Editorial Reviews for Nominees
|
|
|
 Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
The Ominous Struggle by George Beasley is one of those rare Christian books that actually feels like it was written in the middle of the storm, not years later from a safe distance. It hurts. It comforts. It wrestles. And it keeps coming back to the same stubborn claim: struggle is universal and often devastating, but it can also be transformed into something meaningful when it is carried with faith, honesty, and real support. Readers who already know George Beasley from his multi time OCA winning memoir The Invisible Soul will recognize the heart here. What surprised us is how much more refined and structured this book feels. If The Invisible Soul excelled on raw power and inspiration, The Ominous Struggle feels like the next step. It is better organized, more clearly argued, and more intentionally educational while still drawing deeply from the author’s personal pain. The book is built around twelve carefully crafted chapters that move through different dimensions of struggle. Early on, Beasley defines what he means by “the struggle,” breaking it into three major layers: societal, personal, and existential. That alone already gives readers a useful framework. Societal struggle shows up in things like social media comparison, economic pressure, and the constant push to look successful and happy. Personal struggle covers wounds from childhood, trauma, loss, addiction, and the shadow battles people fight behind closed doors. Existential struggle asks the big questions. Why am I here? Does any of this matter? Where is God when everything falls apart? From there, the book moves through topics like faith and perseverance, the role of religious institutions, judgment and shame, materialism, transparency, the mask of happiness, the presence of evil, and finally hope. It has the feel of a well thought out series of sermons, but with far more personal vulnerability than most pulpit messages ever risk. What impressed us is that the book stays distinctly personal despite that structured, didactic approach. This is not just theory. Beasley repeatedly pulls back the curtain on his own story. One of the most memorable threads is the story of George’s brother, Chris. Chris wrestles with addiction, searches for God, and finds a church that actually welcomes him. He starts attending faithfully, even while still fragile. The same congregation that walked with him during rehab continues to show up through relapses, setbacks, and finally his death at only thirty seven years old. The pier scenes are especially powerful. We see the brothers as younger men, standing by the water, talking about hopes and dreams. Years later, George returns alone to that same pier and stands where his brother once stood. The silence, the echoes, and the ache in that moment say almost as much as the words on the page. It is not just a nostalgic memory. It is a raw confrontation with grief, mortality, and the way loss reshapes a person’s faith. Yet even here, the book insists that light can break through. Chris’s search for God and for Christian community did not just change his own path, it became the doorway through which George was drawn into church too. What began as Chris’s personal journey toward faith becomes a turning point for the entire family. The message is clear: even in loss, even in messy, unfinished stories, grace and purpose can emerge. Another standout section describes the author’s own descent into what feels like a pit of depression. He uses a striking image of waking in a narrow vertical shaft of mud, light a tiny circle overhead, unable to climb out. That is where a persistent helper appears, checking in, calling, urging him to hold on. The point is not that one conversation magically cures anything. The point is that someone is willing to sit on the edge of the pit and keep lowering down hope, hour after hour and day after day. It is one of the most honest depictions of depression and support we have seen in a faith based book. The church and illness story also lingers. Beasley tells of a woman with stage 4 cancer who stops treatment after someone prays over her and declares her healed. The cancer returns. She dies. It is a sobering caution about confusing faith with denial and about how dangerous it can be when religious exuberance tries to override medical wisdom. The book handles this with nuance. He never trashes prayer or miracles. Instead, he argues that faith and medicine are meant to walk together, not compete. Scattered throughout are portraits of people like Keith, a man who faced significant hardship but somehow refused to live in bitterness. In speaking of Keith, Beasley notes that “Despite the hardships he faced, he never spoke negatively about his past or his circumstances. Instead, he focused on the present and the future, encouraging others to learn, love, and live fully.” Moments like that keep the book grounded in real faces, not just concepts. One of the strongest threads in The Ominous Struggle is its insistence that people in pain do not primarily need advice. They need presence. Beasley hammers this home with a few simple, memorable lines. “In times of crisis, people often need to feel heard and understood more than anything else.” And, “Time is one of the most valuable things we can offer someone who is struggling, and it can make a world of difference.” Those are deceptively simple sentences. In context, they turn into a quiet manifesto. True support is not drive by encouragement or quick spiritual slogans. It is the decision to sit with someone while they cry, to keep texting back, to take their calls when they are not at their best, and to refuse to judge or blame them for their pain. The book also spends a lot of time on authenticity. Many people, including Christians, walk around in what he calls a “mask of happiness,” smiling on the outside while falling apart inside. Social media only amplifies this. Everyone posts the highlight reel. No one posts the nights they cannot sleep or the mornings they cannot get out of bed. Beasley keeps returning to this plea: drop the mask. Admit the hurt. Talk about it. Ask for help before it eats you alive from the inside. On that note, he is very clear that negative feelings are normal. Anger, sadness, fear, jealousy, doubt. These are part of being human, not proof that you have failed as a believer. The challenge is not to never feel them. The challenge is to bring them into conversation with God and with safe people rather than letting them fester in silence. The book does not dodge the question of evil. Instead, it leans into it. Beasley talks frankly about abuse he has experienced, about cosmic battles like the crucifixion of Christ, and about the reality that evil is woven into the human story in ways that are often baffling. He writes, “The truth is, that evil serves a purpose, even when we do not fully understand it. It challenges us, tests us, and ultimately leads us back to God. Whether through personal experiences, like the abuse I endured, or larger cosmic battles like the crucifixion of Christ, evil is part of the human experience. But it is not without hope. For in every struggle, there is the possibility of redemption, healing, and growth.” That is not the kind of sentence you toss off lightly. To his credit, Beasley does not offer this as a glib answer. He repeatedly invites readers to reflect. As he puts it, “As we examine the role of evil in our lives, I encourage you to reflect on your own encounters with darkness. How have they shaped you. And how might you, too, find grace in the midst of the struggle.” Readers who are in the middle of those questions may not agree with every theological conclusion, but they will at least feel that the author has lived them, not just studied them. Visually, this is a more polished and intentional project than The Invisible Soul. The layout is clean and the images are genuinely helpful additions. You get evocative illustrations and graphics that match the text rather than fighting with it. For example, scenes that depict social media towers overshadowing a lone figure, cracked earth around Job, a divided church panel that contrasts light and darkness, and a solitary figure walking past someone collapsed on the tracks. These are not just decorative. They reinforce the emotional and spiritual points the text is making and give visual thinkers another way into the material. Scripturally, the book is rich. Beasley constantly grounds his reflections in Bible passages from both Old and New Testaments. Job, Joseph, Paul, the Psalms, Romans, Ephesians, Matthew, and Hebrews show up again and again. The closing meditation on hope is especially anchored in Hebrews 6:19. “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” That verse becomes a kind of banner over the whole project. If we have critiques, they are minor and mostly about craft. Some ideas reappear several times in slightly different wording, which can give certain sections a repetitive feel. A few passages read a bit like sermon notes sent straight to print, with phrases that could have been tightened or rephrased for smoother reading. Readers who prefer very lean, minimalist prose may occasionally wish an editor had trimmed a paragraph here or there. There is also an interesting tension around mental health. In the dedication sections, there is language that suggests the mental health crisis may “never get better but only be manageable.” For some readers, that line will feel blunt and realistic, a recognition that many conditions are chronic and require ongoing care. For others, it may sound more fatalistic than they are comfortable with. Fortunately, the stories and the overall arc of the book lean much more toward resilient hope. They show therapy, medicine, church, friendship, and prayer all working together to make life not just survivable but meaningful. None of this undercuts the overall impact. It simply marks this as a very earnest, sometimes slightly unpolished book written by someone who clearly cares more about telling the truth than about perfect phrasing. Ultimately, The Ominous Struggle is a book about hope. Not fluffy, “everything is fine” hope, but gritty, lived in hope that has walked through addiction, abuse, depression, grief, church hurt, and long stretches of silence, and still chooses to believe that God is present and that community matters. Beasley invites us to listen more and judge less. To offer time instead of quick fixes. To drop the mask of happiness when we are dying inside. To accept that evil and suffering are part of the story, but not the end of the story. Most of all, he invites us to let God’s promises and presence become, in his words and in the words of Hebrews, “an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” If you are a believer who is tired of plastic answers, if you are a church leader or friend who wants to support people in pain without making things worse, or if you are simply someone who has looked at your life and wondered, “Is there anything beautiful about this at all,” The Ominous Struggle is well worth your time. Check it out on Amazon!
