Murach's ASP.NET Core MVC (2nd Edition)

I generally like the Murach books, as they have been used as texts in two previous courses (SQL and Python). This one follows the same normal Murach pattern, with two-page chunks, explanation on the left, examples on the right, which makes it good for both learning and reference.The big issue to know about on this one, and it may or may not be a factor for everyone, is the only discussion of database usage is in the context of using Entity Framework. There is no discussion around creating your own data access layer and hand coding your SQL queries. It looks like this is touched on in Murach's C# text, but then that one also jumps right into EF. This gives a newer student the impression that EF is the only way to manage a data layer in an ASP.net app, which is not true as you can "roll your own" DAL (which is actually quite common) or use a different ORM such as Dapper and, either way, students should learn what's going on under the hood by rolling their own SQL before learning an ORM and having everything abstracted away. To me, this is a big enough deal to remove at least one full star from my rating.

Ordered new but looks used. Book was needed for course I am taking

Murach always has quality content and the layout has descriptive content on the left page and bulleted/list steps on the right but sometimes they cover so much in a chapter that it can get a bit wordy. The reading can be somewhat taxing to get through and I found at times that the MS tutorials/docs to be occasionally more brief and clearer. I also pickup Freeman's Pro ASP.NET Core 6 and utilize it a bit more that the Murach.