My Month Is Booked: April 2025

Welcome to April’s My Month is Booked linkup! :] It’s my birthday month! :] I barely managed to read anything for fun last month, but that should hopefully change for this month!

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Only getting through 3 books = due to me happening upon the realization that my medical license is up for renewal and is due at the end of this month.

Typically we’re supposed to submit all our continuing medical education credits at least 3 weeks prior so that they have time to process everything. I didn’t manage to make it to a conference last year, so suffice to say, I had a lot of credits to get done and have been grinding that out all month. (I submitted everything earlier this week though, so hopefully everything should be good to go. Let’s hope I don’t do that to myself again in 2 years…)

The Memory of Lavender and Sage, by Aimie K. Runyan – After Tempèsta’s mother passes away when she is 13, her relationship with the rest of her family becomes much more strained, and when her father passes away 15 years later, she is not surprised when the majority of the family fortune passes to her younger brother. Lost in her grief, she decides to use the modest inheritance to move to a small village in Provence, where her mother grew up.

I’m still on a magical realism/fantasy-ish kick right now! This fits the former, and may well be part of my inspiration in trying to grow more things in/out of the house. It’s a cozy read in a beautiful setting + I loved the found family/community aspect to this book.

Marigold Mind Laundry, by Yun Jun-eun – Born in a mystical town, Jieun develops special abilities that unfortunately/accidentally lead to her parents’ disappearance. She spends several lifetimes searching + grieving for them, and eventually settles into a town called Marigold, where she decides to use her powers for good. She uses her ability to erase traumatic memories/emotions to set up a magical laundry where visitors can “wash away” their troubles.

This book felt like the equivalent of sitting in a cozy cafe sipping a warm cup of tea while rain falls outside. There’s the melancholy of the rain/negative emotions, but you feel more at peace with the world after you finish it. I think this fits into the genre of magical realism too, but also “healing fiction” — slice-of-life but exploring the beauty in the everyday things + finding meaning in the difficult times. It made me stop + think about my own life + ponder if there’s anything in my life I’d want to erase or “iron out the wrinkles” for. (Erase, nope. Iron out, possibly.)

Sisters of Sword and Song, by Rebecca Ross – A YA fantasy/very-light-romantasy about a girl named Evadne — her older sister Halcyon is proudly serving on the queen’s army and is due to return, but when she comes back early, on the run from her own commander + charged for murder, she is sentenced to 15 years in prison and service. Not wanting her sister to lose 15 more years of her life, Evadne volunteers to serve part of her sentence and goes to work for the commander’s family, where she discovers there is much more than .

I loved the world-building in here! Set in an alternate ancient Greek world with different gods, there are unlikely alliances/heroes and a slow-burn romance.  I liked that it was a standalone because it meant I didn’t have to commit to a ginormous series, but I’d be down to read a prequel to see how this world came to be too.

• What genre are you gravitating towards reading lately?
• Any book recommendations for me? :]