Sondra Eklund
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Sondra Eklund
@sonderbooks.com
6.7K followers 8.5K following 1.7K posts
Librarian. Writer. Book Reviewer. Math geek. Knitter. Progressive Christian. She/her. No DMs from strangers.
More at https://sondraeklund.com
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If Looks Could Kill, by Julie Berry, read by Jayne Entwistle, features Medusas vs. Jack the Ripper in 1888, with sweet Salvation Army girls caught in the middle. This book features rich historical research in a tale of the vulnerable fighting against the powerful.
www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/if_loo...
Cover of If Looks Could Kill, by Julie Berry, read by Jayne Entwistle. Picture is in red and blue of a girl in an old-fashioned fancy dress with her hair swirling around her and the whites of her eyes colored white, giving her an intense stare.
November 15, 2025 at 11:41 PM
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The Book of Candles: Eight Poems for Hanukkah, written by Laurel Snyder, illustrated by Leanne Hatch, is a picture book about a family celebrating Hanukkah, with a poem and a thought for each candle.
Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Children.../...
Cover of The Book of Candles, written by Laurel Snyder, illustrated by Leanne Hatch. Picture shows a small child and a cat on either side of a lit menorah, gazing at it.
November 15, 2025 at 4:28 AM
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Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, is about a Tokyo café where visitors who sit in a certain seat can time travel - as long as they return before the coffee gets cold. A feel-good story about what's important in life.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/befo...
Cover of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Picture shows a cafe table with two cups of coffee, a small lamp, and two chairs. There's a black cat under the table.
November 14, 2025 at 4:39 AM
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Photo shows a lake reflecting white clouds in the morning light, with mostly bare tree branches in front of it. Quotation reads: "Unity insists that we have something to learn from each other, and that our gifts can complement each other." -- Hanna Reichel
November 12, 2025 at 1:54 AM
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The Alchemy of Moonlight, by David Ferraro, read by Will Watt, is a gay retelling of The Mysteries of Udolpho in all its gothic glory.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/alchem...
Cover of The Alchemy of Moonlight, by David Ferraro. Picture shows a pale man in black with blond hair facing the reader. A full moon is behind him, and two gentlemen in tails, one light-skinned and one dark-skinned. There are small howling wolves pictured in the lower corners of the picture.
November 11, 2025 at 11:22 PM
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The Poisoned King, by Katherine Rundell, is another amazing adventure in the magical world of Impossible Creatures. In this one the Princess of Dousha wants to set things right after her grandfather the king is poisoned and her father is framed for his murder.

www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fi...
Review of Impossible Creatures Book 2: The Poisoned King, by Katherine Rundell. Picture shows a girl and a boy with swords, a creature with a scorpion tale, a winged lion, and the shadow of a castle.
November 11, 2025 at 3:32 AM
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The Myth of Good Christian Parenting, by Marissa Franks Burt and Kelsey Kramer McGinnis, analyzes the Christian parenting advice empire, uncovers hurtful myths, and provides guidance on evaluating whether resources are helpful or not.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/m...
Cover of The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families, by Marissa Franks Burt and Kelsey Kramer McGinnis. Picture shows a large two-story home with pillars in front.
November 9, 2025 at 4:27 AM
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Sequel to The Dagger and the Flame, The Rebel and the Rose, by Catherine Doyle, has Seraphine trying to figure out the new power of Lightfire - not only how to wield it, but for which side. And how can she and her assassin lover have any future together?

www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/rebel_...
Cover of The Rebel and the Rose, by Catherine Doyle, read by Freddy Carter & Emily Carey. Picture shows a man and a woman facing each other in silhouette, holding a rose between them, with roses flying up around them on either side. He has a sword behind his back and she has a dagger behind her back.
November 8, 2025 at 4:20 AM
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The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice: How to Discover a Shape, by Amy Alznauer, illustrated by Anna Bron, is a picture book biography of a citizen scientist who made the mathematical discovery of more pentagon shapes that tile a plane.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_No...
Cover of the book The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice: How to Discover a Shape, by Amy Alznauer, illustrated by Anna Bron. Picture shows a housewife across from a cat sitting on a basket of laundry. She's looking up at a pentagon holding the title. It's got flowers and butterflies and octopus arms bursting out of it.
November 7, 2025 at 3:29 AM
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The Cassatt Sisters: A Novel of Love and Art, by Lisa Groen, pulls you into Paris in the 1870s, as Mary Cassatt, inspired by her sister Lydia, works to make a place for herself in the world of art, teaming up with the outsiders dubbed the Impressionists.

www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/cass...
Cover of The Cassatt Sisters: A Novel of Love and Art, by Lisa Groen. Picture is an impressionist painting of two women sitting together at some kind of performance. One woman is holding an eyepiece of some kind to her eyes with a gloved hand.
November 6, 2025 at 4:04 AM
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Read more here: sonderbooks.com/sonderquotes...
Pink and white flowers with the quote: "The gospel - the good news - is that you are already fully loved and accepted." - Brian Recker
November 5, 2025 at 2:57 AM
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Set among Shakespeare's own acting troupe, That Self-Same Metal, by Brittany N. Williams, read by Patricia Allison, adds a paranormal twist as it turns out A Midsummer Night's Dream is based on actual Fae - with their pact not to harm humans recently broken.

