Calendar Girls: April 2019

Hey all, Dani here.

Happy first day of April. Sorry I don’t have any sort of April Fools Day prank or anything for you. That was never something that interested me anyway. Nope, instead I’m here to talk about books–I’m mostly always here to talk about books or other geeky hobbies. Anyway, as it is the first Monday of the month, that means it is time for another round of Calendar Girls, so let’s go ahead and jump into all the important details.

Calendar Girls is a monthly blog event that was started by Flavia and Melanie, but is now being hosted by Katie and Adrienne. They are all wonderful ladies, and you should check out their lovely blogs. Oh, and if you go to either Katie or Adrienne‘s Calendar Girls post each month, they will have links to all the other wonderful book bloggers participating in this event.

First, more about the Calendar Girls. It is designed to ignite bookish discussions among readers, and was inspired by the 1961 Neil Sedaka song, Calendar Girl.

Just like the song, each month has a different theme. Each blogger picks their favorite book from the theme, and on the first Monday of the month reveals their pick in a Calendar Girls post. Make sure to post back to the hostess’s post, and both Katie and Adrienne will make a master list for the month. The master lists allow everyone to see the other Calendar Girls’ picks and to pop on over to their blogs. Thus, we all get to chat about books and even make some new friends!

Oh, and you don’t have to identify as female to join the Calendar Girls. We welcome readers of all types. So if this sounds like fun for you, join us in all of the fun bookish conversations.

And now that we’ve gone over all the details, all that’s left is to announce April’s theme and then jump into discussing honorable mentions followed by my choice for this month’s winner.

The April theme is…

April Fools

Favorite Book with a Surprise Ending or Twist

Okay, so this is another month where I had such a hard time choosing books in the running, let alone picking a single winner. One reason for the difficulty is that I’m still working on reorganizing my shelves. The other reason is that I am not a fan of choosing/talking about books with surprise endings or twists. They feel like purposefully going into spoiler territory. I don’t want to know if there is a surprise or twist at the end. I just want to sit back and enjoy the story, and then let others discover the twists and turns and surprises on their own.

But typically if you like surprises and twists, then obviously going with a mystery or thriller or suspense novel is a good call. Those are genres that I don’t tend to read much, but last year I did enjoy One of Us is Lying by Karen M McManus and All of This is True by Lygia Day Penaflor.

Now for books that surprised me, there are probably quite a few that I’m not thinking of right now, but will later, and then I’ll be upset with myself.

So many of these had moments that caught me by surprise and it was wonderful. Whether these moments happened in the middle of the story or the end I won’t say. That’s for you to discover when you pick them up.

But I haven’t put one of my more recent favorites on this list, and that’s because this particular book is my winner for the month.

I didn’t know if I would like this one at the beginning. Everyone raved about the interesting format and how they flew through it despite the size. But I admit that I don’t read a whole lot of science fiction.

And okay, yes, it did take me like 100 pages or so to get really invested in Illuminae, but then I was hooked and addicted and I flew through it.

There were so many twists and turns as these characters recounted what happened to them, and we got to read more reports and documents and such.

Trying to figure out who was behind everything and why was an absolute thrill. So I can say this was a surprise in that I greatly enjoyed reading it, and there were a whole lot of surprises throughout.

All right, well I guess that is all from me today. Please check out all the other posts from the Calendar Girl participants, and I will be back soon with more bookish content.