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It feels traitorous to say, but I did not enjoy Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Like so much of the world, I am a Potter Head and gobble up anything and everything Harry Potter. I was even a counselor at Harry Potter Camp for two summers! So when I heard that an eighth book was being released in the form of a play script, I once again bubbled with excitement and anticipation at being back in the world of Harry Potter. It did not take many pages to realize this book is NOT J.K. Rowling’s work and for the zeal to wear thin.

The story takes place where Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows lef

Christakis begins with a very simple premise: that, for preschoolers, schooling and learning are often two different things. That young children are much more powerful and capable than we often give them credit for, that they primarily learn through relationships and play, and that the educational push to make their school experience more focused on "academic readiness" runs counter to their natural inclinations for learning.

She then spends nearly 400 pages comprehensively exploring that idea across the many dimensions and aspects of early childhood education. She has been a child, parent

“To those trained in Explosive Ordinance Disposal, the last-resort tactic for defusing bombs is known as the Long Walk: a soldier dealing with the device up close, alone, with no margin for error.” Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit in Iraq where he earned a Bronze Star. He speaks with candor about the excruciating trauma of war, the daily battles against a constant and unknown hidden danger, the likelihood of death around every corner, and finally his return home to his wife and family. Diagnosed

When you are a contestant on a reality TV show, how can you tell the difference between what is real and what is manufactured for the program? One woman faces this dilemma as real-world events collide with simulated ones.

The survival-type show begins with twelve contestants sent into the woods to face numerous challenges--singly and in groups, physical and mental. The contestant who outlasts the others wins a cash prize. It seems simple enough, nothing that hasn’t been seen on these types of shows before. Some participants are in it purely for the money; some are out for the adventure. None

An enjoyable, magic-less fantasy that nicely balances worldbuilding, character development, and action.

Tequende is an isolated realm in the Nigh World (something like the Americas) that escaped conquest by the hungry invaders from the Far World (something like Europe), a peaceful little neutral kingdom on a high plateau surrounded by mountains. That isolated peace is ensured by the tradition of the legendary Queen's army. All first-born children inherit their parents' livelihoods; there are three broad guilds of professions, each with their own god and subculture. All second-born children

Eligible is a retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Set in modern day, the five Bennet sisters are all back at home after Mr. Bennet has health issues--though some of the sisters have never left. CrossFit, reality shows, fertility treatments, and dating make for some humorous situations. I found the plot enjoyable, funny, and sometimes refreshingly real when dealing with more serious situations. Unfortunately, I did not like our main character, Liz, very much. Liz is important as the glue that hold the Bennets together, but her modern-day past was a bit disappointing for me

In Don't Look for Me, private investigator Amos Walker is hired to track down a missing wife. He has no solid leads, so he starts at the herbal remedies store that she frequented. All of a sudden, people are tailing him and people are dying! Raymond Chandler once said that when he didn’t know what to do, he would send a man through the door with a gun in his hand. I get the sense that Estleman's approach is the same.

Estleman holds true to the private eye formula, and he plots well, but I think he tries too hard when it comes to dialog. Nonetheless, I enjoyed his latest effort. 

Soon to be a motion picture, The Light Between Oceans is an Australian novel with themes of love, loss, and isolation. Set in the years following World War I on a fictional lighthouse island miles from shore, PTSD-suffering Tom and his young wife Isabel are being torn apart by multiple miscarriages. When a baby and a dead man in a boat wash ashore, they decide to keep the child as their own, not knowing the consequences that decision will bring in the future. This might be my book club’s favorite book of the year for its straightforward moral dilemmas, but I imagine this book would be

I was hesitant to start this book. I rarely seek out books about World War II because they bring out a lot of emotions that I'm not always ready to experience. I also find that books with a lot of hype tend to fall below my expectations. I'm really glad I looked past my issues and picked up a copy of The Nightingale. I could not put this book down. The writing was incredibly rich and engaging. I loved how Kristin Hannah chose to tell the story of two sisters, and how they were each brave in their own way. One sister, Isabelle, hatches a plan to lead downed airmen out of France to Spain by way

Slow and steady wins the race, right? Then what’s the deal with all the timed tests our kids have to suffer though in school? Last to Finish is a great book to help kids who experience anxiety over timed math tests understand that they are not alone, and, in fact, they just might be kinda special. As the mom of a kid who freaks out when the teacher whips out the timer, I recommend this book for kids and caregivers to read together to foster discussion about math anxiety.

