It’s time for my first half of April 2025 book review post! I am sharing what I read in April so far, although I am skipping my 5 star reads to share later in the month. I would normally post this next week, but it’s hard for me to write posts when I’m away from home, so this first half is early and contains less books than usual, while my 2nd half of the month post may contain an unbalanced amount of books. The Amazon links to the books I’ve read are affiliate links and if you use them and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission. If you’ve read any of these books or are interested in them, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
Title: Trashlands
Author: Alison Stine
Genre: Dystopian
Publisher: Harlequin Audio, 10/26/21
Source: BookSparks – print, Library – Audio
Why I Read It: Backlist
My Rating: 4 Stars
This dystopian story takes place in a future world where plastic is has great value. In Scrappalachia, Coral is a plucker, pulling plastic out of the river, while she avoids being made to strip at the strip club which is the center of the area where she lives with her adoptive father in a school bus and with her partner, but her child was taken and put to work in a brick making factory.
“A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: garbage is currency. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a ‘plucker,’ pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club’s violent owner rules as unofficial mayor. Amid the polluted landscape, Coral works desperately to save up enough to rescue her child from the recycling factories, where he is forced to work. In her stolen free hours, she does something that seems impossible in this place: Coral makes art. When a reporter from a struggling city on the coast arrives in Trashlands, Coral is presented with an opportunity to change her life. But is it possible to choose a future for herself?”
I thought this was a strange book and it was somewhat hard to follow as the timeline isn’t told completely in order. Many of the characters have viewpoints. The people are named after places and plants. Brittany Pressley did a good job with the narration of this one!
Title: True Gretch – Young Adult Edition
Author: Gretchen Whitmer, Lisa Dickey
Genre: YA Memoir
Publisher: Atheneum Books For Young Readers, 1/28/25
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Sent to me for my review
My Rating: 4 Stars
The YA edition of Gretchen Whitmer’s memoir is subtitled “lessons for anyone who wants to make a difference,” and the book did a good job of sharing lessons the governor of Michigan has learned as governor.
“When Gretchen Whitmer was growing up, her beloved grandmother Nino taught her that you can always find something good in other people. ‘Even the meanest person might have pretty eyes,’ she would say, a piece of advice that Gretchen carries with her today in her role as the governor of Michigan. (And one that resonated more than another her grandmother offered: ‘never part your hair in the middle.’) From navigating a kidnapping and assassination plot in which she herself was a target to facing monumental challenges during a global pandemic, Big Gretch (as she’s now known) shares the key pieces of wisdom that have shaped her trailblazing career and personal experiences in this often hilarious, always uplifting book. Along the way, she tells stories about growing up gutsy in the Midwest, the wild comments she’s encountered as a public figure, and how to neutralize high-profile bullies with a fearless sense of humor.”
I appreciated how human and accessible Whitmer appears to be, sharing humor and making fun of herself. Some of the lessons she shared included listening to people, surrounding yourself with great people, apologizing and forgiving, and being happy. The end included an interview with her daughters about being the daughters of a governor. This book does mention an assault that Whitmer experienced in college.
Title: Magic City
Author: Jewell Parker Rhodes
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Harper Perennial, 5/4/21, original 1/1/97
Source: Publisher
Why I Read It: Backlist
My Rating: 3.5 Stars, Rounded up to 4 Stars
In 1921, racially motivated riots took place in Tulsa, OK, where previously Black people lived and worked in an affluent section of the city. This is a fictionalized story of the Black man who was in an elevator with a white woman when she screamed, leading to assumptions about what may have happened between them and kicking off the riots.
“Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921. A white woman and a black man are alone in an elevator. Suddenly, the woman screams, the man flees, and the chase to capture and lynch him begins. When Joe Samuels, a young Black man with dreams of becoming the next Houdini, is accused of rape, he must perform his greatest escape by eluding a bloodthirsty mob. Meanwhile, Mary Keane, the white, motherless daughter of a farmer who wants to marry her off to the farmhand who viciously raped her, must find the courage to help exonerate the man she accused with her panicked cry.”
