May the 4th has been and gone; I hope you had a good one. The month marches on and I’ve failed to write a timely preview of the books I’m hoping to read during May. Pushing on from a very successful April, I’m aiming to read 10 books this month. This is ambitious, but quite a few are children’s books, so I’m hopeful I can reach at least 8 or 9. Here, then, is my May 2024 book preview.
Children’s Books.
Two of the children’s books I’ve been sent publish in the first full week of May, so I need to crack on with those. I Am Wolf by Alastair Chisholm was on my April list, but as expected, it slipped to May. I have already finished this book and it was as good as I expected, from the author of Adam-2 and The Consequence Girl. Look out for a full review very soon.
The Girl Who Couldn’t Lie by Radhika Sanghani looks to have been fashioned in the image of Jim Carey’s Liar Liar. Priya Shah inherits a bangle from her grandmother that stops her from lying. She’s not a malicious liar, but she never lets anybody know what she actually thinks. She’s under pressure and about to crack. Will being able to tell people how she really feels make things better? I’m guessing it won’t be a smooth road to enlightenment.
I’ll be reading the sequel to Peril on the Atlantic in May, too. I enjoyed this kids’ mystery caper, set on an ocean liner, just before the outbreak of World War II. The next installment of the Mysteries at Sea series is The Royal Jewel Plot which promises that the King of England will be on board. I can’t wait to see what Alice and Sonny get up to next!
The Giver by C.S. Lowry is a book that completely passed me by, despite being an international smash hit and made into a film. I’ve found reference to it a couple of times in recent weeks, including in John Schu’s Louder than Hunger. Intrigued by its “utopia that’s really a dystopia” premise, I picked up a copy to see what I think.
The final book on my children’s list is the one most likely to slide into June, as it’s not out until next month. The Wanderdays (Journey to Fantome Island) promises an underwater adventure, as Flo and Joseph search for their missing mother, one of the world’s greatest explorers. The blurb promises a classic kids’ adventure story with maps, clues, and secret islands.
Cixin Liu Again.
Last month I read The Three Body Problem. This month I’m excited to read some short stories from Cixin Liu. A View from the Stars is a collection of stories, essays, and interviews. Hopefully, it won’t have too much filler. It’s only a slender volume so I’m hoping each entry in the book is wheat rather than chaff.
Adrian Tchaikovsky is back at the beginning of June with Service Model, a tale of a household utility robot that has turned on its owner. Troubled by how this has happened, Charles (the robot) is left struggling to find meaning. Unsure of how he came to harm his owner, he must work out how to better continue his programming in a world where humanity is disintegrating into ruin and the world’s wellbeing robots are struggling to find a purpose for their existence. Tchaikovsky novels are never dull and I love the premise of this one, so I can’t wait to check it out.
The book I have the most trepidation about reading this month is Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. This was the Waterstones sci-fi book of the month over here in the UK and regular readers will know I’ve been trying to read each one as they arrive. Iron Wing has been a huge smash hit across the globe, outselling almost everything. From what I’ve read about it, however, I’m not sure it’s a book aimed at me. I’m going in with an open mind but have my doubts. A quarter of a million readers can’t be wrong though, right?
A book I have been looking forward to very much is Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. Spufford wrote The Light Perpetual, which imagined the lived lives of several children killed by a doodlebug in WWII London. His writing is impeccable. Cahokia Jazz is a counterfactual, where the arrival of European colonizers did not destroy the indigenous populations of North America. Instead, they thrived alongside one another.
It’s now the 1920s and Cahokia (The existence of which I first discovered in James Kennedy’s Dare to Know) is a thriving city filled with jazz, speakeasies, and now a dead body. A whodunnit in an alternate universe, by a magisterial author. Sign me up!
My final book for April is The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn. My book group choice. It’s not a book that I would have necessarily chosen to read, but it’s been a big success over here, so I’m hopeful I’ll enjoy it. It’s a prewar family saga featuring a trio of siblings. It looks to be a book about the power of storytelling, and there’s rarely anything wrong with that.
That’s it then for my May choices. I’d better crack on if I want to get anywhere near reading them all. Happy reading!
