April 2024 in Books

This was a really great reading month with a nice mix of books.  There wasn't a bad one in the bunch!

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes - Chantha Nguon - memoir - five stars - This is a pretty amazing autobiography tied together with the recipes of Nguon's life.  I've read accounts of Cambodia during their civil war, but this one sheds a different light on the story.  Nguon grows up in Cambodia, but is ethnically Vietnamese, before Pol Pot came to power, Nguon's family sees the writing on the wall and flees to Vietnam.  Life isn't much better there, and after losing essentially her whole family, Nguon goes to Thailand as a refugee.  She lives in a number of refugee camps there for years, and when her asylum bids fail, decides to try returning to Cambodia and rebuild her life there.  All that Nguon has been through makes her success that much more impressive.  Great read.

The Underground Library - Jennifer Ryan - historical fiction - four stars - Based on true events, this is the story of Juliet Landsowne a deputy librarian during the Blitz.  She begins work at the start of WWII and is trying to breath life into the library.  In doing so she helps to create a community in the neighborhood.  When the library is bombed during the Blitz, she relocates much of the inventory into the Underground.  There are several other story lines including of a Jewish refugee and another volunteer at the library.  While I really enjoyed the characters, the book is predictable and some storylines (Juliet's ex-fiance) are unnecessary or too convenient.  Overall a good book though.

The Things We Didn’t Know - Elba Iris Pérez - fiction - five stars - I really loved this one.  It's about Andrea, who Puerto Rican parents come to Massachusetts where her father works in a factory.  This is not the life her mother wants though, and she takes the kids back to Puerto Rico without telling their father.  They stay with their aunts, one in good circumstances, the other not so good, until their father comes to rescue them.  They return to Massachusetts and adjust to life without their mother, but with many extended family members who form a tight-knit Puerto Rican community.  In many ways this is a story of immigrants, growing up where you don't quite belong, being different from the community around you.  As a first generation American, many of Andrea's experiences resonate with me.  Great book.

Mission Manhattan (City Spies, #5) - James Ponti - juvenile fiction - five stars - We love the City Spies series and are always excited when there is a new one.  The City Spies are working to protect a young climate activist and determine who is trying to hurt her.  They are also continuing to train and incorporate Cairo into the team.  I love how Ponti works out the story at hand, but there is a continuing mystery and storyline that spans all the books.  This is a must read series for kids.

Go as a River - Shelley Read - historical fiction - five stars - The story of Victoria Nash, the daughter who holds her family - dad, reckless son, and invalid uncle (mom, aunt, and cousin died in a tragic car accident years ago) together.  When she falls for a stranger who comes to town, things go sideways.  She is forced to leave town for a period, and when she returns, everything has changed, not only in her family, but her town.  The government is looking to buy out towns as then plan to flood the land to create a reservoir.  Victoria makes a plan to save the peaches the family has grown for years and start a new life.  This book is so well done.  It deals with all sorts of difficult topics, but has so much hope in it too.  Loved.

The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1) - Hisashi Kashiwai - detective - five stars - This was a really cute book and a quick read.  It's a bestseller in Japan and was translated into English.  Koishi Kamogawa is a retired police detective who has opened up a restaurant with his daughter Nagare.  While they serve delicious food, they are also food detectives.  Their clients are people looking to recreate a special dish/taste from their past.  They come to the restaurant, describe the dish and the circumstances under which they had it, and then the Kamogawas research and recreate it.  I loved the premise of the book and the great food descriptions as well as how the cases are solved.  Nothing riveting here, just a book that you really enjoy reading and makes you feel good.

Daughter of China: The True Story of Forbidden Love in Modern China - Meihong Xu - biography - four stars - Xu has a rural background and is recruited into the PLA.  She is selected to be one of twelve female recruits the PLA's Institute for International Relations.  I enjoyed reading about Xu's background, how she joined the PLA and her training.  I thought it was interesting that she, and many of the other female started to become disillusioned even before training was complete.  Xu begins her career and at one point is assigned to a university program where there are visiting professors.  She is supposed get to close to/monitor one of the American professors.  She ends up falling in love him.  This of course leads to questioning and banishment.  It was a really interesting book, although some parts definitely more interesting than others and the writing style was not my favorite, but definitely worth reading.

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson - Ellen Baker - historical fiction - four stars - This is one of those dual storyline books.  Cecily Larson is left at an orphanage by her mother at the age of four.  A few years later, when her mother fails to return, she is sold to a circus to become a bareback rider.  She thrives at the circus and builds a life there, until it all falls apart.  Years later, at 94, her grandson is doing a project for school and wants to trace his family's DNA.  The results are unexpected and lead them to connections they didn't know they had.  I loved Cecily, the story of her life, and how it unfolded.  I do think the book might have tried to tackle too many different controversies, and there were a lot of convenient turns to the story, but overall this was a good one.

Expiration Dates - Rebecca Serle - fiction - four stars - Rebecca Serle specializes in books that look at fate, things that could be.  This book is right in that wheelhouse.  Ever since her teenage years, Daphne Ball has known how long each of her relationships will late.  She knows because she receives a piece of paper with a name and timeframe - one week, two years, three days.  One day she receives a paper with only a name.  The book is a little predictable, I could see the plot line unfolding for a about half the book, and while that part was true, there was also a pretty big twist that was unexpected.  The book does go into some of her previous notes/relationships.  That was one thing that was a little annoying, these relationships weren't revealed in order, they jumped around a bunch.  I know why, but I would have preferred more chronological.  A good book, and I really like Serle, but I feel like her next book should be something that breaks the mold she is in a bit.

The Great Divide - Cristina Henríquez - historical fiction - four stars - This book follows a cast of characters for a 4-5 week period during construction of the Panama Canal.  It's not a subject or period I know a lot about, so I found it very interesting from that perspectice.  People were recruited from all over to go and work on the canal, one of the main characters being from Barbados.  While it's just a very small sliver of time, I really like that it gave you a feel for the conditions and motivations of those involved as well as the impact to Panama that the canal had.  I enjoyed meeting the different individuals/personalities in the book.  It is a little fragmented because a number of the characters really don't intersect with one another, but that didn't bother me that much.  For me what prevented it from being a five was that the endings were a little too abrupt and in some ways too convenient and left me wanting a bit, but overall a very good book.

This really was such a wonderful reading month.  My favorite this month hands down was Go Like a River.  And I really didn't have a least favorite, they were all good.  I've just started Amor Towles Table for Two, and I'm also reading Astor.  Would love to hear what you have been reading!