The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Armin

A notice in The Times addressed to ‘Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine’ advertises a ‘small mediaeval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let furnished for the month of April’. Four very different women take up the offer, escaping dreary London for the sunshine of Italy. Among the party are Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arthuthnot, both fleeing unappreciative husbands; beautiful Lady Caroline, sick of being ‘grabbed’ by lovestruck men; and the imperious Mrs Fisher, who spends her time remembering the bearded ‘great men’ she knew in her Victorian childhood. By the end of their holiday, all the women will fall completely under the spell of Italy in this funny, insightful and very charming novel.

Endgame by C.J Daugherty (book 5 in the Night School series)

The spy is gone but the cost has been high – the rebels at Cimmeria Academy have lost their leader and Carter West is missing. Nathaniel can taste victory. But Allie and the other survivors aren’t done yet. First they have to get Carter back. Then they plan to make Nathaniel pay.

One Small Act Of Kindness by Lucy Dillon

Libby and her husband Jason have moved back to his hometown to turn the family B&B into a boutique hotel. They have left London behind and all the memories – good and bad – that went with it.
The injured woman Libby finds lying in the remote country road has lost her memory. She doesn’t know why she came to be there, and no one seems to be looking for her.
When Libby offers to take her in, this one small act of kindness sets in motion a chain of events that will change many people’s lives . . .

Book of the month:

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America and to do it alone. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise – a promise of piecing together a life that lay shattered at her feet…

I read Wild after enjoying the film adaptation but wanting to know more about her story. I’m so glad I read the book as, so often the case, it was definitely a deeper and richer experience. Wild is a memoir, a travel journal, of Cheryl’s time walking the Pacific Crest Trail but it also delves into her past and her reasons for tackling the trail, and how it changed her. I do not read a lot of non-fiction but Cheryl is a great writer and her story proves the truth is often stranger than fiction. You have to admire her strength and perseverance during her hike, and there are a lot of emotional moments as she looks back on her mother’s death and how she struggled to deal with it. It’s an inspiring, brave and honest story. I shall be definitely looking into her other work.

The last line of the book will stick with me for a long time I think:

Victoria

xoxo

Jessica Beam is a girl who knows how to party. Only lately she’s been forgetting to turn up for work on time. Or in clean clothes. Down on her luck, out of a job and homeless, Jess seeks the help of her long-lost grandmother.

Things aren’t going well for Matilda Beam, either. Her 1950s Good Woman guide books are out of print, her mortgage repayments are staggering and her granddaughter wears neon Wonderbras.

When a lifeline from a London publisher arrives, the pair have an opportunity to secure the roof over their heads – by invigorating the Good Woman guides and transforming modern, rebellious Jess into a demure vintage lady.

The true test of their make-over will be to capture the heart of notorious London playboy Leo Frost and prove that Matilda’s guides still work. It’s going to take commitment, nerves of steel and one seriously pointy bra to pull this off . . .

Auburn Reed has her entire life mapped out. Her goals are in sight and there’s no room for mistakes. But when she walks into a Dallas art studio in search of a job, she doesn’t expect to find a deep attraction to the enigmatic artist who works there, Owen Gentry.

For once, Auburn takes a risk and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is keeping some major secrets from coming out. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything important to Auburn, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it.

The last thing Owen wants is to lose Auburn, but he can’t seem to convince her that truth is sometimes as subjective as art. All he would have to do to save their relationship is confess. But in this case, the confession could be much more destructive than the actual sin…

“Non Pratt is a writer to watch” – The Guardian. From the author of Trouble comes a novel about boys, bands and best mates. Kaz is still reeling from being dumped by the love of her life. Ruby is bored of hearing about it. Time to change the record. Three days. Two best mates. One music festival. Zero chance of everything working out.

Lee Fiora is a shy fourteen-year-old when she leaves small-town Indiana for a scholarship at Ault, an exclusive boarding school in Massachusetts. Her head is filled with images from the school brochure of handsome boys in sweaters leaning against old brick buildings, girls running with lacrosse sticks across pristine athletics fields, everyone singing hymns in chapel. But as she soon learns, Ault is a minefield of unstated rules and incomprehensible social rituals, and Lee must work hard to find – and maintain – her place in the pecking order.

Marnie FitzPatrick is a reclusive sixth-former from Hertfordshire with a dysfunctional family, a penchant for Pythagoras’ Theorem and an addiction to doughnuts and gin. Julie Crewe is a disillusioned maths teacher who lives vicariously through the girls she teaches, yet who once danced barefoot through Central Park with a man called Jo she has never been able to forget.