0 Comments
 Score: 85+/100 (8.5+ out of 10)
A Grave Danger: White Chalk Crime is an impassioned, incendiary diatribe targeted at the American education system, Donald J. Trump and the multitude of factors that got him elected, and on what the author calls "White Chalk Crime" (often abbreviated as "WCCrime"). We have to be upfront and honest: we didn't particular enjoy this book. We actually found it be very bitter and unpleasant. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that YOU won't enjoy this book. Maybe it will resonate with you more than it did with us. We also wanted to say that we actually agree with some of the premises and arguments in this book. For example, we absolutely agree that the American education system is flawed and in need of serious, major reform from the top down. Reading, writing, and overall literacy scores continue to drop. On NAEP, 2022 reading scores fell 3 points from 2019 in both 4th and 8th grade, reaching their lowest levels since 2005 (grade 4) and 1998 (grade 8), clear evidence of declining literacy. On NAEP, math fell 5 points (grade 4) and 8 points (grade 8) from 2019 to 2022, with 8th-grade math still 8 points lower in 2024. 8th-grade science fell 4 points from 2019 to 2024. Attendance is also plunging. Roughly 28% of students were chronically absent from 2022-2023). Schools are understaffed. Entering 2024-25, 74% of public schools reported difficulty filling at least one teaching vacancy. Facilities are aging and/or unhealthy in some district with many reporting HVAC and other infrastructure issues (a GAO national survey found 54% of districts need to update or replace multiple building systems; around 41% need HVAC upgrades in at least half their schools (around 36,000 schools), conditions that hinder learning and safety. We've personally had very negative experiences inside and outside of the education system both as teachers and students. It's true: good, caring, innovative, creative teachers are being terminated, unhired, or unpromoted in favor of obedient yes-men who just do what the higher-ups want—no more, no less. This is something that we ABSOLUTELY AGREE with the author on. But here's the thing... how is that any different from any other field? In what field do the bosses resist the temptation to hire who they like? In what field do they not hire (or fire) who they dislike? That's just a part of human nature. Anyway... we also agree that the education system is being hollowed out, becoming a lot more soulless. Let's face it... a lot of underqualified morons are getting degrees and high scores these days. How? Well, cheating has always been a thing. In the old days, students could glimpse at someone else's paper, strongarm a smart friend into coughing up the answers, or just pay someone to do an assignment. Now they've got these seemingly innocuous websites/services like Chegg and Quizlet that pretty much have everyone's answers to old tests, quizzes, and exams. Oh, and the big one: now there's AI/LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Notebook LLM that are just a cheater's dream. (By the way, there is a section of this book that talks about AI and other sections that discuss the new problems the Internet in general caused). Like, a lot of these degrees and honors these days aren't even earned, they're literally manufactured (FAKE). It's like Gaddafi or Idi Amin just putting a new honor badge or medal on their uniform without ever having earned it. The rich and powerful can do that, apparently. And you know who suffers the most? Good people. Caring people. Hard working people. People like us who actually read, write, and do our own work. People who've actually done the work, made the effort, and EARNED the degrees. Yeah, we're the ones who get left behind. We're the ones who get passed over for promotions. We're the ones who get terminated or have our entry passes silently revoked. And who gets the jobs? The people who cheated to get their PhDs and master's degrees. The sychophants who kissed enough butts (or the right butts) to get to the top. The people who anchor themselves to do just what the arbitrary curriculum, standards, and rules say—no more, no less. Yeah, we totally get that! And we agree with the author on those points. The problem is that the narrative of this book is severely hampered and bogged down by the author's fixation on things that seem loosely to do with education, namely Donald Trump and conservatives. It often seems like this book is more fixated on ranting and complaining about Donald Trump than actually discussing education and its issues. We did a CTRL+F search of the book on Adobe Acrobat and found that "Trump" was mentioned 207 times in this book! TWO-HUNDRED AND SEVEN times! Let's compare that to some other things the book could've discussed. "Reading" is mentioned 74 times. "Science" is mentioned 65 times. "Writing" is mentioned 35 times. "Math" is mentioned 15 times. "Creative" & "creativity" are mentioned 12 times. "Art" is only mentioned 11 times. That really goes to show how overly fixated this book is on Trump. Love him or hate him, why do we have to keep reading about him in a book that's supposed to be about education? And you know all those statistics we discussed earlier in this review about the plummeting scores and school attendance? Those aren't from the book, they're actually from our own independent research because this book would rather rant and rave about the author's opinions and ill feelings than just stick to facts and evidence. It really comes across as anectdotal (based on personal feelings, experiences, and emotions) rather than being the data-driven, evidence-based work that it could have been. It's the weakest form of argumentation and rhetoric. That's why we describe this book as a "diatribe." If the author had just stuck to facts and evidence rather than resorting to emotional, tangential rants, this book would've been better for it. Instead, we get really petulant, immature name-calling and hyperbole like: - Likening Trump to orange juice because he's infamously orange-skinned (" I didn’t imagine that Trump would come along and I could make lemonade out of him. I know. Excuse me. With him, it has to be orangeade.") - Calling Trump a "Soul Cannibal" - Saying that people are "psychological rapists" - Saying that Trump is the devil/Satan and comparing him to Hitler constantly ("I didn’t use to believe in the devil until Trump. It now seems like a maybe. Perhaps if I had lived in Germany during Hitler and watched that madman take over my country, I might have... How can he not be the devil?") - Repeatedly calling Trump a "con man" - Compares being written-up at work as being like a "firing squad" that's ready to shoot at you given the order - Calling corrupt school officials "EducRAT$"--which is something that Trump would probably do, ironically - Repeatedly calling Trump a "rapist"/"convicted rapist" which is actually not legally true, and is why ABC News had to pay a $15 million settlement and issued a correction after George Stephanopoulos wrongly said a jury had found Trump liable for rape (the civil verdict was for sexual abuse, not rape). - The following passage: "...they’re agreeing to hand over our democracy to one man, Hitler-style. They’re so irate and so convinced both political parties are corrupt that they’re ignoring the following unsigned poem aimlessly wandering on the internet, filled with undeniable wisdom: It’s so simple. I don’t know why people don’t get it. A man with a pattern of cheating his customers, vendors, and business partners is going to cheat you. A man who’s casually betrayed his wives, Again and again, will casually betray you. A man who lies all the time is lying to you. A man who has spent his entire life screwing people is going to do the exact same thing to you." Everything just seems so hyperbolic, over-the-top, and melodramatic. For example: - Designating people, whom the author's group deems problematic, as "real 'Satans'" - Constantly talking about "evil" and how the things that people do are "evil" or that the system is "evil" or that certain administrators are "evil" - Constantly saying how the school administrators and the officials who allegedly enable them are like "mafia", "gangsters", or "criminals" Can we just name and describe the specific misdeeds/corrupt things that these people allegedly did instead of just throwing labels on them? It often seems that everyone is to blame who doesn't exactly tow the line that the author wants them to tow. Trump is to blame. The system is to blame. The conservatives are to blame. The school admins are to blame. The celebrities who ignored the author's letters or book are to blame. The journalist/reporter is to blame ("Yet, the reporter did nothing more. She was too sure I was the problem"). The psychiatrist is to blame ("conniving psychiatrist"). The judge is to blame ("I enjoyed watching the judge squirm as he labeled it out of his jurisdiction"). Multiple attornies are to blame. We will probably get an angry e-mail blaming us for having opinions. It just seems very finger-pointy. As written, it doesn't come across well in our opinion. This is supposed to be about education, but it just doesn't read like it. The way that this book is written really sounds more like someone who is disgruntled, vengeful, and is taking out their anger and frustration on the institution(s) and people who are presumed to be at fault. It really sounds like ranting and raving most of the time. It reads like relentless, redundant steamrolling with the same things repeating over and over again (mostly about Trump and democracy dying) as opposed to actual factual evidence. Think about the non-fiction books this book is competing against: Kings of Stone by R Jay Driskill, which is heavily evidence-based and research-based, sticking to facts in educating readers about the Hittites. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence in Special Education by Ange Anderson, which is heavily evidence-based and research-based, sticking to facts in educating readers about emerging technologies in education. In contrast, A Graver Danger, which you can tell was written before the November 2024 president election, reads more like a desperate attempt to stop Trump from being reelected rather than an attempt to fix our education system and, as the author continuously mentions, stop school shootings. We're still confused and baffled as to how this was supposed to stop school shootings. From what we gathered, stopping the administrative bullying and "teacher abuse" was supposed to improve the school environment, making school shootings less prevalent... because...? Because there's a cycle of bullying from the top-down and all around that causes students to eventually become school shooters? Because reality-TV makes impressionable students want to be on TV for the notoriety of being a shooter? Because kids are taught to not think critically? We're confused. And it's not our fault. We read the whole book. We read it from beginning to end. We took notes. So much of the core message gets muddled by the loosely-relevant pseudo-apocalyptic political ranting. It doesn't help that a lot of the writing in this book comes across as really self-righteous, pretentious, and condescending. For example: - "Since I’ve scientifically proven the ineffectiveness of parents influencing their children, I’m saying learned it from a teacher!" (Emphasis added) - "Indeed, my teaching excellence is a fact that none dispute." - "...a person like me, a kid whisperer..." - "No one else has put this million-piece puzzle together yet, and that task force will