The author tried a lot of things. Some of those things worked, some of them didn't. The author seems to be very passionate about our history and the things that ground us to our roots. The book seems to want to promote unity and accepting our commonalities outside of what makes us different. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
Every adoptive family eventually runs into that stranger in the supermarket who asks something so jaw-dropping that you only think of the perfect response three hours later in the car. This book is basically a loving, funny, kid friendly toolkit for those moments. It does two big jobs at once: it tells a warm family story about adoption, and it quietly hands adoptees and parents the language and confidence to handle other people’s curiosity without losing their dignity. The story portion of this book follows a multiracial family of five, narrated by an adopted daughter who explains that she and her little sister joined the family through adoption while their baby brother was born to their mom. Right away, we see how often people feel entitled to comment on or dissect that reality. An uncle calls her “your adoptive daughter,” a relative asks, “Don’t you wish she was actually yours?”, and Mommy gently but firmly corrects them: “Thank you, OUR daughter is indeed absolutely adorable.” Later, a doctor wonders if the girls are “real siblings,” a coworker demands to know “what was wrong with them,” and a postal clerk casually asks if you can “return” adopted kids if things do not work out. The parents’ responses model exactly what so many families crave: calm, clear boundary setting with a side of wit. What really elevates the book is how it keeps circling back to a few core truths and lets kids sit with them. “Adoption builds families. It does not matter if we do not share the same eyes, nose or skin tone, LOVE is what holds us together. A family is a family.” “No one is ever entitled to our adoption story.” “Real” vs “biological” siblings are distinguished with simple, precise language. The text never sugarcoats the loss and grief that sit underneath adoption, especially when others gush that the children are “lucky” or “rescued.” The parents insist that they are the lucky ones, and that there is nothing fortunate about being separated from birth parents. It is honest without being heavy handed, which is a hard balance to strike in a children’s book. Then the book changes gears and becomes a workbook, and this is where it turns from “nice story” into “essential resource.” There are sections for four different audiences: “You were adopted,” “You adopted,” “You are hoping to adopt,” and “What is adoption?” For each group, there are gentle prompts about identity, family trees and “bubble clusters,” how you describe yourself, what you like or hate being asked, the questions you wish people would ask instead, and the responses you wish you had given. There are pages that sort comments into categories like CURIOUS, NOSY, CLUELESS, JUDGMENTAL, UNGRACIOUS, and BIG NO NO, followed by spaces to craft factual answers and then “sassy pantaloons” comebacks. There is even a matching exercise in positive adoption language, shifting phrases like “give up for adoption” to “make an adoption plan” and “unwanted child” to “waiting child.” Visually, the book is adorable and smart at the same time. They're actually a bit like infographics. Anyway, the cartoon family is expressive and diverse, with bright, rounded illustrations that kids will gravitate toward. Repeated motifs like sticky notes, clipped Polaroid style photos, and pens make it feel like a personal scrapbook rather than a dry manual. The yes/no reflection spreads that ask questions such as “Is this person a total stranger?”, “Are our children here?”, and “Is this an opportunity to educate?” are especially clever. They turn parents’ gut feelings into a visible decision tree that can be revisited when something nosy happens in real life. If we have a critique, it is mostly about density and scope. The workbook sections are rich and generous, but there is a lot of text and a lot of prompts. Younger children will definitely need adult guidance to navigate it, and even teens or parents early in their adoption journey might feel a bit overwhelmed by how many questions they are asked to process at once. Some reading level guidance or suggested age ranges for each section would make it even more user friendly. A few of the most powerful story spreads (like the “Adoption is forever!” moment or the “looking adopted is not a thing” page) could also benefit from a touch more breathing room to really land. One of the things we noticed is that there's a lot happening on some of the pages. A lot of different graphics and text seems to be coming from everywhere: up, down, left, right, diagonal, above, below, and everything inbetween. It's kinda overwhelming, to be honest. Page 44 has this poster/decal behind the character that seems to have