April's Reads Reviewed

April's Reads Mini-Review Roundup

Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim

This book is perfect. I love Elizabeth. She'd prefer to spend her days in her garden, alone, and I can definitely relate to that. This book is written in diary format with Elizabeth recounting the mundane daily activities of her life as a wealthy Englishwoman in Germany during the latter part of the 1800s. It's subtle, but my god this book is funny.

Much is left unsaid but the reader can still pick up on it, like Elizabeth's loving marriage (with her husband with gentle ribbing and good-natured fun referred to as The Man of Wrath) and her doting relationship with her charming children. Elizabeth is perfectly imperfect. I loved Arnim's The Enchanted April for the tranquil escapism and lovely characters, and all of that is here again but with a main character who is even more of a kindred spirit and definitely more humor.

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

While I liked The House at Riverton a whole lot, The Secret Keeper is even better. It's another doorstop with fairly large chapters, but I flew through it despite all that. The mystery kept me guessing, and just when I thought I had it figured out, some new bit of information changed things up again.

The historical part had me enthralled. It had a great sense of time and place. I loved two of the characters, but one of them I tried to like but couldn't fight off the creeping dread that I really didn't like them. That wasn't a bad thing at all though. Ah, and the romance was lovely. The modern story follows Laurel-- a hardened 66 year old cigarette smoking woman who, while not as developed, was still likable and I was caught up in her sleuthing. She wasn't the typical young lead with a romance, and while I love that trope, it was nice to have a different kind of character to follow.

Morton did a particularly fantastic job of keeping up the tension and mystery between the modern parts and the historical parts. It's hard to describe, but the way she scattered the clues kept me constantly on my toes and voraciously collecting the pieces from the past and present to try to weave together the mystery of the past. It was gripping, and the ending was worthy of the journey. 

The World According to Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers

This is another book that I read over time. Each chapter is about 1-3 pages and focuses on a story, life lesson, or thought from Fred Rogers. I felt like I was sitting on the set of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and chatting with Fred. He felt like a mentor. I learned so much about him, his show, and child psychology, which was unexpected but wonderful. Every time I'd open the book I'd get this sense of calm and love. The book has the subtitle of "Important Things to Remember" and that's very apt. I think I'll open it again from time to time and reread passages. They are important things to remind oneself of again.

The Solitary Summer by Elizabeth von Arnim

This is the second book in the "Elizabeth" series, and everything I said about the first book is true for this second book. I think you could probably read this book without having read the first one, but why would you want to miss out?

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

I can't decide if I like this one more or The Secret Keeper. It's a tough call. For about the first quarter of the book I thought that this was good, but I was impatient because I felt like I had it all figured out already and that I was going to spent the next several hundred pages waiting for the main character to get there too. While I was right in guessing that aspect of the mystery, thankfully the main character figured it out about a quarter of the way through as well and then the rest of the book opened up even more mysteries that I happily paced along the main character in unraveling.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find there are short stories/fairy tales interspersed throughout. I think there are about five of them and each one is a fantastic story in its own right. All of the characters were fun to follow and I appreciated the romances a lot. There were a lot of bittersweet and sad events that tugged at my heart. The parts with Nell and young Cassandra reminded me of my own grandparents who have recently passed, and so that was personally bittersweet as well. The final, final discovery was a little disappointing, but all in all it was very well worth the read.

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March's Reads Reviewed

March's Reads Mini-Review Roundup

Echo the Copycat by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams
Calliope the Muse by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams

These books are consistently good. I don't have much more to say about them than what I've already said. They're short enough to fit in quickly, but long enough to have substance. There's always a sweet element of humor and the characters are just straight up nice. These are feel-good books and I'm glad the new stories are still being published.




The House at Riverton by Kat Morton

First, let me get this out of my system: FINALLY!!! Ahem, okay, so I've had Kate Morton's books on my shelves for, oh, over eight years and I've never read them. Why you might ask, when these books seem so right up my alley? Well, because they're long and I had this impression in my head that they would fall into that "rewarding in the end but a slog to get through" category. Where I got that idea I don't know, but firmly set in my mind it was and so I longingly and shamefully looked at their beautiful spines for years.

Until January 2019, when I picked up The House at Riverton and got about 50 pages in before putting it down again. It seemed nice enough, but it just hadn't grabbed me. I vowed to pick it up again...someday.

That someday came just over a full year later when in March 2020 after tentatively toe-dipping back into reading I somehow decided NOW was the time. And it was.

This may be a hefty book (almost 500 pages) and the chapters aren't super short, but I sped through it. I didn't really like any of the characters and the plot wasn't what I'd call fast, but this is the kind of book that has a deceptive slow burn where it feels like not a whole lot is happening but I feel utterly gripped anyway. Then in the final quarter all of the threads started coming together, building and building toward the absolutely face-smacking conclusion. And then that final piece of the puzzle...ah, what a punch in the gut. It's weird to say that a gut-punch is a good thing, but in this book it made me do the mental equivalent of sitting down suddenly in shock with my jaw dropped to the floor. I loved it!

How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh

I started reading this book years ago, picking away at it a little at a time. It's a short book with tiny chapters-- each only about a minute or so to read. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of love and mindfulness and I read it slowly because I wanted to let each lesson sink in. Not every chapter was profound or mattered to me right now, but every few chapters were. Those were the chapters that made me pause, think, and sometimes change my approach. I love the simple, approachable way this book is written.

Sanctuary by Edith Wharton

My dabbling in Edith Wharton's short novels/novellas continued and for the next foray I chose Sanctuary. This one felt a lot shorter than Bunner Sisters with the characters reading more like sketches. The first half of the story follows Kate, a young woman soon to be married to a man who has recently come into a fortune. Shortly before their wedding, Kate discovers something about her husband that irrevocably changes their relationship. The situation unravels with Wharton presenting a thought-provoking moral dilemma that left me mulling over the possibilities and wondering "What would I do?" Had the story ended here, it would have been an interesting short story.

But, of course, it didn't end there. The choice Kate ultimately made (which I thought was absurd) guaranteed that Wharton had to write the second party of the story. This is that part that left me lukewarm. The bones of the story are good. The writing and characterization is strong in the way I've come to expect from Wharton. The dilemma mirroring the dilemma in the first half was interesting and kept up a "What will he do?" tension, thickened by what the reader, but not the character, knows happened in part I. A dozen conversations could be sparked by this story and I would happily chat for hours over the different angles of the story (nature versus nurture, morality, so on). While I appreciated the short length, it might have been nice to have the second part fleshed out a little more, and maybe even told from Dick's point of view.

And yet...I couldn't shake an icky feeling throughout the whole second half. Kate's relationship with her son felt...wrong. I can't say more without spoiling things, but it's this relationship that leaves me slightly unsettled with the story, even though I loved everything else.

Okay, almost everything else. Kate is so righteously annoying. But, I don't read Edith Wharton books for her lovable characters.

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