The ants go marching one by one hurrah! hurrah! The ants go marching one by one hurrah! hurrah!
Okay.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about all the incredible books coming out this March! If you want to buy or preorder any of the books listed below, make sure to do it on Bookshop with our affiliate link so that we can pay our writers at no extra cost to you.
The Last Beekeeper
Author: Julie Carrick Dalton
Release Date: March 7th, 2023
Genre: Literary Fiction, Dystopian
StoryGraph Summary: It’s been more than a decade since the world has come undone, and Sasha Severn has returned to her childhood home with one goal in mind—find the mythic research her father, the infamous Last Beekeeper, hid before he was incarcerated.
There, Sasha is confronted with a group of squatters who have claimed the quiet, idyllic farm as a way to escape the horrific conditions of state housing. While she feels threatened by their presence at first, the friends soon become her newfound family, offering what she hasn’t felt since her father was imprisoned: security and hope. Maybe it’s time to forget the family secrets buried on the farm and focus on her future.
But just as she settles into her new life, Sasha witnesses the impossible. She sees a honeybee, presumed extinct. People who claim to see bees are ridiculed and silenced for reasons Sasha doesn’t understand, but she can’t shake the feeling that this impossible bee is connected to her father’s missing research. Fighting to uncover the truth could shatter Sasha’s fragile security and threaten the lives of her new-found family—or it could save them all.
Sasha’s journey is a meditation on forgiveness and redemption and a reminder to cherish the beauty that still exists in this fragile world.
Find the Book: StoryGraph | Goodreads | Bookshop | Review
As Maxx said in their review, “I am not typically a fan of dystopias, but love is such a throughline in this story that I don’t even mind how depressing a picture of the world the book paints. The world is sad but still filled to the brim with the power of love and hope.”
I have also steered away from Dystopia lately but the review is most certainly making me want to read The Last Beekeeper!
There Goes the Neighborhood
Author: Jade Adia
Release Date: March 7th, 2023
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
StoryGraph Summary: Fifteen-year-old Rhea and her best friends, Zeke and Malachi, are South L.A. born and raised, but a recent wave of gentrification has been transforming the place that they call home. When an eviction notice from a greedy landlord threatens to split up the crew, Rhea and her friends manipulate social media to form a fake gang in hopes of scaring off developers. Their scheme appears to work at first… until a murder is pegged on the nonexistent gang. Yikes.
Find the Book: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop
This book looks so good! I love the idea of teens using social media to manipulate older people and get their way in novels. It’s something that’s truly happening with Gen-Z and Gen Alpha on TikTok and the internet in general, so it’s cool to see that making it’s way into fiction as well.
What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez
Author: Claire Jiménez
Release Date: March 7th, 2023
Genre: Mystery
StoryGraph Summary: A deeply powerful, raw debut novel that’s “equal measures hilarious and haunting” (Crystal Hana Kim), of a Puerto Rican family in Staten Island who discovers their long‑missing sister is potentially alive and cast on a reality TV show, and they set out to bring her home.
The Ramirez women of Staten Island orbit around absence. When thirteen‑year‑old middle child Ruthy disappeared after track practice without a trace, it left the family scarred and scrambling. One night, twelve years later, oldest sister Jessica spots a woman on her TV screen in Catfight, a raunchy reality show. She rushes to tell her younger sister, Nina: This woman’s hair is dyed red, and she calls herself Ruby, but the beauty mark under her left eye is instantly recognizable. Could it be Ruthy, after all this time?
The years since Ruthy’s disappearance haven’t been easy on the Ramirez family. It’s 2008, and their mother, Dolores, still struggles with the loss, Jessica juggles a newborn baby with her hospital job, and Nina, after four successful years at college, has returned home to medical school rejections and is forced to work in the mall folding tiny bedazzled thongs at the lingerie store.
After seeing maybe‑Ruthy on their screen, Jessica and Nina hatch a plan to drive to where the show is filmed in search of their long‑lost sister. When Dolores catches wind of their scheme, she insists on joining, along with her pot-stirring holy roller best friend, Irene. What follows is a family road trip and reckoning that will force the Ramirez women to finally face the past and look toward a future—with or without Ruthy in it.
What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez is a vivid family portrait, in all its shattered reality, exploring the familial bonds between women and cycles of generational violence, colonialism, race, and silence, replete with snark, resentment, tenderness, and, of course, love.