like a dozen different terms and phrases just crammed in and weaved together. Anyway, this book spoke to us. In 2022, we read Fostering: A Memoir of Courage and Hope by Carmen Maria Navarro, and we can see a lot of parallels between the experiences in the book. It's like there's a needless stigma attached to adopting and fostering, and it really hurts. We can tell. A lot of this book focuses on encouraging people to be tactful, sensitive, and mindful when it comes to adoption and adoptive families. Taken as a whole, though, this is a heartfelt, practical, and deeply validating resource. It tells adoptees: your feelings and boundaries matter. It tells adoptive parents: you are allowed to protect your children’s story and still educate others when you choose. And it tells future parents: adoption is not a shortcut, a rescue mission, or “just a piece of paper,” it is a lifelong relationship that deserves thought and preparation. For adoptive families who are tired of improvising on the spot when the next nosy question hits, The Little Book of Nosy Questions About Adoption can serve as a mirror and a guide. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 90/100 (9.0 out of 10)
Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine is a glorious, infuriating, wildly ambitious mess of a book. It is big, brainy, weird, and overflowing with smart ideas about attention, love, and reality, but it is also chaotic, confusing, and harder to read than it should be. This is not a smooth, general audience sci-fi novel. It feels more like a long, elaborate concept album that some people will obsess over, while others will bounce off in the first few tracks. This book tracks the frantic efforts of Jonnie Fazoolie, a disgraced crypto hustler and erratic inventor, to fund and create a mythical Transfinite Reality Engine (TRE) capable of jumping between universes. His plans hinge upon Dr. Amaranth “Casey” Floyd, a brilliant physicist whose obsession with quantum teleportation and unresolved grief over a lost first love make the TRE’s promise of alternate realities intensely personal. Running parallel is the story of ambitious media executive Penny Pitz, who struggles to ignore her strange attraction to Jonnie while managing a high-profile “Thrillionaire” event that he inevitably crashes during a reckless stunt. Fazoolie’s volatile lifestyle involves eviction and chaotic stunts, such as BASE jumping and flying a Levity Jet Suit in Las Vegas, all while narrowly escaping various personal and financial calamities. These mundane crises are overshadowed by a larger, cosmic struggle involving an entity named Alice, who has hacked the Infiniverse simulation created by the powerful Kreo Bonsai. Ultimately, the narrative positions the TRE and the reality-warping math behind it as part of a larger arms race, with everyone from scammers and scientists to interdimensional power brokers fighting over who controls the ability to rewrite reality itself. So, this is all pretty convoluted and confusing. This is one of the most convoluted and confusing books in this contest. So here's another try at making sense of this: At the center of this all are three gravitational bodies. First, there is Alice, a sentient universe that names herself into existence, moving from “I am Alive” to “I am Universe” to “I am Alone” to “I am Goddess.” She is godlike in scope, able to spin up and snuff out universes, but stuck with a very human problem. She cannot force anyone to love her. She can manipulate realities, tweak probabilities, and nudge timelines, yet genuine affection remains out of reach. Her fixation on one particular human, Jonnie Fazoolie, gives the cosmic material a strange, lonely heart and provides the metaphysical spine that the rest of the book hangs on. Then there is Penny Pitz, who might be the most grounded reason to keep turning the pages. Penny is a Brown grad and former crypto PR star who rode the bubble all the way up, survived the crash, testified publicly when everything went up in flames, and has the trauma to prove it. By the time we meet her, she has washed up at Fauxbes, chasing “Thrillionaires Under Thirty” for a living while her sisters judge her career and love life over upscale Friday dinners. Penny’s voice, full of sarcasm, self-awareness, and buried hurt, does a lot of the heavy lifting. Through her eyes, we see the absurdity of billionaire worship, the hollowness of clout chasing, and the tenderness of someone who still wants to believe that work and love can matter. Jonnie himself enters the story like a walking red flag. When Penny goes to his Chicago penthouse to conduct what she expects will be a routine profile, small details signal how off-kilter he is. There is the trash and takeout piled outside his door, the way she swaps flats for heels in the hallway to look more “Fauxbes ready,” and then that first conversation where he mishears her name and refuses to answer questions like any normal person. The