Review of Like Glass, by Jen Ferguson

Like Glass

by Jen Ferguson

Heartdrum, October 6, 2026. 322 pages.
Review written July 10, 2026, from an Advance Reader Copy.
Starred Review

A year ago, Tatum Nova Lambert’s big sister, Bronwyn Moonbeam, died of a brain aneurysm in Chamonix, in the French Alps. Their father, a world-class chef, decided to open a restaurant there in her honor. Now Tatum has come to Chamonix over Spring break for the opening of the restaurant – and to get her father to come back to Toronto.

It doesn’t begin well: He forgets to pick her up from the bus station. They’re staying in what used to be Bronwyn’s apartment, and Tatum finds Bronwyn’s necklace there – the one they buried with her sister. Her father doesn’t really talk with her, he grew out his beard, and Tatum’s pretty sure he’s drinking again.

But as Tatum explores Chamonix, she meets people who help her gain perspective. There’s Beetle, the kid who pickpocketed the necklace before she confronted him and got it back. And then there’s Agatha, who’s training to be on the U.S. Olympic Team as a ski jumper. Agatha gets her. But how much trouble will she get into if Tatum knocks her out of her training schedule?

This isn’t a gripping plot book, but it is, like all Jen Ferguson’s books, nuanced and meditative and full of people you enjoy spending time with, including queer people and people with indigenous heritage.

It’s also about Art and about Identity. Tatum’s art teacher back home doesn’t think her art is Native enough. But what does that even mean? And how does he, with settler heritage, have any right to say that?

And it’s about Grief. Bronwyn was never good about answering Tatum’s postcards, and Tatum’s finding out all she didn’t know about her sister’s life.

I like the way the book comes together at the end, though I won’t give away the many threads that involves. They aren’t tied up in a neat bow, but Tatum got some good interior work done on her trip, and it was a pleasure to get to bear witness to it.

jenfergusonwrites.com

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Review of Rewriting the Rules, by Danna Zeiger, illustrated by Josée Bisaillon

Rewriting the Rules

How Dr. Kathleen Friel Created New Possibilities for Brain Research and Disability

by Danna Zeiger
illustrated by Josée Bisaillon

Millbrook Press, 2025. 36 pages.
Review written August 19, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Rewriting the Rules is a picture book biography of a scientist I’d never heard of – Dr. Kathleen Friel, who has cerebral palsy.

One of my friends has a child with cerebral palsy, so I’ve seen for myself how children with cerebral palsy are underestimated. It does depend on where in their brain the damage exists, but in general trouble walking and speaking does not mean the person has trouble thinking.

This book covers the many challenges Kathleen faced as a child with cerebral palsy, including a doctor who told her parents to put her in an institution. (They found a better doctor.)

It was harder for Kathleen to do some simple things like buttoning her clothes and cutting up food. This author frames her finding ways to do these things as rewriting the rules.

In high school, science became Kathleen’s favorite subject. Her teachers showed her that scientists found new solutions to problems, and she knew she wanted to do the same.

After all, she’d always been rewriting the rules.

The book goes on to explain Kathleen’s doctoral work on monkeys with brain damage doing training to create new brain connections.

After getting her PhD, Dr. Friel runs a lab that helps children with cerebral palsy find treatment to help their brains make new connections. And she models all that a person with cerebral palsy can achieve.

The author of this book was a scientist before she became an author – and was mentored by Dr. Friel, so her love and admiration shines in the text.

This picture book biography of a distinguished scientist teaches kids about cerebral palsy in a way they can understand, framed in the story of a person who overcame tremendous challenges – and helps others do the same.

Kathleen and her research are paving the way for people with cerebral palsy and other disabilities
to be heard,
to find their own approaches,
and to rewrite the rules.

dannazeiger.com
joseebisaillon.com

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Review of Translation State, by Ann Leckie

Translation State

by Ann Leckie
read by Adjoa Andoh

Hachette Audio, 2023. 12 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written February 25, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’m not sure why it took me so long to discover that Ann Leckie has another book set in the universe of her Ancillary trilogy with AI spaceships trying to get status as a species, but I was delighted to discover Translation State.

