Between the Shelves Book Review

ABOUT THE BOOK

Piper Monroe and Dorian McConkie never saw eye to eye in college—she thought he was cold and insufferable, he was just painfully shy, and she was just painfully convinced he hated her. Years later, Piper owns a thriving bookstore, and Dorian walks back into her life for a book signing—only for her to discover he’s the secret identity behind her all-time favorite author.

When the instructor drops out for a sold-out writing class in Piper’s bookstore, Dorian agrees to step in for one month. But between old grudges, new tensions, and entirely too much banter, Piper realizes something terrifying: she might actually like him.

Piper has a secret Dorian can never, ever discover. She isn’t only a bookseller—she’s also the woman behind the pen name of his number one rival on the charts.

If Dorian ever finds out, it won’t just ruin their tentative truce—it might just ruin everything.

A swoony, slow-burn romantic comedy packed with sharp banter, undeniable chemistry, and a love story that was never supposed to happen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kasey Stockton is an Amazon bestselling author, Whitney Award finalist, and winner of the Swoony Award Book of the Year. She publishes both contemporary and historical novels, and all of her titles fall under clean romance. She loves reading, chocolate, and period dramas, but nothing tops exploring new places with her very own prince charming and their three children.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Life Is What It's Like - What will readers like most about Between the Shelves? 

Kasey Stockton - The romance, hopefully! 

 

Life Is What It's Like - What is your favorite line in Between the Shelves? 

Kasey Stockton - Oh my gosh, what are his calves like? And also: if you want contentment in your career, do it for the love and the rest will level itself out.

Life Is What It's Like - Which author are you most like in Between the Shelves? 

Kasey Stockton - Someday, maybe! I absolutely love to read them.

Life Is What It's Like - Would you ever write a thriller? 

Kasey Stockton - I'm a solid mix of the two. I'm always careful never to fully write myself into a character because then the critical reviews can't hurt as much.

Life Is What It's Like - If this book was a food what would it be and why? (cheesy like pizza, sweet like chocolate, etc.) 

Kasey Stockton - In-N-Out. Quick and delicious.

Life Is What It's Like - What other releases are you planning for this year? 

Kasey Stockton - Two Regencies, both in multi-author series, The Ex-Best Thing, which is a romcom for my Belacourts series, and a secret project I'm not allowed to talk about yet.

BOOK REVIEW

Between the Shelves is a cute rom-com book about a bookstore owner/author and an author she knew in college. The characters drive the store forward. The romance is predictable, but lovable and an easy read. Romance lovers will enjoy this quick story and comfortable story. The author also drops some perks within the story from writing tips to a literary discussion. This is a fun, relaxing read. To learn more, click here.

Please note that I received a free ebook to read, however, this is my honest opinion. This post contains affiliate links.

If You'll Have Me Book Review

 ABOUT THE BOOK

Anna Atwood returns to Breckenridge, where she spent one blissful summer as a young woman. This time, though, she comes to the quaint town as a penniless spinster with a single hope: to build a life free from the constraints her father’s death put on her and free from the persistent suitor Mr. Green, whose plans for marriage are Anna’s worst nightmare.

 When she runs into David Tate, the boy she knew from that memorable summer, she finds he has grown into a confident and striking man. As they rekindle their friendship, David offers her warmth and protection in the moment she needs it most—when Mr. Green appears in town and threatens to destroy Anna’s carefully laid plans.

David Tate remembers Anna as the spirited woman who once brought light into his dark childhood. Now a man of means, he has a promising future, if he can withstand the powerful Lord Murphy—a man whose menacing hold on the town he owns is surpassed only by his relentless hold on David’s life. When David meets Anna again, he realizes he has a chance to save her from Mr. Green’s schemes, even if it means putting himself in danger of Lord Murphy’s wrath and revealing his own deepest secrets.

