My April Reading List has great options for all kinds of book lovers!
How is Easter this weekend?
I feel like I looked at my calendar last month and Easter was infinity away. And then I woke up this morning and realized that Easter is in just a few days and I haven’t even bought one plastic egg or one chocolate bunny. Whoopsies.
Strangely, Lucy is a super huge fan of the Easter bunny. We happened across him at the mall the other day and she totally fangirled. Of course, she was wearing a pizza sweatshirt and her hair was sticking out in a zillion directions, so NOT visiting was not an option. We stood in line and when it was her turn to sit on his lap, she basically collapsed into him, snuggling his fur and closing her eyes as if to fully absorb the whole experience.
Needless to say, the $20 photo I ordered is quite a sight to behold.
So here we are. April means April Reading List. I went with a variety this month, so there’s a little something for all tastes. Unless you’re into that 50 Shades stuff, in which case…I can’t help you.
I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi
I have been seeing this book on ALLLL the lists lately, and the reviews are phenomenal. One review said that this book “will keep you reading until the final delicious revelation.” I mean, I am all about delicious revelations, so it had to go on the list.
Via Amazon:
A story from debut author Abby Fabiaschi that is “as absorbing as it is illuminating, and as witty as it is heartbreaking.”
Maddy is a devoted stay-at-home wife and mother, host of excellent parties, giver of thoughtful gifts, and bestower of a searingly perceptive piece of advice or two. She is the cornerstone of her family, a true matriarch…until she commits suicide, leaving her husband Brady and teenage daughter Eve heartbroken and reeling, wondering what happened. How could the exuberant, exacting woman they loved disappear so abruptly, seemingly without reason, from their lives? How they can possibly continue without her? As they sift through details of her last days, trying to understand the woman they thought they knew, Brady and Eve are forced to come to terms with unsettling truths.
Maddy, however, isn’t ready to leave her family forever. Watching from beyond, she tries to find the perfect replacement for herself. Along comes Rory: pretty, caring, and spontaneous, with just the right bit of edge…but who also harbors a tragedy of her own. Will the mystery of Maddy ever come to rest? And can her family make peace with their history and begin to heal?
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
Somehow I’d never even heard of this bestseller, but it came so highly recommended that I had to give it a try. I’m currently about halfway through…and it’s very good. It’s not particularly a page-turner, but it’s an all-around good and entertaining book. If you like classic Southern coming-of-age tales, I highly recommend this one.
Via Amazon:
The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around – fast. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he’s aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson – a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward – the news is served up all over town with that afternoon’s dinner. And young Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a major scandal.
Boggled by the sheer audacity of it all, and not a little jealous of his grandpa’s new wife, Will nevertheless approves of this May-December match and follows its progress with just a smidgen of youthful prurience. As the newlyweds’ chaperone, conspirator, and confidant, Will is privy to his one-armed, renegade grandfather’s second adolescence; meanwhile, he does some growing up of his own. He gets run over by a train and lives to tell about it; he kisses his first girl, and survives that too.
Olive Ann Burns has given us a timeless, funny, resplendent novel – about a romance that rocks an entire town, about a boy’s passage through the momentous but elusive year when childhood melts into adolescence, and about just how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the century. Inhabited by characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Cold Sassy, Georgia, is the perfect setting for the debut of a storyteller of rare brio, exuberance, and style.
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
This YA novel was published just over a month ago and already has 180 five star reviews. I really love smart, thoughtful, important YA novels with a message and I’m really looking forward to diving into this one.
Via Amazon:
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
Got any titles I need to add to my next list? Let me know!
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