Ann Leckie does mind bending so well! One of the three viewpoint characters in this novel is Qven, a juvenile Presger Translator – a species made by the Presger to interface with humans. We get the viewpoint of this creature when they’re young and driven to discover what is inside other beings by dismembering and eating them. As they grow, they’re taught how to behave to fit in with humans – to eventually become an adult and merge with another to get their final form. But Qven finds themself not always wanting to follow the rules.

The adult Presger Translators don’t let humans know about this. But they assert that it’s dangerous for humans to be around their juveniles.

And the treaty with the Presger is up for renewal in a great Conclave – most think it’s what has kept the Presger from destroying humankind across the galaxies. So most want it to continue.

Meanwhile we meet Enae, who had been taking care of her grandmother for most of her life, but has to leave after her grandmother’s death. Ze’s sent on a diplomatic mission no one expects hir to complete to track down a Presger translator who went rogue two hundred years ago. Surely they’re dead by now.

But that brings hir to Reit, who was abandoned as an infant and adopted into a loving family. Now he’s thirty years old and working a boring job. When he was small and tried to eat another kid, he was told in no uncertain terms not to do that any more, so he’s learned to keep those urges in check, but he does wonder what’s wrong with him. When some activists on his planet hail him as the long-lost heir of the captaincy of a space station that was destroyed, he likes thinking he belongs at last. But working for them in the diplomatic corps lets him meet Enae, who gets interested in his story.

And all this leads to the three characters eventually meeting in the context of treaty negotiations with the Presger. And then a catastrophe happens, and they have to work together.

I love the way Ann Leckie can get me inside even such an alien mind and feel like I understand it. This very alien universe becomes full of beings you care about. Absolutely brilliant. (Do read the Ancillary trilogy first. This book made me want to reread that – maybe I’ll listen this time.)

annleckie.com

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Review of The Otherwhere Post, by Emily J. Taylor

The Otherwhere Post

by Emily J. Taylor
read by Barrie Kreinik

Listening Library, 2025. 11 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written January 23, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I placed The Otherwhere Post on hold because I wanted to see why so many other people had done the same. (My job is to select books for a large public library system, so I see what’s popular and often get curious.) Sometimes I’m disappointed by that method, but not this time. The Otherwhere Post pulls us right into the action, as Maeve Abenthy has a ticket to another city, to adopt another identity, because she’s been in her current position, working in an ink shop, too long, and people might realize who her father is.

The whole world, including Maeve, believe that seven years ago, her father was responsible for the living death of every person in Inverlea, one of the three known worlds. But then the Otherwhere Post finds a way to deliver a batch of old letters from shortly after the tragedy – and Maeve receives an anonymous letter from an “old friend” of her father who claims he was innocent – and they have proof. Only Maeve has already missed the meeting he proposed for seven years ago.

All magic in the three known worlds is done through scriptomancy – messages written with special ink by talented, trained people. Maeve’s father was a skilled scriptomancer and courier and lived at the Otherwhere Post, with Maeve in the keeping of her aunt after her mother’s death. So Maeve decides that the obvious way to find this “old friend” is to train to be a courier. Good thing her father grounded her in the basics of writing. Now if she can just pass the admissions test.

Of course, once Maeve gets to the academy, she’s going to have trouble finding the old friend, when she doesn’t dare reveal who she is. But someone knows and starts sending her magical threatening letters.

I shouldn’t have liked this book, because the plot is pretty chaotic, with some drastic turns at various points. But I liked Maeve immensely (despite the unethical way she got into the school), and I liked the young man assigned to be her mentor, and the world-building was creative, so I forgot to be nitpicky and enjoyed the ride.

emilyjtaylor.com

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#Sonderbooks25 – Stand-outs 2008 and Working as a Librarian!

Happy 25th Birthday to Sonderbooks! Yes, as of last month, I’ve been writing Sonderbooks for 25 years! So I probably should step it up with my #Sonderbooks25 project of revisiting the Sonderbooks Stand-outs from previous years, and adjusting the older pages to the new phone-friendly format.

And I’ve finished the Sonderbooks Stand-outs 2008 page!

