Editorial Reviews for Nominees
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 Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
Color us impressed! We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of Hero Dawn: The Shadow of Peace by Diego Rincon! While we weren't quite fans of the cover or even the plot, this book is actually remarkable in a lot of ways, particularly when it comes to the writing, the characters, and the world-building! This book seriously reminded us of some of the very best fantasy novels we've read over the years—books like The Angels of Resistance by David V. Mammina and Kindred of the Unseen by Micah Beardsley. Is the plot as compelling as The Angels of Resistance? Well, maybe not. Is the world-building as rich as Kindred of the Unseen? Actually, it's pretty close. With that said, this book succeeds at one key thing: chemistry. These characters just have so much chemistry! You feel like they are real people who actually care about each other and have bond that's beyond the superficial. Oh, and some of them have cool powers and/or skills, which is cool (like a cherry on top). A lot of that comes down to the hero duo at the heart of this story: Bastius and Tristian. Bastius is the broken, burned-out survivor who is trying very hard to pretend he is just a merchant lord with a drinking problem instead of a failed Sentry who watched everyone else die. Tristian is the sharp, principled, occasionally stubborn strategist who believes in duty and in Bastius far more than Bastius believes in himself. Put them in a room together and you get some of the sharpest, most heartfelt banter in the book. Put them in a collapsing crypt with a demon and you get one of the best climactic two man boss fights we have read in a while. Bastius and Tristian just CLICK right away, and you can tell there's a lot of history behind their bond. You feel it in the way they talk to each other, the way they argue, and the way they wordlessly fall into formation when trouble hits. You can especially tell in the way they know how to joke and press each other's buttons without pressing too hard. Tristian knows exactly when to push Bastius and when to back off. Bastius knows exactly how far he can joke or snap before he has to rein himself in. There are little hints of shared battles, shared mentors, and shared disappointments scattered through their conversations, so even when they are just walking or drinking together, it carries the weight of years. When things get dangerous, that bond really shines. Tristian trusts Bastius with his life even when Bastius does not trust himself. Bastius, no matter how broken he feels, is always watching Tristian’s back and stepping into harm’s way for him without thinking twice. By the time they are facing Caedes together, you believe one hundred percent that these are two men who have bled, failed, learned, and grown side by side for a long time, and that is exactly the sort of bond that makes a fantasy duo stick in your head. The supporting cast is just as strong. With dense fantasy books that have a lot of characters, it's easy to fall into the NPC trap: characters who are just there for window dressing. Well, that doesn't seem to be the case with this book! The key to that is how all of these characters seem to be real people with real lives. They have their own clothing styles, hairdos, jobs, passions, motives, and things to do that are extraneous to the plot and main characters. And that's a good thing! The world seems really lived in. We found ourselves randomly enamored with the supporting and minor characters. Princess Olivia, for example, is only in a slice of the story, yet she instantly feels like someone who could headline her own book. She is a princess, a general, and a political bargaining chip all at once, but she never comes across as cold or stuck up. She teases Bastius, brushes off Germain’s overprotective scolding, and has this bittersweet “childhood friends who grew up into different lives” vibe with him that quietly aches beneath the surface. Their balcony conversation about purpose and home is oddly tender for a scene that happens in the middle of a mob infested masquerade. Little touches like that are everywhere. Olivia could have been a generic visiting royal. Instead, she feels like a real person with history, feelings, and obligations, passing in and out of the story but leaving a surprisingly strong emotional footprint behind. Even her guard, Germain, got to shine. His protectiveness is both humorous and charming. Then there is the setting. This world feels like it has strata. On the surface you have the nobles and royal court trying to preserve a fragile peace they barely understand. Beneath that you have the Sentries and their half-forgotten war against literal monsters. To the side you have a crime driven city like Herus, full of brothels, nightclubs, mansions, and docks, that is quietly being hunted by something worse than any mob boss. The book keeps moving between those layers, and it usually does so very well. Herus in particular is a triumph. It feels grimy and glamorous at the same time, a place where you can drink with pirates, dance in a crime lord’s club, then turn a corner and run headlong into a forest demon. The "three families" dynamic gives the city a crime thriller flavor. The masquerade and nocturne sequence, when everything goes off the rails and the Buckwalker starts to move, is one of those set pieces that makes you sit up a little straighter. It is loud, chaotic, and cinematic. The other big standout for us is the way this book handles horror. Caedes the Buckwalker is not just some big animal in the woods. He is theatrical, mocking, and genuinely unsettling. The underground sanctum is described with enough sensory detail that you can practically smell the blood and dust. Julian Lore’s diary, the chants, the carvings, the broken bodies, all of that gives the demon weight and history. When Bastius and Tristian finally face him, it feels like a payoff to a real mystery, not just a random boss dropped into the story. On top of that, the magic system, the Prowesses, are handled in a satisfying way. They feel both mythic and personal. Bastius’s Blue Flame is not just a power, it is tied to his identity and his trauma. Its return is emotional, not just flashy. Tristian’s electric ability fits his personality. Even the Light Bearer, Victor, and his tie to shadows and Vambosh the dog, has a cool, symbolic quality to it. Actually, fun fact: Vambosh is the exact same kind of giant dog as Cassius, the protagonist from Animal Revenge by David Bush—yet another thing this book has in common with great OCA fantasy books over the years. This might sound weird, but the world and the creatures that live in it are kinda a character too. For example, there are Moth Goblins that are described in such fascinating detail. You can practically feel their wings brushing the air and hear their chittering in the dark. They are not just “some monsters to fight,” they have a look, a movement pattern, a way of attacking, and a specific role in the ecosystem of fear the book is building. Now, we would be lying if we said everything was perfect. This book can be dense. There are a lot of names, factions, and bits of history to hold in your head. You get Sentries, Salasils, warlocks, old wars in Hadia, lost ships, royal politics, three separate crime families, pirates, forest cults, and a demonic hierarchy that is only partly explained. For readers who love big, chewy worlds with layers of lore, this will feel like a buffet. For readers who prefer something leaner and more streamlined, it might feel like a lot. The pacing reflects that. The book takes its time laying foundations, especially in the early noble court chapters and the setup in Herus. There are stretches where you can feel the narrative wandering a bit, talking and planning for quite a while before the next major event hits. When the action comes, it is very good. We just wish the road there had been a bit shorter and straighter at times. At the same time, the author made a very smart decision with this book: making this part of a series and not making it overly long. Yes, it's dense, but you can still get through it and enjoy it in a day or two (or maybe three). Another way in which we felt the book dropped the ball was that it killed off arguably its coolest character in the first few chapters. Gaius Emile Trasque is killed fairly early on in the Camden Abbey sequence. He fights the king’s assassin in his bedroom and courtyard, takes multiple brutal wounds (knees, shoulders, etc.), stays upright out of sheer will, and gets in some last hits, but he’s ultimately finished off in the yard. His last words are “Find him… for the darkness looms” before the assassin cuts him down. Get this: Trasque is almost EIGHT FEET TALL and a bad@#$ senior citizen who can stil crush your skull and kick your SH** in! He is essentially like a mix of the Mountain (Ser Gregor Clegane) and Ser Barristan Selmy (the noble and highly capable elderly knight) from Game of Thrones. And Trasque literally lives in an Abby eternally haunted and marked as the place where an infamous massacre took place. How bad@$$ can you get? Well, he's dead now, so... For us, it felt like the book introduced a once in a generation legend, someone who could have anchored whole arcs or even his own prequel, only to remove him almost as soon as things get going. It raises the stakes and shows the assassin is no joke, sure, but it also leaves a bit of a hole where a larger than life character could have continued to shine. That's not to say that Bastius and Tristian aren't cool and awesome in their own right, but Trasque was on a different tier. He was too well built to just kill off like that. With all these cool characters and world-building, it's pretty easy to lose focus on the plot. Like, the plot gets somewhat muddled and buried by the other highlights of this book. There is technically a clear spine here: the death of a king, the reemergence of ancient darkness, and a duo of damaged heroes drawn into a hunt for a demon that is preying on a crime ridden city. That is a strong premise. The problem is that it sometimes feels like the book is more interested in hanging out with its cast and exploring side pockets of the world than in driving that central conflict forward in a straight line. The noble court intrigue, the Herus mob drama, the Sentry legacy, the Hadian backstory, the Buckwalker mystery, Julian Lore’s diary, Victor’s curse, forest warriors, pirates, and more all jostle for space. Most of these things are cool. They just do not always cohere into a single, easily trackable line of action. It also does not help that the emotional throughline is often stronger than the plot throughline. We almost always knew how we felt about the characters in a scene. We did not always remember exactly what they were supposed to be accomplishing in terms of the larger mission at that moment. That is not a fatal flaw, but it does mean this book reads more like a richly layered season of television than a tight, one and done fantasy novel. Thankfully, the fact that this is the first book in a series takes a lot of the sting out of that. You can tell Rincon is investing early in a cast, a setting, and a mythology that he clearly plans to use for multiple books. In that context, the density and occasional meandering feel less like sloppiness and more like an intentional decision to lay track for future stories. We just hope future installments give the plot a slightly firmer hand on the wheel. Ok, one last thing: this book is beautifully and eloquently written! The best way we can describe the writing is... it's sophisticated! Whenever Rincon describes something, there's a lot of detail, a lot of layers and richness to it. Rincon could be describing some random corridor in the palace, a crack in the cellar floor, or the rain hitting Bastius’s empty estate, and he still makes it feel alive with smell, texture, and history. The moonlit desert where the Sentries face the Salasil, the reek of sulfur that slithers into Walter’s banquet, the storm-tossed decks of the Hadian expedition, the cold, stone weight of Cromwell at night, all of it feels vivid and almost musical. Moments that could have been quick bits of exposition instead unfold like tiny self-contained stories, which fits a novel so concerned with memory, legacy, and the long shadow that peace casts over people’s hearts. Overall, though, Hero Dawn: The Shadow of Peace really impressed us. It has the feel of a big, ambitious fantasy saga written by someone who genuinely loves their characters and their world. The dialogue is sharp. The relationships pop. The horror moments hit. The action, when it arrives, is exciting and cinematic. The epilogue hooks you for more. Check it out on the author's website!
