Hello friends. I wanted to call your attention to the "Understanding Before Moving" series of books by Herman Grooten, published by Thinkers Publishing. Currently two volumes are available, the first on Ruy Lopez and Italian Game structures and the second on the Queen's Gambit. These were published late last year and I have not seen any discussion on here, I suppose because they are targeted more toward the novice and club player crowd (which I can confidently claim membership in). A total of 16 volumes are planned in the series.
The aim is to give detailed explanations of the various "theoretical" moves and why they are preferred, and also to illustrate the main ideas and pawn structures that arise from these openings in a way that mid-1000s level players can understand. Grooten speaks of players memorizing opening moves without understanding their content, and getting lost as soon as they leave theory. As you may guess from the title, Grooten aims to remedy this. Several annotated GM games are featured.
I am not very far into the first book, but I will try to finish both soon and post more detailed comments later. My initial impressions are quite positive. I think Grooten hits his target. I only have two complaints so far. The first is that the English translation and copyediting is poor, however this has caused me no problems in understanding the chess content. The second is that the price seems to be about $25-30, and this is quite hefty for a book with "spaced out" typesetting that is not even 150 pages long.
Chessable also carries the book in their proprietary training format, and one of their staff members (IM John Bartholomew) has a nice video review of the first book:
https://www.chessable.com/understanding-before-moving-1-ruy-lopez-italian-struct...In particular by watching him scroll his screen you can see most of the contents of the book. (I have no affiliation with Chessable [or the author or publishing company] and obviously one should be wary of reviews by people attempting to sell the product in question. I mention it only because I found it informative prior to purchasing the book.)
If anyone has questions about either volume, please ask and I will do my best to answer.