Everything we read in March 2021

I got this as part of my monthly Cafe Con Libros subscription, and was so excited! I’ve been meaning to read this since it came out a few years ago, but just never got around to it. On a side note, definitely sign up for their book club if you haven’t already, so worth it! The farm is set in modern day New York, and is based on an exclusive, elite community in upstate New York where surrogates (spookily called Hosts) for the world’s rich and famous spend a full nine months catering exclusively to pregnancy. I LOVED this book; it was the perfect mix of good writing, drama, and social commentary. I found this to be very thought provoking, as I think it is not at all difficult to imagine a world where this could happen. If you can’t wait for the Handmaid’s Tale Season 4 (one of our favorite book to TV adaptions) come back, this might tide you over till April 28th.

I have been so excited for Carola Lovering’s next book since the day I finished Tell Me Lies. While I don’t think this lived up to the VERY high bar set by her last book, I still really enjoyed it. I found it difficult to relate to the main character, but the twists and turns in this book are pretty wild, and there is nothing better than a thriller set in the affluent world of rich twenty-somethings in New York City.

This book follows several girls during their experience at an elite all-girls boarding school in rural New England, as the community reels from an allegation of sexual misconduct from an alumna. I really liked this book; I saw a lot of parallels between my own high school experience, and it really put me back into the teenage-girl mindset. Having multiple narrators is definitely a little chaotic and confusing, but the book is very well written and offers a unique perspective on how allegations of sexual misconduct and sexism permeate a community.

This book genuinely freaked me out. In my opinion, it’s always a good sign if you can’t read a book after dark. This Ruth Ware book is significantly creepier than her other book, One by One, which I read last month. A young family living in remote Scotland hire a new live-in nanny, but things take a wild turn and escalate from there.

I was coming down from the high of The Turn of the Key and was looking for another thriller. I was drawn to the fact that The Broken Girls is set at a boarding school in rural Vermont (my favorite state), and decided to pick it up. Twenty years ago, a young girl was found murdered on the grounds of an abandoned school. Two decades later, an anonymous company announces they are redoing the school, and they find a body. The book toggles back and forth between the late 1940s and present day, and ended up taking a wild twist I did not see coming at ALL.

My love for Dolly Alderton is well documented on this blog, and I was so excited to read her first piece of fiction. While I didn’t love this as much as Everything I Know About Love, I liked Ghosts and found that it followed the same themes of relationships and love. Nina Dean is a food writer in her mid-thirties navigating dating and friendships in London when she meets her dream man. They spend several blissful dates together, and then he completely ghosts her. If you are lucky enough to head out on vacation in the next few months, definitely pick this up.

I listened to this on Audible. I love audiobooks read by the author, and I especially enjoyed listening to President Obama narrate his early life, elections, and first term in office. This book is long at 30 hours (and it’s only part one!), but I recommend it for anyone feeling nostalgic for the Obama years. 

I had put this on hold at the library a few months ago and finally got it on a Saturday morning in March. A perfect weekend read, Lore reimagines Greek mythology so that every seven years, the Gods become mortal again and are can be killed by humans who can then inherit their power. I’m not going to lie, the concept of this was really tough for me to understand for the first third of the book, but once I understood the world, it was a fast and fun read.

I got this on NetGalley as an advance copy, but it’s now widely available, and you should definitely pick it up! A lot of people have compared it to Daisy Jones & The Six because it’s about a band in the seventies and written in an oral history format. I loved Daisy Jones & The Six, but this is a much more substantial read. Dawnie Walton goes deep into racism and sexist in the music industry, both in the 70s and in modern day. This was her debut novel, and I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Note: I feel a little conflicted about A Deadly Education. The initial publication of this book included racially insensitive passages. Naomi Novik (who is white) has since apologized and the publisher has removed the insensitive passages. The copy I got from my local library did not contain those passages. You can read (what I found to be) a good discussion of the issue here.

While this book is not perfect in regards to its discussion around culture and race, I will say that I really enjoyed the concept, plot, and characters. The Scholomance is a wizarding school in Britain (a la Hogwarts), but once you enter, you stay locked in the school for four years. If you make it out, you graduate, but most people die. Unlike Hogwarts, this book actually features quite a diverse cast of characters, and some of the criticism of Novak comes from having a lot of representation, but not getting it quite right. The second book is supposed to come out in September 2021, and I will probably read it. Here’s hoping Novak (and her editors) learned their lesson the first time.

This was another audiobook for me this month! I love spy books, so American Spy has been on my radar for a while. The book starts Marie killing an unknown man who breaks into her home in suburban Connecticut. The book is then written in the form of a letter to her two young sons as she discusses her time as a spy and how she met their father. Despite the action in the first chapter, the first part of this book is pretty slow. It picked up for me in the middle when Marie heads to Burkina Faso for an assignment. I didn’t know much about that part of Africa, so it was really interesting to hear the descriptions of life in the capital of Ouagadougou.

I read this series in about five days. Considering it’s about 1400 pages total, that was a pretty big effort. These books are set in an alternate reality where there are three versions of London in different parallel universes. Certain people are able to travel between the Londons, which each have varying access to magic. V.E. Schwab always creates interesting casts of characters, and this series is no different. Lila is a bit too perfect for me, but Rhy, Kell, and Holland are all great characters. Interestingly, the second book of this series is my favorite, but I would definitely recommend the whole thing if you have some time and need something escapist.