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 Score: 90+/100 (9.0+ out of 10)
Nurse Florence, What is Muscular Dystrophy? by Michael Dow is yet another educational health-based children's book by Michael Dow, who has put together quite the collection of Nurse Florence books! We've read about a half-dozen in the series so far. Nurse Florence, What is Muscular Dystrophy? simultaneously embodies the very best and very worst aspects of the series. On one hand, it is one of the longest and most exhaustive books in the series (in a good way)! Even being familiar with the subject matter, we really learned stuff from this book! That's a good thing. This wasn't just a nothing-burger, this book had substance! You do not just learn that muscular dystrophy is a “muscle disease” and call it a day. You learn that it is actually a whole family of over thirty genetic conditions, each with its own personality, timeline, and problem spots in the body. The book walks you through the biggest and most commonly discussed types: Duchenne, Becker, Emery-Dreifuss, myotonic dystrophy, facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, congenital muscular dystrophy, limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, and oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy. You get simple but meaningful distinctions. Duchenne, for example, often shows up in little boys who fall a lot, walk late, and have big calf muscles from scar and fat replacing healthy tissue. Becker looks similar but tends to come on a bit later and progress more slowly. Emery-Dreifuss is tied to stiff tendons and heart problems. Myotonic dystrophy involves difficulty relaxing muscles, along with issues in the heart and breathing muscles. Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy can show up as weakness in the face and shoulders, sometimes more on one side. Congenital forms show up at birth or in very young infants who seem floppy and miss milestones. Limb-girdle mostly affects the hips and shoulders. Oculopharyngeal causes droopy eyelids and trouble swallowing, often in middle age. That is a lot of nuance for a children’s book to take on, and it actually pulls it off. The book also does a good job explaining who can be affected. It is very clear that this is not something that only happens to one race, one country, or one type of family. Children and adults of any background can be affected. There is a strong emphasis on family history, since many forms of muscular dystrophy are inherited and run along family lines. There is also an honest acknowledgment that some types are more common in boys than girls because of how certain genes are passed down on the X chromosome. That alone is a big piece of health literacy that many adults do not fully understand, and here it is being introduced to kids in plain, straightforward terms. On top of that, the book goes deep into signs, symptoms, and complications. Muscle weakness is just the beginning. Readers learn about tight tendons that make it hard to move joints, scoliosis that curves the spine, breathing difficulties and lung infections, heart muscle problems, choking risks when throat muscles are weak, learning challenges in some children, and bones that break more easily because kids are not able to run and jump as much. It really drills home that this is a whole body condition that affects everyday life, not just “tired legs.” At the same time, the illustrations of wheelchairs, braces, ventilators, and posture supports present all of these things in a normalized way. Medical equipment shows up as a tool that helps people, not something to be ashamed of. The medical side is surprisingly robust. Kids are introduced to genes and how small changes in these microscopic “instructions” can lead to big changes in muscles. The book explains common tests, including blood tests that look for high levels of creatine kinase that leak out of damaged muscles, genetic testing that examines DNA for changes, muscle biopsies that look at the tissue under a microscope, heart and lung testing, and electromyography that measures how muscles respond to electrical signals. It also introduces the idea of a care team. Children are shown that someone with muscular dystrophy might see a neurologist for the nerves and muscles, a cardiologist for the heart, a pulmonologist for the lungs, a rehab doctor and physical therapist for movement and stretching, an occupational therapist for daily tasks, a dietitian for nutrition, and social workers or counselors for emotional and practical support. That is an impressive overview of modern multidisciplinary care. The book is also very explicit that there is currently no cure for muscular dystrophy. It does not sugarcoat that reality or pretend that a special diet or single pill is going to fix everything. Instead, it leans into the idea of treatment and management. Medicines like corticosteroids are mentioned for preserving muscle strength for as long as possible. Heart medicines help support the heart when it is affected. Gene-targeted therapies and clinical trials are mentioned as active areas of research that give hope for the future. The text covers range of motion exercises to keep joints flexible, braces to support walking, wheelchairs as mobility tools that help people get around, ventilators and breathing machines when lungs need extra help, spinal surgery in some cases of severe scoliosis, pacemakers for heart rhythm problems, and vaccines and regular checkups to help prevent infections that could make things worse. Readers come away with the sense that although there is no cure yet, there are a lot of things doctors, therapists, families, and patients themselves can do. With that said, that's A LOT to put in a children's book. It can be overwhelming. This also highlights another strange, awkward, and somewhat negative thing about this book: it seems really unnatural and contrived. These characters just don't seem like real people. They don't talk like real people. Who sits down with kids and spontaneously has a 125-page conversation with them about muscular dystrophy, rattling off every subtype, test, specialist, complication, and treatment option in one go? It reads much more like a detailed pamphlet that was chopped into speech bubbles than an actual conversation happening over lunch. Like, how is Nurse Florence eating her lunch while talking about all this stuff? How is she finishing this entire conversation/lecture + eating her lunch in the 15-30 minutes this book is supposedly takes place in? Don't these girls want to talk about boys? Homework? Pop music? Drama at home? Oh, and by the way, what prompted them to ask about muscular dystrophy and start talking about it? That's an issue that has lingered throughout this series: characters often lack motivation and seem to exist like cardboard cutouts to facilitate the info-dump. That is the awkward part. The information is outstanding. The vehicle for the information (the “dialogue") often feels stiff and contrived. The kids rarely talk like kids. They mostly exist to ask perfectly timed textbook questions so Nurse Florence can launch into another long explanation. There are very few jokes, interruptions, misunderstandings, or emotional reactions from them. No one zones out, changes the subject, or needs something repeated. For a 125 page “chat,” it is strangely tidy and perfectly linear. Because of that, the pacing can feel off. The girls are supposedly in the school cafeteria, yet the discussion keeps drilling deeper and deeper into increasingly specific medical territory with very little break. You rarely get small character beats like “Condi looked worried” or “Sonia needed that part explained again.” Instead, you often get paragraph after paragraph of uninterrupted explanation. It is educational, but it does not feel organic. We also felt a bit of a missed opportunity on the emotional and human side. With this much space, the book could have easily woven in one or two short case examples of kids living with muscular dystrophy, how they play, go to school, use their wheelchairs, or work with their care team. Instead, almost everything stays in the abstract. We are told what can happen, but we rarely see a specific child or family. That keeps the book squarely in “medical briefing” territory instead of letting it become a fully formed story kids can attach to. So, we want to be clear: the content is gold. You learn a ton about who muscular dystrophy affects, what the different types are, what medicines and therapies exist, why there is no cure yet, and what hope looks like through research and clinical trials. At the same time, the way that content is delivered can feel dry, overstuffed, and unnatural for a children’s picture book. It is the kind of resource that will shine brightest when an adult is there to pause, paraphrase, and emotionally translate, rather than something kids will naturally breeze through on their own. With that said, muscular dystrophy (MS) is something that has become increasingly relevant. We know someone who suffers from it. Winners of ours have lived with it. Most notably, recently, the mother of Fernando Mendoza (Heisman Trophy & National Championship winner ) was wheelchair bound throughout the playoffs watching her son play on national television. So, it's definitely something interesting to learn about and something that's worth learning about. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93+/100 (9.3+ out of 10)
