What I Read | April 2025

women finding themselves - a common thread in this month's Romantasy & experimental novels

It’s Spring! Yay! I don’t have a ton to say in this intro, except that my life is fabulous, I fucking love my job, and I read some good stuff this month. Hope you enjoy! (I re-read this intro while on my period and rolled my eyes at it but am too tired to write another one… so whatever, this will have to do.)

Also, I just realized that every single book I read in March and April was written by a woman, and most of this month’s novels accidentally shared the same theme: female protagonists on a quest to find themselves and what they want their life to be (yes, that includes both the Romantasy and the experimental novels I read because womanhood and my reading are on a spectrum).

As always, if you’re new and want to read past issues, here’s What I Read | March 2025, February 2025, January 2025, December 2024, November 2024, and October 2024.

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After officially starting my new job at Book of the Month on March 31st, I wanted my first April read to be a BOTM pick. I had gotten Liquid: A Love Story by Mariam Rahmani in one of my early boxes when I was still interviewing, and found myself gravitating towards the eye-catching jacket: a candy-pink and red heart made from cells on an Excel spreadsheet.

Liquid follows an unnamed Iranian-Indian-American post-PhD narrator living in LA and unsuccessfully looking for tenure. Building off a passive comment from her bestie Adam, our disgruntled narrator decides to marry rich as an alternative to job-hunting, and embarks on a quest to go on 100 dates. In a series of diary-like entries, our heroine muses on her various dates, her relationship with her immigrant parents, and her life so far. As the book progresses, it also becomes increasingly obvious that the narrator’s true affections lie with Adam, unavailable as he is from his on-again, off-again relationship with his hot girlfriend of eight years. [SPOILERS INCOMING] About halfway through, Liquid takes a sudden dark turn when the narrator’s father has a heart attack, prompting her to fly back to Tehran. Following his death, an unexpected inheritance leads her to consider a permanent move from LA to Tehran. She tries out this quieter, simpler life. But after a few weeks, she is pulled back to LA by something bigger. The novel ends on an expected but sweet ‘happily ever after’ as Adam confesses his feelings to our narrator, and she puts away her wishes for money to instead follow love.

I really enjoyed Liquid and found the writing to be intellectually stimulating, enjoyable, and beautiful, in a way that academic writing can be when it is done well. The narrator’s head was a fun one to be in; she is dry, funny, and self-aware. I would recommend this to fans of literary fiction who want an elevated, satirical twist on a rom-com!

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Next up, I read Stag Dance by Torrey Peters ahead of the

Open Book Club NYC

event with the author (so cool!).

Stag Dance consists of three short stories and one novella, with each piece written in a different genre (Teen Romance, Horror, etc.), but all deal with gender, masculinity, the trans experience, and… pigs. I loved all three short stories and thought they were fantastic. However, I struggled with the novella, as it’s written in lumberjack style, and all the characters are men. I had a hard time understanding and connecting with the language, and did not particularly take to the setting or the characters either (they were painfully manly). In the story’s defense, my brain was imploding with new information as I was starting my new job, and I did not have a lot of energy to use up on engaging with the story in the way it demanded.

The author event with Torrey Peters was fantastic. Liz’s questions were deep, unique, and interesting, and she masterfully steered Torrey into talking to the room about the when, how, and why of her different pieces. One thing that stuck with me was Torrey’s explanation that her writing in different genres was in reaction to the idea that trans voices needed a new narrative to be shared and understood. Torrey disagreed and decided to write her stories in different genres to showcase that trans experiences could be shared with the world in a myriad of existing ways. To say I think she succeeded would be an understatement. I finished Stag Dance and left the event very excited to read her debut novel, Detransition, Baby.

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By the time mid-April rolled around and I was done with my third week of work, I had accepted that it would not be a heavy reading month for me, a likely-to-continue trend that I’m making my peace with. But continue reading I shall, and my next read was Andromeda by Therese Bohman, another literary fiction and somewhat experimental novel.

