April 2022: What I’ve Been Reading

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Well, I was going to share this post last week, but when Hadley got sick, I had to skip a day of posting! #momlife

Anyway, today I’m sharing the three books I read in April. Honestly, I read two them at the beginning of the month during Spring Break. I’ve been a slow reader so far in 2022.

This month I read…

{As always, book summaries are from Goodreads…}

Such a Quiet Place:

Summary:

We had no warning that she’d come back.

Hollow’s Edge used to be a quiet place. A private and idyllic neighborhood where neighbors dropped in on neighbors, celebrated graduation and holiday parties together, and looked out for one another. But then came the murder of Brandon and Fiona Truett. A year and a half later, Hollow’s Edge is simmering. The residents are trapped, unable to sell their homes, confronted daily by the empty Truett house, and suffocated by their trial testimonies that implicated one of their own. Ruby Fletcher. And now, Ruby’s back.

With her conviction overturned, Ruby waltzes right back to Hollow’s Edge, and into the home she once shared with Harper Nash. Harper, five years older, has always treated Ruby like a wayward younger sister. But now she’s terrified. What possible good could come of Ruby returning to the scene of the crime? And how can she possibly turn her away, when she knows Ruby has nowhere to go?

Within days, suspicion spreads like a virus across Hollow’s Edge. It’s increasingly clear that not everyone told the truth about the night of the Truett’s murders. And when Harper begins receiving threatening notes, she realizes she has to uncover the truth before someone else becomes the killer’s next victim.

Quick Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this book. Doesn’t “Hollow’s Edge” sound like a place where there would be trouble?! The plot line with Ruby showing up unannounced immediately caught my attention. There were various layers to the story with many of the characters keeping secrets that are eventually revealed as the plot and conclusion come together. This was a good one.

Rating:

Pack Up the Moon:

Summary:

Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they’re wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness.

As Lauren’s disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future–a future without the only woman he’s ever loved. He’s so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never imagines his life after Lauren.

But Lauren has a plan to keep her husband moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him. In those letters, one for every month in the year after her death, Lauren leads Joshua on a journey through pain, anger, and denial. It’s a journey that will take Joshua from his attempt at a dinner party for family and friends to getting rid of their bed…from a visit with a psychic medium to a kiss with a woman who isn’t Lauren. As his grief makes room for laughter and new relationships, Joshua learns Lauren’s most valuable lesson: The path to happiness doesn’t follow a straight line.

Quick Thoughts:

Based on the summary I knew this would probably be a tear jerker. As I started to read it, I kept thinking it sounded so familiar. So much so that I went back and looked at my reading lists from 2018 on, but didn’t see the title. Then, I checked my Good Reads list — I even have a list for “started but didn’t finish” and it wasn’t on there. As I continued reading, I knew that I had started this book…I must have previously quit on it knowing that the story line seemed sad?

Anyway, I started this book on the drive to Asheville and just kept reading. At around page 100, I stopped feeling like I’d read the book before, so that must have been when I quit on it.

I loved how the book was organized with letters from Lauren. There were monthly letters to Joshua for the first year after Lauren’s passing. Also, occasionally, there were letters to Lauren’s father who had passed away when she was twenty years old. The letters to Joshua were heartfelt, bittersweet, humorous, encouraging and more. The chapters that weren’t letters shared about their lives leading up to her death: dating, proposal, marriage, honeymoon, life as newlyweds, her diagnosis and illness progression, and her death.

I cried ugly tears at the end. Good thing I was alone when finishing this book.

Rating:

This book was probably 4.5⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️ for me just because it was such a tear jerker, but it was really good.

The Rent Collector:

Summary:

Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working. Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a secret about the bad-tempered rent collector who comes demanding money–a secret that sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone it sweeps past.

Quick Thoughts:

“The Rent Collector is a story of hope, of one woman’s journey to save her son and another woman’s chance at redemption.” This was such a touching book, and I couldn’t put it down. A friend shared in on Facebook, and I immediately added it to my reading list, and I was actually on the library waitlist for a bit.

I think anyone would enjoy this book, but I especially did so as an educator (and lover of reading). I believe it was inspired by real life as far as the people living near a garbage dump in Cambodia.

I can’t imagine living conditions for Sang Ly, Ki, and Nisay in Cambodia. I loved the grumpy temperament of the rent collector, Sopeap. She holds such a powerful gift of being educated and ends up changing Sang Ly’s life. Sopeap’s past could have been its own book and is such a key piece in the plot. This story is beautifully written and as the story continued to unfold and the pieces fell into place, I was in awe. This may be one of my top reads of 2022.

Fave Quotes:

• “Life will not always be so hard or cruel. Our difficulties are but a moment.”
• “Peace is a product of both patience and persistence.”
• “Education is almost always good, especially when it brings us to an understanding of our place in the world.”
• “In literature, everything means something.”
• “Stories teach us to not give up hope because there are times in our own journey when we mustn’t give up hope. They teach endurance because in our lives we are meant to endure. They carry messages that are older than the words themselves, messages that reach beyond the page.”
• It doesn’t matter where you live, Sang Ly, it is how you live.”

Rating:

What have you been reading lately? I’m almost finished a book that a friend suggested, and then I hope to pick up my reading pace just in time for summer!

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