Hello Interwebs!
Another month gone by in 2022 and another month with very little posting from me. I'd like to say I have a good excuse but I really really don't.
March was a pretty good reading month for me, I read six books in the month of March and I am working on two more as the month ends. I read one contemporary fiction, one historical fiction, two thrillers, one horror and one horror manga. I did not dislike any of the books I read this month but two of them were fine but not my favorites.
First up I finished Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead which I read from February 28th to March 5th and gave 3.5/5 stars. This book follows the main character, Jonny who is a Native queer boy working to get back to the reservation where he was raised for his stepfather's funeral. Mostly the book is about his life growing up different from everyone else around him and his life on his own terms in the city where he works as a cam boy online. You learn about the special relationship he had with his grandmother and the complicated one he had with his mother and how he got here from there. It was an interesting book and the main character was very compelling but the book was just not my favorite so I gave it an okay 3.5 star rating, I'm not sorry I read it but I feel no need to read it again.
Next I picked up what was my only 5 star read of the month of March which was also the February Literally Dead book club pick for the month. That was Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby. This is a thriller following two fathers, one black and one white, in Virginia after their sons who were gay and married to each other are murdered. The two men are both ex-cons and use that experience to find out who killed their sons and get revenge for their deaths. This book was very twisty and I loved both the main characters immensely despite their flaws and it was unbelievably satisfying when they got their revenge for their sons. I read this book from March 5th to the 12th and it was my only 5 star read of the month.
Next I read Tomie by Junji Ito. This is a horror manga and follows a girl named Tomie who is murdered repeatedly but keeps regenerating to be killed over and over again. She is depicted as some sort of succubus with an unnatural power over all the men around her which leads to obsession which results in death every time, nearly always hers but others as well. This was a good series of interconnected stories and I read it fairly quickly despite it being a monster of a book. I read it from March 12th to the 20th and gave it a nice solid enjoyable 4.5/5 stars.
Then I read my first real horror book of 2022 with a new release Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes. This book came out this year and is a sci-fi horror described as the Titanic meets The Shining. This book did not disappoint. I don't usually read science fiction in any form but I loved this book. You follow a woman who is the leader of a communication repair crew when they come upon a distress beacon from a luxury space liner (much like the Titanic) that was lost decades before. They decide to claim the salvage rights to it but find a ship full of corpses that all met violent ends, at their own and each others' hands. As their salvage crew prepares to return home with their spoils the darkness of the ship starts infecting themselves as well as they are left to wonder what happened and if anyone will survive. This book was so good, a slow burn horror where the narrator is unreliable but not stupid, which is always my issue with the unreliable narrator. This was the ultimate isolationist horror and I loved it. I read this from March 12-21st and gave it a 4.5 star rating as well.
During most of March I was also listening to the March Literati pick for Cheryl Strayed's Wild Reads book club which was The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. This book is a historical fiction which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction back in 2020 when it was released. This is a historical fiction taking place on the Turtle Mountain Reservation during the 1950s during the era of the Indian termination policies. It follows a number of characters, most notably Thomas Wazhask who is the main organizer against the Indian Termination Bill and the titular night watchman at the jewel bearing plant on the reservation. The other real main character is Patrice Paranteau "Pixie" who is a young owan who works at the jewel bearing plant who gets involved in the anti-termination movement and is looking for her sister Vera and her sister's baby who are missing in Minneapolis. I really enjoyed this book but at the same time there was a lot going on in it. I ended up listening to it on audiobook and spent most of the month working on it. It was hard to keep characters and storylines straight through the whole thing. I learned a lot about a period of time that I didn't know anything about which was especially interesting because a number of tribes in Oregon where I live were affected by the Indian Termination Acts including the one closest to where I grew up, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. I listened to this book from March 4th to March 22nd and gave it 4.25 stars due to the difficulty I had at times following the story line.
Finally I read The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley. This was the book club pick for both The Book Troop and the Literally Dead Book Club. This is a new release thriller (and was one of my March Book of the Month picks). It follows a woman named Jess who needs a fresh start after having some issues in England that leave her broke and alone so she goes to stay with her half-brother Ben who lives in Paris. When she arrives in Paris she finds him not there and in an apartment that doesn't seem like something he can afford on his journalist's salary. She gets roped into a mystery trying to find out what happened to Ben and what is going on with the weird apartment building and it's even stranger interconnected residents. This book was okay, not the best thing I've read but sufficiently twisty and entertaining for my tastes in thrillers. I'm not disappointed that I read it and I still intend to read The Guest List which is on my bookshelves by the same author. I read this book from the 21st to the 29th of March and gave it 3.5 stars.
So there you have it, everything I read in the month of March. My absolute favorite book of the month was Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby which was my only 5 star read. And I think my least favorite of the month was probably Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead. It wasn't a bad book by any means but it definitely wasn't for me.
Now on to April and some very springy reads!
Happy Reading!
Richelle
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