I read some wonderful books that year! In February 2008, I began working full-time for the first time since my firstborn was small, and working as a full-fledged librarian managing a small youth services department at the closest library to my house.

Reading the reviews I posted that year reminded me that in those days, a committee chose books as a system to book talk in the schools before the Summer Reading Program. It was my first ever year book talking (with many more to come), and I zealously read the chosen books, reading some wonderful books I might otherwise have never found. Looking at those reviews reminds me of how much joy I got out of really working as a librarian, doing what I loved, with a calling I cared about.

But then I realized that since 2007 was the year I started the Sonderbooks blog (and I was using the blog to determine which year reviews were posted), it was also the year I started my Sonderquotes blog and my Sonderjourneys blog. So of course I decided to read the posts from 2008 on those blogs – covering the 2007 posts first.

In both blogs, there were some strange character artifacts – I think from when I switched web hosting companies. I’d gotten them fixed on the main blog, but it turned out I needed to do it manually on these two, as long as I was reading them.

The Sonderquotes reading honestly inspired me. I was still trying to adjust to my new life without my husband, and was reading uplifting books about finding joy and thriving and not getting weighed down by resentment. Going through them years later still lifted my heart. Some of the books will show up in my 2009 Stand-outs, because I’d only begun to read them in 2008, but the especially good ones that show up in Sonderquotes from 2008 include Forgive for Love, Tell Me No Lies, Beyond Codependency, This Is Not the Life I Ordered, The Return of the Prodigal Son, and Staying Connected to Your Teenager.

I also reread my Project 52 posts that covered 2008. There were four – Becoming a Librarian, My graduation and my oldest’s graduation, Divorce, Phase 7: Negotiations, and New Home and New Beginnings. Then it dawned on me that as long as I’m reading the posts, this would be a good time to update the Project 52 Landing Page with those posts.

So all that slowed me down. My challenge now: Can I finish #Sonderbooks25 before I hit Sonderbooks’ 26th birthday? But whatever the answer, at least I’m having fun doing it.

But now, besides the ones above, let me highlight a few books from the 2008 Sonderbooks Stand-outs that I intend to reread sometime in the near future:

Chalice, by Robin McKinley, was recently acquired by our library as an eaudiobook, so that one’s a no-brainer. I’ve been rereading other Robin McKinley books lately, and she never fails to enchant me.

I’m not sure completely why it grabs me from this list, but I also want to reread Italian Lessons, by Peter Pezzelli.

And I have to say, my Stand-outs in Picture Books were exceptional that year. Maybe because now I was regularly doing story times? I still highly, highly recommend Timothy and the Strong Pajamas, Millie Waits for the Mail, A Visitor for Bear, and Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. And that seems to be the year I discovered Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books, which are just the best!

The Children’s Nonfiction Stand-outs are also exceptional. Kadir Nelson’s We Are the Ship, Jon Scieszka’s Knucklehead, and Bruce Goldstone’s Greater Estimations are all classics still worth looking up.

So, yes, it was sobering to look back on 2008 – the divorce negotiations were angry and bitter – but it was also inspiring. I was working at a job that is my calling, and I had dear friends and wonderful books to get me through!

Review of Blue Monster, by Petr Horácek

Blue Monster

by Petr Horácek

Otter-Barry Books. 36 pages.
Review written August 25, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This book surprised me into laughing out loud when I opened it up to read. The titular Blue Monster looks friendly and sweet. The story plays out on a bright yellow background. As the book opens, Blue Monster is bored, and asks Rabbit to play with him. But Rabbit doesn’t hear him because he’s fast asleep.

When Blue Monster wakes up Rabbit, he doesn’t want to play because he wants to sleep.

So Blue Monster swallowed Rabbit.

But Rabbit’s friend saw what happened. Blue Monster is feeling embarrassed, so he swallows Rabbit’s friend, too.

And so it goes. This is my favorite exchange:

“Have you seen the rabbits anywhere?” asked Raccoon.

“I didn’t swallow them,” answered Blue Monster, but he looked a bit shifty.

So Raccoon said, “You did swallow them, didn’t you?”

What does Blue Monster do? I’ll bet you can guess.