spin more wheels due to the black hole of ignorance." (Again inflating one's intelligence and abilities while disparaging the intelligence and abilities of others) - "Think about the children who would still be alive had that book gone viral" (Ok, this statement... probably came from a place of compassion and care, but it's offensive to us. It actually hurts to read. This is one of those statements in a book that hurts the message of the book rather than helping it. It is literally saying that a book going viral would've stopped school shootings. Could you imagine actually being a victim of one of these shootings? To now read an author say that we should've read their book and our loved one(s) would still be alive?) - "Remember, I outwitted the rocket scientists in my advanced high school chemistry class?" - "Our schools engineered too many ignorant, gullible people." (Insults peoples' intelligence, particularly those who don't agree or vote the wrong way) - "...it’s better to think Karen Horwitz can’t be right, as no one wants an ounce of that guilt." (Writes in third-person in a passive-aggressive manner) - "Those of us with working brains and an ability to dodge manipulative guilt would see being shamed for endorsing a candidate who is a rapist who intends to end our democracy as a good thing." (Implying that only people who votes a certain way have working brains/intelligence) - "Stupidity is more contagious than COVID-19" (Again, calling people who disagree or don't tow the line stupid) It's so agitating and frustrating to read things like this—passages that put people down while pumping the author up. It shouldn't be that way. And the key argument that conservatives are the cause of our education system failing and Trump getting elected is actually not very strong. According to NORC, 71% of college administrators identified as liberal (read it here: https://www.norc.org/research/projects/administrators-views-on-campus-life-diversity-and-politics.html). According to Pew Research, 58% of K-12 teachers identify with or lean Democrat compared to only 35% who identify as Republican (read it here: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/04/04/teachers-views-on-the-state-of-public-k-12-education/). So, the evidence for that whole argument doesn't add up. But not everything about this book is negative. Like we said, we agree with some of the premise. Also, some of the passages are eloquent and even beautiful. The author makes great use of metaphors, similes, and analogies. For examples: - "...education is no longer braided with democracy" - "These documents, you can see for yourself in this book, remain like landmines that have held danger for years." - "... our universities have locked education in a closet, hoping it won’t scream." - "Education is the vaccine of violence." - "Fraud must surface. It’s like a painful pimple on one’s face that needs to pop to find peace." These are actually really good. In fact, some of these are great. Also, we do get some sections that actually focus on the problems and solutions like "Visions for Visionary Schools." It's just unfortunate that this is relegated to so late in the book after we've already been bombarded and inundated with ranting. Anyway, this book may speak to some people. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)
Dear Orchid may be Carol Van Den Hende's best book yet! And what's even more extraordinary about that is how this book really seems like it's intended as more of a companion piece or behind-the-scenes look rather than a mainline installment in the series. Yet, it hits so hard on an emotional level and says so much! Hey, do you know what's often more interesting and exciting than a movie itself? The behind-the-scenes stuff—what inspired it, what was difficult, what was learned, what was gained, what was... earned. And that's somewhat how this book plays out. Dear Orchid is a hybrid collection that sits somewhere between memoir, epistolary essays, and connected short stories. It is framed as a series of “letters” that explore where Carol Van Den Hende’s tenderness for wounded heroes comes from and how real people and moments fed into her fiction. That's right. This isn't a conventional non-fiction or fiction book. Instead, it's a meta text in which fiction stories are explained and given significantly more weight and meaning by the real-life stories and people who inspired them. This book showcases, explores, and celebrates the many courageous and extraordinary wounded veterans who inspired Phoenix & Orchid's journeys in the series. It also provides a lot of insight into the author's personal experiences, serving almost as a memoir chronicling some of her extraordinary life as well. The fact that the author was able to bring this all together into one cohesive text is a testament to her determination and skill in her craft. This is Carol Van Den Hende's magnum opus! Let's dive in! Ok, so what stood out to us? How about the little individual stories that say a lot about the author's world view and mission? The stories that don't directly involve war or the veterans, but that greatly parallel their experiences. One of those stories is how the author met her eventual husband, which shows a love and admiration for literature already budding, presumably long before the author was published. This is later followed by an act of profound selflessness in which Carol and her husband visited Berlin shortly after the Berlin Wall fell. Unable to use their German marks, her husband decides to give them all to a random woman, whose eyes light up and whose spirit seems to soar. The money doesn't just represent wealth, it also represents liberation and freedom from decades of oppression behind the wall. What's fitting is that a lot of this book and series deals with finding one's freedom—being able to move, to breathe, to live—which is powerfully paralleled by the Berlin Wall and this woman's experiences. There is also the unforgettable story of the Coca Cola machine. Young Carol and her best friend figure out how to fish quarters out of the overflowing coin box with a stick and masking tape, dreaming of Creamsicles and Baby Ruths. It feels like a thrilling heist, at least until an older boy on a ten speed bike shows up and silently tries to buy a Sprite with no money. Instead of laughing or walking away, she slips two of the stolen coins into the slot and offers him the victory. Only later does she piece together that he likely has a hearing or speech disability and that he moves through the neighborhood mostly alone. The scene becomes more than just childhood mischief. It turns into an origin story for two core parts of her mission as a writer: her resolve to never again take what is not hers, and her belief in using whatever you have, even ill gotten pocket change, to give someone dignity, joy, and a sense of belonging. And you know what? Those are the exact same things that many wounded warriors and amputees are searching for too. So when Carol later writes about Phoenix struggling to reclaim his agency after life changing injuries, or about the real veterans she profiles, you can feel the through line. This is someone who has been thinking about fairness, harm, and making things right since she was a kid feeding stolen quarters into a soda machine for a lonely, disabled boy. There is another scene from the author’s earlier years in which she tries to give a moth to one of her college professors, a man living with hemophilia. On the surface, it is such an odd little moment, almost whimsical, yet it becomes another quiet metaphor. The moth is fragile, easy to crush, short lived. Her professor, whose blood does not clot the way it should, carries his own kind of fragility inside his body. The encounter captures how Carol’s mind works. She is always noticing the delicate, vulnerable things in people, always looking for symbols that can hold both their beauty and their risk. Those instincts are exactly what make her such a compassionate chronicler of wounded heroes later on. Sadly, however, her professor decides to smother the moth in chloroform and pin it to his collection. What she meant as a small, living gift of beauty is instantly reframed as something to be controlled, studied, and preserved. It becomes a quietly haunting moment, a reminder that fragile things are not always cherished and that people who live with their own vulnerabilities are sometimes still capable of harming other delicate lives without even meaning to. But this story, while somewhat sad and disturbing, also causes the author to have another epiphany: should we be trying save life or preserve it? Because they're not the same thing. Keeping something in extended animation like a trophy or a statue isn't the same thing as giving them back their life and dignity. And now, with that context, we can get into the meat of this book—the heart: the wounded veterans/heroes! Sgt. Bryan Anderson does not simply “inspire” her. He challenges her. Here is a triple amputee who has every reason to be bitter, yet what he radiates most is humor, stubborn independence, and a very clear boundary around pity. He jokes about his prosthetics, shows her the thousand little workarounds that let him live on his own terms, and tells her plainly that he loves his life. Through Bryan, we learn right alongside the author that the job is never to make a character “brave enough” to endure tragedy. The job is to show the full human being who existed before, during, and after it. Gosh, if we remember correctly, he gave us one of the best quotes in the whole book: "Do you think I'll get laid again?" This quote, spoken in the middle of a warzone after an IED explosion has just collapsed his lungs and losing his legs and one of his hands, says a lot. Yes, it can be a bit humorous, even getting a chuckle from the observing friend, but it's also deeply and profoundly human. Something as foundational to our humanity as our sex drive is brought to the forefront, and a deeper set of questions: Now that I've lost my limb(s), can I love again? Am I still desirable? Am I still capable? Am I still human? Doc Jacobs brings a different flavor of courage and grit. He is the competitor who refuses to let limb loss bench him. We watch him return to sports, chase a shot at professional baseball, and pour his energy into helping other veterans. His story is full of grueling rehab and setbacks, yet what lingers is his drive and sense of humor. From Doc, we see what it means to keep chasing joy and excellence in a body that has been permanently altered. He shows Carol that wounded heroes do not just “overcome” something once. They wake up every day and keep choosing to show up in their lives. Then there is Noah Galloway, whose journey through injury, depression, and eventual visibility as an athlete and public figure underscores another crucial lesson. His missing arm and leg are the most obvious things about him at a glance, yet his story is about everything else he has built: fitness, family, new work, new purpose. He is honest about the dark seasons and about how hard it can be to look in the mirror, yet he also embraces opportunities that put his scars in the spotlight instead of hiding them. From Noah, Carol learns how important it is to let characters (and real people) own their stories, including the parts that are painful or messy. Taken together, these heroes teach her how to write about injury and disability with integrity. They teach her to ask, not assume. To focus on what people can do rather than what they have lost. To center agency and choice instead of spectacle and suffering. We can feel those lessons woven into every fictional scene with Phoenix and Orchid, every letter, every quiet moment in which a character is trying to figure out how to move, breathe, and live again. By the time we close Dear Orchid, we feel like we have been entrusted with pieces of many lives: the veterans and amputees who lent their stories, the childhood friends and professors who shaped the author’s conscience, the fictional lovers who carry all of those truths into a wider world. These heroes do not just teach Carol Van Den Hende how to tell better stories. They help her crystallize a mission, and they invite us to care more deeply and see more clearly in our own lives too. What a beautiful bow on top of this gorgeous gift of a series! Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 91/100 (9.1 out of 10)