This is the story of what happened in the summer of 1969, when the sun burned down on the roof of the Shredded Wheat factory, and a boy called Freddie Friday danced to the records he had stolen. This is about first love, and last love, and all the strange stuff in between. This is what happens when three people are bound together by something that can’t be calculated or explained by any equation.

This is what happened when they saw the open door.

Book of the month:

‘It is never what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophies are always different – unimagined, unprepared for, unknown…’ One morning, Julia and her parents wake up in their suburban home in California to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth is noticeably slowing. The enormity of this is almost beyond comprehension. And yet, even if the world is, in fact, coming to an end, as some assert, day-to-day life must go on. Julia, facing the loneliness and despair of an awkward adolescence, witnesses the impact of this phenomenon on the world, on the community, on her family and on herself.

I enjoyed all the books I read this month! Although Prep has a pretty unlikeable main character, which I’m always unsure about, I must admit I like someone to root for in a book. My favourite read definitely has a main character you root for – told from 11 year old Julia’s perspective, it’s a coming-of-age story set against the rotation of the world slowing down. Her first person point of view means the changes the slowing has is limited to her family life in California so you see her growing up in this new world order where days stretch into weeks and people begin to change with it.

This book had a really original premise and I have no idea whether scientifically anything that happens in the book would ever be possible but that doesn’t matter, it’s fiction and the author makes you believe it all, the voice of Julia is brilliant and the book has an almost dreamy feel to the prose, matching the slowing of the world. It was a book that I could have kept on reading. The last paragraph is perfect too. I can imagine I will re-read this book and would definitely recommend it.

Did you read anything special this month?

Victoria

xoxo

Books read in April:

All Played Out – Cora Carmack

In Texas, two things are cherished above all else—football and gossip. My life has always been ruled by both.

Dallas Cole loathes football. That’s what happens when you spend your whole childhood coming in second to a sport. College is her time to step out of the bleachers, and put the playing field (and the players) in her past.

But life doesn’t always go as planned. As if going to the same college as her football star ex wasn’t bad enough, her father, a Texas high school coaching phenom, has decided to make the jump to college ball… as the new head coach at Rusk University. Dallas finds herself in the shadows of her father and football all over again.

Carson McClain is determined to go from second-string quarterback to the starting line-up. He needs the scholarship and the future that football provides. But when a beautiful redhead literally falls into his life, his focus is more than tested. It’s obliterated.

Dallas doesn’t know Carson is on the team. Carson doesn’t know that Dallas is his new coach’s daughter.

And neither of them know how to walk away from the attraction they feel.

Last Night in Montreal – Emily Mandel

Lilia has been leaving people behind her entire life. Haunted by her inability to remember her early childhood, and by a mysterious shadow that seems to dog her wherever she goes, Lilia moves restlessly from city to city, abandoning lovers and friends along the way. But then she meets Eli, and he’s not ready to let her go, not without a fight.

Gorgeously written, charged with tension and foreboding, Emily St. John Mandel’s Last Night in Montreal is the story of a life spent at the centre of a criminal investigation. It is a novel about identity, love and amnesia, the depths and limits of family bonds and – ultimately – about the nature of obsession.

All Fall Down – Ally Carter

I don’t mean to get into trouble. Trouble just sort of finds me.

Grace has been shipped off to stay with her diplomat Grandpa in the glittering Embassy Row, a place where trespassing into the wrong garden can cause an international incident. Grace knows the rules – she’s ignored them before – but however much she wants to change, she can’t. Not while she’s certain of three things:

1. She isn’t crazy.

2. Her mother was murdered.

3. Someday she’s going to find the man with the scar, and then she is going to make him pay.

Red Queen – Victoria Aveyard

This is a world divided by blood – red or silver.

The Reds are commoners, ruled by a Silver elite in possession of god-like superpowers. And to Mare Barrow, a seventeen-year-old Red girl from the poverty-stricken Stilts, it seems like nothing will ever change.

That is, until she finds herself working in the Silver Palace. Here, surrounded by the people she hates the most, Mare discovers that, despite her red blood, she possesses a deadly power of her own. One that threatens to destroy the balance of power.

Fearful of Mare’s potential, the Silvers hide her in plain view, declaring her a long-lost Silver princess, now engaged to a Silver prince. Despite knowing that one misstep would mean her death, Mare works silently to help the Red Guard, a militant resistance group, and bring down the Silver regime.

But this is a world of betrayal and lies, and Mare has entered a dangerous dance – Reds against Silvers, prince against prince, and Mare against her own heart . . .

All My Puny Sorrows – Mriam Toews

Elf and Yoli are two smart, loving sisters.

Elf is a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die.

Yoli is divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive.

