Another month has flown by, and I managed to knock out a decent amount of reading in spite of spring busyness!

One thing to note, before I get into the month’s breakdown: As mentioned in this post, I am now a Bookshop.org affiliate. As such, the links to books in my list will take you to my shop page, and I will earn a small commission on any purchase.

With that business out of the way, let’s get to what you really want to know:
What did I read in March, and how did I rate it?

Titles and Star-ratings (with format!):
📱 Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute (Talia Hibbert) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
📖 Anne of West Philly (Ivy Noelle Weir) ⭐⭐⭐
🎧 The Little Wartime Library ⭐⭐⭐1/2
📖 A Most Intriguing Lady (Sarah Ferguson) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
📖 The Secret Garden on 81st Street (Ivy Noelle Weir) ⭐⭐⭐
📱 Pages & Co: The Treehouse Library (Anna James) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
🎧 Death at Victoria Dock (Kerry Greenwood) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
📖 Murder Your Employer (Rupert Holmes) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Both Anne of West Philly and Secret Garden were graphic novels that I read to confirm their placement in the library collection {gotta make sure you get things in the age-appropriate places, or else you risk chaos}. They were cute, and I’m always impressed by the way people reshape classic stories in new ways – in this case, both graphic format and contemporary/updated contexts.

I was thrown off a bit by The Little Wartime Library – I didn’t expect it to be so hard, so sad. Yes, it’s a WWII story – and yes, the library was moved underground because its original building was bombed in the Blitz. But … there are some really hard things in this book. Sad, painful, make your heart ache (and your stomach lurch) things. I had to take breaks in the listening, let my mind/heart heal enough to continue. The celebration of Story and the Power of Books is glorious however. From the author’s “essay” at the end, it’s clear she’s a library fangirl, and I found the real history of the Bethnal Green Library fascinating. Here’s an article the author wrote for The Guardian in support of the Library during the pandemic, which includes a short version of the Library’s war-time history.

Surprisingly, I read/finished fewer books in March than February, but we were very very busy with projects on the weekends. And the positive of leaving 3 {yes, 3} books “stranded” to carry-over into April means I’ll get a jumpstart on the month. Take your wins where you get them, right? At least the books I did read were really good on the whole.

What about y’all? How did March reading treat you?

**Disclaimer: As a Bookshop.org affiliate I will earn a small commission on any purchase.**