March Reading List

I woke up yesterday to a little April Fool’s joke played on us by nature: another several inches of snow on the ground. Most of it melted today. I think we’re finally, maybe, on the way to spring over here– it’s sure taken long enough, though! The gloomy weather of March made me grateful that April is finally here. Here is my roundup for what I read this past month.

“A Necessary Evil” by Abir Mukherjee is a historical fiction mystery. Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee (Wyndham as narrator refers to him as “Surrender-Not”) work for the Calcutta Police Force in 1920. While they are meeting with Prince Adhir of Sambalpore, a mysterious man appears out of the crowded city streets and assassinates the prince. Chaos ensues and pretty much continues throughout the book at a digestible level. While Wyndham and Banerjee manage to track down the assassin, this only leads to more questions. Their investigation leads them to west to Sambalpore where they meet all manner of interesting characters/suspects– many of whom are related to the Maharaja and his deceased son– and are nearly murdered themselves. Wyndham and Banerjee remind me a bit of Sherlock Holmes and Watson– Wyndham is observant and bold, but he’s an opium addict with a rough past and, being British, he misunderstands Indian social cues. Meanwhile, Banerjee is quiet and intelligent, connecting the dots for them both. It would be interesting to see the story from Banerjee’s perspective, so I wonder if Mukherjee changes that in any of the other books. Apparently, it’s Book 2 of 5 in a series, so now I have to go back and read the first book (and then all the rest probably because I really enjoyed this one!).

“The Bookstore on the Beach” by Brenda Novak is a romance, which is a bit of an unusual pick for me. I don’t typically read romances, but this one looked like an Elin Hilderbrand-esque beach read, which I always enjoy. (EH is also a cancer survivor, BTW.) “The Bookstore on the Beach” drew me in because I wanted a beachy sort of read for Spring Break so that I could at least pretend to be on a beach this miserable March even if I never left Wisconsin. It actually was a rather interesting book! Autumn Divac’s husband has been missing for more than 18 months. He just disappeared completely out of the blue leaving Autumn and her teenage children to pick up the pieces of their lives. Hoping to find some healing and closure, they end up spending a summer with her mother, Mary, who lives at Sable Beach and owns a cute little bookstore. Mary has a dark story of her own that she is keeping from Autumn, though Autumn seems more and more persistent about learning the truth of her mother’s past. While in Sable Beach for the summer, Autumn reunites with a former high school crush who returned to town after being stabbed by his crazy ex-wife, and, of course, that is where the romance element comes in. In case you haven’t noticed already, there are a lot of weird things in this story; I have to admit the amount of bizarre elements surrounding the family make the story pretty unbelievable, but it’s still a fun read.

I only read two novel-length books in March, but I also read the newest issue of Wildfire Magazine. Wildfire is the amazing magazine “for the ones ‘too young’ for breast cancer”, and they’re absolutely amazing. I’m really glad that another cancer survivor friend pointed me to Wildfire. Their February/March issue is called Five Years & Counting and features stories from long-term survivors. My story “An Unlikely Ally” is in their December/January issue Identity & Aftermath.

Once again, I was all over the place, but I got a little history, a little mystery, a little suspense, a little romance, and a lotta hope. Reading is magical and multifaceted.