The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch - Daniel Kraus

I know 3 books seems like a small amount for a month's reading, but this third and final book in the March  theme is a whopping 642 pages long, so in effect it could have counted for 3 full books in itself. This YA book* is in fact "Volume One: At the Edge of Empire" and covers the titular character's life and ... well, second life? from the turn of the 20th century until the 1930s. The writing is great, and for the most part the characters feel really alive in the sense that you may not agree with everything they do, but they seem like real people. There is a lot of attention to detail that I appreciated. There were times here and there that I felt the book could have been just a wee bit shorter, but the story kept me going. Apparently there is a sequel which I would totally read. Recommended. 

*I'm sensing there was a theme in that cardboard box

The Secret of Nightingale Wood - Lucy Strange

By coincidence, this YA book has a lot in common thematically with the previous theme book, however, the setting is completely different. I think I would have loved this book if it had been available to me as a kid (the target audience). As an adult I thought it was a lovely, well written book that felt like a classic book I would have read during my childhood. Recommended. 

The Space Between Before and After - Sue Stauffacher

Before we get to the review, I'd like to announce March's reading theme: books I got for free at the library! To clarify: these aren't books I got for free by borrowing them from the library, they are books I was able to take home and keep for free. 

It happened like this: 

One Saturday, I was out running errands with Mr. K and one of the errands was returning a library book. In the library lobby, there was a huge cardboard box filled with books with "FREE - PLEASE HELP YOURSELF" written on it. If you think I can pass that up, you are sadly mistaken! Mr. K was waiting in the car so to save time I randomly grabbed 3 books from this box and left. So the books in this theme are all from this generous cardboard box, ha ha!

And now, on to the review:

This YA (I think) book was a really touching story that I thought was well told. I really sympathized with the main characters, although the father got on my nerves from time to time with his rigid realism. It's a very sad story but the author is able to show how people can help a young person make it through a tragedy. Recommended. 

The Reading List - Sara Nisha Adams (Spoilers)

(This book is impossible to review properly without the use of spoilers, so please come back and read this once you've read the book if you'd like to avoid this :) )

*

*

*

March's book club choice was.... OK. I don't know why I just can't connect with these "bestseller" type books. I loved the premise: a mysterious list of books found by random people leads to them connecting in unexpected ways. As a bookworm, this is such a cool idea - and I confess that if I found a list of books like this I would want to read them all as well. And I totally got that the books on the list are related to what the characters in this book are going through - that part worked for me. But overall this book was just... OK. Are there truly no editors of any kind in the publishing world anymore? The writing itself is loaded with cliches and is just "meh" at best. Characters are introduced and then disappear. No one is described in a way that creates mental images. The suicide at the end of the story makes no sense within the context of the story as told - what would have been better is for it to have happened before the book begins, as then the characters who never read books before can connect through mutual loss over reading as a way to get closer to their loved ones and process things. And I will go on record as saying that people who have never read a novel in their lives are highly unlikely to pick up Jane Austen and immediately swoon (but maybe that's just me). I didn't hate this but I wanted to like it so much more than I did.