There are few things more fascinating than someone's diary! (Not like we ever got nosy and dug through someone's before...) What makes a diary so interesting? Well, because it's personal, informal, and unfiltered--all things which this book aspires to be (and often succeeds at being). In this book, Erin is an eleven-year-old adopted girl in Western Canada who starts a journal at the beginning of sixth grade. At first she writes about normal school stuff and her “standard family of eight” (four humans and four cats), but very quickly the focus becomes how other people treat her because she is adopted. Friends and adults constantly ask intrusive questions like “Who is your real mom?” or “Why did they give you away?” and make comments that frame her as either tragic or “lucky” and rescued. These moments trigger a lot of frustration and hurt, especially when her best friend blurts out her adoption story on the bus without permission. Through the fall, Erin uses the journal to sort through complicated feelings. She loves her parents deeply and feels safe at home, yet she has a “little hole” inside when she thinks about her birth mother and the blurry, missing parts of her story. She feels like she is walking a fence between belonging and not belonging, made of two stories that only she has read. She also gets very specific about language, making a whole list of better words to replace phrases like “real parents” or “given away,” because the usual vocabulary feels wrong and hurtful. After a particularly nasty cafeteria incident, Erin decides to turn her English “big project” into something that could change how her classmates see adoption. She begins to channel all that confusion, anger, and curiosity into something more constructive, using the assignment as a way to speak up instead of just react. With the support of her amazing teacher, Ms. Lee, her parents, and the school librarian, Erin grows into a kind of quiet social warrior, a seeker and advocate for truth who wants everyone around her to have better words, better questions, and better stories about adoption. This book does quite a few things well. First of all, the doodles and the pictures really give the impression of how raw, real, and lived-in this diary is. Honestly, this is a brilliant concept. There are times when the execution is a bit rough (in our opinion). Part of that is simply the fact that we already read the author's non-fiction work, The Little Book of Nosy Questions About Adoption, which essentially said the same things and confronted the same issues. In isolation, both books are solid. Together, they come across as a bit redundant. One issue we noticed is that a lot of this book sounds like a fictional rehash of The Little Book of Nosy Questions About Adoption, which then has the additional problem of making Erin sound like a mouthpiece for the author. We'd argue that's probably the weak point of this book—when the author's and the character's voices become intermingled and seem indistinguishable from one another. It happens in books from time to time, especially when a character is grandstanding and trying to make a point. It happened in I Saw What I Saw by Tony Garrantino when Reggie starts giving a profound speech about social justice in the middle of a dining room (if we remember correctly) while the other characters just stare at him, probably imagining an epic instrumental score complete with an angelic choir. The problem with having a character become an author's mouthpiece is that it distrupts the immersion. It also tends to make the narrative sound more rhetorical and didactic rather than entertaining or enthralling. People tend to not want to be lectured. It happens. It's not ideal, but it happens, especially when the message is the point. And this happens to be one of those books in which the message is the point. Part of the benefit of this book being a diary is that it provides some cushion between the reader and the author, making the lecture by the author not seem as much like a lecture from the author. Instead, it makes it seem a bit more personal and emotional. You feel for Erin and grow to understand her emotions, questions, and struggles. She is a character in her own right and not exclusively a mouthpiece or a tool to facilitate a message, which helps. Part of that is the writing—or, rather, Erin's writing. She writes really personable lines like: "Some [families] have two moms, or two dads, or even just one mom or one dad. Some even have a whole pack of siblings, like a human lasagna of brothers and sisters stacked on top of each other (I love lasagna!)." Reading her write "I love lasagna" makes her seem more like a real person, even though it is a bit random. Hey, real people have their food preferences. They're allowed to. Something else about Erin stood out to us: all her discussions about her pet cat, Missy (Full Name: Miss Sweet Cookie Dough). She talks about Missy throughout the book and actually seems to have one of the clearest, most grounded relationships in her life with this scruffy little ex–street cat. Erin talks about Missy with a kind of uncomplicated certainty that she does not have about anything else. With people, Erin is always juggling mixed feelings, missing pieces, and questions she cannot quite answer. With Missy, things are simple: Missy was hurt, unwanted, and waiting for a very long time, Erin saw her, loved her, and brought her home. That is it. Erin calls Missy her “soul kitty” and describes her routine in so much detail that you can feel that this cat is her safe person in animal form. Missy is the one who sleeps on her bed, listens to her vent, and becomes the comic relief when the journal entries get heavy. At the same time, the book uses Missy to clarify something really important about adoption. Missy is the one character who actually fits the “rescued” narrative perfectly. She was clearly mistreated and literally saved by Erin’s family. Erin is not. When Erin contrasts Missy’s story with her own, she is quietly teaching the reader that you cannot just copy and paste animal shelter logic onto human adoption. Her parents did not swoop in like heroes to save a broken child, they simply became her parents and she became their daughter. Missy’s presence makes that point land in a kid friendly way. She gives Erin comfort inside the story, and she gives readers a concrete metaphor to help them understand what adoption is and what it is not. Our favorite moment in the entire book is actually when Erin calls Missy "MSCD." For some reason, we found that so funny. It's like calling your mother-in-law your "MIL." There are some good lines in here. For example: "I'm not a lost toy" "I'm not a donation box" "I wasn't rescued, I wasn't saved" On top of being rhetorical and didactic, it gets a bit shouty and ranty, to be brutally honest. Erin's frustration and anger, while understandable, can sometimes be a bit off putting. She sometimes comes across as someone who is perpetually frustrated, triggered, and angry. It's to the point where we wonder if (in the hypothetical scenario that Erin were a housemate, schoolmate, neighbor, or friend) we wouldn't feel like we were stepping on eggshells all the time when around her. Perpetually and easily triggered people tend to drive others away, they come across as people who are at war with everyone else—with the world. They tend to make it seem like everyone has to adjust their life and actions around them and not the other way around. It's just unpleasant. Anyway, Erin undergoes quite an arc, becoming increasingly more confident, motivated, and driven throughout the book. Her sense of self--her identity--also solidifies. That's nice to see. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)
We know you have one: A book of quotes. A notebook or Google Doc filled with all the great or interesting things you've read or that people have said to you. Or maybe you have a dusty old calendar that you kept because there was a beautiful, inspirational, or witty quote on every other page. You keep telling yourself that you'll use those someday. There’s a reason we keep these. These quotes are tiny, portable jolts of perspective, comfort, and courage. A single sentence can make you feel less alone, help you reframe a problem, or give you exactly the turn of phrase you need to finally land a point with your audience or your kids or your coworkers. In a sense, this book is that quote-filled Google Doc, only bigger, better organized, and very intentionally centered on women’s voices. Carolyn Warner gathers over two thousand quotations from women and arranges them into forty themed chapters like Ability, Action, Age, Courage, Education, Humor, Leadership, Love, Politics, Women, and Work. Each chapter opens with a short, practical mini-essay from Warner on how that theme plays out in real speeches, conversations, and leadership moments, and then hands the mic to a chorus of women from across history and public life. Warner herself comes out of a world of speeches and stump talks, and you can feel it. She tells stories about growing up as a teen speaker, scribbling quotations on index cards, and learning the hard way how a well chosen line can wake up a drowsy audience. One of the sparks for this book was hearing a male editor of a famous quotation anthology dismiss women on the grounds that “they do not write much or have much to say.” This treasury is her answer to that, a big, loud, joyful refutation bound between covers. The variety of voices is one of the pleasures here. You get judges, prime ministers, novelists, comedians, activists, scientists, and even fictional characters like Miss Piggy, often sitting side by side in surprising and delightful ways. Some quotes are quiet and wise, some are fiery and challenging, and some are just laugh out loud funny, but together they remind you that women have been thinking, observing, and speaking sharply about every human topic you can imagine. This might be silly to say (considering this is a collection of quotes), but the highlights of this book are the quotes themselves and the people they're attributed to. Seriously, though! These are some of the most noteworthy women (and people) who ever lived: Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Pearl S. Buck, Marie Curie, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Queen Elizabeth II, Susan B. Anthony (she pops up A LOT, it seems), Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, Helen Keller, Margaret Mead, Maya Angelou, Agatha Christie, Erma Bombeck, and many more. Heck, this book literally opens with a foreword by the incomparable Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court and one of the most influential legal figures in American history. This book doubles as a celebration of the incredible, earth-shaking, glass-ceiling-breaking, record-breaking, headline-making, history making women throughout all of time! These are politicians, world leaders, champions, literary greats, Olympic medalists, actresses, scientists, pioneers, and more. It can be really inspirational for mothers and daughters—heck, anyone! If you're a living, breathing human being, there's bound to be a quote in here you'll love. Oh, one thing we have to mention is how so many of these women have been mentioned and/or heavily featured in other books we've read! In fact, there are a lot of quotes by Mother Theresa (usually called "St. Theresa of Jesus" in this book) and legendary actress Ethel Merman, both of whom were heavily featured in author Tony Cointreau's books, Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa...and Me and A Gift of Love--serving as sort of motherly figures to Cointreau. As a straight read through, this works more like a “dive in anywhere” treasury than a linear narrative, but as a working tool for speakers, teachers, writers, and leaders, it is excellent. It gives you not only the words, but also a bit of coaching on how and when to use them, and it does all of that while quietly correcting the old, biased picture of who gets to have “the last word” in our quote books and on our stages. There are actually a multitude of valuable ways to use this book. You can use it in the straightforward way: as a collection of quotes. Or you can