I like the way the book connects feeling uncomfortable emotions with Blue Monster’s actions. And the background color shifts to blue and more subdued.

Now Blue Monster felt VERY bad.

He knew that swallowing friends is not a nice thing to do.

Besides, now there was definitely nobody who would play with him.

But no worries! When Blue Monster sits down, feeling sad, a bit lonely, and very guilty, he yawns – and all the animals climb out of his mouth (which conveniently has no teeth).

They all looked a bit cross, which, to be fair, was quite understandable.

The animals have a long chat. Blue Monster tells them how sorry he is, and after a stern talking-to that swallowing friends is not nice, he promises never to do it again, and we end with the animals playing nicely together and having lots and lots of fun.

And my description doesn’t do justice to the charm of this book. Of course it would be a perfect vehicle for what’s a good way to deal with uncomfortable emotions, and that we really shouldn’t swallow our friends. Also that everybody makes mistakes – there’s a nice model of apology and forgiveness.

And besides, it’s a sweet story that will make you smile.

petrhoracek.co.uk

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Review of The Neverfear, by Katherine Rundell

The Neverfear

by Katherine Rundell
read by Samuel West

Listening Library, 2026. 8 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written September 4, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is the third book in the series that began with Impossible Creatures, and in my opinion, it continues to be the best currently ongoing fantasy series for kids. Katherine Rundell has a skill that J. K. Rowling also possessed of inserting delightfully imaginative magical details. She’s got a bestiary in the back of each book that has many creatures you will have heard of before, such as dragons and unicorns, but plenty of unique creations of her own.

You will want to read these books in order, though I’m finding I’m not too lost if I’ve forgotten many of the details from the earlier books. Listening to this one reminded me just how much I have enjoyed them all, and I’ll be wanting to reread them from the beginning.

In this volume, Christopher is now living most of the time in the magical world of the Archipelago, studying to be a good guardian, and Anya, the one-time princess from the second book, is living on the same island with her father, the berserker Nighthand, and Irian, the beloved of Nighthand.

On an errand with Christopher and Anya, Irian is kidnapped by a sinister band of outlaws who wear Ouroboros bracelets. The children are told they must perform three progressively more difficult Herculean tasks or she will die. After they perform amazing exploits to complete the tasks, a new threat arises to everything they care about.

In the progress of carrying out these tasks and defeating these challenges, against all odds, both Christopher and Anya uncover new skills within themselves. There’s lots of danger here, along with love, loyalty, humor, and plenty of magic. Samuel West’s voice is perfect for narrating these adventures, matter-of-factly presenting the magical details with his proper British accent.

Reading these books makes me wish my kids were young again, as they would make splendid family read-alouds.

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Review of Counterweights, by Shannan Martin

Counterweights

An Essential Practice for Holding Hope in a Heavy World

by Shannan Martin

Revell, 2026. 238 pages.
Review written July 8, 2026, from my own book, purchased via Amazon.com.
Starred Review

Over several years since it was my Sonderbooks Stand-out in 2016, I’ve gone through the book Champagne for the Soul with two of my small groups (as well as on my own) – and both times it set our group spotting joys, looking for things to be joyful about in daily life.

But sometimes I feel a bit guilty looking for joys when there’s so much trouble in the world. When people are being oppressed and injustice is rampant, is it right to take pleasure in a sighting of a great blue heron?

This book fully acknowledges the weight of the world. And Shannan Martin frames finding joys as looking for counterweights.

She begins with a metaphor that she learned as a child that it’s easier to carry heavy weights if you have one bucket on each side.

Abundance isn’t experienced by merely counting our blessings but by countering our weights.

The essays that follow are a collection of some of the weights and counterweights I’ve faced, mostly over a few years’ time, which I believe deserve our sacred attention. Some of my hardships have been uniquely personal, while others have tied all of us in knots. Others have been secondary: the contact burns of paying attention to a world where, most often, trauma lands hardest on those who are already vulnerable. These weights range from mundane to dizzyingly dramatic. But at every turn, goodness has waited for me to take notice and scoop it up, leveling the load of life’s endless dualities.

I love the way this doesn’t dismiss or minimize the weights, but shows that the weights make the counterweights all the more necessary.

