Ren’s Reading Ledger: March Reading Recap
Reading for comfort, staying for the feelings, living at The Cottage…
March was not my most emotionally stable reading month, but it was a very committed one.
I tried, I really did, to move on from Heated Rivalry. I told myself we were branching out. Expanding our horizons. Being a well-rounded reader. And instead, I stayed exactly where I wanted to be, rereading, rewatching, and having the absolute best time doing it.
Real life was a little heavy this month, so I leaned hard into reading for comfort, for joy, for distraction when I needed it, and for connection when I could find it. And honestly? I’m not mad about a single choice I made.
Also, I am once again posting this a little later than intended, which I’m choosing to blame entirely on Heated Rivalry. Hopefully, this is the last time that happens.
March Reads (and ReReads)
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The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey | Quiet, a little eerie, and very atmospheric. This one felt like sitting in stillness for a while.
The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith | Such a fun concept. Books about books always get me, and this one had just enough chaos to keep it interesting.
That One Night by Emily Rath | Quick, fun, exactly what it needed to be. No notes. 🌶️
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney ⭐ Favorite of the Month | I loved this. Reflective, clever, a little wandering in the best way. Stayed with me as a former copywriter and a currently aging woman.
Pucking Around by Emily Rath | Listen. This was a good way to spend some time. Slightly chaotic. Good hockey story. I read it for the hockey. #SureJan
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr | Made me think about my brain in ways I wasn’t fully prepared for. Interesting, but a bit rambling. It didn’t deliver on the promise it set out to.. Which felt ironic to me…
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout | I kept waiting for this to click for me, and it just…didn’t. We’ll talk about that below.
Neon Gods by Katee Robert | Exactly what you think it is. And yes, I had a good time. So freaking good…mama loves a good Hades X Persephone story, this was the best one I’ve read.
Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid ( 🔁 Reread) | No thoughts. Just feelings. Still here (and thriving!) at the Cottage.
Beautiful Exile by Catherine Cowles | Comfort read energy with a little emotional weight.
Cursed King by Julie Saman | I don’t usually start unfinished series, but here we are. No regrets so far.
The ReDo List by Denise Williams | Light, fun, and easy to settle into. Listened to this on audiobook. Not very spicy, the premise was interesting, and the ensign was happy (spoiler alert!).
Love and Saffron by Kim Fay | Soft, warm, quietly emotional. This one surprised me, and we’re talking about it below…
This month’s recap is open to everyone, so you can get a peek at what goes on behind the scenes here. If this feels like your kind of space, I hope you’ll stick around and come talk books with me. Paid subscribers get access to comments and the deeper conversations that happen after the recap.
Your Permission Slip
You are allowed to not like the book everyone else is talking about.
I wanted to like Olive Kitteridge. I really did. It has a good reputation. People love it…and I kept waiting for the moment when it would all come together for me.
It never did.
And instead of stopping, I kept going. Because I thought maybe I just needed to get further in. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. Maybe I was missing something.
Nope. It just wasn’t for me.
Part of it might have been the audiobook. I don’t do well with multiple narrators or a lot of shifting perspectives. My brain just checks out. But even knowing that, I still pushed through longer than I needed to.
So here’s your reminder:
You don’t have to finish it, like it, or “get it.” Trust your own reading experience, even when it doesn’t match the crowd!
Let’s Talk About It
I want to talk about Love and Saffron for a second.
Because underneath the letters and the recipes and the quiet pacing, what really stayed with me was the idea of connection. Two people, not living in the same place, not sharing a day-to-day life, still choosing to show up for each other through words.
And I kept thinking about how rare that feels nowadays…
Many of us are doing this whole reading thing kind of alone. Maybe we have people in our real lives who read, maybe we don’t. Maybe we’ve tried to talk about a book we loved and gotten a polite nod and a “that’s nice.”
And that’s it.
If you’re a smut reader, you know it can be doubly hard (no pun intended) to find those you can talk to about how you spend your free time…and if you’re here because of my Heated Rivalry content, I know how many of you have struggled to find friends in your real life to bear witness to your obsession.
That’s why there’s something really special about finding people who get it. Who read the same way you do. Who feel the same way about books that you do. Who are just as stuck on a character or a story as you are.
That’s part of what I’m building here.
And it’s a big part of what I’m thinking about as I put together the Ren Reads Too Much Book Club (coming soon!). Not just a place to read, but a place to talk about what we read. To sit in the stories we love with the characters we can’t stop thinking about for just a little longer.
Because life isn’t a solo experience. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be.
So I want to know:
📚 Have you ever read something that made you wish you had someone to talk to about it right away?
📚 Do you have people in your life you can share that with, or are you mostly doing this on your own?
📚 And what book lately has made you want to reach out and say, “Okay, we need to talk about this?”
That’s it for March (now that it’s the end of April).
Still firmly in my Heated Rivalry era, still chasing the feeling, and still figuring out what I want more of from my reading life as we go.
If you made it this far, I’m really glad you’re here. Truly. This is the part where it gets less like a post and more like a conversation, and I want to hear from you!
Come talk books with me….I’ll be in the comments.