Andromeda opens with a first-person narration by Sophie, a young intern at Rydéns, a renowned Swedish publishing house. We watch as Sophie elliptically (and confusingly) moves through decades of her career in less than 100 pages, and as she develops an intense friendship with her editor in chief, Gunnar. Halfway through, Andromeda switches perspectives, and we get a first-person Wikipedia-like account of Gunnar’s life, starting with his childhood as a poor boy with a love of reading, all the way to his heart problems in his later life. He barely mentions Sophie. I don’t know what to make of Andromeda. I did not think it was a very good book, nor did I find it enjoyable to read. There was no plot, no vibes, the characters were flat, and the subject matter (art, literature, its place in the world?), despite being complex and important, was treated superficially. Lastly, the writing was sterile, dry, and boring. Remember when I said Liquid was academic writing done right? Andromeda was academic writing done wrong. In case the above isn’t clear, I do not recommend this book.

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Next up, my reading steered itself towards some more Romantasy (see last month’s review of Fourth Wing, my first Romantasy read). The author Kaylie Smith was coming to the Book of the Month offices to promote her latest book, Enchantra, so I figured I would give Phantasma, her debut novel, a read before then.

Let me tell you, Phantasma was FUN! It follows Ophelia, a Necromancer, as she inherits her mother’s magical powers and embarks on an impossible quest to rescue her sister and uncover some family secrets. Ophelia, for reasons that make more or less sense, enters a traveling circus / haunted house competition run by a couple of bored and bloodthirsty devils. To survive, our heroine makes a bargain with a sexy, snarky phantom, and things quickly get very intense between them (so much so that Ophelia kind of forgets why she’s entered the competition in the first place, but I digress). Phantasma (the competition, not the book) consists of nine trials based on the nine circles of hell and takes heavy inspiration from Dante’s Inferno. I did think the trials themselves could have been thought out a lot better, and gone a lot deeper, but I also understand that those trials were not the ~~crux~~ of the novel (as much as, say, the steamy scenes between Ophelia and her phantom lover).

Overall, I’ve been enjoying my foray into Romantasy (which is a good thing, considering it is, I repeat, my JOB now). The books are a little formulaic, from what I gather, but that’s because the formula works. And honestly, the tension and the plot twist in Phantasma had me SHAKING. If you want a fun, steamy, devil-filled read, Phantasma is a phantas-tic (hehe) choice!

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While part of me wanted to delve into Phantasma’s sequel Enchantra immediately, I thought a little genre break would be best, so I picked up Some Trick by Helen DeWitt. If you haven’t read The Last Samurai, you should. If you have, then you should know that Helen DeWitt is a fantastic, genius writer, and you should be recommending The Last Samurai to everyone you know (and who likes reading, obviously. Do not recommend The Last Samurai to someone who has not read anything since they skimmed The Catcher in the Rye in high school).

Some Trick consists of thirteen satirical short stories. Most of them either follow pretentious people being pretentious, or artistic people navigating the absurdity of the artist world. Some of the stories were really, really good. I particularly enjoyed On the Town, a story following Gil, a bright-eyed Iowan with an obsession with New York. Unlike the supposed “smart, go-getters” in the Big Apple, Gil wraps New York and its inhabitants around his finger in a matter of days by actually getting shit done instead of just… yapping about getting shit done. A couple of the other stories in Some Trick also had me chuckling to myself on the subway, or shuddering at the dark reality behind DeWitt’s biting satire. However, a lot of the stories just didn’t work that well. They were too dense, some even boring, and I often struggled to connect with the characters or their storylines. If you know and like DeWitt, I still think this is worth reading!

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Next up was another fantastic (and EXCLUSIVE) BOTM read: The Sun Was Electric Light by Australian author Rachel Morton.

Written in simple, declarative sentences (think Hemingway; think “the sun was warm and that was nice and good.”), TSWEL follows Ruth, a lost woman in her thirties, who decides to move to Guatemala in an effort to make her life “feel more real”. We follow Ruth as she tries to build a life she might be content with, and in the process, meets friends, lovers, and employers.

The writing takes a second to get used to, but as a Hemingway fan, I had no trouble doing so, and found it made for a nice and good (jk, I’ll stop) captivating and frictionless reading experience.

As someone who often thinks my life feels “fake”, I found Ruth’s quest for something more tangible incredibly relatable. I, too, fight the urge to move to the mountains, though girlie lost me when she started living in a hut.

The ratings on Goodreads for this book are polarized. I do understand how TSWEL might not be for everyone; it is quiet and slow, and the style is unusual. But I found it so incredibly beautiful and moving. It’s really “bare bones” and stripped down, and I think that made for a really honest and true book.

