My Month Is Booked: March 2025

Welcome to March’s My Month is Booked linkup! :] I had a pretty prolific reading month and managed to finish 8 books!

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Onyx Storm, by Rebecca Yarros – I read Fourth Wing + Iron Flame back in June of last year — this is the 3rd book in the Empyrean series following a dragonrider named Violet Sorrengail — in the interest of not including spoilers, I will keep this vague. She goes on a quest to try to (a) form alliances, (b) find a cure for a curse, and (c) find the lost 7th breed of dragons.

I feel like when there’s so much hype for a book, it’s  gonna be pretty difficult to live up to it. The pacing felt really slow for most of the book and I didn’t see the point to a lot of the events that happened (unless it’s meant to build up what will happen in books 4 and 5?). It also felt like nothing really happened in this book until the end, which is where it just steamrolled through and left us with yet another cliffhanger. I feel I would’ve enjoyed this more if there’d been more on some of the side characters (I liked Violet more in the first book, but her POV is starting to grate at me, haha). I was left not knowing how to feel at the ending, haha. If you read this too, lemme know your thoughts!

The DallerGut Dream Department Store, by Miye Lee – This is the first book of a duology and follows Penny , a new  hire at a department store that you can only visit when you’re asleep. Each floor sells different types of dreams — precognitive dreams (e.g. leading to deja vu moments in real life), nightmares (e.g. to help you conquer fears), short nap dreams, dreams for pets, and even a special section where you can custom-order dreams to deliver to people in your life.

This gave me kinda the same vibes as Before The Coffee Gets Cold (which I wrote about here!) — almost like intertwining short stories woven together into a single book.  Overall, it was an enjoyable book that made me think about all the dreams I’ve had — there were poignant moments as well, especially regarding the custom dream delivery department. One could argue that there’s no “plot”/suffering/trials and tribulations/huge revelations made by the main character, but if you take it for what it is — a cozy whimsical story about day to day life at a dream department store, it’s a very enjoyable read. :]

The One, by John Marrs – This was a virtual book club pick (kinda a fun one for Valentine’s Day reading, haha — but please don’t go into this thinking it’ll be a romance or you will be sorely disappointed) — due to the discovery of a gene that pairs each person with their soulmate, you can now find your perfect “match” that you were genetically made for with a single DNA test.

The One delves into several different people and what happens after they find that they’ve been “matched.” (I listened to this as an audiobook so it took me a bit to get to know the characters enough to not get vaguely confused with the many different POVs.) There were definitely some characters I really could not relate to, but it was such an interesting premise, I had a hard time putting it down. Apparently it was turned into a Netflix series too?

The Thirteenth Child, by Erin A. Craig –  Hazel is the 13th child born to a family living in poverty. Her parents decide to give her up to the care of the god of death, also known as the “Dreaded End.” He blesses her with the gift to be able to instantly know what treatment/cure is needed to treat the sick, but every gift comes with a price, and she finds that for those she cannot heal, she is also the one tasked to end their suffering.  When she is brought to the royal court and is tasked to save the life of a king who is marked to die, she is caught in a dilemma in what she knows she is meant to do vs what her heart tells her she should do instead.

This is beautifully written retelling of the Grimm Brother’s “Godfather Death” + it really makes you think — about what it means to have a life well-lived + the difficult decisions we make because of those that we love. I’ll definitely be looking for more books by this author in the future!

The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore – On an early summer morning at a summer camp in the Adirondacks, a 13 year old vanishes. She is the daughter of the family who owns the summer camp + employs most of the region’s residents.  The town’s panicked search dredges up a lot of unanswered questions about her, as well as her older brother, who similarly vanished 14 years prior.

This was a popular one on several “recommended for me” lists, so when it popped up on “Skip the Line” for me on Libby, I decided to snag it! I did find it a bit longwinded, and felt that a lot of the details that popped up were just put in to purposely mislead so that the final reveal would be more surprising. It was an enjoyable/engrossing read listen overall though!

The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill – Each year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as a sacrifice to the witch in the forest in hopes that they will  allow them to live in peace for another year. As it turns out, the witch in the forest, Xan, is actually a kind and gentle soul who doesn’t understand why a baby  is left in the forest each year, but she makes the trek annually to rescue the abandoned child and deliver him/her to a loving family on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight along the way. One year, she accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead, filling the child with magic, and decides to raise the child as her own.

This was a cute fairytale complete with a poetic  swamp monster named Glerk + a tiny dragon named Fyrian — it’s marketed toward middle  grade readers, but I was in the mood for something light with a happy ending (I kinda assumed the latter part would be the case and am thankful that I was not wrong), and this was perfect for that!

The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett – Stella and Desiree are twin sisters who grow up in a small, southern black community in the 1950’s and run away at the age of 16. Years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the hometown she previously escaped, and the other passes for white, living with her husband who knows nothing of her past. Despite this separation, their lives and fates still remain intertwined + this novel spans through the 1950’s-1990’s to explore culture, identity, race, and how that shapes lives.

This was my book club’s pick for Black History Month (aka last month!) — I found it to be very well written + an enjoyable read. There were some choices made by Stella that I found hard to understand, and I feel the author could’ve gone a little bit more into her fears/thoughts, but I really enjoyed how the author wove in  how their daughters’ lives/paths cross + the “open” feeling at the end that just leaves you thinking.

Hula, by Jasmin Iolani Hakes – Hi’i is the youngest in the Naupaka dynasty — daughter to Laka, who was once the pride of Hilo and former Miss Aloha Hula – this is a saga detailing tradition, culture,  family, and history across 3 generations of women in Hilo while also capturing the hurt, anger, and damage caused to the Hawai’ian people to have their land and culture stolen from them.

If you’ve ever wanted to find historical fiction on a part of Hawai’ian history, I’d really recommend listening to this as an audiobook. Parts of it read more as narrative fiction so it can be harder to follow + there are a lot of Hawai’ian words in there that weren’t defined (for the most part, you can tell by context + since I’ve been dancing hula for several years, I have picked up a number of words as well), but I think the narration by Mapuana Makia made all the difference for this one.

• What are you currently reading? I’m halfway through Sisters of Sword and Song right now (currently on a fantasy kick because of the need to escape reality!).
• What genre have you been reading lately?