This is not a “silver lining” situation, where pain and injustice are minimized for the sake of flimsy optimism or playing nice. It’s not even about hoarding our favorite things. We are not guaranteed to have those things within our reach. The practice of gathering counterweights is about creating moments of sustenance from the raw materials of what we’re given. It is about holding everything in honest tension. Both/and. Our counterweights help us move forward and breathe through the heaviness. At their best, they can’t be bought or sold. They aren’t a matter of luck or reserved for the privileged. They are widely accessible and casually weird, entirely personal and communal to their core. They are their own reward. And they are happening all the time, ready to steady us on our feet.

So that’s what you’ve got in this book – stories of weighty matters, but also counterweights, things that bring joy. And it’s a lovely model for dealing with our own weights.

After all:

Counterweights are everywhere. But it’s up to us to slow down and see them.

shannanmartin.com

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Review of King of the Neuro Verse, by Idris Goodwin

King of the Neuro Verse

by Idris Goodwin
read by the Author

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 3 hours, 2 minutes.
Review written August 12, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is a young adult novel in verse, so it’s short, and perfect for neurodivergent thinkers like the protagonist.

Pernell is stuck going to summer school for his third time in high school, and all his nerves are jangled. Fortunately, a friend gave him a digital voice recorder, so he’s letting off steam by telling all his difficulties to “the future.” It’s 1999, so he’s not sure if the world will end when Y2K hits.

He’s got to take English – and then it turns out that the very teacher who made him go to summer school is teaching the class. She’s made up her mind about Pernell and is portrayed as a bully who humiliates him regularly. Though Pernell honestly has trouble paying attention.

Fortunately, at lunch time, every year a group of students do a rap circle they call the Cypher. Last year’s Cypher King graduated, and Pernell is determined to win the crown himself.

So why does playing with language in rap make so much more sense to him than writing essays in class?

My one little quibble with this audiobook is that a couple of times Pernell refers to ambient noise, and I wish the production had gone to enough trouble to simulate that, since it pulled me out of the book when I didn’t hear it. Supposedly, he’s recording the whole thing. In a print book, we don’t miss the ambient noise and trust that it’s there, but in an audiobook, I wish they’d attempted to make us think this was Pernell’s actual recording. The author is a rapper himself, so he reads the words well.

But that was a minor quibble. The story itself helped me understand how it feels to be a teen with ADHD just trying to do his best – and be King of what he actually cares about.

idrisgoodwin.com

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Book Talking with Sondy: Wild Goose Edition

A library serving a community of any kind… enriches that community, which would be impoverished and weakened if that library did not exist.

— Michael Gorman, Our Own Selves: More Meditations for Librariansp. 191

I’m writing today from North Carolina!  Yes, I’m attending Wild Goose Festival, a kind-of out there festival based in progressive Christianity about spirituality and activism and other good stuff.

I wimped out today.  After a 9 to 5 pre-conference in 96-degree heat (but we were in a tent, with fans), I went back to the hotel and got cool.  And I’m not camping like the real devotees.  I guess I know my limits.  Anyway, the preconference was a lovely time with a Methodist minister who is an indigenous practitioner, talking with six of us about prayer.  I’m looking forward to two and a half more days of goodness (and heat).  I’ll be leading a group on Saturday writing their own psalms of lament.

New format!

Yes, I’m planning to continue posting Book Talking with Sondy as a monthly newsletter, sent to subscribers in their email.

But I’ve decided to also post them as blog entries.  I like being able to refer back to what I’ve written.  So if you subscribe to my blog for the reviews, you can unsubscribe to Book Talking with Sondy.  You can find all three options on the Subscribe page of the blog.

#Sonderbooks25

Yes, I’m making progress on  #Sonderbooks25, celebrating 25 years of writing Sonderbooks as of this month.

I very quickly made a new page of 2008 Stand-outs in the phone-friendly format.  But then it dawned on me that not only did I start the Sonderbooks blog in 2007, I also started the Sonderquotes blog and the Sonderjourneys blog then.  So I started reading not only the old book reviews, but also those other posts from 2007 and 2008.

