April Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month
- The Bossy Bookworm
- 10 hours ago
- 6 min read
Bossy Favorites of the Month
Here are my six favorite reads of April: a contemporary novel about family and identity; a debut novel about characters with disabilities from a nonspeaking author; a creative fantasy novel that's a book within a book; a story about loss and a love of books; a darkly funny book about loss and grief; and the third and final mystery in a series from a favorite author.
Have you read any of these titles? What were some of your favorite reads this month?
01 More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen
Quindlen's key characters find themselves in messy situations whose resolutions are all but assured. The small moments between characters bring them to life (and link them inextricably together), and while their heartwarming, heartbreaking paths are not all smooth, More Than Enough offers a version of a happy ending. I loved this.
Polly's friends gift her an ancestry DNA kit, and when she lightheartedly submits her results, she is matched to a stranger. Sure that it's an error, Polly digs into her family history to make sure she is who she has always thought.
Polly's connection to the young ladies she teaches in her school becomes more evident to her and to the reader as the story unfolds; her influence and affinity for the teens--as well as the new teen friend she meets through her DNA test journey--is a poignant juxtaposition to her struggle to start the family she wants to have.
The tone of this one let me know that the story might be messy, and it might not turn out satisfactorily for all involved, but that some version of a happy ending was coming without feeling unrealistically easy.
For my full review, please see More Than Enough.
02 Upward Bound by Woody Brown
I felt that knowing the story of the nonspeaking author of this novel added significant depth and poignancy to this big-hearted, heartbreaking story of the clients and staff of an adult daycare center, their personal stories, and their inner lives.
In his debut novel, author Woody Brown, who is nonspeaking and autistic, shares a portrait of an adult daycare center in California through glimpses of its varied clients and staff members, their motivations, their frustrations, their hopes, and their divergent paths.
Brown shares realistic challenges and disappointments within the novel, yet he also offers enlightening insights and hope for improved care and connection for his Upward Bound characters. He does this without smoothing the way too easily for discovering potential avenues to communication, which the author well knows can be a fraught, necessarily inventive and flexible, complex, time-consuming challenge.
The real-life story of the challenge of Brown's education, his extremely dedicated mother, and his labored yet highly effective method of communication is breathtaking and inspiring.
For my full review of this book please see Upward Bound.
03 This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me (Maggie the Undying #1) by Ilona Andrews
At once a book within a book and a real-life dive into a fantasy story, the novel offers adventure and a quest; an everyday person in an extraordinary situation; secret identities; a ragtag, loyal group of friends; twists; and a forbidden romance with No Swooning.
Maggie has long leaned on rereading her favorite fantasy series for comfort and security. She eagerly awaits the final book in the series, and by now she feels like she personally knows the characters and world of Kair Toren.
So when she wakes up naked and cold in a filthy gutter, with events unfolding around her as they do in the first book of the series, Maggie doesn't know how or why she's there, but she's certain that she's living within her beloved story world.
Danger surrounds her, and Maggie must survive long enough to figure out what's going on.
But as the story went on, I was left feeling unmoored and repeatedly wondering what the heck was going on as I tried to take in the many suddenly revealed details of treachery, politics, relationships, and past and present elements, none of which I was familiar with until their importance was thrust upon me and professed by Maggie on the spot.
Yet This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me shines in so many ways: Maggie's love of books, Maggie's entering into the fictional world she is obsessed with, the ragtag pack of friends-like-family that forms around her, the group's greater quest, and the star-crossed lovers at its heart.
For my full review, please check out This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me.
04 This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page
Page's romantic novel celebrates the importance of books for coping, celebrating, and exploring, while also delving into our main protagonist's deep grief and fight to find her footing again after loss. The sweet story offers poignancy, heart, and hope.
Tilly is a young adult still reeling from the death of her beloved husband Joe, and she's hoping that the start of a new year will mean hope and maybe a version of a fresh start.
She receives a mysterious message from the owner of Book Lane, a local London bookshop, and learns that Joe had made arrangements for a handpicked book for Tilly each month of the coming year, hoping to inspire, comfort, and challenge Tilly, but most of all, to open her up to living again. The books become a touchstone each month during that first difficult year after Joe's death.
Tilly befriends bookseller Alfie and his coworkers, and her new friends allow her to grieve as well as celebrate small joys without guilt. But the year following Joe's passing also allows Tilly to imagine a new version of herself and a future with happiness, hope, and the promise of unexpected adventure.
This is a feel-good romance celebrating books while its main protagonist reels with grief. While the complications and difficulties exist, Page makes you certain things will turn out with hope and the promise of joy.
You might also want to check out these other Bossy reviews of books about books and books that deal with grief.
You can read my full review here: This Book Made Me Think of You.
05 Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen
Nguyen offers a novel inspired by real life about the loss of a child and the deep, paralyzing grief that follows; this tragicomedy has dark humor and messy, realistic-feeling paths toward finding greater peace without minimizing sorrow.
Cleo and her best friend since childhood, Paloma, live down the street from each other and are ecstatic to be pregnant with their first children at the same time. They have a joint baby shower, discuss all of their pregnancy woes, compare baby products--and they even give birth on the same day.
But Paloma and her husband happily bring their new son home, while Cleo and Ethan find themselves in a nightmare of grief: their daughter Daisy dies at the hospital soon after birth. Cleo and Ethan's world is turned upside down.
Cleo takes a zigzagging, destructive, uncomfortable, cathartic, despairing, and often gallows-humor-fed path through the depths of her grief to a place where she can function again, holding her grief a little more lightly but prepared to always keep it close.
Characters surprise each other, and while the tone of the novel assures the reader that many issues will be resolved, we know that Cleo's loss cannot be reversed.
Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead is darkly funny, moving, honest, messy, and lovely.
06 The Keeper (Cal Hooper #3) by Tana French
The third in the Cal Hooper series is a slow-burn mystery in which Tana French serves up deep character development; a prominent, brooding Irish landscape; and a multitide of community secrets, dark motivations, and furious revenge.
I love a retired detective story, an Irish setting, and a Tana French book.
Cal Hooper, a former Chicago cop, has settled into small-town Ireland life, made connections, developed a low-key but deeply felt romance with Lena Dunne, and taken on the role of a surrogate father to a local teen, Trey Reddy. But he can't seem to find peace and quiet; in this third novel in French's series, the community reels over the disappearance and death of a local young woman, Rachel Holohan.
The focus of The Keeper is largely the complicated, evolving, often unspoken interpersonal goings-on in Ardnakelty, and I was fascinated by Cal's navigation of the minefields (along with Lena's and Trey's entrees into their own complicated social encounters). French also digs into the past to show us Lena's past and to illuminate the reasons for her frequent seclusion and her withdrawal from local society.
The Keeper is an almost 500-page slow burn mystery, and an undercurrent of tension and danger exists throughout. After a time the mystery is no longer a mystery; the main unknown is which form the community's renegade justice will take, and how far it will reach.
I wasn't wholly satisfied with some of the plot points, but The Keeper delivers wonderfully in terms of character development, which takes center stage throughout.
I received a prepublication edition of The Keeper courtesy of NetGalley and Viking Penguin.
For my full review, please check out The Keeper. You might also be interested in my Bossy reviews of other Tana French novels.