Books from March 2025

Mini book reviews and recommendations from my month of reading.

Sundaze Book Café is the home of everyday magic, joyful living and conversations likely to be had over a hot drink with a friend in your favourite café, capturing the syrup-slow feel and glow of a Sunday. I’m Michelle, and I’ll be your host this Sunday.

March was a productive month of reading, buoyed by my beloved library room slowly but surely coming together. In hindsight, perhaps last month was slowly simply because I didn’t have access to my books? It’s much harder to pick a book when you don’t have them to hand! In any case, I made sure that March would be more focused by selecting a birthday month reading list for myself: three reads selected for nostalgia or some other purpose. I’m a mood reader through and through, but this was a really lovely way to read through my month and I’ll absolutely be doing something similar next year.

I then got really excited by some eARCs and thus my month ended up being one packed with fantasy, folkloric elements, magical realism and climate chat. What’s new, eh?

Find me on Goodreads and StoryGraph to see what I’m reading and reviewing in real-time.

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March reads

• The Rainfall Market by You Yeong-Gwang

• The Swell by Kat Gordon

• A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon

• The Antidote by Karen Russell

• The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

• Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn (reread)

• Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura

In review

The Rainfall Market by You Yeong-Gwang

Rating: 2 stars

The Rainfall Market is a bestselling translated Korean fiction, set in a magical ‘market’ that appears only when it rains. Send a letter to the old house and, if it’s chosen, a golden ticket will arrive to your home. And, nobody is more surprised than Serin when she receives her ticket and gets the chance to swap her mundane, average life for another. She has just a week to search for happiness and the perfect life, otherwise she’ll be trapped inside The Rainfall Market forever.

I really really wanted to love The Rainfall Market, yet it just didn’t work for me. Perhaps I wasn’t in the right headspace for it – I did pick it up alongside my epic experience with The Greenlanders! – or perhaps I’ve finally outgrown the cosy fiction genre. I think it could well be the latter. Serin was an annoying protagonist to me, and it felt like there was a touch too much introversion? The writing, or maybe it was the translation, felt a little middle-grade to me and I wasn’t convinced by it or captivated at all. Instead, the story then felt a bit too dreamlike and easily guided at the same time. In fact, I wanted to DNF it at 10%, and then again at 77% (but I was already too far gone!).

The Swell by Kat Gordon

Thanks Bonnier Books and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy of this book!

Rating: 4 stars

Set in Iceland 1910, sisters Freyja and Gudrun rescue a mysterious, shipwrecked man near their remote farm. Sixty five years later, Sigga is visiting her grandmother when news breaks: a body has been discovered on a mountainside near Reykjavík, and it’s perfectly preserved in ice. Rich in Icelandic myth, which I so appreciated after my November trip, this was a beautifully compelling and atmospheric read and a wonderful farewell to winter (for me).

A good example of books in good conversation with each other is The Swell and The Greenlanders. Both Nordic sagas with a focus on character, family and the swell of everyday life, I enjoyed The Swell as much as I did The Greenlanders. In fact, I enjoyed it more because I was already familiar with the family naming conventions, the local produce and rhythm of the ways in these harsh-condition, Nordic countries. We move between 1910 and the 1970s and piece together this Icelandic mystery, the changing timeline really works to build suspense and turn this into a page-turner. I love a story that digs deep into both character and plot, and that’s exactly what The Swell does.

Gudrun is a headstrong heroine, balanced out by her milder-mannered sister Freyja, and they make compelling characters to steer us through the earlier year setting. Actually, they’re mirrors for Sigga in the 1970s and her ‘Amma’, her grandmother. Freyja and Gudrun live with their widowed father in a patriarchally dominated village, which soon becomes a strong theme in the book, that of historical patriarchy. When a Danish sailor washes up ashore and the sisters bring him home, whispers swirl around the village about two unmarried women cohabiting with a man.

In 1975, Sigga is untangling who she is outside of her relationships with her partner, her brothers, society as it still stands. She is worried about her future, her fertility, whether or not she truly has autonomy of her body. And we hear mentions of the Women’s Day Off, a strike where women abstained from any work that was assumed to be a ‘woman’s job’. Feminist uprisings and modern feminism are, of course, then huge themes in this book. Then, the news breaks: a body has been found preserved in ice on a mountainside. As Amma and Sigga converse about their histories, thus begs the question: who is the body that was found?

The author creates a hauntingly atmospheric scene in Iceland and I loved this as a constant backdrop. While it’s got a slow burn start, I raced through the latter half of this book. It’s suspenseful and teases out the mystery in heartbreaking, shocking and tragically real circumstances, while examining sisterhood and breaking free from the patriarchy.

A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon

Rating: 3 stars

TW: suicide ideation.

A feel-good and whimsical short novel with some darker themes, A Magical Girl Retires is about magical girls and their fight to make the world a better place. I chose this book as part of my ‘birthday month reading’ because I was/am obsessed with Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura growing up. The manhwa-inspired cover and illustrated chapter dividers added to the sheer whimsy of this book.

Ah Roa is a 29-year-old, crippled by debt and self-doubt and contemplating ending things when she learns she is a magical girl. She joins the Union for Magical Girls to fight climate change! A quick little read packed with social commentary on how women show up in the world and how women are up against things in the world, I thought this was enjoyable but, ultimately, will be a forgettable read for me sadly.

The Antidote by Karen Russell

Thanks Vintage Books and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy of this book!

Rating: 4.25 stars

TW: rape.

The Antidote is a brilliantly on-the-nose magical realism set in America’s Dust Bowl, 1930s Nebraska. ‘The Antidote’ is a prairie witch who can keep your memories safe: speak into her emerald ear-horn and your secrets, shames, private joys leave your mind and enter hers instead. But after the dust storm, The Antidote wakes up ‘empty’. Along with three other characters in an accidental found-family, they face what’s ahead, together.

My goodness, I absolutely loved this book! I highlighted endless quotes and passages from this one, and found myself completely unable to put it down. The Antidote makes a curious protagonist: she moves between narratives, sometimes speaking to herself and narrating in a first-person voice, others to her child in a second-person voice, and also we eventually have three other characters feeding in. This makes it a definite ‘must concentrate’ read. Between the cast of characters, there’s a lovely found-family feeling that weaves a gloriously told story about a nation’s forgetting, with a great yarn of climate running throughout.

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

Rating: 4.5 stars

Another The Unseen Review Book Club find, The Spear Cuts Through Water felt like reading an epic, fantastical folkloric tale, told by a wizened grandparent. In fact, that’s exactly what it is. A young boy is listening to his lola (a term used for grandmother in the Philippines) tell stories of the ‘Old Country’ and the ‘Inverted Theatre’ that can be reached only in dreams, only in an ‘Inverted World’. Of course, we are then plunged into such theatre to watch as a fantastical tale unfolds.

If I’m honest, it took me a long while to get stuck into this book. Jimenez employs use of the second-person narrative – not my favourite, personally! – and we don’t have chapters, it’s more like little spliced scenes that add to the theatrical feel. Between that, we move between lola telling her tale, the boy’s (our) experience of the theatre, and then the story itself. I made a ton of notes while reading this, which helped but it is quite a complicated read.

Within the dream, we hear how a god escapes royal captivity and flees from the Three Terrors, her monstrous suns that rule the countryside and force the throne’s people into suffering. Their five-day journey becomes a pilgrimage to freedom, a sweeping adventure made all the more interesting by Jimenez’s beautifully styled prose and well-paced quest. A really fascinating epic fantasy that I’m glad I discovered.

Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn

Rating: 5 stars

I reread this childhood favourite as part of my ‘birthday month reading’ project and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Strangely while doing some post-book research, I discovered that the author is originally from Hertfordshire, the county that I too am from! I love the invisible string theory and this just reinforces that further. In Across the Nightingale Floor, we follow our protagonist Takeo in a mission of avenging his family, who’ve been murdered by Iida’s warriors. Takeo possesses the otherworldly skills of the Tribe – invisibility and the ability to slip into a second self – thus enabling him to enter the lair of the Tohan.

Rereading this historical fantasy completely confirmed to me where my reading tastes began and why I am the reader that I am today. In fact, I could still remember entire passages, dialogue and tiny details, and that just goes to show what an impact this book has one me – all the more special for rereading the exact copy I read then. Across the Nightingale Floor has epic scope and I just remember feeling as utterly enthralled by this alternate Japan then as I do today. Hearn’s lyrical language, strong-willed characters, magical touches, and turns of phrase conjure a believable alternate feudal Japan that dances on the page, and I am so proud of little Michelle for ever having picked this up.

Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura

Thanks Transworld Digital and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy of this book!

Rating: 4.25 stars

Having loved Lonely Castle in the Mirror, I was granted an eARC of the author’s latest English translation. Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon similarly touches on nostalgia and real-life issues with a magical realism touch. The story revolves around the Go-Between, somebody that can summon the deceased at the full moon, for free. The catch is, the deceased can refuse the offer, and they can only be summoned once. Thus begins a tale of four stories.

At first, I was worried that this would feel a little too similar to Before the Coffee Gets Cold or What You’re Looking for Is In The Library, which are also sentimental, translated Japanese fiction novels that have a repetitive feeling with one common thread. This, however, captured my heart with its varied dialogue, meaningful prose and a common thread of memory, regret, love, and longing. Each story builds on a feeling of wistfulness, a missed love and longing. Plus, the Go-Between has his own special story. I even cried, and it's incredibly rare that a book touches me enough to do so. A lovely choice for fans of cosy fiction with hints of magical realism.

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What was your favourite book from March? And, please share your own monthly bookish wrap-ups in the comments.