Find the Book: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop
This is yet another book that is taking the modern world into the realm of fiction! The idea that you could find your long lost sister on a reality TV show is entirely unbelievable and yet simultaneously not outside the realm of possibility. This debut novel looks like it’s going to focus on people and their relationships, which are always my favorite types of books to read.
Pineapple Street
Author: Jenny Jackson
Release Date: March 7th, 2023
Genre: Literary Fiction
StoryGraph Summary: A deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class, this zeitgeisty novel follows three women in one wealthy Brooklyn clan
Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have, and must decide what kind of person she wants to be.
Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable—if fallible—characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love—all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.
Find the Book: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop
Do we really need another book about a rich girl who marries an even richer family and moves to New York? Most definitely not, but I’m excited to read this nonetheless. The lives of those so much richer to me are always entertaining escapist fantasy. The description of this book is eerily similar to the plot of White Lotus season 1, but I am excited to see how that plays out from inside Darley’s head.
A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating
Author: Sarah Hawley
Release Date: March 7th, 2023
Genre: Adult Romance / Fantasy
StoryGraph Summary: Mariel Spark knows not to trust a demon, especially one that wants her soul, but what’s a witch to do when he won’t leave her side—and she kind of doesn’t want him to?
Mariel Spark is prophesied to be the most powerful witch seen in centuries of the famed Spark family, but to the displeasure of her mother, she prefers baking to brewing potions and gardening to casting hexes. When a spell to summon flour goes very wrong, Mariel finds herself staring down a demon—one she inadvertently summoned for a soul bargain.
Ozroth the Ruthless is a legend among demons. Powerful and merciless, he drives hard bargains to collect mortal souls. But his reputation has suffered ever since a bargain went awry—if he can strike a bargain with Mariel, he will earn back his deadly reputation. Ozroth can’t leave Mariel’s side until they complete a bargain, which she refuses to do (turns out some humans are attached to their souls).
But the witch is funny. And curvy. And disgustingly yet endearingly cheerful. Becoming awkward roommates quickly escalates when Mariel, terrified to confess the inadvertent summoning to her mother, blurts out that she’s dating Ozroth. As Ozroth and Mariel struggle with their opposing goals and maintaining a fake relationship, real attraction blooms between them. But Ozroth has a limited amount of time to strike the deal, and if Mariel gives up her soul, she’ll lose all her emotions—including love—which will only spell disaster for them both.
Find the Book: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop
I am such a sucker for putting fantasy romances on these lists. The book cover is just absolutely adorable! This is also a fake dating to lovers story, which most definitely has to be one of the most entertaining tropes.
Hello Beautiful
Author: Ann Napolitano
Release Date: March 14th, 2023
Genre: Literary Fiction
StoryGraph Summary: William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so he’s relieved when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a future different from the expected path of wife and mother; Cecelia, the family’s artist; and Emeline, who patiently takes care of all of them. Happily, the Padavanos fold Julia’s new boyfriend into their loving, chaotic household.
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable loyalty to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes an emotionally layered and engrossing family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?
Vibrating with tenderness, Hello Beautiful is a gorgeous, profoundly moving portrait of what’s possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
Find the Book: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop
This book sounds so good! Any novel with the description “emotionally layered and engrossing family story” is one that I certainly want to read. I haven’t read a book by Ann Napolitano yet, but this seems like a great one to start with.
Not So Perfect Strangers
Author: LS Stratton
Release Date: March 28th, 2023
Genre: Contemporary Mystery / Thriller
StoryGraph Summary: One fateful encounter upends the lives of two women in this tense domestic thriller, a modern spin on Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train that flips the script on race and gender politics.
“I’m a big believer that women should help each other, Tasha,” she says. “Don’t you think?”
Tasha Jenkins has finally found the courage to leave her abusive husband. Taking her teenage son with her, Tasha checks into a hotel the night before their flight out of D.C. and out of Kordell Jenkins’s life forever. But escaping isn’t so easy, and Tasha soon finds herself driving back to her own personal hell. As she is leaving, a white woman pounds on her car window, begging to be let in. Behind the woman, an angry man is in pursuit. Tasha makes a split-second decision that will alter the course of her life: she lets her in and takes off.
Tasha and Madison Gingell may have very different everyday realities, but what they have in common is marriages they need out of. The two women want to help each other, but they have very different ideas of what that means . . .
They are on a collision course that will end in the case files of the D.C. MPD homicide unit. Unraveling the truth of what really happened may be impossible‒and futile. Because what has the truth ever done for women like Tasha and Madison?