use it in the way the author seems to have intended: for use in communication, in presentations, and public speaking occasions. The fact that this book is well-organized helps you to just find what you need, plug, and play. These quotes can serve as the hook and/or anchor for a Power Point presentation, speech, or lecture, for example. The author also talks about other aspects of presenting like the colors and clothes you wear as well as the body language you exhibit. One of the best quotes from this book is actually just Warner explaing: "As a speaker, perhaps the most empowering quality you can communicate to your listeners is to cause them to care." There's even a short section on respecting your audience's time and attention. This actually reminded us a little bit of Briefly Speaking by Deborah Shames and David Booth, in that sense. Just like entire religions and ideologies have been built around quotes, you can build your entire presentation on them! Here are some of our favorite quotes from the book: "When I was young, I was poor; when old, I became rich; but in each condition I found disappointment. When I had the faculties for enjoyment, I had not the means; when the means came, the faculties were gone." - Comtesse Catherine de Gasparin "Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience." - Dame Rebecca Wes "Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power." - Barbara Jordan "When men are oppressed, it is tragedy. When women are oppressed, it is tradition" - Bernadette Mosala "Everybody has a purpose in life, even if it is to serve as a bad example." - Carolyn Warner's Grandmother "Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway." - Mary Kay Ash "We have to preach what winners practice." - Mary Jean LeTendre "God is a sure paymaster. He may not pay at the end of every week, or month, or year, but remember He pays in the end." - Anne of Austria "Nearly everyone is in favor of going to heaven but too many are hoping they live long enough to see an easing of the entrance requirements." - Anonymous "Imagination is the highest kite one can fly." - Lauren Bacall "The only place you find success before work is in the dictionary." - May V. Smith Perhaps our favorite passage from this book was: "Kids don't make the movies, they don't write the books, They don't paint gay pictures of gangsters and crooks, They don't make the liquor, they don't run the bars, They don't make the law and they don't sell the cars, They don't peddle the drugs that addle the brain, That's all done by older folks greedy for gain. Delinquent teenagers, Oh how we condemn The sins of the nation and blame it on them. By the laws of the blameless the Savior made known, Who is there among us to cast the first stone? For in so many cases (it's sad but it's true), The title 'delinquent' fits older folks too." - Margaret Hogan This one resonated with us for some reason, perhaps because it points out the influences that books, movies, music, and media have on our children and how most of that is peddled by older people with power and money to gain more power and money. That's profound yet eerily true! Now, this book—which is written monstly for women—does sometimes seem heavily feminist or even derogatory-toward-men in a way that could rub some readers the wrong way. It definitely wasn't the author's intention to be explicitly anti-male, but there are a lot of quotes in here that put men down, poke fun at them, or blame them for some of society's ills. Even some of the funnier-seeming quotes can cut a bit sharp to men. Here are a few: "I require only three things of a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid." - Dorothy Parker "After all, God made man and then said: I can do better than that—and made woman." - Adele Rogers St Johns "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." - Gloria Steinem These are light roasts, to be fair, but they help to give the book an angle that's slanted in a particular way, especially when there's a lot of talk in this book about the hardships of just being female (as opposed to male). So, if that bothers you, it bothers you. All in all, though, this is a really interesting book with great quotes to pull from. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)
The Red in the Wrong Profession by Carolyn Summer Quinn was a welcomed relief the week that we read it (in early January). That was a week filled with a bit more mundane books that seemed mostly flat and just didn't get much of a rise out of us or peak our interests. The Red in the Wrong Profession was just what we needed: a tense yet approachable Cold War spy story with real stakes, real history, and just enough heart to keep us invested. Set in 1979 in the little town of Halliwell, Virginia, this book drops a full-blown espionage plot into the middle of cul de sac life, PTA talk, and lesson plans. We follow widowed school teacher Spencer Wynne, his curious twelve year old daughter Cecily, and Spencer’s older brother Preston, an FBI counterintelligence agent, as they slowly uncover that someone very close to them is feeding secrets to the Soviets. That “someone” happens to be Zinnia Tepper, the glamorous, faintly phony English teacher next door whose travel to the USSR and affected sophistication always felt just a little off. What really hooked us is how ordinary the starting point is. Cecily is just poking around the local bookstore when she catches Zinnia hiding a strange coded note inside a copy of Huckleberry Finn. From that single moment of kid curiosity, the whole thing unravels. Suddenly we are knee deep in cipher grids, KGB handlers, secret “book drops,” and an audacious American tunnel under the new Soviet embassy in Washington (which the author explained to us actually existed). It is an almost absurd contrast: a sleepy Virginia town on the surface, and beneath it, an invisible war of information and ideology. The character work is solid and accessible. Cecily might be the MVP of the book. She feels like a real twelve year old: nosy in the best way, brave but not reckless, and deeply bonded to her father and her uncle. Her excitement over codes and spies gives the story a slightly Nancy Drew flavor that lightens what could have been a very grim premise. Preston, the big brother in the FBI, gives the plot its grown up backbone, explaining the Cold War in a way that is clear, grounded, and surprisingly engaging without turning the book into a textbook. Zinnia is another highlight. She is not a slick cinematic superspy. She is vain, insecure, and a bit ridiculous at times, which actually makes her more believable. The flashbacks to her being recruited as a lonely young woman in the late 1960s are some of the better sections. You see how someone who just wants to feel important and wanted can be slowly pulled into something far bigger and darker than she ever intended. Her panic attack in the closet, trapped in the middle of a botched mission, is one of the most memorable scenes in the book because it strips the glamour from espionage and leaves us with raw fear and regret. We also appreciated how the book ties into a real historical operation involving a tunnel dug under the Soviet embassy. The hand drawn map Zinnia finds in Nicholas Robinette’s safe is one of those “oh wow” details that links the fictional plot to actual Cold War history. That adds weight and a cool “this sort of thing really happened” factor that history buffs will enjoy. Apparently, this is now known as the Operation Monopoly Tunnel as it was part of Operation Monopoly. If we have any quibbles, they are pretty mild but worth mentioning. The point of view jumps around a lot, bouncing between Spencer, Cecily, Preston, Zinnia, KGB figures like Yuri and Oleg, bookstore owner Julia, and others. It keeps the story moving but sometimes at the cost of emotional depth. We are often watching the characters rather than really living inside them. Some of the antagonists, especially Maxie and Anthony, can feel broad and a little cartoony, which undercuts some of the moral complexity you might expect in a story about ideology and betrayal. This is something we often experience with a lot of Carolyn Summer Quinn's novels. They tend to have a ton of characters and a lot going on. It can be overwhelming and hard to follow at times. There are also spots where the pacing slows so that someone can deliver a mini lecture on Cold War history or political context. These passages are informative and well written, and some readers will love them, but others might feel the narrative gears grinding a little when they pop up in the middle of an otherwise tense situation. But not all of those slow, expositional parts are bad. In fact, some of them serve as the most fascinating parts of the book. We loved the parts when the narrative slows down long enough to really compare what life looks like in the Soviet Union versus what it looks like in America. Zinnia’s memories of Moscow are a great example. Quinn walks us through those “cracker box” apartment blocks, all identical and interchangeable, sprouting around the city like a fungus, then contrasts them with the ornate older buildings and onion domes from before the revolution. It is one of the few places in the book where you can feel Zinnia thinking, not just reacting, and you get a sense of how drab, regimented modern Soviet life could feel next to all that leftover beauty. The riff on school and store names is even better. In America, Spencer and Cecily live in a world where you send your kids to places with names like George Washington Elementary and Abraham Lincoln Junior High, where schools and streets and parks are constantly reminding you of specific people and stories. In Zinnia’s travelogue version of Russia, that individual flavor has been stripped out. Schools are not named for heroes or presidents. They are School One, School Two, School Three, on and on. The grocery stores are just “gastronoms.” The pharmacies are “apteka.” Plain. Functional. No personality. No story. It is equality pressed so flat that it starts to feel like erasure. Those little comparisons do a lot of quiet work. They make the ideological clash feel concrete. This is not only a fight about missiles, codes, and tunnels under embassies. It is also a fight about whether you live in a place where everything is numbered and generic, or a place where even your kid’s school and your local store carry names, people, and history. Later, when we see Julia wrestling with the communist ideals she was raised on while happily running her very capitalist little bookstore in America, that theme comes back in a subtle but satisfying way. So while The Red in the Wrong Profession sometimes over-explains and sometimes juggles more characters than it strictly needs, those grounded, human-sized contrasts between Russia and America are where it really shines. They are the moments that stick with you after the last coded message is decoded and the last spy is hauled away, and they are a big part of why this book is exceptional. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 93+/100 (9.3+ out of 10)
