Mini Book Reviews: April 2025

 Disclaimer: I received ARCs of Enough: Climbing Towards a True Self on Mt Everest, Heartwood, The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits, and The Imagined Life. This post contains affiliate links.

April was another great month of reading for me. You know it's a good month when your lowest rated book was by Jennifer Weiner. She's usually a win for me, but this time, The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits was just ok. Maybe it was just me--the ratings on Goodreads disagree with me. It could be just a matter of personal taste. But that's what is so great about reading books--there's something for everyone. And if you don't like it, you don't have to finish it. Thankfully, no DNFs this month! 

In Enough: Climbing Towards a True Self on Mt Everest, Melissa Arnot Reid shares her journey to becoming the first woman ever to summit Mt Everest without oxygen. She seamlessly weaves her journey along with the challenges she experienced in her personal life. Mountain climbing became her refuge from her troubled soul, so much so that she used it to avoid dealing with life off the mountain. Really well written and full of inspiration; I couldn't put it down. 

An experienced thru-hiker disappears on the Appalachian Trail without a trace. A search ensues, and for almost 2 weeks, a large group of volunteers combs the area where the hiker is thought to have gone off trail. The story of her disappearance is told from 3 perspectives: the hiker, as she writes in her journal, the game warden who is leading the search, and a homebound birder who spends time online with conspiracy theorists. It took a while to understand the last one's connection to the story, but once that aha! moment happened, the pages turned themselves. As a trail runner, I loved the descriptions of the AT. The author captured the joy and fulfillment of being on the trail as well as the solitude and fear of harm. You don't have to be outdoorsy to appreciate Heartwood, though!

Everyone is writing a book about bands lately, or so it seems. Although Jennifer Weiner is well known for her intelligent women's literature, the setting for The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits was a big departure from the usual. It didn't entirely work for me. Two sisters, Zoe, who is beautiful and outgoing, and Cassie, talented but introverted and lacking beauty, form a band. They become hugely successful, mostly due to Cassie's enormous gifts as a singer and songwriter. Zoe does her best to try to stand out, but her jealousy takes a toll. Fast forward to the present, when Zoe's talented daughter Cherry wants to become a performer, but Zoe holds her back. What follows is predictable. Most of the story is predictable, but at times, it is all over the place. I love a good read about musical performers. The story had so much potential, but in the end, it just didn't deliver.

Fun for me too! Fun for the Whole Family is the story of four siblings, raised by an erratic mother and a workaholic father who were mostly absent; the task of raising the 3 younger siblings was left to the oldest. As adults, the siblings were scattered across the country, living their own lives until Jude, one of the twins, summons them to a cabin in North Dakota. Stranded in the cabin due to a blizzard, secrets come out, and tensions build. I loved this family drama. The writing was so realistic that I felt like I was in the story with the others. The narrative weaves from the past to the present and back as well as between the characters, but I never felt lost. I hated to see the book come to an end. Having read the author's previous novel, The Unsinkable Greta James, I was not disappointed! 

Linda is a loner, an odd duck, working as a comment moderator on a video sharing platform. She's made a few friends at her job but has a big secret--she's a frequent flyer who gets turned on by planes. She refers to planes in the masculine sense and describes their bodies as you would a man. She even knows the planes by their call numbers and stalks them on a tracking app. The more turbulent the flight, the better. When she flies, she carries a small piece of a 737 in her pocket that she can insert for pleasure during the flight. The book climaxes (see what I did there) when she goes on a flying binge, chasing after 'the one'. Believe it or not, Sky Daddy is probably one of the most clever and entertaining books I've read in a long time. This probably won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like outlandish stories with quirky characters, this is the book for you. 

The Imagined Life is a beautifully written coming of age story about a boy growing up in California, his unstable father, and his mother who holds it all together. The father is a professor whose tenure depends on the publication of his book, the cause of so much of the tension at home. While the parents host many pool parties with lots of shenanigans, there's a darkness to this life as the father slips deeper into mental illness. The son is a witness to it all while navigating adolescence. He spends a good deal of his adult life processing his anger at his father yet imagining what his life could have been. Set in the late 70s-early 80s, the narrative feels almost dreamy. Written like a memoir, it's not a page turner but more of an introspective novel that hit home for me.

What have you been reading this month? Have you read any of these books? 

I'm linking up with Jenn and Zenaida for Tuesday Topics. I'm also excited to join Farrah for My Month Is Booked! Check out the newest link-up: Share Your Shelf with Slices of Life, Memphis Bridges, Overflowing with Thankfulness, and The Other Side of the Road.