In a moment of desperation, David and Anna agree to a proposal of convenience to provide the safety they both need. But as their attraction ignites, the looming dangers from Lord Murphy and Mr. Green threaten to destroy their budding happiness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Esther Hatch grew up on a cherry orchard in rural Utah. After high school, she alternated living in Russia to teach children English and attending Brigham Young University in order to get a degree in archaeology. She began writing when one of her favorite authors invited her to join a critique group. The only catch was she had to be a writer. Not one to be left out of an opportunity to socialize and try something new; she started on her first novel that week. Visit her at estherhatch.com.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Life Is What It's Called - What makes If You'll Have Me stand out from other romance books on the market?

Esther Hatch - One of my favorite things about the book is that my heroine is a few years older than the hero. I don’t see that very often in Historical Romance.

Life Is What It's Called - If this book was a food, what would it be and why? (cheesy like pizza, sweet like a cheesecake, etc)

Esther Hatch - It would be a full meal with fun bright appetizers, a hearty main course, and a surprising flambé dessert.

Life Is What It's Called - What is your favorite line from If You'll Have Me and why?

Esther Hatch - Oh this is a hard one. Maybe, “Anna has returned.”

Life Is What It's Called - What will readers like most about this book?

Esther Hatch - I hope they will love Anna and David the most. I also think the very early proposal, early proposal, and slightly too early proposal make it really fun.

Life Is What It's Called - Will there be additional books that branch off of this one?

Esther Hatch - I have plans for two more and I’m so excited about them!

Life Is What It's Called - What do you want readers to know about you?

Esther Hatch - I absolutely love the community I’ve found since becoming an author. Readers and authors are such amazing people! Thanks for making my career the best of careers.

BOOK REVIEW

Anna returns to Breckenridge as a penniless spinster trying to escape the persistent Mr. Green. When Mr. Green threatens her happiness; a childhood friend offers his protection in a marriage of convenience. 

The scenes in this book are memorable and detailed from the very beginning. The intrigue and the build-up happen gradually allowing time for the reader to get to know the characters. The author does a good job at describing the scenes and actions of the characters. The characters are engaging and full of depth. The rich storytelling comes alive on the pages making this novel hard to put down. The romance builds as the plot unfolds. Overall, this novel is well-written and something romance readers will enjoy. To learn more and to add it to your bookshelf, click here.

I received a free copy to review, however, this is my honest opinion.

Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom Virtual Book Tour, Author Interview, and Giveaway

ABOUT THE BOOK

Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom
Written by Claudia Mills
Ages: 9+ | 272 Pages
Publisher: Holiday House (2026) | ISBN-13: 978-0-8234-6050-2

Publisher’s Book Summary: “Difficult” student Callie joins a philosophy club seeking the wisdom she needs to keep her beloved but equally difficult dog in this hilarious, heartfelt middle-grade novel for underdogs and dog-lovers alike!

Once Callie (Calliope Callisto Clark) starts saying something, it’s hard for her to stop. The opinion gets bigger and bigger, her voice gets louder and louder—and she gets in more and more trouble. She’s in trouble with her teacher, who likes order and not Callie. She’s in bigger trouble with her Grampy, who blames Callie and her dog (a.k.a. Best Ever Friend) Archie for his ever-rising blood pressure. Then there’s the biggest trouble of all… just one more strike, and Callie could lose her beloved Archie forever.

When she turns to Greek philosophy for answers on how to solve her problems, she only gets more questions: What is justice? What is fairness? And as her problems get bigger, so do her questions: Is it Callie’s fault when Grampy has a stroke?

Told in Callie’s endearing, energetic voice, Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom is sure to speak to any student who’s ever been called “disruptive.” Acclaimed children’s book author and retired philosophy professor Claudia Mills delivers a heartfelt middle-grade novel for misunderstood readers who feel like they’re living their own Greek tragedies.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claudia Mills has written over sixty books for children, including The Lost Language, an NCTE Notable Verse Novel, a Charlotte Huck Recommended Book, A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year, and A Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Book. Her most recent book, The Last Apple Tree, received a starred review in Kirkus Reviews. She is a recipient of the Kerlan Award for her contribution to children’s literature. She was a professor of philosophy for more than two decades at the University of Colorado. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Visit her at claudiamillsauthor.com, Facebook, Bsky Social, and Instagram.


AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Life Is What It's Called - What inspired you to write this novel?

Claudia Mills - For much of my adult life, I have pursued two different careers simultaneously. I was a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, and I was the author of many books for young readers. As the years went by, my two careers began to become woven together. I sometimes used children’s literature to illustrate concepts in my philosophy classes; I often had my child characters ponder ethical dilemmas. But I yearned to write a book where my main character would actually encounter some of the great works of the history of philosophy that I have loved for long and try to apply their advice to her own life. This was my inspiration for Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom. But then I had the challenge of making difficult, daunting philosophical texts written over two millennia ago accessible and engaging for young readers. First, I had to give my protagonist an urgent motivation for a new interest in philosophy. I made her an emotionally intense sixth grader being raised by her grandparents, who are threatening to rehome her energetic dog who is causing them as many problems as she is (e.g., a broken wrist for Granny, who trips over Archie while hurrying to the phone for yet another call home from Callie’s teacher). If she’s going to keep Archie, Callis feels she has to be perfect and needs the wisdom of the ages to help her with this impossible goal.

Then, I had to find a way for her to access these texts, which are admittedly hard going even for many college students. Solution: she enlists the sympathetic and philosophically minded school librarian to create a philosophy club where he can give the members needed guidance. I also worked on choosing philosophical questions I thought would be interesting to young readers and would connect with Callie’s struggle to keep Archie. For example (from Plato’s Republic): If you had a ring that would make you invisible, would you do some wrong things you wouldn’t do now? The planning for this book was a complicated jigsaw puzzle with many moving pieces!

Life Is What It's Called - How is this book different from the other books you've written and how is it similar?

Claudia Mills - As I just noted, although I’ve had characters face ethical dilemmas before (e.g., in my middle-grade novel Write This Down, I have aspiring seventh-grade author Autumn wrestle with whether she should publish a story that reveals something painful about her family), this is the first time I’ve had a character actually learn directly from great thinkers of the past like Socrates and Epictetus. I also usually write in third person, but this time Callie’s distinctive, candid, lively voice just came pouring out of me, eager to tell me all about herself! But in all my books, I try to create some scenes that will make readers burst out laughing, and some that will have them blinking back tears.

Life Is What It's Called - What's your favorite line from the book and why?

Claudia Mills - What a fun question! There are a lot of lines I love because they sound so much like Callie and reveal so much of her personality, like this one, early in the book, after she first hears the threat to send Archie back to the Humane Society (it’s a very long line, because Callie is a talker, for sure!): “Even if something happens that is worthy of the world’s biggest and longest meltdown, something that would justify a meltdown entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, it turns out that after you get completely melted, puddle-on-the-floor-melted, little by little the puddle starts to dry up and Melted You starts to turn back into Regular You.” But I’m going to choose the line that for me sums up what the book is fundamentally about. At the end of the book, librarian Mr. Davenport asks the kids in the philosophy club if they’d be open to a new member; they are shocked when they find out who this would be. But then Callie says, “I think . . . I think wisdom sort of belong to everybody?” As the author of Callie’s story, I think wisdom DOES belong to everybody. I wrote the book to share a few bits of the world’s store of wisdom with young readers everywhere.

Life Is What It's Called - How do you think readers will relate to the characters in this book?

Claudia Mills - The three main child characters – Callie, her best friend Peggy, and her nemesis Philip – are very different from one another so readers have a choice of which one they identify with most. Callie has intense, volatile emotions of joy and despair. Peggy is calm and matter-of-fact, taking life as it comes. Philip works so hard to meet high parental expectations that his seeming perfection irks other kids and makes him feel like a misfit at school. This offers a range of possibilities for reader identification.

Readers who have beloved pets – or anything they love deeply – are likely to relate to Callie’s terror of losing her dog if she has one more strike against her. Later in the book, she faces the unthinkable possibility of losing her elderly grandfather to a stroke. The fear of losing what we love, whether large or small, is something many readers, in their own way, will share.