Faithless Friends and Replacement Lovers by Elizabeth Horst is a themed collection of fourteen short stories about love, friendship, betrayal, and the choices people make when their relationships hurt or disappoint them. The settings range from old-world nobles and knights to Italian villas, mission trips in unstable countries, awkward church coffee hours, and modern coffee shops, but the through-line stays the same: people trying to figure out what faithful love actually looks like .vs. the cheap, self-protective or selfish version. The tone mixes gentle Christian spirituality, old-fashioned storytelling, and some pretty real emotional pain. A lot of the characters have to decide whether they will cling to bitterness, fantasy, or “replacement” relationships, or move toward something healthier and truer. “Rosalyn and Her Father the General” features a lonely general’s daughter, raised partly by a Romani servant family, despises her harsh, war-shattered father and dreams of running off to live a different life. When she finally escapes and ends up serving near the front, she is forced to confront both her father and her own capacity for hatred, and to decide whether she will repeat his hardness or choose a different kind of courage and love. Right off the bat, this first story set the pace and tone for the rest of the book. It became clear to us that these weren't going to be gritty, violent, action-packed, thrilling stories like "We're All Gonna Die" from Adventures Are Everywhere by Horst. These weren't going to be psychologically riveting or poetically eloquent stories like "Night Journey to Sanity's End" (also by Horst). Instead, these were going to be more slow-building romantic dramas: methodical and deliberate rather than sharp and fierce. These stories play out more like soap operas than those in Adventures Are Everywhere, albeit with frequent subverted expectations. Yes, there's still a psychological element to some of these tales, but it's far more subtle than Horst's other book. For example, Rosalyn's tale still features a lot of internal struggle, especially a drive and determination for freedom and independence from her father, the General, a "bear of a man." You can really feel Rosalyn's thirst and hunger for her own identity separate from being the "General's daughter" which gets in the way of relationships like with Alex later. So, not only is the General controlling and possessive in his actions and behavior, his very existence seems to own her. Something else we noticed is that Rosalyn definitely bonds with the servants in the household more than her own father or the nobility. It gives you the sense that she feels like a slave and a prisoner similar to them, and who can blame her? Also, something that crossed our minds is that this story kinda gave us Anna Karenina vibes. Is it as good as Anna Karenina? Obviously not, that's like saying something is as good as Citizen Kane. But the setting, drama, time period, and themes definitely seem to fit. Now, this story also highlighted something we noticed about stories in this book. Their lengths are a bit wonky and/or weird, or at least it seems like it. This story seems overly long for a short story, almost like a novella. Most times, you'd expected a character's escape/liberation to be the climax and the end of the story, especially since there was so much build and lead up to that (with the servants and the book and all), but this story drags on pretty far beyond that. There's a whole gypsy and war arc that made this story seem a bit bloated. On one hand, that extra length gives Rosalyn's arc room to breathe. Horst is able to explore what hatred and bitterness actually do to a person over time instead of rushing straight to a neat “I forgave my father and everything is fine now” ending. On the other hand, you do start to feel some fatigue. There are stretches when we felt like the emotional point had already been made, and we were waiting for the story to catch up and close. It is not bad writing, it is just slower and more drawn out than we usually expect from a short story. You know, at least this bloatedness allows both Rosalyn and the General to develop, which is something we like to see. Character development is nice, especially when it's done right. “The Noblewoman's Dilemma” leans even more into that thoughtful, interior space. Lady Honora is so empathetic and sensitive that she is practically paralyzed by the thought of people suffering elsewhere. She is the kind of person who reads a newspaper headline and feels personally responsible for every tragedy worldwide. That kind of conscientiousness is admirable, but Horst is honest about the dark side of it too: if you are not careful, compassion can twist into guilt and self-hatred. Honora is afraid that falling in love and being happy would somehow be a betrayal of all the people who are not. Watching her friends gently, persistently challenge that mindset is one of the more quietly moving arcs in the book. It is also one of the more relatable ones for readers who struggle with anxiety, scrupulosity, or “survivor's guilt” in a broken world. Something we liked about this story is the contrast between Lady Honora and Archibald. Honora is this woman whose life experiences have almost paralyzed her emotionally (“You shut up your own heart like a chest of drawers with never a key in sight!”). Archibald, by contrast, is almost disarmingly human, like a cartoon character. He laughs easily, speaks plainly, and wears his hopes on his sleeve. Where Honora tends to freeze in the face of suffering and responsibility, Archibald moves. He visits, writes, shows up, and offers the very simple gifts of presence and affection without turning it into a tortured moral equation. That contrast really sells their relationship. Honora brings depth, gravity, and a sincere desire to live rightly. Archibald brings warmth, motion, and the reminder that joy is not treason against a hurting world. Together, they model the idea that a faithful life is not about shutting out goodness until every problem on earth is solved, but about letting love make you more available to those problems. It turns what could have been a dry, philosophical story into a quietly compelling romance that feels earned rather than sentimental. In one of our favorite parts of the book, Honora breaks out of her shell to exclaim, "My Archibald!" There's a profound sense in exasperated release in that. In contrast to how Honora started the last story, “The Preposterous Proposal” is one of the liveliest and funniest stories in the collection. Sir John Sebastian Dudley is basically the poster boy for impulsive, self-centered romanticism. He charges in and blurts out a completely inappropriate, half-baked marriage proposal while everyone is supposed to be focused on a serious mission, then acts offended when his nonsense is not instantly rewarded. Lady Abigail, thankfully, has her head screwed on straight. She loves her calling more than flattery, and she is not about to sign up for a lifetime of emotional whiplash just to soothe a man's ego. The narrator clearly has fun roasting Dudley, and the whole piece becomes a kind of comedic warning about how not to pursue love or “glory.” If you're thinking what we were thinking, this story definitely has Don Quixote vibes! Abigail is probably the coolest character in this book, disguised as a male (Sir John O'Reilly) to fight alongside her brethren while clearly being a lot more competent and capable than Dudley. This reminded us a bit of the theory of the Fool from King Lear possibly being Princess Cordelia in disguise, albet in a much lighter and less dramatic story. “An Italian Love Story” shifts the tone again into something warmer and more domestic. Luigi, the heir to a villa, feels called to service and simplicity, quietly helping priests and the poor rather than basking in privilege. Regina, the governess, is caught in that complicated space between social classes and expectations. Horst does a good job showing how family dynamics, wealth, and religious devotion can pull characters in different directions. There is a sweetness to Luigi and Regina's relationship, but the real heart of the story is how they navigate those pressures without losing themselves or their sense of what is right. Again, this is a story that seems to push forward the idea that wealth and status don't equate to freedom and happiness. Regina is trapped similar to Rosalyn was in her story, this time in an arranged marriage to a brilliant yet sickly man named Tomaso Pasquale Giovanni. And it seems like she's just been paired with this guy since forever. She keeps having to meet with him as part of the courtship, and she clearly doesn't like any of this. Something we found interesting is how Tomaso isn't played up as this big, evil, perverted villain. There's a lot of sympathy for him too. Regina is kind and compassionate enough to see that Tomaso is struggling with a lot too. She wonders if maybe he doesn't want to get married and is suffering constantly with his illness. Anyway, this story seems LOOOOONG for some reason. We're not sure what it is, but it's like this Regina story dominated the center of this book. With that said, it's still satisfying. Luigi is sweet, like when he takes the thorns off the rose before giving it to Regina so she doesn't get hurt. That's nice. Chivalry isn't completely dead. But this is also one of those stories that subverts your expectations and reminds you that you don't always kiss the prince and ride off into the sunset. “Hope in the Darkness” takes place in a grim, oppressive setting in which Lena and Darren have to talk frankly about imprisonment, death, and what it actually means to love someone who is probably not going to make it. There is a striking scene in which Lena practically begs to share Darren's fate, and he insists that the more loving choice is for her to walk away and keep living out her purpose. It is not a romantic fantasy of heroic rescue. It is love expressed as letting go, and that is one of the boldest things this book attempts. “Love Out of Place” has a similar emotional charge but in a very different setting: an overseas mission trip in a politically unstable country. Bekah and Sayeed's connection is layered with cultural, religious, and safety complications. Horst handles this with more nuance than a lot of inspirational fiction manages. Bekah's feelings are not simply dismissed as “silly” or sinful, but she is also pushed to ask whether her attraction is truly love or a kind of escape from her real life back home. The arrest scene and its