Best Books of April
As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at doing this.
So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.
These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from April.
Malice (Keigo Higashino): This was brilliant. Every single plot point is accounted for. Every detail snapped into place. It was so neat, so clever. I want to read every book in this series. The numbering is different in Japan vs. here; it listed this one as #1 and/or #4. But you will be fine following the story if it is #4. I treated it as #1.
Moderate Becoming Good Later (Toby Carr and Katie Carr): I read about this book before we left for the UK this winter, and I was lucky enough to snag the last copy at the bookstore. (And thank you to the employee who ran from section to section saying, “It has to be here, somewhere.”) I love the Shipping Forecast, and I’ve long told Josh that my dream is to take a trip where you visit each of the Shipping Forecast locations. Toby Carr did just that — in a kayak. The book is a meditation; time spent on a verbal sea. I cried at the end despite not knowing Toby personally. Spending time with him in the pages made me feel like I had been on the trip with him. I’ll reread this one whenever I need time on the water.
Expiration Dates (Rebecca Serle): It is exactly what you expect from a Rebecca Serle book: It’s a super sweet book about being okay with the unknown. If you think too deeply, you’ll end up with a lot of questions that poke holes in the plot. My recommendation is not to think too deeply and just enjoy the story.
How To Solve Your Own Murder (Kristen Perrin): First and foremost, I love the cover for the U.S. version. Brilliant. It was a fun cozy quirky mystery, set in a great town with interesting characters. I am so happy there will be a second book.
The Husbands (Holly Gramazio): I laughed so hard reading this book. There were passages I tried to read aloud to Josh, but I couldn’t get through them, so I had to hand the book over. The story is perfect from beginning to end: Interesting situation, funny exploration, wonderful ending.
What did you read last month?
1 comment
These all sound good! I’m especially interested in “The Husbands.” 🙂
I finished 5 books in April — all of them related to various online book clubs/groups/readalongs I’m involved in. All reviewed on my blog, as well as Goodreads & StoryGraph.
* “The Improbability of Love” by Hannah Rothschild. A London chef, nursing a broken heart, picks up a painting in a junk store to give to a new love interest, setting off a chain of unexpected events. This one took a while to get into, and the cast of characters was perhaps a little overstuffed. About halfway through, though, things got more interesting, and I wound up enjoying it more than I thought I was going to. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.
* “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel. The Substack “Footnotes & Tangents” is hosting a year-long read of the Cromwell Trilogy by Mantel, and this was the first of the three books. (We’re also reading “War & Peace,” one chapter per day, for a full year!) It’s long, leisurely and very dense, with a huge cast of characters — but the writing is beautiful. There’s a LOT to chew on, but the group discussions & context posts really help me to process just what’s going on. 4 stars.
* “Widowland” and “Queen Wallis” (titled “Queen High” in the UK) by C.J. Carey (who also writes as Jane Thynne. These were re-reads for an upcoming book club discussion. I’ve been thinking about them ever since I first read them, and I am so looking forward to talking about them with other readers. They’re dystopian/alternative history novels set in the 1950s, with the premise that Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany in 1940. Kind of a cross between “Fatherland” by Robert Harris and “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood. I think they are HIGHLY relevant to the times we’re currently living in, and I would love to see them more widely read (and maybe even made into a movie/TV series!). Both books: 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.
* “Bel Lamington” by D.E. Stevenson. Typical Stevenson fare, a gentle tale of a young woman with few resources, struggling to support herself in late 1950s/early 1960s London, while dealing with life, love, loneliness and office politics. After meeting a stranger in the rooftop garden she’s created, her life begins to change in some unexpected ways. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.