Colors of You is a very interesting and ambitious LGBTQ+ novel by Damien Benoit-Ledoux! It explores themes like religious and institutional bigotry, acceptance, tolerance, inclusivity, and being your genuine self. Colors of You follows two boys at Benedictine, a conservative Catholic high school: Ethan St. Hilare, an artsy gay sophomore who has just come out over winter break on the social app Profile, and Samanthan "Sam" Sanders, a popular soccer player with a tight circle of "Sportsball Folk" friends and a father who is battling cancer. Ethan has a loving, accepting family, including his older brother Ian and fierce sister Annabelle, but he feels hypervisible and vulnerable at school after his online coming out. Sam, by contrast, is the golden boy who looks like he has everything together but is quietly drowning. His dad is getting weaker from chemotherapy and needs help with basic care. In one of the early gut punch scenes, Sam has to get into the shower with him to help his mom bathe him, and he sees how much the treatment has hollowed his once strong father out. Sam is also figuring out his sexuality, dating Tina halfheartedly while noticing Ethan more than he wants to admit. Something that stood out to us about this book is that it explores this theme—this dichotomy—of openness versus concealment. There are times when characters want to keep their attractions and relationships a secret. There are times when they don't want to hold hands or kiss in public, or admit that they're actually together. The book keeps putting that tension under a microscope. Being out on Profile is not the same as being out in the hallway between third and fourth period. Being honest in a text message is not the same as looking someone in the eye in the cafeteria when everyone is watching. The story keeps asking: is this love something you hide in the shadows, or something you bring into the light We really see that in the contrast between Ethan's secret, shame soaked library encounters with Chiran and his growing, genuine relationship with Sam. With Chiran, Ethan is constantly shrinking himself, agreeing to be invisible so that this other boy can feel safe. It is thrilling and damaging at the same time. With Sam, there is still fear, but there is also mutual care. Their connection is built on long conversations, shared laughs at Java Grind, late night texts, and the kind of honest vulnerability that only comes when someone actually shows up for you in your worst moments. Watching Ethan slowly decide he is done being someone's secret and deserves to be someone's partner is one of the most satisfying parts of the book. Sam's side of the story is equally fascinating. On the surface he is the easygoing soccer star who dates the "right" girl and fits neatly into the school ecosystem. Inside he is exhausted, terrified of losing his father, and carrying the emotional weight of caregiving that is usually reserved for adults. Those scenes of him helping his dad shower, listening to the machines in the hospital room, and then sitting through the wake and funeral bring a very real, grounded layer of grief and responsibility into what could have been a lighter high school romance. It is also in that crucible of loss that he finally chooses authenticity over performance. The conversation with his dad about not wasting time hiding who you are echoes all the way into his later decision to stand up in front of the Inclusivity Club and own who he is. The setting at Benedictine is another thing the book does quite well. Instead of making the Catholic school a cartoon villain, it shows a whole ecosystem: homophobic classmates and angry parents on one side, and on the other side teachers, nuns, and staff who are quietly and sometimes loudly on the kids' side. The Inclusivity Club, technically open to everyone but clearly designed as a safe space for queer students and allies, becomes the center of a small Rainbow Rebellion. The scenes around the locker vandalism, the club's first meeting, and the tense parent gathering give readers a good sense of what it actually looks like to push for change inside a conservative institution, step by fragile step. There are several things about this book that bothered us. First of all, there were times when the LGBTQ+ advocacy and pride aspect was super over the top. There were times when they overshowed other aspects of the book and started to verge on ok, maybe we're pushing a bit much and going off the rails. Like, there's a scene in which not one but TWO of the bullies ends up being gay. What are the odds? Seriously? There's a scene in which a parent in the big meeting reveals that their child is gay in one of the book's biggest "AHA!" moments. About 2% of the US population identifies as gay, but it almost seems like half the characters in this book are either outwardly or secretively gay. How many gay friends and family members do you have? Cause we have like three that we know of in our community in three separate households (and they're great guys—love the heck out of 'em). This book would have you believe that a huge portion of the population is in the closet. It just doesn't seem realistic in that regard. You can argue that the 2% figure reflects those who are admittedly gay and that a lot of people hide their sexuality out of shame or fear of retribution, which is plausible. But we still feel the statistical representation is overblown and exaggerated in the context of this book, to the point where it seems forced and unrealistic. The key scene that got under our skins is the funeral scene in the conservative church. What bothered us about this scene is that the character in question went out of his way to wear a rainbow tie during the funeral in this conservative church. Wait a minute? Isn't the funeral supposed to be about the deceased person and not about YOU, your identity, your sexuality, and your values? We get that the deceased person came to an epiphany of acceptance of the character and stuff, but... that doesn't change the fact that the funeral should be drawing attention to the person who died, not away toward something like someone else's sexuality. Think about it: do you wear a bright pink or orange suit to someone's funeral? If you're a bridesmaid or female guest, do you wear white to some other woman's wedding? Do you go to a book group called "Non-Fiction Book Group" and start posting a bunch of sci-fi and fantasy books there? Well, that's how we felt about this character deciding to flaunt a symbol of their sexuality at someone else's funeral. Like, it's just not the time or the place. We get that the eulogy is about "Living Authentically" but... how far are you gonna take that? You can't show up naked at a funeral either. That's arguably as authentic as you can get. Furthermore, why would you go out of your way to disrespect a church that made it explicitly clear that it has a certain set of beliefs and way of dressing and doing things. Yeah, those beliefs may not be compatible with you, but why would you go out of your way to antagonize them? That's like if you brought roast beef and smoked turkey to a party full of vegans knowing that it was going to be a vegan party, or if you brought a statue of Vishnu into a Muslim mosque or a Jewish synagogue. That's like wearing a Star Trek costume to a Star Wars party or dressing up in an Michigan uniform and crashing a Ohio State party. Like, you can have your beliefs, your lifestyle—the things that you like, love, and support—that's perfectly fine. But have some regard and respect for the beliefs and values of others who may be different from you. Respect is a two-way street. It often seems like the characters are going out of their way to push the issue on people they know have already made up their minds. It's like they go out of their way to be as inconsiderate, aggressive, and forceful as possible about their message. The best real-life comparative example we can think of is the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case in which a baker was sued by a gay couple for refusing to bake them a cake based on his religious beliefs, and the US Supreme Court ruled in the baker's favor. Why? Because it was within his rights not to be forced to go against his religious beliefs just to accommodate the demands of the customer. By the way, did you know that there was an almost identical case in Northern Ireland (Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd and others), but in this case, the details of the cake were more explicit: a cake that very clearly celebrates, promotes, and advocates for gay marriage, which would be put on a conservative Christian baker to create. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled in favor of the baker in that case too. You can't force a private citizen to support or believe something they don't support or believe in. You definitely can't force an artist to produce art that goes against their beliefs and values. We have freedom of thought in a free society. And you know what? It's a good marketing and business opportunity for LGBTQ+ advocates and allies to create LGBTQ+-friendly businesses like LGBTQ+-friendly bakeries and private schools. If you don't like a conservative Catholic private school being a conservative Catholic private school, then go to a secular or LGBTQ+-friendly school. Some of the things in this book kinda reminded us of these cases. For example, why do the boys insist on staying at this very specific Catholic private school that marginalizes them? No one is forcing these two characters to attend this very specific Catholic private school. In fact, there's a transgender character in here (Calico) who clearly finds freedom, acceptance, and happiness at their secular public school. But instead of going to a secular public school, the characters make it their mission to go out of their way to try to get this whole Catholic school to change its views and accept queer people. It's an admirable cause, and it makes for a good, inspiring story, but we have some apprehensions about how, where, and when they go about this. Ethan just straight up wears a rainbow backpack to his conservative Catholic school near the very beginning of the book. Like, they clearly have uniforms and a dress code at a conservative Catholic private school. What did you think was going to happen? If one of us signed up for a Catholic private school and wore a tank top or a Speedo, we'd get written up or told to go home and change. If we got employed at Walmart but refused to wear the Walmart uniform and instead wanted to wear an American flag, we'd be reprimanded. If you made the Venezuelan professional soccer team but refused to wear the Venezuelan uniform and instead wanted to wear Argentina's, you'd be kicked off the team and/or booed by the fans. Do you go to a Muslim or Jewish house and start cooking pork