I really wanted to learn more about what happened in Tulsa, but this was more of a character driven book about fictional characters. Mary was raped by a farmhand and when she screamed, others assumed that Joe had raped her. She then befriends Joe’s sister and tries to help exonerate Joe. Mary comes off as a bit of a white savior type character. Joe talks to the ghost of his brother and also to the ghost of Houdini, as he repeatedly escapes from jail. This book suffers from multiple repetitions of the characters names. I appreciated that it referred to a (fictional) previous lynching of a Jewish man, which was created as a “bridge between Jewish and African American struggles to escape bondage, and as an illustration that prejudice blunts growth, literally and spiritually,” according to the author. I listened to the last 25% of this one.
Title: Sweetshop of Dreams
Author: Jenny Colgan
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Tantor Audio, 8/5/14
Source: Publisher – Print, Library – Audio
Why I Read It: Backlist
My Rating: 4 Stars
Although this book was originally published in 2014, I received a paperback copy of the version linked here, which was released in 2021. I had never read a book by Jenny Colgan before, but I’d heard good things. This was a sweet book about Rosie, who goes to a small village in the UK to help her great aunt, who is having health issues and can no longer run her sweetshop. Leaving her job in London and her dead end boyfriend may be difficult, but I was cheering for Rosie to realize how much better off she was in Lipton!
“Rosie Hopkins has gotten used to busy London life. It’s…comfortable. And though she might like a more rewarding career, and her boyfriend’s not exactly the king of romance, Rosie’s not complaining. And when she visits her Aunt Lilian’s small country village to help sort out her sweetshop, she expects it to be dull at best. Lilian Hopkins has spent her life running Lipton’s sweetshop, through wartime and family feuds. When her great-niece Rosie arrives to help her with the shop, the last thing Lillian wants to slow down and wrestle with the secret history hidden behind the jars of beautifully colored sweets. But as Rosie gets Lilian back on her feet, breathes a new life into the candy shop, and gets to know the mysterious and solitary Stephen―whose family seems to own the entire town―she starts to think that settling for what’s comfortable might not be so great after all.”
The people that Rosie meets in the village are fun and entertaining and I especially enjoyed 6 year old Edison. I thought this book was sweet and cozy. There is a romance involved, but it isn’t the focus of the story. There are also flashbacks to Rosie’s aunt Lillian’s life in the village as a young adult during World War 2. In the audio, the transitions to different time periods and viewpoints were a little jarring. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this one.
Title: Paper Chains
Author: Elaine Vickers
Genre: Middle Grade Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 10/17/17
Source: PJ Ourway
Why I Read It: Trying to get out of slump
My Rating: 4 Stars
After not finishing two books, I chose a middle grade book from my shelf, which sometimes helps with book slumps. Paper Chains by Elaine Vickers is about best friends Katie and Ana. They each have issues within their families – Katie is adopted and has heart issues, while Ana’s dad left their family and her mom is depressed. Her grandmother Babushka comes to stay with them and she and her little brother Mikey aren’t the hugest fans. At the beginning of the book, Katie is thinking about how all stories have a beginning, but she doesn’t know her beginnings. Her family makes a paper chain to countdown to Christmas and they put things they are thankful for on the papers. She writes that she is thankful for her birth family and is nervous to let her adoptive parents know this.
“Katie and Ana are the kind of friends who share everything with each other. But there are some things you can’t even share with your best friend. Katie has always known she was adopted, but recently she’s been wondering about her birth parents and her birthplace. She worries that saying this out loud—even to her best friend—could mess up the perfect family she has now. Ana’s family has been falling apart ever since her dad left, and it’s up to her to hold it together. But Ana fears no matter how hard she tries, her family may never be whole again. At a time when they need each other the most, the links between the girls are beginning to break. Before they lose each other, they must work through the tangles of secrets to the shining truth underneath: friendship, just like family, is worth fighting for.”
I appreciated that Ana’s family is Jewish and when Mikey makes a paper chain, his counts down to winter break instead of to Christmas, and includes blue chains to represent when Hanukkah takes place. At times, this felt like two parallel stories about the two separate families, but the girls come together when Ana decides to reunite with her father. Like many middle grade books, this involves the kids leaving home without permission, which is something I wish would not happen as much in books! It was interesting that both girls had Russian heritage, but they never actually discussed this. Babushka served as a good character to connect the cultural stories both families shared.
This post includes 5 of the books I read this month. 3 were print books and 2 were on audio. 3 of them were adult books, 1 was YA, and 1 was middle grade. Genres included dystopian, memoir, historical fiction, and contemporary.
Have you read any of these books or do you want to? What have you been reading lately?