When Elf’s latest suicide attempt leaves her hospitalised weeks before her highly anticipated world tour, Yoli is forced to confront the impossible question of whether it is better to let a loved one go.

Book of the month:

I really enjoyed Cora Carmack’s All Lined Up, if you’re looking for a New Adult writer, you should really check her books out – fun and romantic, I always race through them!

For the book of the month, I was really torn between two books. I loved Red Queen – it’s sort of Games of Thrones meets The Hunger Games meets Divergent and was a great start to this new YA trilogy. But as it’s only book one and the series has a long way to go, I went with this as my book of the month:

Amy Snow – Tracy Rees

Winner of the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller Competition. ‘A sparkling and compelling mystery. Amy Snow captured our hearts from the very first page’ Richard and Judy.
Abandoned on a bank of snow as a baby, Amy is taken in at nearby Hatville Court. But the masters and servants of the grand estate prove cold and unwelcoming. Amy’s only friend and ally is the sparkling young heiress Aurelia Vennaway. So when Aurelia tragically dies young, Amy is devastated. But Aurelia leaves Amy one last gift. A bundle of letters with a coded key. A treasure hunt that only Amy can follow. A life-changing discovery awaits… if only she can unlock the secret.

This was a lovely Victorian mystery / coming-of-age story about a girl called Amy Snow sent on a treasure hunt  to uncover the secrets of her recently deceased friend. Amy Snow has wonderful voice ad you’ll root for her from page one. Although it’s a mystery it’s really about Amy’s journey rather than her destination as she leaves the mansion she grew up in following her friend Aurelia’s directions and discovers what she wants for her life. She meets all sorts of special people on her way and there is a lovely romance plot mingled in with the mystery. I could definitely see this as a BBC series as each chapter kept you wanting to read on and I think it’s a book I would re-read in the future.

What book stood out for you this month?

Victoria

xoxo

This is what I read in March:

The Ruby Circle – Richelle Mead (Bloodlines series)

After their secret romance is exposed, Sydney and Adrian find themselves facing the wrath of both the Alchemists and the Moroi in this electrifying conclusion to Richelle Mead’s New York Times bestselling Bloodlines series. When the life of someone they both love is put on the line, Sydney risks everything to hunt down a deadly former nemesis. Meanwhile, Adrian becomes enmeshed in a puzzle that could hold the key to a shocking secret about spirit magic, a secret that could shake the entire Moroi world . . .

The Animals – Emma Jane Unsworth

Laura and Tyler are best friends who live together, angrily philosophising and leading each other astray in the pubs and flats of Manchester. But things are set to change. Laura is engaged to teetotal Jim, the wedding is just months away, and Tyler becomes hell-bent on sabotaging her friend’s plans for a different life

I’ll Give You The Sun – Jandy Nelson

From the author of The Sky Is Every­where, a radiant novel that will leave you laughing and crying – all at once. For fans of John Green, Gayle Forman and Lauren Oliver. Jude and her twin Noah were incredibly close – until a tragedy drove them apart, and now they are barely speaking. Then Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy as well as a captivating new mentor, both of whom may just need her as much as she needs them. What the twins don’t realize is that each of them has only half the story and if they can just find their way back to one another, they have a chance to remake their world.

Paper Towns – John Green

Quentin Jacobsen has always loved Margo Roth Spiegelman, for Margo (and her adventures) are the stuff of legend at their high school. So when she one day climbs through his window and summons him on an all-night road trip of revenge he cannot help but follow.

But the next day Margo doesn’t come to school and a week later she is still missing. Q soon learns that there are clues in her disappearance . . . and they are for him. But as he gets deeper into the mystery – culminating in another awesome road trip across America – he becomes less sure of who and what he is looking for.

And then I read two books that I’ve been meaning to read for years!

Book of the month:

This was a really difficult decision this month as I read some great books! The Ruby Circle was a great finish to the Bloodlines series, a spin-off from Vampire Academy and I really recommend these series! I’ll Give you The Sun is a quickly, emotional YA read, and I loved Paper Towns – my second John Green book and one I couldn’t put down until the end. I’m also pleased I finally read To Kill A Mockingbird.

So it was hard to pick just one book of the month but I’ve gone with The Bell Jar. I found it a really compelling read, I loved the main character’s voice and raced through the book. It’s definitely disturbing in places as it charts her descent into depression and as it’s told from a first person point of view, you feel as if you’re right there with her through it all. I think it’s one of those books that will not only feel different to each reader but if you read it at different stages of your life, it will also affected you differently. So it’s one that I’m sure I’ll re-read in the future and for that reason, it’s my pick this month.

Has anyone else read these books? What did you think of them?

Victoria

xoxo