I like this quote from the back of the book:

"Surprisingly, many of history's greatest mathematicians have been slow

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett is a lyrical and sprawling book about how a single action rebounds and spreads out over time. Here, an impulsive romantic action between two married (to other) people leads to tons of unexpected consequences, the shattering and then blending of two different families, and an unflinching look at how that action unfolds and ricochets over time. Patchett is a master of deep, thoughtful characters, and this look at domestic complications should not only satisfy fans of her previous books that include Bel Canto and State of Wonder but should pull in new fans as well. 

Hildy Good has two tricks to find out anything about anyone. First, as the top real estate agent in her area, she's able to figure out more than you'd think by looking at the condition of someone's house, including the state of their health, or the state of their marriage. And second, she claims to be a mind-reader. Oh sure, it's just a party trick that involves being very good at interpreting micro-expressions and body language, but with her skills and the fact that her ancestor was Sarah Good, who was among the first to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials, she's managed to

Draco Incendia Trychophyton. That’s the official name for the spore that causes fiery veins of Dragonscale to show up on the patient’s skin. Eventually, the infected people will spontaneously combust, burning down hospitals, laboratories, and killing entire families. What’s scarier than this plague, though, is the cult-like group of infected survivors holed up at Camp Wyndham. Enter the Fireman, who can control the Dragonscale and keep it from killing him, and Harper, a pregnant former nurse trying to survive until her delivery date. While this apocalyptic novel is very original and filled

Caitlin Doughty’s memoir of her journey to becoming a licensed mortician is equal parts morbid, hilarious, inspiring and ruthlessly genuine. It’s also a memoir of her fight against the fear of death, a fight that almost destroys her. Much like the orange rot that sometimes trails our faces during death, we may never be ready to see it. But Caitlin stresses throughout Smoke Gets in Your Eyes that witnessing death is how we ready ourselves for it, and even embrace its terrible beauty.

Caitlin may be a mortician, but first and foremost she is an observer and writer, using description and self

As a children’s librarian, it’s uncommon that I recommend a book about a teenage runaway to parents looking for a book about relationship-building. But author Jennifer Mathieu has written an uncommon book. I just can’t recommend it highly enough. In this cautionary tale of what can go wrong when parents put too many restrictions on their teens, Rachel Walker is a seventeen-year-old girl who runs away from her strict, Quiverfull-adhering, fundamentalist Christian home in an effort to feed her curious mind and to build a life of her own. What I like most about this book is how complexly the

In Laura Lippman's latest mystery, Wilde Lake, Luisa Brant is the newly-elected state's attorney for Howard County, Maryland, and she has some big shoes to fill. Her father held the position and was greatly admired (to the extent that any politician can be) during much of her childhood, and Luisa has just beaten out her mentor for the role in a hotly-contested election. Eager to prove herself worthy of her new position, she decides to personally act as the prosecutor in the first murder case that comes across her desk. The seemingly-straightforward killing of a single woman in her apartment by

Many of you have heard of Marie Kondo and about her KonMari method of organizing your home, so you may already know that you’ve gone about it wrong. It isn’t that you need to improve your systems for storing and arranging stuff. It’s that you need to throw your things away. If they don’t bring you joy, yes, joy, they have no place in your life.  Old paperwork – joyless – chuck it. Extra buttons – joyless and useless (according to Kondo!). Toss ’em. Clothes you don’t wear – allow them to illuminate your abhorrence of them. Then say goodbye.    

Don’t read this book if you are interested in

The first time I read this I thought that it was much too wild for my taste. After spending the next year flipping through it every time it came through the library it was obvious that I was in love with this crazy book so I reread it and now we're besties. It’s comprised of different takes on the bohemian style – everything from modern to nomadic to earthy. You may even discover that you’re one or more of these styles and go about changing things up in your home. A lot of the finds in this book came from craigslist and thrift shops, which is excellent news for those of us who are treasure

The Choices We Make is a beautifully written, powerful, heart-shattering story about friendship and motherhood. Hannah and Kate have been as close as sisters since they met in fifth grade. Hannah cannot help but feel envious of Kate's family, complete with two little girls. Meanwhile, after six years of trying every method she and her husband can endure, Hannah has just found out that she is unable to get pregnant. Kate chooses to be Hannah’s surrogate, and this is where the journey begins. Everything goes according to plan until a shocking tragedy puts everything the two women have set out

​Let me begin this recommendation with a caveat: you probably need to be at least a little bit interested in knitting to enjoy Knitlandia. Or have an interest in traveling . . . to knitting related destinations. Clara Parkes, author of The Yarn Whisperer and several other books on knitting, returns to delight us with stories of her knitting adventures to both domestic and foreign locations. A couple of my favorites are "Romancing the Loons" – about the Squam art workshops in New Hampshire and "Cloudburst Over Paris" – learning that the owner of a unique yarn store in Paris (that I have

When reading a Mary Roach book, always bring a strong stomach and a sense of humor. Grunt, Roach’s bestselling follow-up to Gulp, is filled with anecdotes about pretty much every aspect of military science that you can imagine. Inside you’ll find a chapter on failed shark repellents, another on surviving IEDs through science, one on stink bombs and weaponized odors, and another where the author offered herself up as a guinea pig to have her sweat collected and analyzed. When covering the horrifying topics of amputations and urogenital wounds, she retains her humor while not being disrespectful

Don't be fooled by the opening battle scene and continuous conflict that drives the story into thinking this is a simple action book. It's tense and fast-paced, yes, but it is also full of moral, psychological, interpersonal, and political conflict. It is a book whose external action deeply considers complicated internal issues.

