9 Must-Read Books Released in April
Sometimes spring disappoints.
Weather wise, that is.
Such was the case this April — in the Midwest at least — where cold temperatures failed to do what the fuck they are supposed to do — leave, so the warm weather can roll in.
This April, the unseasonable chill left me reading and drinking inside instead of out on the patio — which is my preferred reading and drinking location as it makes it easier to pretend that I’m not quite as huge a people-hating introvert who consistently chooses books over people again, and again, and again.
While the weather disappointed, though, what didn’t let me down at all were the April new releases.
The new release crop was so stellar, in fact, that we had a hard time limiting our list.
After some work, we whittled it down to the nine titles we think you absolutely need to add to your TBR, below.
Are any of them already on your bookshelf?
The 15 Wonders of Daniel Green
by Erica Boyce
Genre - Literary Fiction
Release Date - April 2, 2019
Daniel Green doesn’t have a normal occupation.
He’s not a teacher, nor a factory worker, nor even a supermarket cashier.
No.
Instead, he is a crop circle maker.
Yes, you read that right… crop circles… those odd and enigmatic field features that have so long been attributed to little green men in big silver spaceships — and, really, some might still be able to accurately be attributed to them… idk… I for one found M. Night Shyamalan's “Signs” to present some very compelling evidence.
Anyways, Green has, for quite some time, worked as part of a secret organization making these monstrously huge and magnificently impressive crop-ruining displays. Since undertaking this unorthodox employment, he has moved from job-to-job with little thought of the people who live crop-circle adjacent or the motivations of the individuals who pay for his artistry.
That all changes when an ailing farmer from a small Vermont town hires Daniel to install a crop circle — in a bid to draw some attention to the tiny-and-getting-tinier burg.
Suddenly, Daniel finds himself swept up in the campaign to save this small town — an effort in which he has unwittingly become a participant. Feeling emotions he hasn’t felt for years and realizing the impact of his work for potentially the first time, Daniel learns some significant lessons about life, love and family.
Little Lovely Things
by Maureen Joyce Connolly
Genre - Literary Fiction
Release Date - April 2, 2019
Claire Rawlings has endeavored to keep a lot of proverbial balls in the air at the same time for years now.
A med student.
And a wife.
And a mother.
Her plate isn’t full, it’s overflowing.
In situations such as these, a crash is all but inevitable.
Unfortunately for Claire, the first time she lets one of those fast-moving balls slip past her hand results in life-changing consequences.
Despite the fact that she feels ill — which she attributes to a high-dose vaccine she was recently given in response to an outbreak — Claire rushes to get her daughters to daycare so she can proceed with her day. But, as she rushes down the always crowded Chicago freeway — something I struggle to do even when my reflexes are most keen — her condition deteriorates.
Feeling like she’s going to pass out, Claire pulls over at a gas station, props the door to the exterior restroom open so she can see the idling car in which her daughters nap, and rushes to splash some cold water on her face.
As the chilled water hits her face, she hears the door close and she feels herself lose the last bits of consciousness to which she had managed to cling.
When she awakes, only minutes later, she rushes outside to find, to her horror, that her car, and her daughters, are gone.
To call this novel moving would be an understatement. Exceptionally well paced and beautifully crafted, it will absolutely linger in your mind.
Someone Knows
by Lisa Scottoline
Genre - Thriller
Release Date - April 9, 2019
Allie Garvey has been living with a secret.
For twenty years it has festered inside of her, haunting her and growing ever-more-poisonous with each passing year.
Though she’s tried to push down the truth — to forget what happened decades earlier, when what started as a drunken high school party turned into something dark, life-changing — she has never fully succeeded in doing so.
She’s become a master at unintentional self-sabotage, ruining everything — including her marriage.
So, when Allie is forced to return home for the funeral of a childhood friend, she’s not only devastated by the loss, but also terrified of what going back to the scene of this long-ago trauma will mean. Compounding her dread, this trip home will also mean coming face-to-face with the only two other people who know what happened on that night so long ago.
Though she’s initially torn between continuing to repress her memories and finally facing them head-on, upon returning home Allie finds herself newly resolute.
She knows the only way to get over this trauma is to face it. But is she ready for a truth she could have never seen coming?
The Better Sister
by Alafair Burke
Genre - April 16, 2019
Release Date - Thriller
To say that the Taylor sisters’ relationship is complicated would be an understatement.
Their stark differences all but ensured that their relationship, while familial, would also be adversarial.
Chloe, the younger of the two sisters, could do no wrong.
And Nicky, the eldest, could do no right.
As the sisters reached mutual adulthood, it seemed that, though she would never match the successes attained by her sister Chloe, Nicky was in a good place.
Happy.
Moderately successful.
Married to an up-and-coming lawyer named Adam and mother to a happy baby boy.
But now, 15 years later, things have…changed.
Now, Chloe is Adam’s wife — yes, her sister’s ex-husband Adam. I know. Family Thanksgivings must be a treat — and step mother to Ethan, her sister’s biological son.
Then — as if things weren’t complicated enough — Adam is murdered.
Though Nicky has had little contact with Ethan for quite some time, after his father’s death Chloe allows her sister to begin to re-enter the boy’s life.
As it would turn out, she makes this decision just in time as, shortly after Nicky and Ethan’s reunion, the police turn their attention on Ethan, declaring him a suspect in his father’s murder.
Suddenly, the two sisters who have nothing in common must work together to ensure that Ethan, whom they are both certain is innocent, doesn’t get blamed for something he certainly couldn’t have done.
Stone Mothers
by Erin Kelly
Genre - Thriller
Release Date - April 23, 2019
Marianne has worked for decades to build a life vastly different from her hardscrabble youth.
Thanks to her own success and a favorable marriage, Marianne will likely never want for anything again. Neither will her daughter, Honor, a passionate art student who suffers from depression.
But Marianne’s world is built on lies.
Or, more specifically, one huge lie of omission.
There is something in Marianne’s past.
Something dark and dirty.
Something that only she and two other people know about.
And Marianne has worked to keep it that way.
But when she’s forced to return to the hometown she fled at the tender age of 17 to help her sister care for their ailing mother, the truth threatens to come out once and for all.
There is one thing Marianne knows with absolute certainty — she can’t let the truth come to light. Because, if it does, it will ruin everything.
The Mother-in-Law
by Sally Hepworth
Genre - Thriller
Release Date - April 23, 2019
Diana is universally adored and likes everyone in return.
Well, almost everyone.
The one person she has never warmed up to is her daughter-in-law, Lucy.
From the moment Lucy met Diana, she has tried to earn her place into her good graces.
And failed.
Miserably.
Repeatedly.
Five years into her marriage, Lucy has essentially given up on getting on her mother-in-law’s good side. Or so she says.
But then, Diana turns up dead.
A suicide note found near her body says that she simply couldn’t continue to wage war against the cancer that has been slowly but surely incapacitating her.
The problem: the autopsy finds that she’s cancer-free.
Her apparent cause of death — a combination of poison and suffocation — suggests that she didn’t commit suicide but was, instead, very deliberately and deviously murdered.
This begs the question, who would want Diana dead?
The only person who didn’t consider her all-but-a-saint was Lucy, but would Lucy really kill her mother-in-law over something so…trivial?
The Missing Years
by Lexie Elliott
Genre - Thriller
Release Date - April 23, 2019
Ailsa Calder is settled and comfortable in bustling London.
Then her mother dies, and she’s forced to leave it all behind and head to somewhere vastly different — the secluded Scottish Highlands — to deal with the business of estate settling.
As if dealing with the death of a parent weren’t complex enough, Ailsa finds that she has inherited her childhood home.
Or, at least, half of her childhood home.
The other half belongs to her father, who she — conveniently — has neither seen nor heard from in 27 years.
Making matters worse, she doesn’t even have time to settle in to the imposing property before she starts to feel… off. Something isn’t right about the house.
While she initially explains away her concerns, she realizes just how justified they were when she finds that animals refuse to set foot in the garden.
While this would be enough to entice me to call it a day and leave — I’ve seen enough scary movies to know there is a 99.98% chance this isn’t going to end well — Ailsa is much braver — or, stupider, depending on how you look at it.
She tries to quell her discomfort, pushing her fears aside.
Until, that is, an intruder shows up in the night. Now Ailsa wishes she had listened to her intuition and worries that it might be too late to escape.
Murder Knocks Twice
by Susanna Calkins
Genre - Thriller / Historical Fiction
Release Date - April 30, 2019
Things were very different in the 1920’s.
While you were allowed to smoke in bars, you weren’t allowed to drink in them — legally, at least.
But, in busy and bustling Chicago, prohibition is often flouted, with patrons rushing to speakeasies to which they come with money and leave with an illegally acquired hangover.
When Gina Ricci takes a job at the most notorious of these establishments — the Third Door — she seeks to prove a point to herself. She’s sure she has what it takes to work as a cigarette girl in hectic Chicago. And, even if she doesn’t, she’ll have to fake it till she makes it, as she needs the money to help care for her sick father.
Not long after she starts working at the Third Door, though, she begins to hear gossip of the girl she is replacing — who, ominously, died under suspicious circumstances.
As if this wasn’t sufficient to prove to Gina that maybe there are better ways to earn a few dollars, another murder soon rocks the speakeasy. This time that of a photographer named Marty.
Unfortunately there was only one witness to Marty’s murder, Gina.
Now she feels honor-bound to help track down the killer. Even if that means putting herself at risk in the process.
Belly Up
by Eva Darrow
Genre - Young Adult
Release Date - April 30, 2019
Sara knows what she wants.
As she approaches her senior year, she hopes to spend her final year in high school hanging out with her BFF Devi. After graduation, she’ll go to an Ivy League college.
Despite being the daughter of a struggling single mother, Sara has managed to beat the odds doing well in school and, generally, being an all-around successful teen.
That all changes, though, in the drunken blink of an eye — or drunken pull of a zipper, more like.
Still nursing her wounds from a recent breakup, Sara lets herself consume a bit more than she normally would at a party and ends up hooking up with a random stranger… repeatedly… in the front seat of his pick-up truck.
Oh well, we all make mistakes, right?
Well… yeah. But as luck would have it, Sara’s ends up being even more significant.
Several weeks later she finds out that she’s pregnant.
Compounding the all-around shittiness of this situation, almost simultaneously to Sara discovering that she’s carrying around a womb goblin, she finds out that she and her mother are moving in with her grandmother — which will mean switching schools.
With her plans up in flames, Sara tries to resign herself to being the new, knocked-up, girl in school.
Suddenly, senior year isn’t looking so great after all.
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