What I Read: March

I read quite a few books I really liked this month. Spring break made for a great week of reading! There's nothing better than sitting on the couch with the kids while reading a book and being snuggled by a kitten or kittens!

Books:

• The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead- I read this with the kids. It always takes us a long time to get through a book when we're only reading one chapter a night. I think taking a long time to get through books make them less enjoyable for me. I'd heard great reviews for this one. I liked it, but not as much as I expected.

• Songbirds by Christy Lefteri- This was very well written and I liked that it was written from different perspectives. It was hard reading it while knowing what the outcome was going to be. I came to really love the character I knew must be dead.

This cover was so pretty!

• Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto- A friend recommended this to me. The aunties and their interactions were hilarious and had me giggling. The story line just got a bit annoying and stressful to me.

• Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh by Rachael Lippincott- I was so excited, thinking this was a re-telling of Pride and Prejudice. It was cute, but it was not a re-telling. It took me a while into the book to give up on it being a re-telling and enjoy it. I was still disappointed she used Pride and Prejudice in the title to dupe people into reading it. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the title had been different, but I also likely wouldn't have read it!

• Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange- I was really excited for Tommy's second book to release. There There was so good! I didn't read the book jacket and went into it blind. I was shocked when I got about halfway through the book and realized the characters I was reading about were ancestors of some of the characters in There There. It was exciting to see where they ended up after There There. I loved how he showed that surviving a traumatic event doesn't necessarily mean it's a happy ending. I wanted more of the ancestors' stories. I also want to go back and read There There now.

• Keyed Up by Sarah Estep- Abby Jimenez's newest book releases on April 2nd. I got really excited about it and really wanted to read her book (which wasn't out yet) so I went with a romance. This book was really cute and reminded me of You've Got Mail. I bought it a while back because one of my friends is mentioned in the acknowledgements.

eBooks:

• Royal Valentine by Sariah Wilson- This was one of the ebooks in the Improbable Meet-Cute series. I got it just for Abby Jimenez's ebook, but am excited to read through the rest of them. I don't think I would have made it through this one if it were a full length book. It was not very good. 

• Crying in the Bathroom by Erika L. Sanchez- This was our book club pick. I liked her writing style and found myself laughing at different points. Overall it was really sad and we spent a huge portion of the book in the depths of depression with her which bummed me out.

Audiobooks:

• Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul by Evette Dionne- I got this one when I bought a blind date with a book from our local indie bookstore. I was looking for an audiobook as I was waiting on one to come in on hold at the library and decided to do this one as an audiobook. I didn't like it very much. 

• The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah- I liked this. People rave over Kristin Hannah, but I think she's just okay. I liked this a lot more than Firefly Lane, but it wasn't a book that made me want to read more from the author.

• Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano- I didn't pick the best time to read this book. It was about a plane crash and I read it a month before we fly to Boston. I probably should have read the book jacket. I just picked it because I found it in a Little Free Library and the cover was pretty. It was an interesting book, not necessarily one I would recommend, but I liked it. The memorial sounded gorgeous and I loved the letters Edward found.

• A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michelle Porter- I loved everything about this book. The interweaving stories from different generation of women, the telling of parts of the story from a bison's perspective, the grass' perspective, narrated by dogs, and even a car at one point. The beauty of resilience, love, family, and the matriarchs who hold it all together in the face of trauma. This was my favorite book of the year so far! It was great as an audiobook because there were so many different narrators. I want to re-read it as a regular book so I can catch things I may have missed while listening to it.

• Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones- This was book 2 in The Indian Lake Trilogy. I liked this one more than My Heart is a Chainsaw which was the first book. I finished this one right before book 3 released and our local indie bookstore had an event with Stephen Graham Jones on the day the 3rd book released. He was so amazing and I got so excited to read some of his other books and to finish this trilogy.