I felt like I didn’t do much reading this month, but somehow March ended and I realized I had finished seven books. My favorite book this month surprised me! I bought Ian McEwan’s new novel What We Can Know for my husband, as I’m trying to help him expand from non-fiction to fiction. He didn’t love it, but I was obsessed, despite having gone off McEwan after Saturday. I also hadn’t read any ARCs in a while, but NetGalley provided me with a copy of The One Day You Were My Husband, a new domestic mystery-thriller-romance novel by Rosie Walsh – I highly recommend adding it to your TBR in May when it’s published.

I’m looking forward to my April reading – I received ARC of upcoming novels from Dave Eggers and Richard Russo from NetGalley, and snagged three books from my to-read list at the library this evening.

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My Top Pick

What We Can Know

Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan’s new novel What We Can Know is set in a future apocalypse driven by climate change. A lonely scholar is researching the whereabouts of a lost poem written by the famed poet Francis Blundy for his wife Vivien, and believes he’s on the verge of restoring an important environmental poem to the canon. In the second half of the book we read Viven’s diary and discover the truth. The title of this book is perfect, as it’s ultimately a novel about how little we can truly know about the past – how history depends on perspective, and how fragile that truth becomes when we weren’t there to witness it. Get your copy from Bookshop and come back next week when I publish my full review.

More from this Month

These Summer Storms

Sarah MacLean

A young woman returns from exile to her ultra-wealthy family after her larger than life billionaire father’s death. Over a Labor Day weekend on their private island in Narragansett Bay, Alice reunites with her estranged siblings and mother as they play a demented inheritance game devised by their patriarch to reveal family secrets and bring them closer together. The book starts out strong with juicy, Succession-like family drama, but the plot wasn’t strong enough to hold my attention. Get your copy from Bookshop.

A Hymn to Life

Gisèle Pelicot

Gisèle Pelicot became a feminist hero a couple of years ago when she waived her right to a closed trial of her husband, who was charged and convicted of drugging her and inviting more than fifty men into their home to sexually assault her repeatedly over the course of ten years. In her powerful memoir, she grapples with how to reconcile the love of her life with the monster who subjected her to these horrors. It’s a brave memoir, and emotionally very difficult to read. I had a hard time sleeping the night I finished it. Get your copy from Bookshop.

My Other Heart

Emma Nanami Strenner

This Read with Jenna selection explores identity, motherhood, privilege, immigration, and friendship from the perspective of two Asian American high school seniors and best friends. Adopted, biracial, wealthy Kit heads to Japan the summer before college to explore her roots. Sabrina, the daughter of a single Chinese immigrant mother, spends her summer working at the country club and exploring her own identity with the support of a mentor she interns for. Both girls are sidetracked from their quests by summer romances. I found Kit shallow and unlikeable and Sabrina a bit one dimensional. The climax is unexpected, and exploring the fallout from it could have given the book a lot more depth, but I felt it tied up too quickly at the end of the book. If you enjoy books about identity, you may like this novel, but since it’s through the perspective of two teenagers it may read a bit YA to some readers. Get your copy from Bookshop.

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible

Rabih Alameddine

Raja, a 63 year old gay teacher living with his mother in Beirut, sets out to tell a tale, which, like a river, meanders, with many heads, rivulets, and off branches. He traces the story of his life through the Lebanese civil war, liquidity crisis, Covid pandemic, and port explosion, with a traumatic personal experience at the heart of it. Raja is wry, his mother is spunky, their relationship is feisty. The book is a national history of Lebanon as much as it is a tale of a mother’s fierce love for her son. I get why it has gotten rave reviews – but I didn’t love reading it. Meandering stories work well when told orally; the approach didn’t work as well for me with the constant interruption of picking it up and putting it down over several days of reading. I did find this article about the author’s narrative approach interesting though. Get your copy at Bookshop.

Coming Later This Year

The One Day You Were My Husband

Rosie Walsh

In this domestic thriller slash romance, ambitious British surgical intern Carrie spontaneously marries her boyfriend Johan on a beach in Thailand after a whirlwind romance. That same night, Thai authorities storm the beach and arrest Johan. Carrie never sees him again, and never learns the truth about what he did. Fourteen years later, Johan resurfaces in Sweden. Carrie, now happily married and the mother of twins, becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened, with dangerous sparks of her old romance flaring as she pursues the truth. I enjoyed this one a lot. It’s got a lot of intrigue and plot twists, and I was invested enough in the story to stay up late reading. Thank you to NetGalley and Viking Penguin for the ARC – all opinions are my own.

The One Day You Were My Husband will be published on May 19. Pre-order it now and come back in May for my full review.