What I read in March (2025)

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1. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Summary

In this cozy mystery novel, Vera Wong is a widowed sixty-year-old woman living alone and running a teahouse in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Unfortunately, her teahouse doesn’t see many customers—until one day, she walks in to discover a dead body! Even though the police think there’s nothing suspicious about the scene, Vera knows it in her gut that they have a murder on their hands, and if the police won’t see it her way, she’ll just have to find the killer on her own. When Vera’s teahouse starts seeing new faces popping up after the murder, her suspect list starts to grow, but so does her heart.

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My Review

I had the luxury of reading this book over the course of less than 3 days while I was at a writing retreat. I was staying in a hotel, writing 10,000 words per day, ordering takeout, and living my best “single-woman-with-no-children” life. (Let me pause here to tell you all that I am deeply in love with my husband and adore my children, but let’s be honest–every once in a while the selfish life feels good.)

This book was recommended to me by a friend who is rarely wrong about her suggestions (thanks, Shelly!). Overall, I really loved and appreciated the character of Vera Wong; she’s like no one I had ever met before, and I felt her character was solid from beginning to the end. As I had mentioned earlier, I am picky about my murder plots, especially when it comes to solving them, and while this one wasn’t a character out of nowhere, I wasn’t convinced enough clues had been dropped throughout the novel to make me believe they could have committed the murder. As a mother, I also struggled with the character of Emma, a supposed two-year-old who breastfed and rarely spoke, but when she did at times she enunciated full adultish sentences.

I will continue to pass on the recommendation as a worthwhile read. Amazon announced that book 2 entitled Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man) will be released April 1 of this year; I am not going to rush to pick it up, since I have enough other recommended reads on my immediate list. But perhaps in six months or before the end of the year I will find myself in Vera Wong’s life once again.

2. James

Summary

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

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My Review

My actual anticipation of this novel was high, since I had put it on hold back in November of 2024 and needed to wait until March of 2025 to finally receive my library copy.  It felt like the “who’s who” of elite readers had read it and offered their reviews, and they were all glowing with recommendations.  So I began with a bit of apprehension; what if it wasn’t all up to the hype? What if I didn’t like the book everyone was calling the “must read” of 2024 & 2025?  Let me put you at ease and say it was worth the wait and every page read.  Percival Everett does a spin on Huck Finn similar to how Wicked made the reader rethink  the story of the Wizard of Oz.  James, or “Jim” as we knew him in Huck Finn, is given a voice and the chance to tell his own story, and what a story it is.  Not only is it a story of hardship, of death and brutality and beatings and loss that all comes with slavery and human ownership, but James also weaves in his own beautiful story of hope and pride and the beauty of education and literacy.  He also includes one-liners throughout the novel which prove how well he understands white people of the day; it’s as if he got ahold of a secret copy of the unspoken rules of how to white people want to be treated.  I inhaled the book in less than 3 days and immediately returned it to the library to allow the next person in line their chance to read it.  The only gut punch that still remains is wondering how truly different life is today, and what race rules still exist.  Have we really come as far as we say we have?

3. Louder than Hunger

Summary

It’s 1996.

13-year-old Jake Stacey lives in the Chicago suburbs with his mum and dad.  He loves musicals, rollerblading and his grandmother (who takes him for drives in her big red car).  But he hates school where he is bullied and ostracised by the other kids and worse, he is keeping a secret: inside him is a Voice, which tells him to exercise more and eat less.  The Voice tells him not to trust anyone, tells him that the Voice is all he needs.  

When Jake’s worried parents take him to Whispering Pines, the Voice tells Jake not to co-operate with the staff who want to help him to get better.  But the staff are keen to show him that he doesn’t have to listen to the Voice, that he can build a different life for himself if he can just find it in himself to silence it …

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My Review

I wasn’t planning on reading this book, but when John Schu literally handed me a signed copy at a luncheon during the Michigan Reading Association conference, I decided to make it my next read. I knew from hearing John speak that this novel was only semi-fiction; it was based upon his life and some of his struggles in adolescence. The paperback version had just come out that week, so that is why we were all given a copy.

I brought it home, prepared to tackle a 500 page novel, only to be pleasantly surprised that it was written in verse. I have now read a few middle grade novels written in verse, and I think they are simply lovely. If you haven’t read anything in verse, consider it “accessible poetry.” It tells a story in prose form, but with fewer words it slows the reading pace down and asks the reader to take in every word. The novel still reads quickly, especially due to the heartbreaking story of Jake (a.k.a. John Schu) and his eating disorder due to the voice that tells him he is worth nothing and doesn’t deserve to take up space.

It’s a heavy topic, but I’m a firm believer in wanting to bring these important topics to the middle grade level. They are living it and experiencing it, so they should be given fictional material to read about it. This could be a fascinating book to read with your adolescent as I guarantee it will provoke worthwhile conversations.

4. The Lager Queen of Minnesota

Summary

The Lager Queen of Minnesota is about two generations in a Midwestern family—starting on a farm, with two sisters who have no desire to be farmers. Helen, the younger, go-getter sister, wants more than anything else in the world to make beer. She finagles her way into taking over her husband’s family’s failing soda business and builds it into a thriving beer company by single-handedly inventing light beer. Her older sister, Edith, shares none of this grand ambition, even as her pies are named third-best in the state of Minnesota. Unfortunately, being a champion pie baker does not earn her a fortune, or even a good living. Enter Diana, Edith’s beloved granddaughter, who grows up trying to help Edith make ends meet—and in the most roundabout way possible, becomes obsessed with making a series of the best IPAs the Midwest has ever seen. But just as she is about to open her own brewpub, the fates converge and she is forced to turn to the unlikeliest cadre of amateur brewmasters imaginable—Edith’s cohort of grandmother friends—to save her brewery before it’s DOA.

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My Review

I chose this book in order to lessen my stack of unread books on my nightstand. My stack is tall, and some days it taunts me that I will never read all of them. But I’m a sucker for free, or very cheap, used books, so I find that I take them into ownership more frequently than I read them, hence the large stack.

Interestingly enough, this is my second “food based” fictional novel I have read this year (Funeral Ladies of Ellery County was the first). I’m not sure I can exactly remember how this book came into my possession; I do enjoy a good beer, especially a dark porter or stout, although I muss confess my body tolerates alcohol less and less these days. I did enjoy it as a lighter topic read; I learned quite a bit about the brewing industry and what goes into different beers.

While the characters and my interest in them kept my motivation early on, I was between ⅓ and halfway through the book before I actually began to understand what the plot might be. I do love a good “braid” or “strand” novels where the author tells seemingly different stories, only for the reader to trust there is a common connector. Stradal forces his reader to the very last chapters for the ultimate resolution.