Last month, I properly hit my groove in both reading and reviewing. I read seven books in April, which I think is my highest monthly total in many years. This new monthly list approach I have been taking has made me love reading more than ever. Unlike last month, when one book hit a bum note, I enjoyed everything I read. Here is my April 2024 book review round-up!
The Book Club Choice
My book club choice for this month, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait, reminded me of one of my all-time favorite books, Whatever Makes You Happy by William Sutcliffe. Both titles are words uttered by mothers in the books—lines that do an extraordinary amount of passive-aggressive heavy lifting. My book group didn’t love this book as much as I did, but I found it poignant and funny from start to finish.
Reading I’m Sorry You Feel That Way was never a chore. I loved being able to luxuriate in Wait’s writing, which is witty and well-observed. The book meditates on modern family life, how parents fail their children, and how children struggle to see things from their parents’ perspectives too. While, on the face of it, some of the characters in the book are awful human beings, West deftly shows us that there are multiple facets to every person.
The core family narrative is entwined with a story dealing with mental health issues, adding another cable of poignancy to proceedings. I very much enjoyed I’m Sorry You Feel That Way and would thoroughly recommend it. It’s a good book group choice too. While not everybody enjoyed the book as much as I did, it provoked a lot of discussion and the realization that, as difficult as the relationships were in the book, bordering on the point of being unrealistic, just about everybody has at least one equally implausible family story. In short, every family has issues, we’re just very good at hiding them.
The Book Parents Should Read
Louder Than Hunger by Jonathan Schu was the most important book I read in April. It’s a moving account of teenager Jake’s battle with depression and anorexia. The novel is semi-autobiographical, which gives Jake an authentic voice as we follow his plight. The novel shows us Jake’s inner turmoil as he battles with the voice inside his head that tells him that he’s fat and worthless. The innovative use of text and font makes a difficult topic lighter to read, and while Jake’s journey is difficult, Louder Than Hunger is ultimately uplifting. You can check out my full review here.
The Book I Should Have Read a Long Time Ago
The Three-Body Problem was nothing like I expected it to be. I’ve owned a copy for a long time but never managed to find time to read it. I am interested in watching the new Netflix adaptation, but I wanted to read the novel first. I’m so glad I did. I’m just disappointed it took me so long! The melding of Chinese history and science fiction was great, but it also reminded me how much I enjoy hard science fiction. There’s some complicated math and science in the book, which I didn’t expect, but I loved the novel all the more for it. There’s a reason why this book is loved by so many, and I am glad to be another convert. Sequel The Dark Forest will no doubt appear in one of these review posts in the not-too-distant future.
The Waterstones “Book of the Month”
I picked up The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi in trepidation, having not particularly enjoyed the previous month’s Waterstones choice. The novels couldn’t have been further apart and I needn’t have worried. Shannon Chakroborty’s novel is an entertaining adventure that would have worked equally well with most of its fantasy elements removed. Those elements just make it shine a little bit brighter.
It tells the story of a female pirate who sails the waters around Northwest Africa and the Arabian peninsula. I don’t think I’ve read a novel set in this region before, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning some of the history and customs of an area that often impinges on our consciousness for negative reasons. This is a fantasy story, so its world-building perhaps needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but Chakraborty namechecks Amitav Ghosh in her afterward as an inspiration. Ghosh is a master storyteller, especially for water-based historical sagas. The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi does this inspiration proud.
Amina is an entertaining character. It will surprise no one reading that she’s a ruthless pirate with a heart of gold and ferocious loyalty to her crew. The crew, in turn, enliven the novel to make an ensemble cast you can’t help but root for. The tricksy tale involving a kidnapping—with a side of mystical goings-on—is thoroughly entertaining. I look forward to seeing what happens in book two. (The aforementioned mystical goings-on ensures that there will be several more adventures in Amina’s future.)
The Alien Sequel
One of my favorite books last year was The Space Between Us by Doug Johnstone. It was great to be given a second helping in The Collapsing Wave. Events take place shortly after The Space Between Us as we see Lennox and Sandy once again pursued by inexorable government forces. I didn’t enjoy this second quite so much as the first book, but Doug Johnstone’s writing is always a pleasure to read and, as a pair, the novels have much to recommend them. Check out my full review here.
The Dark Age Fantasy
A sequel of sorts to Sistersong, The Song of the Huntress returns to Dark Ages Britain. It’s another tale that blends folklore and history into a satisfying whole. A riff on the Wild Hunt myth sees Herla, an Iceni hunter, captured by the mischievous Gwn Ap Nudd. She is released centuries later during a battle between the ruling Saxon clans of Wessex and the indigenous Britains who live in what is now Devon and Cornwall.
As with Sistersong, Lucy Holland offers us an ancient tale with modern sensibilities. King Ine and his wife, Aethelburg, must come to terms with treachery within their own family and the arrival of the striking and powerful Herla. A great blend of politics, history, and inter-family rivalry, The Song of the Huntress is a slow burner but a novel well worth persevering with. Check out my full review here.
The One With the Bard
Not Shakespeare but Shakespeare adjacent. All the world’s a stage in Sebastian De Castell’s return to his Greatcoats series. Play of Shadows is set amongst a theatre company where our narrator has taken refuge. With forces on all sides threatening to kill him, Damelas finds himself haunted by the spirits of old historical figures, forcing him to participate in what is literally a history play. Only the restless dead want him to perform a version of events that borders on heresy. As Damelas tries to wrestle his way out from one predicament to the next, he is joined by a bone-fide lute-wielding bard as they try to get to the bottom of a political conspiracy. Something truly is rotten in the state of Pertine.
Damelas and the rest of the cast are fabulous, as are the scrapes they get into. Funny with a great plot, with no need to have read any of the previous Greatcoat novels to enjoy it, Play of Shadows is well worth checking. You can check out my full review for more reasons why you should read it!
And that’s it! April was a great month, and not only because it contained my birthday. Check-in soon to find out what I’ll be reading in May.
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