April Reads 2024
April Reads 2024: 7 Books I Read this Month
By: Brittany Shields
Somehow I still managed to read 7 books this month and only 20ish pages less than March.
Homecoming was a really long book and I didn’t have as much time to read because I suddenly got motivated to work on my boys’ baby book on Shutterfly and did a second photo book on my backlog, both of which took several hours to make!
I read four new releases this month, three from my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2024 and enjoyed them all!
It was apparently the month for thrillers!
I also fulfilled 4 prompts for this year’s Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge - two were from the same category: Homecoming and Darling Girls both have a character named Nora/h.
Overall, a great month of reading!
Spotlight of the Month
This month I want to highlight the book Raising Worry-Free Girls by Sissy Goff.
This was a super helpful book (and I believe ongoing resource) to aid parents in navigating their children’s anxiety and worries… and really their own as well.
I would highly recommend all parents of girls to buy and read this book no matter where your daughters are currently on the spectrum of worry. You will be much more prepared to handle the ups and downs without stirring up for stress for your family!
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1. The Garden Girls by Jessica R. Patch
Genre: Suspense/Thriller/ Christian Fiction
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2024]
[Fulfilled ‘A Christian fiction book’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“I know the kinds of things that await me. I know what evil men can do.”
This is my first Jessica Patch book and I loved it!
It was suspenseful from start to finish. The opening prologue begins with a woman’s attempted escape from her captor. The action and intensity continues to the very end as a last rescue attempt is made in the middle of a hurricane on the Outer Banks.
The Garden Girls is an intense thriller about a serial killer who abducts women with flower names and tattoos them with flowers from neck to thigh: blooms when they obey, buds when they don’t.
He has a secret garden in his house with human-sized bird cages where he puts them on display to dance for him.
With NCIS/Criminal Minds vibes, this is sure to be enjoyed by any readers who like a little bit disturbing thrillers, but without all the swearing or sexual content!
Read my full review to get more plot details, a line-up of characters, some random comments, and some spoiler comments!
2. The Alone Time by Elle Marr
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
“In war, often the first strike is best, when the prey is still unaware of the imminent danger.”
Last summer I read Marr’s book The Family Bones which was about a family of psychopaths. The Alone Time also deals with a family, but the vibe is more mystery and trauma about the past than surviving in the present.
Violet and Fiona (13 and 7 at the time) survived Olympic National Forest after their small plane, piloted by their father, crashed on the way to Canada for a family trip.
It’s been 25 years since ‘The Alone Time’ but when a woman becomes breaking news claiming to be their father’s mistress the months leading up to the crash, the case of their parents’ deaths that was never closed has new energy, a pursuit of more answers as to what really happened out in the woods.
What secrets are the girls keeping?
It’s a thriller that is meant to be mysterious, to freak you out a bit, and because of the dual time-line and character POV chapters, you cycle through mistrust and wondering about each of the characters.
Read my full review to get more plot and character details, to read my comments to the haters, and get my ultimate recommendation.
3. Candor: The Secret to Succeeding at Tough Conversations by Charles Causey
Genre: Non-Fiction/ Self-Help
“Candor helps us build relationships because it requires us to be courageous, vulnerable, and willing to offer feedback. It leverages openness and honesty to increase trust.”
If you came to this book to read about one of the five factions of the Divergent series, you’ve got the wrong book, but if you’d like to learn more about candor and how to use honesty and transparency to benefit your relationships, your home, and your workplace, then you’ve come to the right place!
While I wasn’t super engaged in the content regarding leaders and employees as it no longer pertains to me, I did find a few of the chapters more relatable. There were chapters on family, friends, difficult people, and charm vs character that I thought were particularly good.
Read my full review to see which Divergent faction I would choose, to understand what candor is NOT, find out what I felt called out by, see what features this book has, and read what my ultimate recommendation is.
4. Homecoming by Kate Morton
Genre: Historical Fiction/Mystery
[This book was the nominated for the ‘Best Mystery/Thriller’ category of the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge ]
[Fulfilled ‘Book with a character named Sofia or Nora’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“There were times when she felt terror at her own desolation, the gnawing sensation of having lost something she could not name and therefore could not hope to find.”
