The April Book Round Up

I still feel like I am playing catch up after the two weeks of kiddo spring break and in laws, and then…life. The birthday surprise was amazing and it was so nice to have them here. April was a much slower month for me for books, because I was 1. distracted/sad by personal things 2. very busy. I read 10 books and it took me ages to get through them, compared to my normal reading times. This month was all audiobooks.

1. I started the month off with a WW2 fic that had been on my list since its release. The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin is part of the genre that I love – stories about what ordinary people did re: ordinary everyday life (books and libraries, etc) during the war. Many of Martin’s novels have a book theme and I already have her 2025 release, The Secret Book Society, pre-ordered. I really enjoyed this, though, and it speaks to the tenacity of the regular people existing and living through the horror that was WW2.
2. I have never read Jane Austen (yes, take a moment to clutch your pearls) but This Motherless Land by Nikki May is apparently a retelling of Mansfield Park. Since I’ve never read it, I can’t compare the two, but it was beautifully written and a well-told story. Funke is thrown into a world she doesn’t know, with family she’s never met, finds her footing, and then her life is upended again. It’s a great coming-of-age that touches on racism, home, generational trauma, and belonging.
3. Honestly, would it be a book round-up without Sierra Simone? Next month might have to be because I am running out of stuff to read by her! But Supplicant is much more straight smut than most anything else I’ve read by her, but it’s hot and a quick read!
4. I got this one in the Amazon Prime First Reads ages ago, but didn’t read it. I finally picked up Go Ask Fannie and it’s a good family drama but it didn’t blow me out of the water.
5. Reminiscent of Where the Crawdads Sing and The Girls in the Stilt House (I read both in 2023 I believe), The Last Carolina Girl is another family drama (though it doesn’t seem that way to start) that touches on generational trauma. It wasn’t my favorite but the plot is good.
6. Ok, Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners was a funny and lighthearted listen – and I definitely recommend the audio for this, because it is full of personality and wit and very enjoyable. More like a podcast than a book, since it’s non-fiction, but not droll at all!
7. This one hit hard and was rather poignant given the current times in the US. Mother Daughter Traitor Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal was recommended by a friend and follows a mother-daughter duo that integrate into the American Nazi party pre-WW2 in LA. The anti-semitism, racism, and fascism they are spying on is unsettling, given our own political environment. I needed a break from WW2 lit after this though. Too many parallels to current times.
8. A palette cleanser! The Phoenix Crown is historical fiction set in the days leading up to, and during, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, with a well fleshed out plot that includes theft, murder, romance, and thankfully, no Nazi’s.
9. This is the third in the Before The Coffee Gets Cold series and I have to be honest, Before Your Memory Fades was tough to get through. There wasn’t much movement on the lives of the main characters that stay the same and the stories of those who come to the cafe to time travel are getting repetitive. I won’t read more in this series now that I’ve finished the three book set I bought.
10. There is so much to say about Broken Country which is the newest novel from Clare Leslie Hall, who used to write under the name Clare Empson. It’s messy and devastating and beautiful. I loved it so much, I immediately bought her other two books (Him, re-released as Pictures of Him and Mine, re-released as Days You Were Mine). They’re all wonderfully human stories that have a lot of substance without feeling gratuitous. They touch on how complex life is without getting fantastical.

Anyway, I read 10 books in April and so far in May I have read 4 and am in the middle of two books – My Own Words, Ruth Bader Ginsburgs memoir and the first book in the Thursday Murder Club series. I’m having a rough go of it right now so I am taking forever to move through these. Proof? I got an actual genuine punishment spanking last night. I’ll try and talk about it more in its own blog, but I am really struggling. What do you do when someone is plastering blatant lies about you in shared online spaces, including just enough detail but not your name, to maintain plausible deniability, all while claiming they “value” you, and you’re already committed not to say or do anything that might even be misunderstood as hurtful to this person?

Sitting back and letting it happen is the only appropriate course of action, of course. This is testing a skillset I’ve never been strong in but I am committed to doing my best to looking away and letting it go. Turning the other cheek. Going high. Call it what you will. But my heart is hurting (and my head from all the crying).

I wrote lines last night, as affirmation, to accompany the spanking I got Saturday night and connect back to it, and remind myself of this truth. That line was:

The lies people tell about me are none of my business.

-M