chops or roasting a pig? Do you go to a Hindu person's house and just start frying steaks and trying to force them to eat hamburgers? In certain situations, you wear certain things. In certain situations, you do certain things. You might not like it, and the host might be wrong as hell, but they're still the host, and they still have the right to think and believe what they think and believe. It's not your place to go to someone else's house and be like, "You will do what I want and follow my rules now." They have the right to have rules in their house to follow. If you don't like it, then that's not the house for you. If this were a public school or a public institution, the situation would be a lot different, and we might have different feelings about the matter. And about this situation with the characters staying at the Benedictine school instead of joining Calico at a secular public school, think of it like this: if you were in an abusive household where you are beaten, bullied, and neglected every day, then were given an opportunity to go to another household where you would clearly be loved and accepted, why would you go back to the abusive household and try to get everyone there to change? That would be... not smart. Not smart at all. It would be courageous and brave, yes, but not smart at all. Then again, you could argue, history is made by the bold and people who did courageous yet probably not safe things. It's not like what Harriet Tubman did was the safest thing to do at the time, but it ended up being the right thing. Anyway, there were aspects of this book that we liked. We liked that this book puts forward the idea that LGBTQ+ people don't all fit a mold and are as diverse, different, unique, and special as straight, heteronormative, and cis people are. LGBTQ+ people can be sci-fi nerds, athletes, and more! We also admired the text messaging gimmick because it was a bit outside-the-box and different. We do have another book in this contest that also uses a text messaging gimmick (Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine), but it's still interesting to see. There are also a few supporting characters in here who are cool. Tina is cool. She goes from being briefly part of a love triangle to being a huge supporter and advocate of the main protagonists and their mission. And, of course, there's Sam's dad who is battling cancer and is undergoing a huge character arc throughout the book. Oh, and there are a few members of the Benedictine faculty and staff who stand up against the bigotry like Sister Cornelius, Mr. Hund, and Brother Mathias, demonstrating that there are people who care. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)
The Tempest Fury is the highly-anticipated third installment in the stellar Saxon Saga series by Ingrid Moon! Ingrid Moon has established The Saxon Saga as one of our favorite series in the history of our contests! Come to think of it, it's arguably our favorite sci-fi series as far as OCA goes. What makes this series so great are the likable, charismatic, and cool main characters: Turner Boone, a brilliant but broken teen strategist with a brain wired for war games, and Elyon, a deadly Saxen assassin who is equal parts weapon and wounded soul. Their bond and connection is unmistakable. While this isn't a traditional romance, you can feel the tension, desire, chemistry, and attachment between these two. It radiates from the pages like the rays of a star. Then you add the super intriguing villainous and/or morally gray characters like Vindik, Chelani, and Reia PLUS conflicted characters like Admiral Weden and Greming—those are some ingredients for a compelling character drama recipe! We can't emphasize this enough: we really felt for these characters, particularly Boone and Elyon. A lot of times, we read books with these really flat characters who seem just as bored to be in their books as we are whilst reading them. That's not the case with Ingrid Moon books, especially the Saxon Saga. These characters are lively, motivated, emotional, and animated. They all seem to be after something. Even someone like Weden—not even a super central character—is still rich with inner conflict, torn between loyalty to the Coalition, loyalty to her crews, and the creeping realization that the people she serves are not who she thought they were. And, of course, there was Greming in the previous book who was both complicit and remorseful for Vindik's crimes, a character motivated to make amends and find redemption. That's something else we appreciated about these books and this series: they don't forget their continuity. Characters don't just come and go. They don't just appear and are forgotten about. The actions and influences of characters from previous books, like Vindik, Greming, Chelani, and Reia are still felt. Speaking of Chelani... Chelani, in the previous book, was more of an enigmatic background figure—the mysterious "client" who seemed to be sabotaging Boone. In a sense, he was a bit of a phantom menace, to borrow a Star Wars term. Well, Chelani is front and center in this book as its principal villain. He has BIG shoes to fill considering that Vindik was such a menacing and imposing villain in book one, so much so that his influence was still strongly felt in book two. Chelani is a different kind of villain. While Vindik was big, powerful, and intimidating, Chelani is more a schemer and a manipulator. In other words, while Vindik was more like Thanos or Darth Vader—someone who is just going to try to overwhelm and control you with shear might and power—Chelani is more like Loki or Palpatine/Darth Sidious, someone who is going to ensnare you in a web of lies and blackmail. Chelani is one of the seven chairmen of the Coalition, but he isn't the head chairman, not yet... That role is filled by Prime Chair Temten, Chelani's political rival. Chelani is actually a little bit like Loki in the sense that, while also being a Machiavellian mischevious-maker, he has a huge chip on his shoulder due to his lineage. This is due to the expectations piled on him as scion of the Chelani family. Temten and the other Chairs still treat him as an ambitious upstart rather than the rightful center of power. Everything about Eritrissere, his family’s ringworld estate with its immaculate vineyards and carefully staged pageantry, feels like a monument he is building to prove that the name Chelani belongs at the top. That mix of insecurity and brilliance makes him one of those villains who is dangerously competent yet uncomfortably human. You never quite root for him, but you always understand how he got this way, and every scene he shares with Boone, Elyon, or Weden crackles with tension. In terms of story, this book might have our favorite setup yet. Boone is reeling from the fallout of Nightfire, drowning in guilt and grief, and basically trying to disappear on the Makellan. Instead, he winds up back in the game, quietly hustling high level strategy matches as the mysterious “Nova” until both a crime boss and the League Intelligence Bureau catch his scent. The League scenes are especially riveting. Watching this shell shocked teenager sit at a table with generals and analysts, calmly unpacking Chelani’s moves and fleet doctrine while his own mind is fraying from the multiplex “grooves,” is tense and heartbreaking at the same time. On the other side of the war, Elyon has more or less sold herself to Chelani, living and working on his ringworld estate, Eritrissere, training his marines and biding her time as she plots how to protect Boone and eventually hit Chelani where it hurts. We really appreciated how much this volume leans into the political and intelligence thriller aspects of the setting. Chelani’s ringworld is more than a cool sci fi backdrop. It is a symbol of his power and legacy, the place where he plays at being benevolent patriarch while quietly building weapons, patronage networks, and the groundwork for a coup. Admiral Weden is trapped in that gravity well, trying to follow orders and protect her people while suspecting she is helping to crown a tyrant. The League is not exactly pure either. They are quick to see Boone as a useful tool. There is something chilling about the way they discuss him as an asset at the same time they are swearing to protect him. That moral murkiness keeps the stakes grounded. Elyon probably delivers the single most powerful emotional turn in the book. Without spoiling specifics, there is a stretch in which grief almost breaks her. For a while, she goes numb. Then all that pain crystalizes into fury, and she chooses one target, one man, to hold responsible. The resulting operation on Eritrissere, with the Makellan running interference while Elyon turns herself into the literal tempest tearing through Chelani’s sanctuary, is one of the most cathartic and cinematic sequences in the series. Her later confrontation with Reia about who really owns her loyalty is equally strong. It is the moment Elyon stops being just a weapon in other people’s hands and starts choosing how she will be used, and by whom. If we have a small critique, it is that the middle can feel dense at times. That's something we noticed about all three of the books in the series: they really meander and weave around in their middle-sections. It's also pretty complicated and overly-complex at times. Chelani alone has like three or four different plans that he's enacting either simultaneously, consecutively, or concurrently: the assassination plot, the Scotli terraforming beam superweapon, Elyon as a biological weapon, using the CN fleets and maneuvering his slow coup against Temten, etc. The guy is always scheming. There are a lot of acronyms, ship classes, and moving parts, and some of the war room and briefing scenes go deep on fleet composition and political positioning. For us, the payoff is worth it because the big moves in the third act make sense and hit harder. However, readers who are mainly here for fistfights, dogfights, or saber duels might occasionally wish the story would hurry back to Boone, Elyon, and the Makellan blowing things up. That said, if you enjoy the “spy novel in space” flavor of science fiction, this is where The Tempest Fury really shines. Oh, and we finally figure out why—after all this time—Boone is such a masterful strategist at such a young age, something which always seemed weird to us. It turns out that Boone is an auton, a motherless biologically-enhanced hybrid who was engineered to essentially be a chess engine—or, in this case, an appote master (appote is the Coalition's military strategy game akin to chess mixed with Battleship). This explains why Boone is so unbeatable at appote and why he's a strategist so sought-after that he commanded his own floatilla fleet and was heavily recruited by Vindik and others. So, now it makes sense! Finally! What's extra special about this is that it provides another way in which Boone and Elyon are similar and kindred spirits. Both are, in their own ways, lab-built weapons who were shaped, used, and hurt by powerful institutions long before they ever had a say in their own lives. Boone was engineered to think and calculate, Elyon was trained and tortured to fight and kill, and both have to figure out what it means to be a person rather than a tool. That shared origin in trauma and manipulation makes their quiet moments of care, loyalty, and stubborn affection for each other hit even harder. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