Life Is What It's Called - Why is the messaging in this book important to middle grade readers?

Claudia Mills - The philosopher who features most prominently in the book (and is pictured on the cover) is the great Stoic Epictetus (my own personal favorite!). Epictetus’s central claim is that some things are up to us (our own choices and actions) and other things, everything else, really, is NOT up to us (in particular, OTHER people’s choices and actions). The only thing we need to worry about – the only thing we can do anything about – is the former. The sooner we can learn this crucial life lesson, the better! So this book would help young readers – or readers of any age – who feel burdened by worry about situations that are completely outside of their control (i.e., most of us). I wish I had learned this lesson when I was Callie’s age and need to remind myself of it even now just about every single day!

Life Is What It's Called - What can you tell us about your journey to becoming an author?

Claudia Mills - I wrote my first book, titled MY BOOK, when I was six years old. The entire book consisted of “Nachur Pictures” – rainbow, flower, tree – with one-word labels. But at the end I included advertisements for future books: a “BIG BOOK – 100 PAGES” of “MY LIFE” and a “THICK BOOK – 100 PAGES” – of “POWATREE” (my spelling for POETRY). So, from an early age, I knew what path I wanted my life to take. I continued writing throughout my K-12 school years, including an entire shoebox full of poems scribbled on scraps of paper, church bulletins, and crumpled Kleenex, and a typed-up book (the promised BIG BOOK of 100 pages) about the triumphs and travails of my 8th grade year, a book which was the sensation of the junior high school, with a waiting list for classmates to have a turn to read it.

During my college years I did little creative writing, immersing myself in my philosophy courses instead and then heading off to graduate school in philosophy. But halfway through a Ph.D. program at Princeton (conveniently situated just 50 miles from NYC), I saw an ad in a Sunday New York Times classified section for a position as an editorial secretary at Four Winds Press, a division of Scholastic. On a whim, I applied for it, interviewed for it, was offered the position, and accepted it, bailing on the graduate degree that I did end up finishing over a decade later. My job at Scholastic renewed my love for writing. Each morning, I sat on the bus for my 90-minute commute to the city, busily writing picture books, all of which were rejected with form letters. Yearning for a fly-on-the-wall view that would give me more insight into how my stories were being received, I hit upon the devious scheme of submitting one of my manuscripts to Scholastic under a pseudonym. It, too, was rejected – and I was the one who had to type the rejection letter! Ditto for my second surreptitious submission. But on my third try, the editor I worked for saw some promise in the manuscript and asked me to read it and write up my critique. On my IBM Selectric typewriter I typed a report that was remarkably even-handed: when I put on my editorial hat, I did see many flaws in the book I hadn’t seen before and noted these candidly – as well as the book’s many virtues, of course! The editor ended up writing a letter to the author – me! – which was typed by her secretary – me! – and included the report written by her editorial reader – me! She said she’d be interested in seeing a revised manuscript if I made the suggested changes. Which I did, and she ultimately ended up publishing the book, which had now grown from a picture book into a full-length middle-grade novel. (Fortunately, my timid confession of the author’s actual identity had just made her laugh!)

Many subsequent rejections followed in the decades since then, and many more published books, too. I had started out writing middle-grade novels starring girls who were an awful lot like me. (I have to say Callie is an awful lot like me, too!). But then I married and became the mother of two boys, so I started to write about boy characters who were not at all like me. I branched out from middle-grade to easy readers (my ten-title Gus and Grandpa series) and then to chapter books (such as my recent Franklin School Friends and After-School Superstars series). With The Lost Language (2011), I wrote my first verse novel. So I think, and hope, I’m still continuing to grow as a writer.

Thanks so much for hosting me and giving me the chance to introduce readers to Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom.


GIVEAWAY

Enter for the chance to win one of 10 signed hardcover copies of Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom. One grand-prize winner will receive two additional signed books by Claudia Mills, plus an unforgettable one-hour Zoom visit with the author!

Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom: Book Giveaway 

This post is sponsored by Claudia Mills. The review and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal views.