Not every book I read is worth a full review and sometimes life gets in the way and I run out of time to review a recently read book. To keep me honest, though, I figure a monthly recap would be easy to manage. Without further ado, here are the books I finished in March 2025.
I should note, I don’t normally read this many books in a month. March included the tail end of my vacation which was me, my knitting and books either on the beach, the balcony or in a 18 hour car ride!
I listened to the audiobook on the car trip back from vacation. This is a fun story of a wizard who wakes up with no memory of who he is or why he has a princess captured in his dungeon. I enjoyed this for the most part, though it did drag at some points. The narrator was great for the narrating parts, but I didn’t enjoy the character voices. The sound wasn’t balanced very well; the women were very quite and the men were very loud. I’m sure we missed important dialogue.
Janice Hallett writes really interesting stories. They’re not told straightforward but through found objects. In this case, the story is told through chat messages and emails. In “The Examiner,” a student might be dead, but maybe not? The class examiner is trying to find out what when on during a school year long class full of unconventional students. But no one knows exactly what is going on. This was a creative story and I’d like to read it again now that I know how it went (read it in order, if you will). However, the ending dragged out longer than it had to and took a complicated story and made it convoluted.
Students at an exclusive boarding school are dying by unexpected and terrible means. Is it all a tragic attempt to become Head Girl or Boy? Is it a historic cult? Who cares, er, I mean, who knows. This was an a fine audiobook and probably a good vacation read. The twist was not really a surprise nor was it particularly well done. The title had nothing to do with the book (there were no games or checklists involved). Just a middling, brainless read. Spolier if you care:
Look, I don’t even remember anyone’s name, but this is told first person and the narrator is the killer. She got a brain injury and was already borderline sociopath and the TBI made her want to kill her friends in weirdly complicated ways. For… some reason. And then she became Head Girl. After killing the headmaster.
This is a sweet book. While nothing in the plot is a surprise, this was a great story. Erin has reached the end of her rope and quit her job. She decides to clean out her room and ends up donating her beloved, note-filled version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Eventually it’s returned to the neighborhood little library with notes from a mystery man. So begins a romance in the vein of all good note-passing romances. Of course each of them have their own trauma to deal with and of course we know how they know each other but they don’t.
There is a lot of childhood trauma that both characters need to deal with and James’ family is a little too quick to tell him why he’s wrong when his own mom has been telling him some terrible things his entire life. That is something you don’t just get over and his family never acknowledges that pain. Probably the biggest read flag in this feel-good story.
This is the second book in the series (check out my review of the first, “The House in the Cerulean Sea”) and I simply love it. I prefer the first book to the second, but this one is just as beautiful. While the first book was told from the point of view of Linus, this story is told from the point of view of his partner and phoenix, Arthur. As with the first book, this book digs deep into childhood trauma, the foster system, found family and parallels to racism and homophobia with the newly added feature of government interference, manipulation and fear-based hate. A little sappy at times, this story still brought tears to my eyes and made me ache for more stories about Linus and gnome child Talia.
Bree is visiting her boyfriend Ty when she becomes hyper-fixated on a missing white woman in the neighborhood they’re staying in. Of course, the body is soon found at the bottom of the stairs in their rental. And of course Ty disappears at the same time, leaving Bree to find the body and become involved in the sensational story of a Black man suspected of killing a white woman. This is a tense, well written thriller exploring what it means to be a Black woman with a “background” caught up in the fervor around a missing white woman and what role social media plays in such tragedies. I loved it until we got to the end. There are a lot of twists and turns in this mystery ending with a totally unexpected twist. However, that twist leaves us with a number of unanswered plot points that Garrett just kind of waves her hands around. Just a lot of loose ends that made the ending unsatisfying.
Spoilers if you’re interested:
The ending was pretty convoluted and most of it not proven, just figured out by Bree before she goes home.
Ty wasn’t the killer but he ends up dead. I’m not sure who killed him. The dead body wasn’t the missing woman (Janelle). Instead, it was the neighbor, Lori, who was probably killed by her husband? Maybe, I’m not clear.
Billie, a social media influencer who really keeps the spotlight on the mystery throughout, was involved in the scam of pretending Lori was Janelle. I don’t know how she got involved.
Bree figures that Ty, a crypto bro, had been working with neighbor Lori to get her out of her abusive marriage and put all of Lori’s money in crypto so she could escape. An obvious thumb drive clue is the key to the account and Billie and Janelle can’t move on until they get their hands on it.
Bree gets it and eventually donates all of the money to a woman’s shelter (epilogue). Janelle is arrested and Billie flees to Paris. Billie’s connection to this is never figured out by the police.
Janelle probably found out about the crypto key because she was neighbors with Lori. And Janelle was friends with Billie, I guess, and told her and then they made this plan when Lori was murdered.
But who killed Ty? How did Lori die and how did she end up in the house?
I also love all of the stats Storygraph gives since I track my reading every day (457 days so far!). Here are my March stats.