www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/that_s...
Cover of That Self-Same Metal, by Brittany N. Williams. Picture shows a Black girl in Elizabethan dress holding a sword - but the blade is swirling in a circle of molten metal.
November 5, 2025 at 2:12 AM
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Creaky Acres, by Calista Brill and Nilah Magruder, is a sweet graphic novel about moving - with a horse. Nora's new barn isn't what she's used to, but we watch her learn that different isn't always worse.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fi...
Cover of the graphic novel Creaky Acres, by Calista Brill & Nilah Magruder. Picture shows a black girl in proper riding gear on a brown horse with a barn behind her.
November 4, 2025 at 2:03 AM
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Hell Bent: How the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a Spirituality of Love, by Brian Recker, explains the biblical support for Universalism & shows how the belief that God truly loves and accepts everyone leads to a more loving and healing spirituality.

www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/h...
Cover of Hell Bent: How the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a Spirituality of Love, by Brian Recker. Words are in a gothic font on a yellow background with a drawing of flames at the bottom.
November 2, 2025 at 4:22 AM
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In the stunning historical graphic novel Song of a Blackbird, Maria van Lieshout weaves together two stories of Amsterdam, one a story of resistance set in 1943, and the other set in 2011, a quest to find out the truth about one of the children who was saved.

www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/song_o...
Cover of the book Song of a Blackbird, by Maria van Lieshout. Words are in white on the black shape of a blackbird pointed toward abstract shapes like a red sun.
November 1, 2025 at 3:22 AM
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Zero! The Number That Almost Wasn't, by Sarah Albee, illustrated by Chris Hsu, is a picture book that explains the surprising fact that Zero had to be invented, and how much difference that made when it finally was.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_No...
Cover of the book Zero! The Number That Almost Wasn't, by Sarah Albee, illustrated by Chris Hsu. Picture is an orange background. A numeral 0 with eyes, hands, and legs is running away from people from various historical time periods.
October 29, 2025 at 2:56 AM
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I made this handy flowchart to figure out if you're as smart as Donald Trump!
Flow Chart: Count backwards from 100 by 7 -> Did you make it to 65? -> If No, see your personal physician. If Yes -> Was it difficult? If No, Congratulations! You're smarter than Donald Trump! If Yes -> Were you tempted to brag about it? If Yes, see your personal physician. If no, Congratulations! You're smarter than Donald Trump!
October 28, 2025 at 4:39 PM
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I loved this one! The Book Club for Troublesome Women, by Marie Bostwick, is a novel about a group of housewives who bond over books in the early sixties - beginning with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Their lives are never the same.
Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/book...
Cover of The Book Club for Troublesome Women, by Marie Bostwick. Picture shows the lower half of a woman from the sixties with folded hands sitting on a flowered couch, wearing a dress and heels.
October 28, 2025 at 2:49 AM
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Zip Zap Wickety Wack: A Book About Sharing, by Matthew Diffee, is a wonderfully silly picture book that makes me want to do library story times again. Kids who have mastered animal sounds will love this subversive book - and learn about sharing at the same time.

www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Book...
Cover of the book Zip Zap Wickety Wack: A Story About Sharing, written and illustrated by Matthew Diffee. Picture shows a sheep and a goat facing off angrily.
October 26, 2025 at 1:55 AM
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Stars, Hide Your Fires, by Jessica Mary Best, is a science fiction mystery novel where the plucky pickpocket scores a ticket to the Ascension Ball - and then gets framed for the emperor's murder.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/stars_...
Cover of the book Stars, Hide Your Fires, by Jessica Mary Best. Picture shows two knives on either side of the title in a starry oval. In the shiny blades of the knives are two young women in formal dresses looking at each other.
October 24, 2025 at 2:48 AM
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The Cartoonists Club, by Raina Telgemeier & Scott McCloud, is a middle grade graphic novel that tells a story about kids who make their own graphic novels - empowering the reader to do the same.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fi...
Cover of The Cartoonists Club, by Raina Telgemeier & Scott McCloud. Picture is a cartoon of four kids with diverse skin tones, with a Black girl jumping in the air with joy.
October 22, 2025 at 11:15 PM
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For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional, by Hanna Reichel, uses the writings of the Confessing Church who resisted Nazi ideology to help Christians today think through what our role and response should be to current events.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/f...
Cover of For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional, by Hanna Reichel. Background is red, no picture.
October 19, 2025 at 2:41 AM
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Oathbound, by Tracy Deonn, is the third book in the Legendborn cycle in which our hero Bree continues to disrupt the racist patriarchy of the descendants of King Arthur.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/oathbo...
Cover of Oathbound: Book Three in the Legendborn Cycle, by Tracy Deonn, read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt with Andrew Eiden, Hillary Huber, Tim Paige & Adenrele Ojo. Picture shows a Black girl in a silver dress with her hands up and red a purple mist around them. There's light behind her and a shadowy figure with red eyes and a hood.
October 17, 2025 at 2:32 AM
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Batchelder Honor Book Home, by Isabelle Simler, translated by Vineet Lal, is a beautiful picture book of poetry about the amazing variety and intracacy of animal homes.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_No...
Cover of the book Home, by Isabelle Simler, translated by Vineet Lal. Picture shows a black bird looking at the reader from a hole with a nest around it. Behind the bird is a distant lake and mountain.
October 15, 2025 at 3:38 AM
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Old Favorite A Tangled Web, by L. M. Montgomery is one of her two novels written for adults, highlighting her skill with quirky characters and intricate family relationships.

Read my review:
www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/tang...
Cover of A Tangled Web, by L. M. Montgomery. Picture is a drawing with three vignettes - a young lady with an old-fashioned hairdo on the bottom, above her a blue jug with fancy decorations, and above that a large old house.
October 12, 2025 at 3:49 AM