moment he climbs onto his desk, ham sandwich in hand like a microphone, and starts pitching his “Transfinite Reality Engine” to an imaginary crowd of “dumb influencers and rich motherfuckers,” you understand why Penny is both wary and fascinated. Jonnie is part visionary, part con man, part damaged kid, and the book never fully lets you relax about which side you are getting. Structurally, the story unfolds across six “episodes” that sound almost like a streaming season: “The Birth,” “The Bet,” “The Band,” “The Brand,” “The Boilerplate,” and “The Blowout.” Each episode takes a different angle on the same core obsession. The Transfinite Reality Engine is, at different times, a pitch deck slogan, a weird science artifact, a reality bending metaphor, and a marketing hook. We watch Penny build a Thrillionaires brand around stunt fueled creators. We watch Jonnie slide between invention and performance. We see Alice hovering above it all, pushing and pulling on the strings of probability in ways that are sometimes clear, sometimes intentionally opaque. It is inventive and playful, and it gives the book a sense of momentum even when the moment to moment reading experience feels slippery. The strongest asset here is the voice. The prose is packed with riffs, lists, callbacks, and sharp little stabs of cultural commentary. Penny’s interior monologue can pivot from PTSD flashbacks about the crypto trial to filthy dating stories to a perfect one line summary of billionaire culture on the same page. Jonnie’s sections feel like being trapped in the mind of a very tall fever dream that somehow learned to talk in TED pitches. Alice’s chapters give us a more lyrical, mythic register that reminds us that everything we are watching is only one corner of an infinite multiverse. The satire hits a long list of targets: tech messiah complexes, influencer burnout, media complicity, political corruption, AI fantasy, meme coins, revenge porn, and the way trauma gets sliced into content. Underneath all of that, the book keeps circling one core question. In a universe this big, what does it mean to truly see someone and to be seen. Where things get shakier is in the execution and reader experience. The book seems to revel in confusion, which will absolutely thrill a certain kind of reader but will shut others out. Time and reality are intentionally porous. Scenes skip between simulation and “real life,” god level meddling and human drama, with very little hand holding. Tonal whiplash is common. One page might describe something genuinely harrowing, the next might crack a joke or cut to an absurd meme styled moment. That kind of maximalism can feel like a feature if you enjoy swimming in chaos. If you prefer a clean through line and clear emotional scaffolding, it starts to feel like wading through static. The density of the writing amplifies that feeling. Sentences run long and ornate, packed with asides and nested ideas. References pile up. There are times when the page feels more like a stand up set or a Twitter thread stitched into a paragraph than a scene moving through space and time. Some readers will love the sheer energy of that style. Others will hit a point where they want the book to stop entertaining them and simply move the story. There are genuine moments of tenderness and insight buried in here, especially in Alice’s ache for connection and Penny’s bruised determination to do her job and salvage a self, but they sometimes have to fight through the noise to get heard. On top of that, the physical presentation gets in the way. The lack of paragraph indentations or clear spacing between beats turns dense pages into visual bricks. In a light, breezy book this might be a mild quirk. In a long, concept heavy, structurally complex story like this, it is a real problem. It makes it harder to track shifts in speaker or thought, harder to find your way back to an earlier emotional moment, and harder to rest your eyes. When you already need to work to follow the metaphysics and satire, basic formatting friction does not feel edgy, it feels needless. All of that is why we land at 90/100 instead of creeping into the mid 90s. This is bold, original, and genuinely thought provoking. It has a memorable cosmic frame, a standout human narrator in Penny, and a messy, fascinating puzzle of a man in Jonnie. It says something real about how fractured and commodified our lives feel in an age of infinite content and finite attention. At the same time, it is confusing, chaotic, and visually more punishing than it needs to be, with real costs to clarity, pacing, and accessibility. For readers who love strange, experimental, idea heavy sci fi, Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine will be a wild, rewarding ride. For readers who want clean structure, straightforward storytelling, and easy entry, this might feel like too much of a good thing. Check it out on Amazon! |
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