Reading Recap: March

The reviews I'd give a friend before she borrows.

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know about The Book Lot, my little series where I match every book I read to a car. I started doing it because so many reviews sound (or read) the same to me. A book isn’t just “good” or “bad.” It has a personality, a pace, a reason for existing. Some books are Porsches. Some are Alfa Romeos. Some are your grandfather’s 1955 Chevy pickup. The car tells you what you’re signing up for before you ever turn the key.

Consider this reading recap the written version of The Book Lot—with a little more room to breathe.

As a slow reader, I try to stick to the goal of reading four books a month. Even for us slow readers, with some swaps of screen time for reading time, I’ve found a book per week to be a doable goal. However, March was busy busy busy. Family time, travel, and sickness slowed me down a bit, but I have three compelling—and incredibly different — books to share from my March reading.

She Didn’t See It Coming by Shari Lapena

The Porsche Carrera

Shari Lapena writes thrillers the way German engineers build sports cars. Tight. Fast. Precisely.

I admire her writing because it feels as if every component exists for a reason. The chapters are short, the pacing is relentless, and the prose gets out of its own way so the plot can do what it came to do.

I finished this in two sittings and the only reason it wasn’t one is because I had to sleep. If you’ve been in a reading slump, this is the kind of book that reminds you why you used to fly through novels as a kid. It’s not trying to be “literature.” It’s trying to be propulsive, and it succeeds.

Will it change your life? No. Will it get you out of a slump and remind you that reading can be pure entertainment? Absolutely.

Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Perfect weekend read.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

The Alfa Romeo

Charlotte McConaghy writes the kind of prose that makes you slow down and re-read sentences just to feel them again. The setting—a remote island research station at the edge of the world—is rendered so vividly you can almost smell the salt. It starts slow, which I know will turn some readers off, but once it gets moving it becomes genuinely propulsive. It’s the kind of book you take to bed and read one more chapter, one more chapter, one more chapter.

Then the ending happened. I was really hoping for a certain ending, and I didn’t get that.

Here’s the thing about Alfa Romeos. They’re the cars that make every other car on the road look a little boring. Breathtakingly designed, unmistakably Italian, and famously—legendarily—unreliable. There’s an old joke that you need to own three Alfas to always have one that works. Because of the ending I was expecting and hoping for, that’s what this book felt like. Gorgeous to ride in—and then it breaks down two miles from home.

There’s a version of this book where the final fifty pages, in my incredibly humble and subjective (!!) opinion, are more emotionally satisfying regarding a specific subplot that was set up in the first two hundred and change. (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here.) That version would have been a flawless read for me. But the prose and story is so beautiful, and it may very well be a flawless read for you. After all, endings are deeply subjective. All creative work is!

But what’s not subjective? Charlotte McConaghy’s talent as a writer.

So would I recommend Wild Dark Shore? Yes.

But one more heads-up while I’m at it: if you’re looking for pure escapism, this book won’t give you that. The heavy climate themes are central to the story, not background. Go in knowing what you’re signing up for.

Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A beautiful ride with a final act that left me wanting more.

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

The 1955 Chevrolet 3100

This isn’t a car you drive for fun. This is the pickup your grandfather passed down: heavy, manual, no power steering. And definitely no AC. Every bump in the road goes straight through your spine. You don’t drive this vintage vehicle to be comfortable. You drive it because it has character that modern cars do not.

A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small Cajun community in the 1940s. A young Black man named Jefferson is wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His godmother asks the local schoolteacher, Grant Wiggins, to visit Jefferson in jail and help him face his execution as a man rather than as the “animal” his defense attorney called him in court.

Two men in a jail cell. One trying to teach. One trying to learn. Both of them carrying the weight of generations prior.

I’m not going to pretend this was an entertaining read. It wasn’t. And it shouldn’t be. There were moments in this book where I had to pause and put the novel down for a second. But this is the kind of book that changes how you think about dignity, about what it means to be seen, about what we owe each other at the end of things. Gaines writes with a restraint that makes every quiet moment hit harder than most books’ loudest ones. I finished this book in tears. And no, I’m not exaggerating.

Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The most important book I read in March, and so far this year.

March in summary? One page-turner for entertainment, one beautiful book with a broken ending, and one tough read that will stay with me for a long time. Not a bad month, all things considered.

What did you read in March? Drop it in the comments! My TBR is always accepting applications. 📚