aftermath carry real weight, and the story leaves you with a bittersweet sense that sometimes our deepest attachments are meant to change us, not culminate in tidy endings. On the contemporary side, “My One True Love” and the title story, “Faithless Friends and Replacement Lovers,” both explore the way we turn people into idols or measuring sticks. Sam in “My One True Love” starts off convinced that he has finally found “the one” in a coffee shop, only for his narrative to get upended. Without spoiling too much, the story gently dismantles the idea that there is one magical human who will complete us, redirecting that language toward a different kind of “first love.” Some readers will love that turn, others might feel slightly preached at, but it is thematically consistent with the rest of the book. “Faithless Friends and Replacement Lovers” is arguably the emotional centerpiece. Connie goes into her school reunion still clinging to old wounds about Jimmy, the ex who broke her heart, and Tracy, the former best friend who effectively replaced her and married him. Horst lets us feel Connie's bitterness and self-righteousness, then slowly shows the cracks in the image she has built of them. Things are not as perfect as Connie imagined, and the question becomes: is she going to gloat, wallow, or grow? The way the story resolves is not loudly dramatic, but it feels truthful. Hurt people can stay stuck in the past and in their imaginations for years. Letting that go, even just a little, is a bigger victory than a perfect “revenge” scene. “Sweet Vengeance” follows that theme even more explicitly. Madeline is nursing a hurt that seems to justify some pretty biting payback, and Horst does not minimize what she went through. Still, the story is honest that revenge, even when it looks clever or “poetic,” does not actually heal the wound. It just keeps the hurt alive. That is a hard message to swallow when you are rooting for a character, but it is also one of the more spiritually mature ones in the book. The last stretch of stories closes the collection on a softer, more hopeful note. “On Matchmaking and Falling in Love” is a charming exercise in structured romance. Mabel hires a matchmaker, Lily, and keeps bumping up against rigorously scheduled, hyper-rational Richard P. Brighton. At first, their interactions feel hilariously stiff and mismatched, but over time the story shows how affection can grow in the little gaps where people loosen their rigid expectations. It is not the flashiest romance in the world, but it is one of the most grounded. “The Coffeeshop” is a fitting final act. Ellen has been through emotional pain, and she is understandably cautious. Her quiet, almost ritualistic visits to the coffeeshop and the slow, gentle presence of Jeff the barista become a picture of how small acts of kindness can re-teach someone how to trust. The ending, with the chai tea, biscotti, and the extra bill on the counter, is understated but meaningful. There is no sweeping proposal, no fireworks, just a tiny, intentional choice to love again in a world that has not been kind. That feels like exactly the right note to end on. In terms of strengths, this collection really shines in its thematic cohesion and emotional honesty. It is clear that Horst cares deeply about the difference between fantasy and real, sacrificial love, and she approaches that from a dozen angles. Readers who enjoy thoughtful, relationship-centered Christian fiction will find a lot to savor here. We especially appreciated the way the book refuses to glamorize “replacement lovers” or justify treating people as placeholders, even when characters have been badly hurt. And that's where the subverted expectations come into play. On the more critical side, the stories can occasionally feel a bit didactic. There are moments when characters launch into long speeches about calling, faithfulness, or what love should look like, and those parts may feel more like mini-sermons than organic dialogue. The pacing is also consistently slow and deliberate. If you are hoping for the raw intensity of “Night Journey to Sanity's End” or the nail-biting stakes of “We're All Gonna Die,” you might find yourself wishing for a bit more edge or unpredictability like we were. But this book ultimately has a lot to offer and a lot to discuss! It also seems to come from a good place. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
History tends to fixate on kings, queens, rulers, and magistrates. It tends to glamorize the powerful. It also tends to heavily glorify and emphasize war and conquest. When most people think of the period around 1066 AD, they think of one thing: the Battle of Hastings. They think of the bows, arrows, shield walls. They think of a Saxon king with an arrow in his eye and a Norman duke seizing a crown. Catherine Hughes asks a different question: what did that world look like from ground level. What did it look like in the kitchens, riverbanks, convents, and burned-out villages where ordinary people had to keep living after the armies moved on? See, what often gets overlooked in our history books are the little people. The average people. The unglamous people. The people on the ground. The people just trying to live and survive day by day without wealth, status, or power. Via Therein Lies the Pearl, Hughes dares us to get down on their eye level: to be there with the common folk of medieval times, to endure some of what they endured, to see what they saw, experience what they experienced, and love like they loved. That's right: love. Love for neighbors, love for family, and—of course—romantic love. We often forget that people who lived a long time ago weren't just actors in a documentary or weird-looking figures on a tapestry or in a history textbook. They were human beings and people just like us who experienced and felt a lot of the same things that modern people experience and feel. And that's what we appreciated about this book the most: the humanity of it. Despite being from a completely different time period as us, these characters are still relatable and familiar. Therein Lies the Pearl is a beautifully wrought, deeply humane historical novel that follows two intertwined lives through those years of upheaval. On the Norman side, we have Celia, a miller’s daughter whose childhood ends the day sickness steals her mother and war burns her village. On the English side, we have Margaret, a dispossessed noble girl with royal blood, shuttled from court to court and kingdom to kingdom as dynasties rise and fall. The famous names are all here in the background (William, Matilda, Harold, Edgar, Malcolm) but the spotlight is firmly on the women, children, and “small folk” who survive the consequences of their decisions. From the opening scene of Celia clinging to a mast on a storm-wracked ship, ready to let the sea take her, Hughes sets the tone: this is a story about endurance. Celia’s arc alone would carry a whole novel. We watch her go from bossy big sister playing by a river with Philippe, to exhausted teen trying to keep baby Vivienne alive after their world burns, to a young woman navigating the treacherous politeness of ducal service at Caen, to a teacher and quasi-nun on a cold northern coast. Along the way she gathers and loses people: Emil, fueled by rage and grief; Simon, the complicated neighbor with a dark past who later returns as a knight; Rowena, a grounded, kind friend who gives Celia a very different model of love and motherhood than the one that terrifies her. On the other side of the Channel and the social ladder, Margaret’s journey mirrors Celia’s in interesting ways. Where Celia is rooted in one patch of earth and repeatedly torn from it, Margaret is born into motion. She is the girl who stands in a Flemish harbor, suddenly realizing how big the world is, as her tutor Gerhard turns a Norse tattoo into a theology lesson. She is also the girl writing desperate letters to that same tutor when he disappears into guilt and self-hatred after the death of King Edward. Through Margaret we feel the numbness of exile, the weight of being told your blood entitles you to a throne, and the very real fear that your family will be used as pawns and then discarded. One of the book’s greatest strengths is how those two lives braid together. Celia becomes part of Duchess Matilda’s household, then later part of the English religious and educational world at Wilton and Bexelei. She and Margaret move in and out of each other’s orbit, starting as almost accidental allies and becoming something closer to sisters. Their friendship quietly undercuts the simplistic “Norman vs. Saxon” narrative that often dominates fiction about this era. In their relationship, loyalty flows along lines of affection and trust rather than flags. Hughes is very good at taking big, abstract history and making it tactile. We do not just hear that William is ill. We see Matilda in the same gown for days, hair neglected, drifting between the duke’s bedside and the abbey like a ghost. We do not just read that William is crowned in Westminster. We stand in the nave as the English shout their assent, then flinch as Norman soldiers outside misread the roar as rebellion and start burning the town. The coronation that should be the climax of William’s triumph becomes a fearful, half-empty ceremony in a smoke-filled city. Again and again, the novel leans into the human cost of these “glorious” events. The title motif, the pearl, is handled with a light but effective touch. Early on, Celia tries to make sense of her mother’s body by comparing it to the empty shells she and Philippe find on the riverbank. Later, as a teacher, she takes children down to the water to hunt mussels and shows them how something rough, slimy, and unpromising can hide a pearl inside. It is a perfect metaphor for the lives we are watching. Celia’s existence is not glamorous. It is bruised, constrained, often lonely. Yet out of irritation and grit – grief, poverty, separation, duty – comes something luminous: a woman who insists on protecting children, who refuses to let war and loss erase her capacity for tenderness. Celia’s fear of motherhood and marriage is another surprisingly modern-feeling thread handled with nuance. She has every reason to be terrified: she watched pregnancy kill her own mother, and she knows full well that in her world a wife can quickly turn into a “breeding mare.” We appreciated that the book does not punish her for these feelings or turn them into a simple “she just needed to meet the right man” arc. Rowena’s counterexample – a woman who genuinely loved her husband and found joy in motherhood – exists alongside Celia’s trauma without one invalidating the other. The novel lets both experiences be true, and lets Celia carve out a vocation built around nurturing without forcing her into a traditional family structure. The prose style is eloquent and beautiful. Hughes is not trying to reinvent the English language here; she is trying to tell a clear, emotionally honest story in a period setting, and she succeeds. Dialogue feels natural without being anachronistic. Little details--the feel of chainmail, the sting of cold water, the crunch of mussels underfoot, the rhythm of convent bells--help anchor us in each scene. We also liked the structural choice to bookend the narrative with the storm at sea and Celia’s later life on the rocky shore under Prioress Devona. It gives the whole story a cyclical, tidal feel. If we have quibbles, they mostly have to do with pacing and density. This is a novel that tries to cover more than a decade of upheaval across multiple regions, with a large supporting cast of nobles, clerics, soldiers, and villagers. Readers who are not already comfortable with 11th century politics may occasionally feel a bit adrift in the names and shifting alliances. Some sections, especially in the middle, can feel more like “life happening” than a tightly focused plot driving toward a single goal. There's a lot of slice-of-life stuff in here: the mundane everyday exisence of medieval folk even in the midst of war. Personally, we did not mind this. The slightly meandering structure fits a story about survival rather than conquest, but readers who prefer a more conventional arc may find it a bit slow at times. This is still a rich and beautiful historical fiction novel that exemplifies how people are people across locations and times. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