And then I found out that somewhere along the way (I think when I switched web hosting companies), the files got corrupted with some special characters.  I got it cleaned up at the time in the main blog, but I couldn’t resist cleaning up the old entries in Sonderquotes and Sonderjourneys while I was rereading them – so it’s taking a little longer, but I’m having a lot of fun.  Very soon, I’ll get a summary post up about my 2008 reading year.  Sonderquotes especially reminded me of the books that helped me get through that year.  And the books reminded me how thrilled I was to actually be working as a librarian.  The quotation above was from Sonderquotes in 2008.

Library Insider Info

The latest interesting thing in our county is that the schools had the very good idea that all second graders should go on a field trip to the public library and check out a book.

This is a wonderful idea.  It did not come with additional money or staff for the library, however.  But we are making it happen.

And where I come in as Youth Materials Selector, is I’ll try to order more books that second-graders will want to check out.  For all of our twenty-two branches.

The hard part is that second graders have a very wide range of reading levels.  My plan is to mainly focus on graphic novels, because those appeal to all second graders, regardless of reading level.

We have some gift money and will get some additional graphic novels.  An interesting thing is that we have a special type of library card for public school students who don’t have a card of their own.  As the year goes on, we can check which books are being checked out on those cards – it will be mostly second graders using them – and see if we need to adjust the books we are ordering.

Reviews to Check Out

I got 26 reviews posted in August, so even more than July.  And I only got 23 new reviews written, so little by little, I’m catching up my backlog.

Actually, speaking of catching up, I completed a milestone just this past week and posted my last review written in 2025, so now my 40 backlog reviews were all written in 2026.

But I got some more good ones posted this last month!  Let me mention some of my favorites:

In the order they were posted:

Heronry, by Barbara Herkert, art by Gordy Wright.  This is a children’s nonfiction picture book, but I am a heron addict, so I loved it.

The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America, by Raphael G. Warnock, is about the moral issues of seeking justice.

Busted, by Dan Gemeinhart, read by Mark Sanderlin, is a kids’ book that pulled all my heartstrings.  It begins with a kid bribed to break an old guy out of a nursing home and help him complete a bucket list.  Hijinks ensue.

Sabriel, by Garth Nix.  This is an updated, phone-friendly review of one of my 2004 Sonderbooks Stand-outs.  A YA Fantasy classic reread with pleasure for #Sonderbooks25.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, by Sangu Mandanna, read by Samara MacLaren.  A cozy fantasy for adults, this features a young witch who gets roped into tutoring three volatile witch children in an unconventional home.

Basket Ball: The Story of the All-American Game, by Kadir Nelson.  Another children’s nonfiction book, but with more text than a picture book, this one tells the history of basketball, accompanied by stunning paintings.

One Word, Six Letters, by Adib Khorram.  The story of a year of high school, it shows the impact of a slur shouted at the start of the year on two students, one of whom did the shouting.

The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers, by Carlos Barragán.  Why the scammers are almost as trapped as the people they’re scamming.

Red Star Rebels, by Amie Kaufman, performed by Max Meyers, Jessica Almasy, and a full cast.  A YA thriller set on Mars with an amazing audio production.

Beauty, by Robin McKinley, read by Charlotte Parry.  An Old Favorite YA Fantasy classic retelling of the fairy tale.

Brigands and Breadknives, by Travis Baldree, read by the Author.  A cozy fantasy novel for adults, this one an adventure tale.

Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, by Neal Allen and Anne Lamott.  A new classic on writing from the author of Bird by Bird – and her husband.

Austenland, by Shannon Hale.  This is an updated-in-2026 edition of the book for adults about what’s essentially a Jane Austen theme park for romantically inclined women.  The first edition was a 2007 Sonderbooks Stand-out.

And that reminds me, in August, I visited the National Book Festival in Washington, DC.  A lot of waiting in line, but it was still fun.

Have you noticed that I have trouble picking out highlights?  This is a side effect of only reviewing books I like.  (I did skip writing reviews of a couple books last month, honest!)  But I did leave plenty for you to discover on Sonderbooks.com

How about you?  Read anything good lately?

Thanks again, so much, for your support!

As always, Happy Reading!

Sondy