In my review of the first book in the series, I wrote: This is a gripping, thoughtful, powerful story, one deserving of many thoughtful readers interested in considering how a nation might very easily come apart as seen through the eyes of a young man during his

Penelope, Ephraim and Audrey have been friends forever, an inseparable threesome. But now that they are juniors in high school, things are changing. Penelope is devastated when for the first time ever, Eph and Audrey both ditch out on the fall festival. She is the only one of the three who has never been kissed, never had a romantic involvement. Audrey is expanding her social circle and encouraging Penelope to do the same, but Penelope doesn't want to. Change is hard. But it is also inevitable. As Penelope grudgingly begins to accept this, a new world opens up with new friends, a romantic

I'm not intolerant to gluten, but I tried this diet to see if the effects I'd heard about would have any benefit for me. I ate gluten free for a month and was remarkably less tired! And it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It was definitely worth the extra effort. 

This is a great book if you're just starting to learn about the gluten free diet. The introduction is wonderfully organized and describes all the different kinds of 'flour' they use. Since it's from America's Test Kitchen, they explain why they used certain flours and what the finished product looked and tasted like compared

The Last Star is the final book of The Fifth Wave trilogy and picks up six weeks after the events of The Infinite Sea. After the Others, an alien race, sent four waves of death they killed seven billion people. The final wave of brainwashed humans will kill off the remaining survivors including Cassie, Sam, Ben, Megan, and Ringer. This installment is darker and more desperate than the preceding two books and unfolds from multiple perspectives which add dimension and depth to this portion of the story. Strong characters and a fast-paced plot drive this story making it impossible to put down

Jack Hurd lives with his parents on a small farm in Maine. One day in the winter of his 6th grade year, Joseph Brooks comes to live with them as a foster child. Joseph has been in trouble and spent time in a boy's group home, a juvenile detention center, and most recently a high security juvenile prison after allegedly trying to kill a teacher. He is only 14, but is the father of a newborn baby girl. He has never seen his daughter, but loves her and her mother dearly. He wants nothing more than to be a part of their lives. The adults in his life are making that impossible at this point and

Monsters: A Love Story features Stacey Lane, a published poet and mother of two young boys who is left in a state of bereavement and confusion after the tragic loss of her husband. Stacey has writer's block and feels totally lost and angry until she receives an email that will change her life. One of Stacey's novels in verse, Monsters in the Afterlife, has been bought by a successful Hollywood producer and Stacey is asked to come to Hollywood to work on the screenplay with the "baddest boy" in LA, Tommy DeMarco. 

Well, they say misery loves company and that's certainly the case when Stacey

Close your eyes for a moment and remember the gang. You know, the one from your old neighborhood. Those kids you ran wild with when it was OK to be kids outdoors. Now imagine an act of violence by an unidentified assailant against one of those friends, and you’ve got M.O. Walsh’s My Sunshine Away.

I strongly identify with our narrator. He’s completely honest in his youthful self-absorption and total lack of insight. Alternately a suspect in the investigation, then absolved, a suspect once again, he himself never quite denies this guilt or claims innocence. And the struggle for truth is

Fans of Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood and all of the season 5 contestants will enjoy the “bakes” outlined in this photo-filled cookbook. The Great British Bake Off Big Book of Baking will show you, step-by-step, how to make the breads, pastries, biscuits, and cakes from the show, including some of the showstoppers and signature bakes. In between the recipes are short interviews with the contestants, hosts, and judges. It appears that the recipes have been modified to be easier, since they were under a huge time crunch while baking on the show. Also of note is that many of these recipes use

This starts off deep, but maybe faux deep. Then it gets heavier and heavier. In the best possible way. It gets authentic. As Nanette digs deeper and deeper to find her authentic self.

I gather from what I've learned and read that everyone was insecure in high school, felt they didn't fit in and relate, that any popularity was based on falsity and pretense. Yet I can't shake the belief that I didn't fit in and relate more than my peers, that my views and values and aspirations were somehow different despite that insecurity. I really do believe I was different in a way that only a small