We were not expecting to enjoy this book so much! We weren't expecting it to hit this hard and to be so emotional, evocative, and inspirational. We've read a lot of book about yoga (and yoga-adjacent concepts like mindfulness, meditation, and posture-improving stretches) over the years. We felt like we were going into another one of those. To our surprise, we were instead met with a spirited personal memoir chronicling the author's harrowing journey as well as what his yoga teachings have meant to him. Even that's not saying enough. These yoga teachings didn't just mean a lot to him, they changed his life and helped to heal his mind, soul, and body. They turned his life around. This is so much more than a how-to manual or a list of spiritual affirmations. It's so much more than a collection of breathing techniques, poses, and idealistic quotes. It is the lived story of a very broken person slowly, stubbornly crawling toward wholeness with the help of a very unusual (but very special) teacher, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and a demanding set of practices. What grabbed us first is how human and vulnerable this is. Daren does not present himself as a graceful yogi who has everything figured out. He comes to this path with chronic fatigue, colitis, serious allergies, a brain injury, PTSD, and simmering anger that poisons his relationships and his own nervous system. He is exhausted, judgmental, and often harsh on himself. In other words, he looks much more like a real person than a yoga poster. Unlike authors of other yoga books, he doesn't talk like he's some kind of guru, grandmaster, or expert. He talks like one of us, which—ironically—seems to give him even more authority and credibility. He is a learner, like us. He is open minded, like he invites us to be. He is a seeker, like he welcomes us to be. Early in the book, there is a scene that quietly redefines everything that follows. A late night phone call drags him, somewhat reluctantly, to a tiny bedroom in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood to meet a young Indian teacher in white. Everyone squeezes in around the bed. Because of his injuries, Daren has to sit with his feet pointing toward the saint, not even realizing that is considered disrespectful. In that silence Daren has an inner vision that becomes the spine of the whole memoir. He experiences himself as pure luminous consciousness, filling space with white and golden light, while in the middle of that light sits a huge mountain of dark mud. He understands that the mud is his mind and all its old impressions, and that somehow, some day, he will be free of it. That one experience is enough to convince him that this teacher and this path are real, and it is enough to keep him going through many years of confusion and hard work. From there the book moves into the first wave of courses and practices, and this is where Daren’s style really shines. He does not just list teachings as bullet points, he lets you watch them land in his own messy life. The three gunas are not just Sanskrit words, they are patterns you can feel. Rajas looks like his addiction to exercise and his compulsion to push his body past its limits. Tamas looks like the heavy depression and fatigue that keeps pulling him into bed. Sattva starts out as a stranger, then slowly becomes the taste of clarity, lightness, and unprompted laughter that begins to surface as his nervous system calms down. Big concepts come attached to memorable images. Karma gets explained through this “postal worker” analogy in which people who hurt you are simply delivering packages that were already addressed to you. Emotions and impressions are described as lines scratched into stone, then into mud, sand, water, and finally air. At the beginning, every slight feels carved into rock. With practice, reactions become lighter, shorter, and less sticky until they finally leave no residue at all. That one metaphor is worth the price of the book. We also loved the way he treats confusion. One of the most striking lines in here is that “blessed are those who are confused.” That sounds almost wrong until you see it in context. Confusion, in this framework, is what happens when an old, cramped belief system breaks down and the mind has not yet grabbed a new box. Instead of being a failure, it is a sign that something deeper is shifting from head to heart. The invitation is not to patch the confusion as fast as possible, but to breathe through it and let a more spacious clarity emerge. Perhaps the biggest surprise for us comes in the final stretch. Many spiritual memoirs climax at the ashram in India and then just sort of stop. Here, the India chapters are powerful, but they are not the end. The last fifty pages bring him home again to Los Angeles traffic, jobs, and everyday responsibilities. The question shifts from “Can I touch samadhi?” to “How do I live this in an apartment, on a freeway, and in a body that still needs care?” Poems like “Where Is True Value?” show him wrestling honestly with what actually matters day after day when survival is no longer the only concern. Status, productivity, and comfort lose some of their shine. What remains meaningful are practice, service, nature, and that quiet, steady joy that does not depend on circumstances. We appreciated that he does not pretend to come back as a flawless saint. Old habits resurface. His health is still a work in progress. There are days of doubt and heaviness. Real yoga, in this book, is not presented as a magic wand that erases difficulty. It looks more like a set of disciplines and a relationship with a teacher that keep pulling him back to center whenever life pulls him off balance. One thing to know going in is that this book is deeply devotional. Daren clearly loves and reveres Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. He does not spend much time critiquing his teacher or the organization. This is not an investigative report, it is a testimony. For some readers, that wholehearted devotion will be moving and beautiful. For others, especially those who are wary of guru centered paths, the lack of critical distance may feel like a blind spot. We think the fairest way to read it is to let it be what it clearly wants to be: an honest account of what it felt like to entrust his life to a living master and a lineage that, from his point of view, literally saved him. Another thing we admired is how often the book puts real psychological and physiological insight into very simple, memorable instructions. When difficult feelings arise, the guidance is not to sit around analyzing the story, but to simply observe the raw sensation: the heat, the tightness, the pounding in the chest. Analysis feeds the narrative and keeps the emotion alive. Neutral observation lets it run its course and dissolve. That sounds almost too simple on paper, yet when we watch him apply it to PTSD, rage, and years of stored grief, it begins to look like a fierce discipline rather than a soft idea. The same practicality shows up everywhere. There is a whole thread about how powerful breathing practices require fresh air and ventilation, not a sealed, sweaty room full of recycled carbon dioxide. There is the strict instruction not to move at all during Sudarshan Kriya, which leads to a stunning moment when the pain that used to force him to fidget simply stops once he commits to stillness. There is the advice to come out of meditation slowly, with eyes closed and a few minutes of gentle transition, instead of snapping straight from deep rest into phone notifications. There is even a quirky little “twelve second rule” for how much silence to leave in recorded talks so listeners can digest the knowledge without drifting away. Details like that make this path feel lived in and road tested rather than vague and mystical. We were also struck by how many paradoxes Daren is asked to live with. Hope, for example, is framed as something that can actually pull you out of the present, because it is a demand placed on the future. At one point he is told to “be hopeless,” not in a depressive sense, but in the sense of dropping that demand and fully inhabiting what is here now. The threefold instruction to burn, vanish, and dissolve takes on real meaning as he practices tapas (burning old patterns), self study (letting the small identity thin out), and devotion (melting in love for something larger than himself). It sounds poetic, but in these pages it comes with real sweat and real tears. Gurudev himself often comes across as unpredictable in the best possible way. At one point a whole caravan of cars does a baffling U turn and drives all the way back so that one tired person can rest, quietly demonstrating that human well being matters more than schedules and plans. At another point, Daren, who has been compulsively over exercising for years, is told to stop all exercise for two months. It feels harsh and almost cruel until we see how that forced stillness finally lets his body process deeper layers of stress and trauma that constant striving had been keeping in motion. The sangha, too, is presented as “the path of the brave” because other seekers are not there to coddle him. They are there to push his buttons and flush old reactions to the surface so they can finally be seen and released. Perhaps our favorite recurring image is the one he uses for the goal of all this. Enlightenment here is not checked out or floaty. It is described as a state of profound joy and fullness that is also razor sharp and alert, symbolized by Ganesh with his big, accepting belly and the alert snake cinched like a belt around his waist. That mix of softness and intensity is exactly what the book keeps pointing to. Real yoga is not about becoming a blissed out puddle. It is about becoming someone whose heart is wide open and whose awareness is bright, steady, and very much awake. Here are some of the memorable passages and quotes we loved from this book: “The seeds of karma are roasted in the fires of knowledge.” "I understood that I am my true self, pure consciousness. I am the bright light surrounding everything, not a mountain of mud." "Blessed are those who are confused. Confusion arises when a belief system breaks. That is a sign of growth." "Real freedom is a lack of inner triggers or buttons." "Discipline protects freedom. Freedom without discipline is like a country without a defense." "Real yoga includes being able to laugh freely. Real yoga includes being fully present in the now moment." "Wanting perfection is in the nature of human beings and the way to achieve it is yoga." If you are tired of yoga books that only talk about poses and cute affirmations, and you are open to a path that includes devotion to a teacher, this is a rich, thoughtful, and unexpectedly moving read. It probably will not change your stretching routine. It might change how you think about what yoga is actually for. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