“Home is where the heart is, and the heart could be a dark and damaged place.”
Tragic.
That’s how I would describe this book.
Homecoming is a dual-timeline (1959 & 2018) family drama that takes place in Australia. It’s a book about loss, motherhood, mother-daughter relationships, and what it means to come home.
In one timeline we have the mysterious deaths of a whole family at a seemingly peaceful picnic, and a baby that went missing.
In the other timeline we have a journalist returning to her home in Australia who discovers the circumstances around her grandmother’s recent fall and hospitalization may intertwine with what happened in the past.
Read my full review to get more plot details, see what I did and didn’t like about this book, my thoughts on ‘coming home’, some spoiler comments, and my ultimate recommendation.
5. Fatal Domain (Travis Brock #2) by Steven James
Genre: Suspense/Thriller/ Christian Fiction
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2024]
“There is always a cost to doing what’s right. Sometimes it costs you everything you have. But it should not cost you everything you are.”
“‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’”
This book takes place about a month after book one—Broker of Lies. It can probably be read as a stand alone but I would recommend reading the first book first for background and context. He reminds us about part of what happened but I think it will be more cohesive for you to have all the information.
It was a great sequel that leaves you on a cliffhanger so I’m ready for book three to be out!
Similar to Broker of Lies, there are a lot of characters and there is some complexity to the plot.
The plot of this book is that Travis’s covert DOD team is still after one of the ‘bad guys’ from the first book who is planning something new to go down in Washington D.C. that has something to do with pharmaceuticals and cognitive functioning. There is also the business with Travis’s love interest and his deceased wife that I can’t say too much about if you plan to read the first book!
Read my full review to get more plot details, a cast of characters, some deeper thoughts on the moral dilemmas of this book, learn some cool things, figure out the riddle that was in the book, and see my ultimate recommendation… actually I’ll give that now- read this series!
6. Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth
Genre: Domestic Thriller
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2024]
[Fulfilled ‘Book with a character named Sofia or Nora’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“The fact remained, there was more to what happened to them when they were children than even they knew.”
This book had a different kind of domestic-thriller vibe than the other books I’ve read by Sally Hepworth.
She tackled some hard-to-read topics like child abuse and the foster care system. It made the stakes feel a little higher and the ending more important.
Even though I had the twists figured out pretty early on, it was still a really compelling and hard-to-put-down book. I was deeply invested in the pursuit of justice and getting the ‘bad guy’ held accountable.
This story is about three girls who become sisters due to their trauma bonds that happened at the foster home of Miss Fairchild. Though they are adults now, when human remains are found under their old foster home, they must go back and confront their trauma as both witnesses and potential suspects in whatever happened in that house.
Read my full review for more on the characters, to find out the trigger warnings, get a spoiler comment about my take on the ending, and to consider something poignant that Hepworth brings up in the book.
7. Raising Worry-Free Girls: Helping Your Daughter Feel Braver, Stronger, and Smarter in an Anxious World by Sissy Goff
Genre: Non-Fiction/ Parenting
[Fulfilled ‘Parenting book or book about relationships’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“It’s never been more important to talk about how the trouble your child will experience can lead to resilience. We want her to learn how she can see difficulties as opportunities. And, ultimately, how God can and will use hurt in her life—even big hurt—for her good and His glory.”
This is an excellent book and resource for parents to use to help their kids cope with anxiety and worrying. I can see myself referring back to it a lot over the years as different worries manifest for my daughters. I would definitely recommend owning this one and sharing it with your parent-friends.
You can also get the workbook that goes along with this that your daughter works through. There is one for younger girls and one for teens.
This book is not intended to replace therapy that a lot of kids may need; it’s meant to provide tools and understanding for parents to handle their children’s anxiety and worries.
Read my full review to see how the book is divided and what it focuses on, get two other related book recommendations regarding anxiety and therapy, see what stuck out to me about the book, and see how influential parents are in how they children perceive their own struggles.
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