Are you up for some twisted, dark, disturbing takes on some of the most iconic, classic horror characters like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster? Holiday Spirit by John DeGuire is a MONSTER MASH in the spirit of the Brothers Grimm. This is not for children, the faint at heart, or those with a weak stomach. It will shock and horrify you. It will keep you at the edge of your seat, covering your eyes like you can barely look at what happens next. And, at the same time, there's a joviality—a celebratory, goofy, hokey, self-awareness to this book. It's like the book knows it's dark, twisted, disturbing, and pretty sick, but also knows that this is cathartic fantasy and that no genuine, serious, actual, real-life harm is being done. It relishes in the cartoonish, over-the-top nature of the violence, perhaps not to a Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry-level, but you get the point. Did we mention this isn't for kids? Anyway, this is for the dark horror/dark fantasy fans out there who aren't afraid of a little extreme (yet mostly comedic) violence. We wouldn't quite put it on the level of dark, disturbing, and twisted as The Dark Mother by Jamilette Cintron, Real Dreamwalker by Ashlyn Jacobs, or Passages of Peculiarity by Mark K. McClain—those were on another level of messed up, but some of the things that happen in this book are a bit messed up. Right from the beginning, you have an elderly woman (Bridgett Bishop) being mercilessly pelted with rocks and eggs by some neighborhood kids who call her a "Bitch Witch." Now, as messed up, mean, and cruel as this is, Bridgett's revenge plot subverts your expectations and reaches another level of depravity and cruelty. See, Bridgett is an actual cannibalistic, monster-summoning witch with a special taste for children. If you haven't figured it out by now, she's pretty much the witch from the Hansel and Gretel. She's actually descended from unfortunate victims of the Salem witch trials. So, what's interesting about this book is that Bridgett is simultaneously the main character (arguably) as well as the main villain. Bridgett largely moves the plot forward by being the one who victimizes the children of Killington, Virginia (where most of this book takes place), but she is also the primary sadistic, evil force that the heroes (if you want to call them that) have to stop. She's a somewhat sympathetic character in the sense that her kind were persecuted for centuries, and we see how badly she's treated by the neighborhood and its children. You almost can't blame her for being angry and wanting vengeance, but equal vengeance would be throwing rocks and eggs at the children, not kidnapping and trying to cook them alive! Bridgett puts a surprising amount of thought and effort into her cannibalistic revenge plans including having a sound-proof basement constructed with cages and feeders, to make sure that the captured children don't become less plump and unpalatable. What's also nice to see is that the children and their families, despite the rocky start we saw, are still fleshed out and made sympathetic in their own right. For example, there is Annie Hawthorne, the kind of kid you can easily imagine in your own neighborhood, and her sister, Emma. Annie admires Harry Houdini, which is ironic given her predicament. Their family feels like a pretty typical churchgoing American family at first, the sort of people who debate whether Halloween is too spooky or secular but still love their kids and want to do right by them. When Annie and Emma are taken, they are not just nameless horror-movie children to be menaced and sacrificed. They have parents who argue, who pray, who question themselves. They have their own little quirks and ways of coping. When they are caged, terrified, and trying to comfort each other, you feel it. Then there is Maria Claudia and her children, Ivy and Dorian. Maria is a Ukrainian immigrant and single mother who already escaped one nightmare - a very real war - only to find herself in another. She works hard at St. Mary’s, tries to keep food on the table, and carries the quiet panic of a parent who knows anything can be taken away. Ivy and Dorian, in turn, are doing that kid thing of trying to be normal, trying to make friends and keep up in school while their mother quietly falls apart in the background. When they end up in the witch’s clutches along with Annie, Emma, and "Bad Ass Pete," the horror of the situation is contrasted with the warmth and normalcy we saw before. The fathers and other adults are not sketched in as villains or idiots either, which we appreciated. There are flawed pastors and parishioners, yes, but there are also decent cops, competent medical staff, and genuinely heroic first responders. The book takes time to show us the Killington Rescue team and St. Mary’s Hospital preparing for storms and emergencies, running drills, and jumping into action when things go sideways. That gives the later scenes of chaos and carnage a sense of weight. These are professionals doing their best in a situation that is way beyond their training. And that brings us to some of the best characters in the book: the "monsters" who are actually the real heroes. Count Dracula and his werewolf wife, Aoife, are not suave, cape-swirling caricatures here. They are weary, traumatized immigrants trying to keep a low profile, literally hiding under a hospital and sleeping among the dead because human beings have proven more dangerous than any monster. They are ancient and powerful, but they are also tired and wary, keeping their circle small and their heads down until the children are endangered and they do not have the luxury of hiding anymore. Count Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) still carries his bloody, sadistic past with him, and it actually comes to light again in a scene in which he has a bunch of sasquatch impaled alive, then lights some of them on fire in one of the scenes that made us groan the most. But, hey, at least he remembers to put the toilet seat down, something which his wife, Aoife, appreciates. Saul Frankenstein is a big, hulking paramedic with a heart the size of Vermont, hauling people out of wreckage in a Combi Crawler and providing literal life support when things go wrong. The irony that he has been branded a "monster" by stories and legends while being the one who saves the most lives is not lost on anyone. He is the sort of character who anchors every scene he is in, the guy you want on the call when everything is falling apart. Then there is Dr. Henry Jekyll and his alter ego, Hyde. Jekyll is a brilliant but socially awkward pharmacist and neuroscientist who legitimately wants to help people struggling with mental illness and trauma. Hyde is the demon child of his research, a cackling, sadistic killer who delights in violence and sick jokes. Some of Hyde’s scenes are among the darkest and most disturbing in the book, but they are also some of the most cartoonishly over the top. There is a particularly memorable sequence involving him biting off fingers and calling them "finger food" that is equal parts horrifying and absurd. And then you have the supporting monsters like Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, Anubis, the mummies, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Erik is equal parts tragic and theatrical, prowling around like a bitter old diva who finally found an audience that cannot leave. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is more of a blunt instrument, all claws and scales and brute force, and the way his storyline ends (let’s just say “fish and chips”) is one of the book’s darkest running gags. Gosh, there's a scene (if we remember correct) in which Anubis brutally kills a daycare owner in front of all the children there. We think this was supposed to be a bit comedic, sorta like when the farmer shoots the cow in front of the school bus in Napoleon Dynamite, but this scene kinda bothered us. Maybe that's a good thing. It shows that we (the readers) still have a conscience to identify right and wrong, good and evil. These monsters are not as nuanced or sympathetic as Dracula, Aoife, or Saul. They are closer to classic fairy tale wolves, the kind of creatures you warn children about. Still, they add to that feeling that Bridgett is stacking the deck with every nightmare she can find, turning Glastenbury into a literal haunted village. They also give the author room to indulge in some gleefully over the top set pieces, letting readers enjoy the spectacle of these iconic creatures unleashing hell before the heroes finally bring them down. Overlaying all of this is the war refugee storyline with Maria Claudia and Krystiyan, and this is where Holiday Spirit really sets itself apart from a typical monster mash. Krystiyan is not just a love interest or a sidekick. He is a dedicated EMT with his own trauma and survivor’s guilt, a man who has already seen too much death back home and yet chooses to put himself in danger again to save these kids in this new place. His relationship with Maria grows in quiet, believable steps. When he goes out into the storm on what might be a one way trip, it hits as hard as the death of a major character in any war novel. Now, structurally, this book is kind of wild, and that is both a strength and a weakness. On the plus side, it feels big. It feels like a whole town, a whole cast of characters, caught up in something huge and supernatural. There are scenes in classrooms, in church, at the hospital, in the underground lair, in the ghost town, and in the middle of a blizzard. There are National Guard units, rescue teams, bishops, vicars, police officers, refugees, and kids, all crisscrossing each other’s paths. The story wants to be an epic, and in many ways it succeeds. On the downside, that means it can sometimes feel overstuffed. There are a lot of names and faces, a lot of classic horror references, and a lot of themes all vying for space. Prejudice, religious hypocrisy, mob mentality, xenophobia, war trauma, mental illness, and child abuse are all in the mix alongside cannibal witches and mummies. For the most part, the author manages to juggle these balls, but every now and then one wobbles. Some readers may find themselves wishing a few side characters had been trimmed to let the core cast breathe a bit more. The tone is similarly ambitious and similarly uneven. This is where we can see readers dividing. If you like your horror dead serious and somber, you might bounce off some of the goofier, tongue in cheek moments. Hyde cracking jokes in the middle of a massacre, the occasional pun, and the knowingly cartoonish violence might feel like tonal betrayal. However, if you are the type of reader who can laugh in between nervous gulps in a slasher flick, you will probably be right at home. Holiday Spirit lives in that space where you are allowed to go "Oh my gosh, that is awful" and "Ok, that was kind of funny" in the same paragraph. Really quickly, we already mentioned the live-impalement and burning of the sasquatch, but something else that bothered us was how cruelly animals are treated throughout the book. For example, there's a section in which a dad and his child are described as shooting their pet dogs. There's another in which a beloved pet chicken named Suzie is killed and eaten by a grandfather. We could've done with less of that. However, at least these acts aren't celebrated and encouraged, they're just described. In our opinion, the real hero and highlight of this book is the Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, who seems fixated on having and describing every possible phobia under the sun, which is actually some of the best comedy in the book. He seems to be the guy who shows up when the day needs saving. We appreciated the way the book repeatedly flips the script on who the real monsters are. The people who first abused Bridgett’s family were respectable, churchgoing citizens. The people who nearly beat her to death on Christmas Eve were masked vigilantes who were supposedly defending their community. The kids who abuse her in the present are repeating the same sins on a smaller scale. In contrast, the supposed monsters--Dracula, Aoife, Saul, Jekyll in his better moments, and even some of the other supernatural being--- are the ones putting their lives on the line to save vulnerable children. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)
Rarely has a book ever genuinely made us tear up and cry, but The Hermit's Hut by Tuula Pere is one of those rare, special books. And what's incredible about that is how this isn't a book about war, poverty, refugees, or terminal illness, it's just a book about a guy: an author who is fed up with what he feels and what he experiences from the world around him. And it's so hard for us not to sympathize and relate to him. Francis, the main character, is an author—a children's author—like us and many of the people we know and love. He is someone you can tell who puts his heart and soul into each and every one of his books, not for money or fame but because he genuinely wants his stories and characters to touch the hearts of people and change the world for the better. How can you not get behind that? What's also relatable are the difficulties and obstacles he faces. He goes to the park to sit down and relax, and all he hears is bad news and negativity: people arguing, criticizing, and being mean to each other. And in his professional life, he feels like people have stopped caring (if they even cared to begin with). And people have stopped reading as well. It's like everything he built his whole life and career around now amounts to nothing in a world of flashy new apps, technology, and multimedia. Where is the love for books? Where is the love for the written word? AI seems to write and solve every problem these days. What happened to us using our own minds? Solving our own problems? Creating our own unique things? Being individuals and independent thinkers? Feeling our own feelings and believing our own beliefs without being told what to feel and what to believe from a screen? All of this comes crashing down as it dawns on Francis that the world he originally wrote books for is not a world that's familiar to him anymore. And this resonated with us a lot. Maybe it'll resonate with you. Maybe you've created something with the hopes that it would touch and change lives only to see it be overshadowed, overlooked, and disregarded. In perhaps the book's most powerful page, Francis sees that people are no longer interested in his books. He receives one-star reviews that say things like his books are too boring, sad, or depressing, actually reflecting reviews that Tuula Pere received about more somber children's books like The Only Blue Crow. Francis exclaims that "Children need to know what's going on in the world!... I write them with a gentle hand, even if the subject is heavy." You can really tell that Francis's words, feelings, and experiences really come from Tuula Pere's own. Her books tend to explore darker, grimmer, sadder things, but always with a positive edge. One of the most heartbreaking parts of this page is that people stopped buying Francis's books, they were put in discount bins, and they were eventually used as wastepaper. But even more heartbreaking is that there's a character in Francis's book who is never given a name, but occurs enough on the page that we know this character means a lot to him: an walking apple. The Apple seems to be one of Francis's core characters and creations, representative of his creative vision. This was supposed to be his Mickey Mouse, but it's like no one cares about him anymore. And that's heartbreaking. What's incredible is that this book doesn't insist that the written word and publishing is the only way to reach people. In the mountains with his friend, the goatherd Erasmus, he has time to do some soul searching and remembers that his grandmother used to knit things: socks, mittens, sweaters, gloves, etc., so he starts knitting things for people too. He relates these knitted creations to the written word, saying, "Each knitted stitch is like a letter. Together the stitches form words and create patterns that tell stories." And they "warm the listener." This is a beautiful children's book. We also were really enamored with the illustrations by Nyamdor J Lkhaasuren. They reminded us of Europe! The way that things are a little slanted and a bit chaotic, yet very stylistically pleasing and colorful. Check it out on Amazon!  Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)
In the memoir I Didn’t Believe It Either, author Todd Kinney recounts his profound personal journey from a life defined by excessive drinking to one of purposeful sobriety. He explores how a cycle of binge drinking and subsequent shame strained his marriage and his role as a father, ultimately leading to a series of "sabbaticals" and a final decision to quit. Through honest reflections, Kinney describes the anxiety of social pressure and the difficult process of unlearning the belief that alcohol is necessary for fun or connection. He highlights the emotional rewards of being fully present, noting that sobriety transformed his relationships with his four children and improved his mental clarity. The text serves as both a personal testimony and an encouragement for others, particularly men, to prioritize integrity and health over societal drinking norms. By sharing his vulnerability, Kinney illustrates how life’s most meaningful moments are better experienced without the fog of intoxication. This is truly a heart wrenching memoir to read. The concept/topic itself is gripping. We all know people who've struggled with addiction and/or alcoholism, so it's near and dear to the hearts of many readers. To top it off, Todd just has a really gripping, personable writing style that reminded us a lot of Donald Hardison's (are recent Author of the Year) or George Beasley (another OCA champion). You can tell that Todd is sharing his heart: the deepest, darkest, most depressing things. This serves both cathartic and cautionary purpose. Furthermore, you can really tell that Todd is getting a lot off of his chest and shoulders. This is an issue that has clearly weighed on him and came close to crushing him. However, like all inspirational stories, there is an upside: Kinney is a survivor. He's an example that you can overcome your addictions and live a full and happy life in spite of them. You really get the full range of emotions and experiences: frustration, anxiety, loneliness, isolation, anger, but also hope, relief, gratitude, joy, nostalgia, and those small, hard-won moments of peace. It is like an emotional roller coaster, and you feel every high and low right along with him. Here are some of our favorite passages: “Early sobriety can be lonely as hell. At times, it felt like I was the only person on earth who didn’t drink or was trying to give up drinking… I felt like I was on an island.” “Even when moderating was successful, it was So. Much. Work. There’s a reason for the saying, ‘If you want to find out if you have a drinking problem, try moderating.’” “Experiencing those two moments sober was the beginning of me realizing that the moments that happen in sobriety you know, life can be profoundly more meaningful than what happens when I drink… The sober versions of those two events were life in living color… The drinking version of those moments is just observing. It’s not feeling, it’s not being, it’s not living.” “How do I choose drinking over a night of snuggling with my daughter? How do I choose drinking over being fully immersed in her joy during bowling and arcade games? Those moments are what life is all about.” Kinney's experiences and emotions are both unique and familiar. We feel like we've read about this dozens of times before in books like Dying for a Drink by Amelia Baker and Reality Check by Mike Sorrentino. You can definitely find yourself in Todd's shoes as he wrestles through this. Check it out on Amazon! |
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