Great love stories involve two people with holes, two people you wouldn't think would get along, two people with unclaimed or unresolved baggage. The best love stories involve two people finding ways to make each other better. They're not parasitic, abusive, or needy, they're complementary and reciprocal. That, perhaps more than anything else, really elevates this romance novel from just another romance novel to a must-read. Wrecked by You is a spicy contemporary romance novel by Kate Sweden that centers on the chaotic professional relationship between Sales Director Rayann Wilder and the intensely controlled security consultant, Max Harrington. Rayann Wilder is the “brilliant chaos” sister in a family of six who inherited their father’s luxury travel company, Wilder Horizons. She is a creative, impulsive sales director who makes magic for high end clients but constantly feels like the messy one compared to her hyper competent sisters, especially the stern COO, Summer. When Rayann books a destination wedding in a Scottish castle for two formerly feuding clans (think Capulets & Montagues from Romeo & Juliet), Summer decides the trip is too high risk to trust to Rayann alone and assigns head of security Max Harrington to go with her. Max is a former Navy SEAL, now a spreadsheet loving risk manager, and Rayann’s long time work nemesis. Right off the bat, you can can tell how diametrically opposed and opposites these two are. Also notable is how their rivalry and differences parallels that of the families they're supposed to be planning the wedding around. Anyway, on the way to Scotland their enemies-to-lovers dynamic kicks into gear. Rayann is late to the gate, spills coffee on herself, and mortifyingly spills a bright pink vibrator out of her bag right in front of Max. He is unruffled, quietly amused, and of course they end up seated side by side on the long haul flight. In Scotland they juggle feuding families, unpredictable weather, clan drama, and a castle that seems determined to stage disasters. Max wants zero surprises. Rayann believes surprises are the point. Their constant sniping, forced proximity, and shared responsibility for making the event a success gradually turn into mutual respect and simmering attraction. What we really appreciated is how each of the characters comes in clutch at different times. It's not like one is always right and one is always wrong. For example, there are moments when Rayann’s spontaneity and people skills are exactly what defuses a tense situation or keeps guests happy, and other moments when Max’s worst-case-scenario planning and security mindset are the only things keeping everything from falling apart. Emotionally, too, they keep trading places as the strong one and the one who needs saving, which really sells this as a partnership rather than a one-sided rescue. The fire is perhaps the best example of this (not to spoil too much). It allows for the two characters to use their different skills and strengths. It especially shows how Rayann is so much more than someone with people skills and that her chaos isn't always a bad thing. In fact, it allows her to react to the unexpected. Complementing this is Max, who knows the routine on what to do in emergency circumstances like this. You see that rhythm again and again: Rayann improvising and soothing people, and Max anticipating risk and keeping everyone safe. You gradually feel both of them slowly realizing they are stronger as a team than they ever were as adversaries. The bond they start to share starts to seem earned rather than forced, which is key to an effective romance. There are a few cliche moments here and there including Max's tragic and traumatic backstory in the military, but—somehow—that never robs those moments and scenes of their emotional weight and impact. We also liked a few of quotes and passages in this book. One of our favorites is: "'When I finally have you, Rayann... it won’t be because I lost control.' A sharp inhale. A muscle ticked in his jaw. His hands flexed, tension pulling at every muscle. 'It’ll be because I let myself.'" Can't you just feel the tension and emotional weight of that moment? Not just the visceral descriptions of Max's physiological experiences but the words themselves. They say a lot about Max as a character and how he's changing from someone trying to control everything to someone who is allowing himself to feel and be free again. Oh, and by the way, this book can be really funny at times. One of our favorite running jokes is when Rayann starts speaking Italian, but gets fixated on weird phrases instead of learning to speak fluently. So she ends up saying all sorts of hilarious things when they're translated into English. They're things like "this is a goat situation" and "Make love to me like I’m the last mozzarella on Earth." Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
Horrifas Magic Makeover by Susan L. Krueger joins Frankinschool by Caryn Rivadeneira as one of the most charming and beloved middle-grade novels to come our way! Are you a fan of fairy-tales and lighthearted stories featuring magic? You might have noticed that witches are often portrayed as the nasty, no-good villains, tricksters, troublemakers, and evildoers in these stories. They're often referred to as mean, ugly, and/or evil. They're often given exaggerated and grotesque features like wiry or frizzy hair, wrinkly skin (often an otherworldly color like green), menacing feline eyes, a wart or two, and—of course—a long, protruding nose with a hairy mole on it. It's like creators go out of their way to portray witches as ugly, undesirable, and inhuman as they possibly can. Well, imagine flipping the script on the tales of "mean, ugly, evil" witches. Imagine putting yourself in their shoes, Taking on their perspective. Imagine seeing humanity and the world as they see them. We might see witches as scary and an eyesore, but how might they perceive us? What if they see us normies in a similar way to how we perceive and portray them? In other words, imagine a world in which witches see themselves as the gorgeous, desirable, and liberated ones while humans are hideous, undesirable, and self-limiting. What's gross to us is delectable to them. What's ugly to us is beautiful to them. It's actually a fascinating and thought-provoking concept! And it's executed with so much tact and care. At the heart of this book is Horrifa, a young witch who is already considered stunning in her own world (among witches). She has green, scaly skin, wild root like hair, smoke on her breath, and a lovely collection of warts. To her mother, Dragunda, this is peak beauty. To Horrifa, at least for a while, it is something to hide. She has fallen under the spell of a mortal fairy tale about a prince’s ball and smooth, pink, twirly princesses. She wants to look like them, fit in with them, and win the prince’s attention. In other words, she wants to trade in her culture’s idea of beauty for someone else’s. The way the book explores that wish is both hilarious and sharp. Horrifa and Dragunda do not just wave a wand and turn her into a princess. They cobble together a “mortal makeover” using witch logic. Horrifa brews a potion to change her eye color. She slathers herself with a bone and moonlight paste so she can be pale and smooth. She dyes her hair with seaweed to get golden locks. Dragunda, grumbling but devoted, sneaks out to solve the “pink ball gown” problem and comes home with one of the strangest dresses in children’s literature, stitched out of stolen pig snouts. It is gross. It is ridiculous. It is also very, very funny. What really works is that the joke is always on the idea of a single, correct way to be beautiful, not on Horrifa herself. Dragunda never stops telling her how gorgeous she is as a witch. The insults are aimed at mortals. They are “small,” “pale,” “smooth,” and “silly.” The book lets kids see how strange and arbitrary our own standards might look from the outside. We call pointy chins and hooked noses “ugly,” but in witch culture those same traits are dazzling. That reversal lands so well because the author never drops the emotional truth underneath. Horrifa’s longing is real and understandable. Most kids will recognize that feeling of wanting to look like the people in a story or on a screen. The adventure that follows keeps pushing that theme. Getting to the ball turns into a whole sequence of chaotic, inventive witch solutions. Eggston the lake monster becomes a taxi service. A golden coach is “borrowed” with a cloud of ashy smoke that makes the mortal girls think it is on fire. Dragunda scares the horses into bolting. The result is not a graceful entrance at the top of a staircase but a crash into a swamp. Horrifa’s carefully built costume literally falls apart in the muck. Her night of perfection is gone. The way the book handles that disappointment is lovely. Dragunda fixes what she can, undoes the pig snout theft with a witty spell, and then offers Horrifa a different way to experience the ball. The chandelier scene is probably the emotional peak. Horrifa and her mother transform into bats and hang from the ceiling to watch the party from above. Instead of sweeping romance, they see crowded guests, braggy princesses, and a prince who is more fussy than charming. The famous ball is noisy, superficial, and honestly less magical than a good witch jamboree. Horrifa’s fantasy runs right into reality, and you can feel her quietly recalibrating. She is not “settling” when she chooses to go home. She is finally seeing clearly that her world, her body, and her life are already special. That is a powerful note for kids, especially for any child who has tried to squeeze into someone else’s idea of “pretty.” On the craft side, this feels like a strong pick for confident young readers or as a read aloud for slightly younger ones. The vocabulary is rich, the sentences are descriptive, and there is a lot of text per page, so it skews older middle grade rather than early chapter book. The black and white art, with its thin lines and expressive faces, supports the spooky comedy mood and sprinkles in fun background details like spiders, bats, and cats. If there is one mild caveat, it is that the makeover preparations take up a big chunk of the book. Very impatient readers might wonder when they will finally get to the ball. The payoff is worth it, however, and the slow build helps the final “this is not as great as I imagined” moment feel earned. This book has a certain choppiness, randomness, and chaos to it. A lot happens in a lot of different locations over the course of only 90 pages. For example, there's a moment when Horrifa just so happens to gain the help of a lake monster, Eggston. However, even that isn't arbitrary. It's earned, as things should be in stories. See, Eggston's help wasn't just something that happened out of nowhere, it's something that Horrifa earned with her kindness and compassion by helping to take a hook out of the lake monster's mouth in the past. This really shows that despite the way Horrifa and her mother might look to humans (like a monster), she is the opposite of a monster on the inside. This book repeatedly and effectively reiterates the message that beauty comes from the inside and that you should always be yourself, not anyone else. You know, there's a nuance to this book that we think might be missed by more shallow readers. This book isn't just a funny, weird, zany story with colorful, charimatic characters, it actually says a lot. It's a commentary on beauty standards. You could even stretch this out to things like body dysmorphia and other body/beauty image struggles. Let's face it, we've all opened a magazine or saw someone on TV and said, "I want to look like that" or "I wish I looked like that." We've all walked away saying to ourselves, "Why am I so fat?" or "Why am I so short?" or "Why is my hair not straight and/or curly enough?" or "Why are my muscles so small?" or "Why is my butt so big and/or small?" or "Why are my breasts so big and/or small?" or "Why am I not as beautiful and/or handsome like so-and-so or such-and-such." That's what Horrifa is experiencing. She wants the blue eyes, bright hair, and white skin of the human girls in the magazines—well, in this case, the fairy-tale books. What's ironic about all of this is that all those wacky, gross-sounding things that the witches use for their beauty solutions and makeup aren't too dissimilar from makeup, which is made of stuff like fish. When you really stop to think about it, makeup is also a kind of socially approved potion making. Grown ups smear on creams that sting, paint their faces with powders and liquids, glue on false lashes, dye their hair with chemicals that smell like something from a lab, even let people poke them with needles so they can look a certain way. In witch culture, rat milk, bilious yellow dye, and beet stained feet are glamorous. In ours, it is contour sticks, chemical peels, and injections. The book is quietly asking the question: who decided which version was normal and which was disgusting, and why do we obey those rules so faithfully? Horrifa’s blue eye drops are one of our favorite details because they dramatize how powerful that kind of conditioning can be. She literally changes how she sees the world, then panics when reality no longer matches the ideal in her head. That is what happens when we internalize beauty standards too deeply. We start to misread the mirror. The genius of this book is that it wraps that idea in jokes about pig snouts and lake monsters so kids can feel it before they ever have to put adult words to it. Anyway, this is a book about being your genuine self and moving past the noise. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)