Find the Book: StoryGraph | Goodreads | Bookshop | Review
This book was so great! I wrote a full review of Not So Perfect Strangers, but for those of you who want the tldr, this is a perfect choice for someone who’s looking for a psychological thriller with two main characters who are coming from dramatically different perspectives with dramatically different goals. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book!
Hang the Moon
Author: Jeannette Walls
Release Date: March 28th, 2023
Genre: Historical Fiction
StoryGraph Summary: “Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who’d amount to nothing. Sally had other plans.
“Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the twentieth century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is her father’s daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful. Eddie is his mother’s son, timid and cerebral. When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out. ”
“Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That’s a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness. Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger.”
Find the Book: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop
From the moment I read Glass Castle, Jeannette Wall’s memoir, I was well and truly in love with Wall’s style of writing. This historical fiction novel looks incredibly good, and I cannot wait to dive in and read it.
Evil Eye
Author: Etaf Rum
Release Date: March 28th, 2023
Genre: Literary Fiction
StoryGraph Summary: The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of A Woman Is No Man returns with a striking exploration of the expectations of Palestinian-American women, the meaning of a fulfilling life, and the ways our unresolved pasts affect our presents.
Raised in a conservative and emotionally volatile Palestinian family in Brooklyn, Yara thought she would finally feel free when she married a charming entrepreneur who took her to the suburbs. She’s gotten to follow her dreams, completing an undergraduate degree in Art and landing a good job at the local college. As a traditional wife, she also raises their two school-aged daughters, takes care of the house, and has dinner ready when her husband gets home. With her family balanced with her professional ambitions, Yara knows that her life is infinitely more rewarding than her own mother’s. So why doesn’t it feel like enough?
After her dream of chaperoning a student trip to Europe evaporates and she responds to a colleague’s racist provocation, Yara is put on probation at work and must attend mandatory counseling to keep her position. Her mother blames a family curse for the trouble she’s facing, and while Yara doesn’t really believe in old superstitions, she still finds herself growing increasingly uneasy with her mother’s warning and the possibility of falling victim to the same mistakes.
Shaken to the core by these indictments of her life, Yara finds her carefully constructed world beginning to implode. To save herself, Yara must reckon with the reality that the difficulties of the childhood she thought she left behind have very real—and damaging—implications not just on her own future but that of her daughters.
Find the Book: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop
The cover of this book made me instantly put it on my TBR, and reading the description makes me even more excited about it. This is yet another book that looks emotionally traumatizing in a way that makes me cry and fall in love with the narrator.
Community Board
Author: Tara Conklin
Release Date: March 28th, 2023
Genre: Literary Fiction / Romance
StoryGraph Summary: The New York Times bestselling author of The Last Romantics delivers a wise, timely, big-hearted novel of unplanned isolation and newly forged community.
Where does one go, you might ask, when the world falls apart? When the immutable facts of your life—the mundane, the trivial, the take-for-granted minutiae that once filled every second of every day—suddenly disappear? Where does one go in such dire and unexpected circumstances?
I went home, of course.
MURBRIDGE COMMUNITY MESSAGE BOARD
FREE: 500 cans of corn. Accidentally ordered them online. I really hate corn. Happy to help load.
REMINDER: use your own goddamn garbage can for your own goddamn pet waste. I’m looking at you Peter Luflin.
REMINDER: monthly Select Board meeting this Friday. Agenda items: 1) sludge removal; 2) upkeep of chime tower; 3) ice rink monitor thank you gift. Questions? Contact Hildegard Hyman.
Darcy Clipper, prodigal daughter, nearly thirty, has returned home to Murbridge, Massachusetts, after her life takes an unwelcome left turn. Murbridge, Darcy is convinced, will welcome her home and provide a safe space in which she can nurse her wounds and harbor grudges, both real and imagined.
But Murbridge, like so much else Darcy thought to be fixed and immutable, has changed. And while Darcy’s first instinct might be to hole herself up in her childhood bedroom, subsisting on Chef Boy-R-Dee and canned chickpeas, it is human nature to do two things: seek out meaningful human connection and respond to anonymous internet postings. As Murbridge begins to take shape around Darcy, both online and in person, Darcy will consider the most fundamental of American questions: What can she ask of her community? And what does she owe it in return?
Find the Book: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Bookshop
This looks so cute! I love the idea of a message board romance— March is most certainly the month of fiction taking things digital. I’m excited to read this little romance about the community message board.
Write Through the Night 