Books to be published April 2025: two reviews
Where Do We Go From Here? by Nick Alexander, April 23, 2025
Source: ARCs from NetGalley, Bookouture
Genre: contemporary women's fiction, family drama
I enjoyed this family drama involving nurse Wendy, her husband Harry, and her two kids, Toby and Fiona. Wendy discovers a remote off-grid eco-cabin in France, outside of Nice, and books it for six months following the tensions with her husband and children during and after the Covid crisis, plus her need for some serious alone-time.
I loved seeing how Wendy copes with the changes in the winter weather that makes her have to be creative and proactive to survive in her rustic cabin, which uses solar panels on the roof for electricity. Heating is from a wood stove that she has to keep feeding with logs to keep herself warm. Her only help comes from the mail deliverer, Mason, who will deliver groceries that she can't get herself from walking to the local bakery/grocery. Her nature walks in the hills and the descriptions of the hills and forests that calm her down is refreshing.
Seeing how this solitary time and experience helps Wendy come to terms with herself, her alcoholism, and her family life is a rewarding reading experience.
What If I Never Get Over You by Paige Toon, April 10, 2025
Source: ARCs from NetGalley, Penguin
Genre: romance, contemporary fiction
Ellie from London and Ash from Wales, both twenty-year-olds, meet while traveling in Europe and spend three days together. They fall in love and arrange to meet at a certain day in Madrid. When Ash doesn't show up in Madrid, Ellie spends the next several years trying to forget him. As they had not even exchanged their last names or family details, Ellie can't reach him, and he hasn't used her number to call her.
A certified gardener six years later, Ellie works as one of the staff on the vast estate of a Welsh family mansion tending the formal and informal gardens and orchards. I loved the descriptions of the gardens, the gardening itself, the varieties of flowers and bushes on the vast grounds. Needless to say, she meets Ash again while she is there. This romance has a few tropes including lovers-enemies and mistaken identities.
The ending is less romantic, in my opinion, and the new lifestyle of the two people doesn't fit with their personalities, though this is a happy together-again ending.
Currently reading
Gravewater Lake by A.M. Strong, Sonya Sargent, March 1, 2025, Thomas & Mercer
Genre: psych thriller, suspense, Vermont
I've just started reading this thriller and am loving it so far. It involves a woman who finds herself at the edge of the lake with bruises and a bump on the head. Problem is, she doesn't know who she is and her amnesia doesn't allow her to figure out what happened to her. Her rescuer, Gregg, is becoming suspicious to her too, although he says he doesn't know who she is.
The book only averaged 3.5 stars on goodreads, but I'm hoping it's a least a four for me by the time I finish reading.
What are you reading this week?
Memes: The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday
