April 2025 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Welcome to the April 2025 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I’ve read and rank them from worst to best.
The sun is out here in New York and it finally feels like spring. This month I read books that were wonderful on audio as I ran along the Hudson River or sat in the dog park. I read Emily Henry’s latest, a memoir by a favorite podcast personality, three works of translated literature, the Hunger Games prequel, and my first 10/10 read since January.
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6. Great Big Beautiful Life - Emily Henry
Fiction/Romance, 418 pages
Two journalists arrive in a small Georgia town to compete for a career defining opportunity: the chance to write the biography of Margaret Ives, an aging, reclusive heiress. One, bubbly Alice, is emotionally connected to the story through her deceased dad, who was a big fan of the woman’s rock-and-roll husband. The other, guarded Hayden, recently won a Pulitzer for another celebrity memoir about a musician slipping into the throws of dementia. After signing NDAs, they are given a month to get to know Margaret and provide a pitch, after which she will decide who she wants to write the story. As in any good romance novel, what begins as a professional rivalry between Alice and Hayden quickly evolves into romance, which is complicated by Hayden’s fears that the relationship will sour when one person gets the job and the other doesn’t.
Emily Henry is a prolific romance writer who has essentially transformed the genre since she started writing a novel a year in 2020. She follows the tried and true formulas of romance novels but fills them with emotionally complicated and professionally successful characters. While Great Big Beautiful Life is a welcome addition to her canon, nothing about it is particularly new. That’s ok. Henry doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel in order to create an enjoyable reading experience.
Rating: 7.5/10
5. Seven Empty Houses - Samanta Schweblin
Fiction/Short Stories, 190 pages, published in 2015 in Spanish, translated to English in 2022
Seven Empty Houses, written by the Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin and first published in Spanish in 2015, was the recipient of the 2022 National Book Award in translated literature. The collection contains seven stories, each of which examines a different home and the oddities taking place inside. Schweblin’s somewhat cerebral writing quickly creates a sense of unease. The details in the stories - names, context, background - are never fully fleshed out, leaving the rest to be filled in by readers. The clues that are given inevitably cause the imagination to fill the gaps with dark assumptions.
For example, in an eery and captivating story positioned at the end of the collection, a young girl meets a male stranger in a waiting room at a hospital and follows him to a store so that he can buy her a replacement pair of underpants. The reader is never told who the man is, where he came from, or any obvious identifying information. Indeed, nothing explicit ever happens in words or deed between the man and the girl. But the details that are provided made me profoundly uncomfortable and waiting for a dark turn that never came.
In the first story, a daughter accompanies her mother as they drive around a wealthy neighborhood and gawk at houses. When their tires get stuck in mud, the mother invites herself into one of the homes and not only refuses to leave, but begins rifling through the family’s things. There’s a reason, I think, that this story was placed first. Just as the mother desperately wants to see how others unlike her live, the reader too is acting as a voyeur into the home, the most tangible intimate space of a character’s life.
Rating: 8/10
4. Ordinary Time - Annie B. Jones
Non-Fiction/Memoir in Essays, 240 pages
Annie B. Jones is the owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. I know Annie through From the Front Porch, a weekly podcast about books and the bookstore that has given me countless hours of joy and reading recommendations. I was very excited when Annie announced that she was publishing a memoir in essays, which is about staying in all its forms. As a child growing up in Tallahassee, Florida, Annie assumed that she would one day move to a big city and fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a writer and journalist. But that’s not what happened. In the memoir, Annie reflects on what it means to live a quiet, ordinary life centered around commitment and community rather than adventure. The book is divided into five parts: staying friends, about maintaining relationships and identity as friends move away; staying put, about the choice to be tethered to a place after buying the bookstore; staying faithful, about living a life of religious meaning in the midst of a crisis of belief in the church of her childhood; staying grounded, about strong familial ties; and staying you, about the conflict between comfort zones and trying new things. Each section promotes the same message: ordinary time in one’s life can also be meaningful.
I really enjoyed the book, especially the audio version read by Annie, although I wonder if some of my enjoyment comes from my para-social relationship with her. Regardless, the book is earnest, personal, and erudite. Although I’m fascinated by bookstore ownership and her reading tastes, I don’t relate to everything in Annie’s life, especially the chapters about Christian faith. In some ways, however, these were my favorite parts of the book because they gave me a beautiful window into an individual’s struggle balancing sincerely held questions of faith with beliefs instilled since childhood. At times I did think that some chapters could have been longer or intellectually deeper than they ended up being, but I think that’s ok, especially if the book is read as a memoir and not a guide to living contently.
Rating: 8/10
3. We Do Not Part - Han Kang
Fiction, 256 pages, published in 2021 in Korean, translated to English in 2025
We Do Not Part tells the story of two friends reckoning with the legacy of the Jeju uprising and subsequent massacres in Korea from 1947 and 1954. Kyungha is a writer suffering from chronic pain and PTSD and lives largely in isolation as she contemplates suicide. At night, Kyungha is plagued by a nightmare of tree stumps, ocean tides, and snow. In an attempt to purge the nightmares she enlists her longtime friend and former colleague Inseon to help build a physical version of the dream and turn it into a documentary. Once the nightmares fade, Kyungha tries to renege on the project, but Inseon, who lives on Jeju Island where at least 30,000 people were killed before and during the Korean War, will not let the idea go.
One winter morning, Inseon sends a message to Kyungha asking her to come to a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has accidentally chopped off two fingers while working. Inseon has an urgent request for Kyungha: catch a flight to Jeju Island, go to her house outside of a remote village, and feed her bird who is at risk of dying if it doesn’t receive food or water by the end of the day. As soon as Kyungha touches down on the island, a massive snowstorm hits and Kyungha has to figure out how to get to the home. At this point, the book leaves tangible reality and moves into a surrealist account of the history of Jeju, the history of Inseon’s family, and the legacy of death and destruction that permeates the area. It is unclear who is alive and who is memory, who is present and who is there as spirit.
Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Asian woman to be awarded the prize. She is an incredible writer who crafts books with unique structures. I, personally, am not drawn to surrealist fiction where it is difficult to understand what is reality, dream, or something in-between. However, if you do like uncertainty in your fiction, then this is a must read. If you don’t, I still recommend it for the beautiful writing on friendship, memory, and legacy in a creative form.
Rating: 8.5/10
2. Sunrise on the Reaping - Suzanne Collins
Fiction/Young Adult/Dystopian, 382 pages, published in 2025
The original Hunger Games trilogy follows Katniss Everdeen as she fights to the death in Panem’s annual Hunger Games and, eventually, leads the revolution to overthrow the tyrannical government. Sunrise on the Reaping is the second prequel in the Hunger Games trilogy and takes place 24 years before Katniss’s story begins. The book follows Haymitch Abernathy, Katniss’s future mentor, as he participates in the 50th Hunger Games. Because Haymitch is alive when we meet Katniss, we know that he will win the games in this book. Thus, this story is less about the suspense of the games and instead is dedicated to understanding the backstory and trauma that causes Haymitch to become the alcoholic, jaded, traumatized mentor that he becomes. In addition to Haymitch’s backstory, the book also includes both subtle and explicit commentary on the power and dangers of propaganda, state control, and complacency in the face of authoritarianism.
I was semi-skeptical of another Hunger Games book, even if it was a prequel, because I assumed there was a limit on how good the books in this series could be before it became oversaturated. I was wrong. This was a great addition to the series. It could be read as a standalone book or in conjunction with the rest. Because I read the original series so long ago, I’m sure I didn’t catch every reference or remember every character, but Collins does a great job of providing the necessary background detail and I never felt lost.
Like all the other books in the series and as depicted in the movie adaptations, the Hunger Games are brutal, violent, and tragic. This is not usually the type of book that I am drawn to. However, the power of Collins’ writing comes from her ability to build a believable world and fill it with fully-formed, vibrant, and empathetic characters while also reminding readers of the larger issues at stake.
Rating: 9/10
1. Eastbound - Maylis de Kerangal
Fiction, 127 pages, published in French in 2012, translated to English in 2023
Aliocha, a twenty-year old Russian conscript, is sitting in a third-class car on a trans-Siberian train with other soldiers. Although there is a mandatory draft for young men in Russia, only the unconnected and poor end up serving. In the weeks leading up to his leaving, Aliocha tries desperately to meet a woman to get pregnant; the only way he could avoid being shipped off as a solider. He fails, and thus finds himself at the very back of the train, smoking and looking out the window as the vast expanse of Russia moves by at a precise 60 kilometers an hour. Aliocha dreads what’s to come; he doesn’t want to fight and has heard stories of brutal hazing. After he’s beaten up by two drunk conscripts, he makes a decision - likely the first truly independent one of his life - to escape. In the process, he meets a civilian Frenchwoman riding the train in the first-class car. Although they don’t share a common language, she agrees to help.
The two spend hours traveling across the vast, infinite, expanse of Siberia, unsure of who to trust and how to avoid capture. As the train hurtles towards Vladivostok, I couldn’t help but think that both of them, intent to escape their situations, were headed in the wrong direction. What would they do if or when they arrived? How would they get back home? This disorientation is the central genius of de Kerangal’s work. The two are alone in a seemingly endless stretch of the world, yet they are able to forge a connection based solely on shared humanity. There is no sanctuary that awaits and trouble lurks behind every door, but they do the best that they can.
It’s an alarming testament to the relevancy of this novel that although Eastbound was first published in France in 2012, it easily feels as if it could be about the present moment. I’m in awe of the sheer amount that de Kerangal was able to fit in this small novel using her exquisitely sparse writing. In 127 pages, I learned about conscription, legacies of war and trauma, personal histories, the trans-Siberian railroad, its internal dynamics, and the towns that have cropped up in the middle of nowhere along the tracks. I also learned about the elements of humanism, longing, and the essential desire for a better life.
Rating: 10/10
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Loved reading this Jodi, and your summaries are really helpful! I found We Do Not Part very surrealist too and I personally can't read too many of these books, especially back-to-back, but I loved reading this book.