five things Friday: March TBR edition

I've been craving spring, but March in Michigan doesn't usually oblige... so instead I'm going with spring-ish covers on my reading list for the month! Some florals and green and butterflies all caught my eye - plus this seems like it'll be a great mix of reads, from memoir to mystery to middle grade.

I've got two non-fiction this month - unusual for me, but the authors and the happy covers are enticing me: Lift was actually a random library grab from an author whose previous work I have loved, Kelly Corrigan; it's written as a letter to her children and sounds like a balm I might need right now in motherhood. Thanks for Waiting has actually been (ahem) waiting on my shelf to be picked up, a memoir by a favorite podcaster.

Mystery and middle grade have been regular parts of my reading life lately... for this month there's We Are All the Same in the Dark, which I have actually already picked up and it is gooood. Just the kind of literary mystery with mix of character development + procedural - secrets being uncovered that I'm always looking for. And A Place to Hang the Moon has been on my radar for a while; a WWII evacuation story, I'm getting Narnia and The War That Saved My Life vibes. Good and heartwarming things - looking forward to cozying up with it while I wait for spring to come.

And finally, have to throw in a bit of rom-com to the month too - I received The Bodyguard from Netgalley and hope it'll be a good escape, though I have had mixed success with Katherine Center (loved Things You Save in a Fire but was meh on What You Wish For). I'll report back and let you know whether it's worth picking up when it publishes in July!

I made it through all of my February books and enjoyed them for the most part. Definitely will be recommending The Maid to a lot of people, and David Sedaris' diaries to people who are fans of his. Here's a recap of everything:

• The Maid: this book is a "cozy" mystery in that it is a whodunit murder that is being investigated by characters who are amateurs rather than police - and isn't graphic or super suspenseful. With the grand hotel setting and the upstairs/downstairs feel with the maids and kitchen workers behind the scenes and the brash, rich guy being murdered in the penthouse, it would be a light and fun read. But the narration of Molly the maid makes it so much more. I've seen comparisons to Eleanor Oliphant for Molly, and I think these are apt, with her difficulty connecting with others, her loneliness, and her narration slowly revealing some repressed traumas; it also reminded me a lot of When We Were Vikings, another book with a protagonist with cognitive differences who loves her job but doesn't quite understand some things going on beneath the surface and thus puts her trust in the wrong people (or even the much more thriller-y version, Sally Hepworth's The Good Sister). Molly is a great narrator for a mystery because her way of seeing the world is so black and white that she notices everything - but she also makes it interesting because with her difficulties in understanding nuance in expressions and things like that, she's also a bit of an unreliable narrator. At the same time, Molly's literalness and keen observations lead to some wit and some chuckles, and her love of being a maid and cleaning is conveyed in such an endearing way. It's hard not to fall in love with her and root for her to solve the case and to find some friends along the way. [Received an e-copy from Netgalley in return for an honest review] ★★★★
• Winter Counts: much less cozy here - instead this is a gritty literary mystery set on a Native American reservation and starring a character who takes justice into his own hands on behalf of those wronged, since the justice system is so hands-off when it comes to the reservation. But when his nephew gets caught with drugs and is offered a plea deal to go undercover as part of a federal sting operation, Virgil has to reconcile that on the one hand he wants to protect his nephew and also protect his community from the influx of opioids, but on the other hand this requires working with federal agents and having his nephew be a snitch, in order to get to the bottom of what's going on and who is actually bringing the drugs in. If you liked Blacktop Wasteland or Razorblade Tears, this has some of the gritty feel with the protagonists skirting the line of the law as they try to protect or get justice for their family (but a bit less violent overall); also, if you liked the YA book Firekeeper's Daughter, this is in some ways the adult version of it - lots of similar elements with the undercover drug investigation on the reservation, and the half white/half Native characters trying to figure out where they fit into their community and what their tribe's traditions and beliefs mean for their own lives. I really loved Firekeeper's Daughter and liked the elements that Winter Counts shared with it, but overall this one felt a bit slow to me and then somewhat disjointed when the reveal of the mystery happened fast at the end. ★★★.5
• A Carnival of Snackery: the 2nd installment of David Sedaris' published diaries, this book is fun for longtime fans of Sedaris and his work, but not necessarily something to pick up if you haven't read his other books. If you do like David Sedaris, this gives a peek behind the scenes into his life, from everyday life with Hugh to travels for book tours. It's just little snippets of life, so you can read it a little at a time; there are lots of observations about the strange or absurd in the everyday, or even just records of jokes he hears, that he picks up from neighbors or people at his book signings - you can see in action his constant curiosity about humans and how the way he observes the world leads to his essays. I enjoyed reading the 1st installment of his diaries (Theft by Finding) even more, because covering the earlier years was interesting to see his as-it-happens reaction to finding his way in the world and slowly gaining success as a writer (which happened relatively later in life) and in figuring out his identity as an individual and as a gay man; this all gave it a bit more of a story arc. But both have their laugh-out-loud moments of course, and I also thought it was so interesting to see little mentions of current events across the years, in relation to the things happening in his everyday life. There are lots of funny tidbits but also some really poignant moments in his personal life and in his reflection on news items like school shootings, etc. ★★★.5
• Bringing Down the Duke: Annabelle Archer is one of the first women admitted to Oxford in the late 1800s, but as the daughter of a (deceased) vicar with no inheritance to her name, she needs a scholarship to be able to attend. In return for this scholarship, she's required to help out with the burgeoning women's suffrage movement, and a pamphlet-distributing assignment leads her to run (literally) into Sebastian, the Duke of Montgomery with the ear of the queen but no desire to hear out the movement. From their run-in, things develop in ways you might expect in a romance... I have to say: the more I read in the romance genre, the more I realize I need to find the ones that are more slow burn and less steamy - honestly, I find the love scenes just distracting from the story when they get so hot and heavy already in the characters' first encounter. I was interested in these characters and their progressiveness for the time, and in the bit I learned about women's suffrage in England, but then the romantic scenes just took me so far out of that part of the story when they popped up, and actually felt like they impeded character development so that I didn't really end up connecting with the characters that much or feeling swoony over their relationship. I probably won't continue in the series, but I know a lot of romance readers really love this one, so if you like reading period romances with some interesting women and a feminist twist, check it out. ★★★
• A Taste for Love: here's a less hot-n-heavy romance - picking a YA one is usually a safe bet for that! The blurb for this one said it's for fans of Great British Bakeoff and Jane Austen - definitely tempted me to pick it up! - but what I didn't realize is that it's actually a Pride & Prejudice revamp involving a Chinese bakery, a youth baking competition, and a mom trying to set her daughter up with the contestants. Lots of mouthwatering food descriptions all the way through, for sure. And I'm always a sucker for a P&P retelling, so I did have fun with it, especially as I think it uses a cultural setting that works well to modernize a story in which who you date/marry is of big importance to - and can involve lots of meddling from - your family (in this case with an Asian American family). I also enjoyed how it incorporated modern-day YA themes of finding identity in relation to your parents/their desires, especially with this interplay of immigrant vs. first-generation, reminding me of other YA books I've loved like Frankly in Love and Super Fake Love Song. But overall not my favorite YA book or P&P retelling - just felt a little long and perhaps convoluted at times, with some parts feeling like they were trying to be P&P retelling, some parts (like the bake-off setup of wacky contestants) feeling a little forced into being comical. ★★★

Have you read any of these? Or have any other best books from the last month that I should add to a future TBR post?!

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