What I Read in April

I’ve been SO excited to share my April reading list. I almost posted it early because I just couldn’t wait. But before I get into what I read (and what I highly recommend), I have to confess that I am just loving reading right now.

I made a commitment to myself to read 52 books this year and it felt a little daunting. I really didn’t want to let myself down. To read a book a week, I really have to read six to seven days a week consistently. For some reason, I was envisioning this as being a big mountain I was going to have to hunker down to trudge up. Instead? Reading every day has sparked ALL THE JOY. I’m loving books even more than usual and it feels so, so good. (Running a #bookstagram has also been a whole lot of fun. Love connecting with fellow readers!)

So here’s what I read:

THE PERFECT COUPLE: 5/5 Stars

I’m a big fan of Elin Hilderbrand. Her books are almost always set on Nantucket, usually during the summer and she delivers the drama. The Perfect Couple is one of her latest books (and she has a new one coming out in June!!!) and in my opinion, it’s her best developed one yet. Sometimes her books are very beach-read-y, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but this one reads like a true novel. It’s about a mysterious tragedy that strikes the night before a wedding on Nantucket. It kept me guessing the entire time.

THE GREAT ALONE: 5/5 Stars

Kristin Hannah is an incredible writer. (She wrote two of my favorite books The Nightingale and Firefly Lane.) The Great Alone is about a girl and her family as they move to Alaska and attempt to survive both the harsh winters as well as their own demons. I loved every bit of it, including the acknowledgments. While reading, I had head to toe goosebumps, I cried, I gasped out loud. Basically, I had a full range of emotions.

THE FAR FIELD: 4/5 Stars

Ultimately, I liked this book but didn’t totally love. It’s about a naive and slightly spoiled young woman who embarks on a journey through India to reconnect with one of her mother’s friends. There isn’t a whole lot of plot, but it’s so well written that it’s still easy to get caught up in the story. It takes place in Bangalore and a village in Kashmir. While reading, I found myself reading articles online about the political climate and conflict there to catch myself up. There are definitely some nuances within the story that required a bit of research (at least for me). I also found it useful to look up photos of both places so I could truly picture the dichotomy of the landscapes in my head!

THE IMMORTALISTS: 4/5 Stars

This book felt like a mix between Alice Hoffman and Ann Patchett’s books, both of whom I love. The book tackles mortality with a touch of magic. Four siblings grapple with living and dying in each of their own ways. Some of the siblings had better storylines than others, but they all brought important elements to the idea of how to live life to the fullest– what that means and what that doesn’t mean.

THE GREAT BELIEVERS: 5/5 Stars

Favorite book of the month. It’s definitely going to be a top contender for the best read of the year in fact. It goes back and forth between modern-day Paris and Chicago during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. The pace of the book is fairly slow– the story gently unfolds. But it can be gruesome and gut-wrenching at times. I cried multiple times while reading and felt deeply moved by it– at one point I truly felt like I had been punched in the gut. I think I’m still experiencing a “book hangover” from reading it.

PS Here is what I read in March.