Springy Books!

Spring is fully springing here in the Midwest, so the weekends have been filled with excursions, adventures, and spiffing things around the house – thank goodness for audiobooks to keep me still reading! Let’s get into the first batch of what I’ve been reading lately…

–Marissa

Strangers by Belle Burden has been the memoir of early 2026, and it absolutely lived up to the hype for me. In 2020, Belle’s hedge fund manager husband and father of her children just… abandons his family after an affair, and begins a battle between them for their assets. I listened to Belle narrate her own audiobook, and her writing is sharp, emotional, fascinating and nuanced. I really, really couldn’t stop listening to this one!

Last Ferry Out by Andrea Bartz was another audiobook listen, and while I enjoyed it, I felt it went on (and on) a bit. Abby travels to a remote Caribbean island to find out more about the death of her fiancee Eszter, who died in a tragic accident… or did she? Abby falls in with an expat crowd, there’s some environmental stuff, some thriller stuff, some grief stuff, and while I was entertained, it just… needed to be tighter overall.

Want to Know a Secret by Freida McFadden was another audiobook listen, but an easy one (all of Freida’s book are super simple to follow along on audio, not too many characters, etc). This time we have April, a YouTube cooking star who starts getting threatening messages from someone unknown. I find McFadden like Doritos – fine while eating, ultimately hollow and difficult to recall later….

American Fantasy by Emma Straub was another catnip book for me – a 50-year-old woman, a themed cruise around a 1990s era boyband, nostalgia, this had all the things! This novel had various POVs (Annie, our cruiser, Keith, one of the band members, and Sarah, a cruise manager) that give us all kinds of perspectives of these types of cruises, and the toll they take on those involved. I enjoyed this, but it took me a bit to get through it, I was DYING to get back to it like I am with really fantastic novels. Good good, but not great.