Exploring Beauty with Photographer Samantha Moller Lopez, Volume 1 is a beautiful photography collection featuring spectacular nature photos by Samantha Moller Lopez. The book is credited to Dow Creative Enterprises (presumably functioning as the corporate publisher/author) and set to "Song of Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Song of Nature" is an inspired choice of text, a sweeping meditation on nature as the original creator and teacher. Emerson’s lines move from the grand and cosmic to the small and intimate, talking about stars and oceans in one breath, then apples, flowers, and dew in the next. The book presents the poem one short line at a time, spread across the pages, which slows your reading down and turns each line into something you can sit with. Instead of rushing through a block of verse, you are nudged to ponder every phrase in conversation with a single image. It's Emerson. It's practically perfect. Emerson's poem is an extraordinary literary example. With that said, we can't credit Lopez or Dow for the beauty of those passages and lines for obvious reasons. We can, however, credit them for providing fitting photographs that illustrate the different passages and lines. And that, to be honest, is hit or miss. There are times when the photographs match the lines and passages, and there are times when they just seem to be there, arbitrarily. Let's start with some the times that the photographs fit the poem... On page 4, an actual photo of the moon on a visibly cloudy evening accompanies the line "The sportive sun, the gibbous moon." Fittingly, it appears to be a gibbous moon. On page 12, there's a magnificent photograph of a stairway leading up and to the right with a marvelous ray of light coming down through the branches and leaves. The accompanying line is: "I sit by the shining Fount of Life." The only photo that would probably be more perfect is if the stairway were replaced with a fountain. On page 31, there's an image of a blooming flower with star-like rays radiating from the seedlings. The matching line is: "Tricked out in star and flower" On page 45, a fitting image of a tall tree accompanies the line "The summit of the whole." A tall mountain like Fuji probably would've worked too, but this is fine. On page 59, a photo of a deer aligns with the line "My creatures travail and wait." On page 67, probably the most beautiful and visually striking page in the book, a photo of a flowing body of light-blue water sparsely concealed behind the cover of green trees, a white path leading to the water. On page 75, the accompanying line "And mix the bowl again" is paired with a body of water wrapped in a circular ring, almost like a bowl. And there are a bunch of other examples like the pink rose on page 84 with "And the fresh rose on yonder thorn." That's awesome. However, there are a lot of photos in here that either seem redundant (very similar to others in the collection), superfluous, or that don't seem to fit the line at all. There are multiple shots of bamboo forests, multiple stone paths through trees, and multiple shrine gates from only slightly different angles. The first time you see a bamboo corridor or a tunnel of torii, it feels magical and fresh. By the third or fourth time, the impact starts to fade and the book begins to feel padded rather than tightly curated. A slimmer, more ruthlessly edited set of images would probably have made the strongest ones shine even brighter. There are also multiple shots of the exact same tree with the white papers hanging around it. Furthermore, there are pairings that require a lot of interpretive gymnastics. Lines that reference specific places or ideas, such as the Judaean manger, Nile, or the Academe, are sometimes matched with images that feel only vaguely related, like a wooded path or a generic stretch of bamboo. You can tell yourself that the path hints at pilgrimage, or that the bamboo stands in for a far off riverbank or a place of learning, but those connections are not immediately clear. In those moments you feel the photograph serving itself rather than serving the line. Or maybe like it's just a placeholder. That said, the photos themselves are rarely less than pleasing to look at. Lopez has a good eye for natural light, color, and texture. The soft blues and pinks of her skies, the glowing petals beaded with raindrops, the mossy roots and stone, all speak to someone who really walks in these places and cares about them. Even when the thematic pairing is loose, the image often still does its job as a visual pause, giving you a moment to breathe before you move to the next line of the poem. The design choice to give each line a full page of its own, paired with a single image, is one of the book’s quiet strengths. The generous white space and the steady rhythm of page turns create a meditative reading experience. You are not skimming a poem on a screen, you are taking a slow walk with it, one phrase and one scene at a time. For readers who already love Emerson, that is a gift. For readers who are new to him, it might be one of the gentlest and most accessible ways to meet his work. From a project standpoint, this feels like a very promising Volume 1. The concept is strong. Pair a classic, spiritually rich poem with contemporary nature photography, use the book format to slow people down, invite them to notice both word and world. With tighter image selection and more deliberate matching in future volumes, this series could become something really special, a kind of ongoing visual conversation with great poets. All in all, this book succeeds more often than it stumbles. The hits are genuinely beautiful and occasionally breathtaking, the misses are mostly matters of redundancy and looseness rather than any lack of skill. If you enjoy contemplative nature photography, classic poetry, or gift books that invite quiet reflection, this is a volume that is well worth sitting with, one line and one photograph at a time. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
Nurse Florence, Why Do Bug Bites Itch? is definitely one of the better installments in Michael Dow's long-running, award-winning Nurse Florence series! This is a health-based collection of children's books that we've long held mixed opinions about, largely due to hit-or-miss illustrations, stilted plots, hollow character motivations, and the complexity of the vocabulary (for children). What we've never questioned was the intention of these books: to introduce health topics to children while educating and exciting them about these topics. Nurse Florence, Why Do Bug Bites Itch? is one of the best-illustrated and relatable books in the series. These books are written to teach kids real science and real health concepts, often using situations that feel familiar and nonthreatening. On that front, this installment really shines. Bug bites are universal. They are annoying but not terrifying, which makes them a perfect entry point into talking about the immune system, skin, and germs. By the time kids reach the last page, they understand that the red bump and itch are not random punishment. They are the body reacting to chemicals in the insect's saliva. The story setup is simple but effective. Jean, Condi, and Sonia are on their way to lunch when Sonia cannot stop scratching her arm. Enter Nurse Florence, who takes their questions seriously and walks them through the whole process, from the insect using a proboscis to pierce the skin, to the blood vessel underneath, to the body recognizing saliva as foreign. The dialogue feels smoother and more natural than in many previous entries. The kids ask the questions real children would ask. Nurse Florence answers in clear, short chunks that kids can follow without getting lost in jargon. The illustrations are also a noticeable step up here. The close up of the mosquito proboscis in the skin is one of the best visuals in the series. It is simple and not too gross. The itchy bump, scratchy fingers, and expressive faces of the kids all support the text instead of distracting from it. The back matter, including the glossary and brief references, gives parents and teachers extra tools if they want to stretch this into a small lesson or discussion. The journal page with reflection questions is a smart touch for classrooms. There are still a few series quirks that show up. The story is very lesson first and character second, so readers looking for big emotions or deeper character arcs will not find them here. The vocabulary is mostly well judged for early elementary, although we still rely on adults to help kids with words like "proboscis" or "saliva." That can be a plus if you treat the book as something to read together, which is probably how it works best. We're going to say something a bit funny but true: the mosquito in this book is one of the cutest characters of the contest season! The author and illustrator took something that is usually seen as foreign, frustrating, annoying, pain-inducing, triggering, and scary, and actually made it cute and even friendly-seeming. This is probably a good thing. You don't want to make kids even more scared of something they're already scared of. It's true that bugs freak people out, not just mosquitos, but things like spiders, centipedes, and bed bugs. There are even people afraid of worms, beetles, and ants. There've been studies done in which people who were afraid of spiders were shown "friendly spider" movies (as a form of exposure therapy), reporting later that their attitudes and feelings toward spiders were less negative and severe. So, this book could help in the same way. Oh, and one of the other awesome things about this book is that it actually provides practical advice on how to deal with bug bites, like using calamine lotion, hydrocortisone cream, or even an ice cube to reduce itching. That turns the story from just “here is why it happens” into “here is what you can actually do,” which kids and parents will both appreciate. Ironically, we just read Steel Soldier, a book about the Battle of Guadalcanal which spoke a lot about malaria-carrying mosquitos, so it's a danger that arguably can't be underestimated, but it shouldn't be so terrifying that one can't live their life without freaking out about each and every bug bite. Check it out on Amazon! |
Archives
December 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed