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Similar to the MCs in the Romantasy books I’ve read so far, I couldn’t stay away from the object of my truest desires for long, and had to give in to reading Enchantra, Kaylie Smith’s sequel to Phantasma. The second installment of the Wicked Games saga follows Ophelia’s sister, Genevieve, as she accidentally enters a(nother) mansion hosting a(nother) devil-organized murderous game. The set-up is as corny as they come: in an attempt to look for others similar to her, Genevieve ends up finding herself and the love of her life. Enchantra was very similar to its big sister, and while it was entertaining, it just didn’t hit as hard for me as Phantasma did. I do think Romantasy is something I need to have in moderation to enjoy it and remain captivated by the elements that make it entertaining, sexy, and fun.

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Next up, I picked up The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt (Smith - DeWitt - Smith - DeWitt - DeFuck?), the first book of hers that I was told about over a year ago. It follows Marguerite, a seventeen-year-old girl whose worst fear is committing something in mauvais ton (the closest translation being ‘bad taste’). Marguerite describes the strange situation she has found herself in: after finding out the people she thought of as her parents kidnapped her as a child and spent the fortune she was meant to inherit, she makes a publishing deal to share her experience, but is unable to meet her editor’s request to “access her feelings”. The English Understand Wool is an incredibly funny and witty novella, and a great reminder to always read the small-print.

After being somewhat disappointed by many of the stories in Some Trick, I loved delving into DeWitt’s praised novella and seeing her genius at work in a more fleshed-out satirical piece.

Random fun (if not scary) fact: Helen DeWitt is fluent in 16 (!!!!!) languages.

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I then grabbed Bitter Water Opera by Nicolette Poleck, another more ‘experimental’ novel to serve as fodder to all the Romantasy I’ve been reading and thinking about lately. The prose immediately pulled me in, with this gorgeous line in one of the first pages:

Marta leaned forward in her seat and offered me a long cigarette. She put it in my mouth, lit it. The smoke tasted soft, like walnut shavings, or an unsugared meringue.

Are you kidding me?! I want to snort this line.

Bitter Water Opera unfolds slowly, and instead of trying to tell you what it’s about, I’ll let you read a piece of Moonkiszt’s very good Goodreads review:

Bottomline, this is a book about Gia - every girl - no, every human - who's had hard things happen and has lost her their hope. Still she they keep moving, keep reading, keep observing, keeping that internal conversation open and honest. . .and like Marta finds her their moment, her their peek through a dusty window into what can be hers theirs if she they move forward. . .

Another cool thing about reading this novel was that, to me, it was in conversation with The Sun Was Electric Light. For example, both touched upon the difficulty of being in the present, instead of always looking to the future or the past. From TSWEL:

At the end of each day, I was tired in a way that felt like charcoal, as though something inside me had been alight and now was all burnt up. It was different from the tired I felt after a day at the school. That one felt like I’d given something away that I needed and would have to grow back. The charcoal feeling made me peaceful and I wasn’t thinking as much. I wasn’t worrying about the future and my place in it, and I wasn’t thinking about how I had failed at my life. Those things were no more or less true than before, but I wasn’t thinking them now. That was what the carving was doing to me.

And from Bitter Water Opera:

How did I end up here, and why didn’t I have anyone to talk to? I felt singed by panic. I could’ve had Peter - but I couldn’t have, because I desired someone else, and with them I would desire yet another. It was my limerence that I’d masterfully hidden out of my own conscience so that it rose out in a moment such as this. It was my limerence for other people that afflicted me, my limerence to be in the future, limerence for the so-called beauty of the past, limerence for other places I had no business living in, limerence for stew when I was eating pie, a limerence so strong that I was always in a world that didn’t even exist.

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Throughout the month, I also read There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die: Selected Poems by the incredible Tove Ditlevsen. I read The Copenhagen Triology and The Trouble with Happiness a couple of years ago, and really enjoyed delving into her poetry this month. I generally struggle with poetry in translation, and find that poems will inevitably lose their rhythm and song to keep their meanings. This was particularly the case with this collection; at the cost of meaning, some of the poems were very choppy. However, I still really enjoyed it.

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I can’t believe some people actually read what I write, so if you do, THANK YOU! It legitimately makes me feel things only my favorite authors would be able to put into words.

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