March Roundup

I just looked back at March last year and it was a bit of a terrible month for reading and I want to say perhaps it was because it is a March thing, as this March has not been much better but for very different reasons of course.

I like a lot of people are no doubt struggling to concentrate on reading, especially when I can get locked in the vacuum of news endlessly and all theories, opinions and facts. As this strange time goes on I now consciously make more of an effort to step away from it all.

But enough of what everyone is dealing with on with the books for March.

When time are tough you can always turn to certain authors and I have used this mantra this month, especially with some of their new novels about to hit the shelves in April.

Heidi Swain – The Secret Seaside Escape it is so great to be back with Heidi and this wonderful new novel is set in Wynmouth and has the same feel good factor as all her previous ones and with a seaside to wander down through the pages of a book, when you perhaps cannot get to the real thing.

Wanting to wander in more wonderful landscape with jewelled names and descriptions then you can pick up Holly Martin – Sunrise over Sapphire Bay where the warmth of the sun as well as the story will make you want to pack your bags and go for a visit. Holly always delivers.

And if you want to escape even more as did the main character in Katie Ginger – Spring Tides at Swallowtail Bay then you are in for a treat. Just make sure you pop into the little gift shop and pick up a memento of your visit.

No doubt we will be back to visit these places later on in 2020.

Of course going away on holiday and even a cruise seems such a distant dream at the moment, but having picked up a book which had been languishing on my shelf for a while I was taken to that cruise with Rachel Rhys – Dangerous Crossing. It’s 1939, on a ship to Australia and the mix of people you are going to meet, their class, their status, their religion, their background, their past and their future is going to all be mixed up on this long voyage. It was a page turner.

In a change from her normal type of novel I approached Emma Davies – My Husband’s Lie with slight trepidation, would this work. Well it did, it was a it of a roller coaster and has some real insights into emotions throughout the book. It works and made you think that sometimes you always need to go forward, never back.

Jennifer Wells – The Lost Girls another historical fiction read for the month was very much on the theme of never going back, never staying still and always moving forward. And of course it is always those you least expect isn’t it?

When all is wrong with the world you can always rely on the known and in the case of Agatha Christie  – A Murder is Announced. I did know, I have seen the TV adaptation enough to know who the crime was committed by but probably because I thought I had read the book, I find I had not and therefore corrected that immediately. A Murder is Announced was the chosen book for Read Christie 2020 in February, I might pick up another one in the coming weeks.

So that was my March.

How was yours?