I'm a couple days late with this post, but better late than never, right? February whizzed by for me, full as it was with a family vacation, preparation for a genealogy class I'm teaching at a conference next weekend, grandbaby sitting, and more. Phew! I did manage to read three bookish books in February, though:

My Imaginary Mary by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows—I've had so much fun listening to the Lady Janies/Marys series on audio. These YA books mix alternate history with fantasy, humor, romance, and adventure. I've enjoyed all the novels.

My Imaginary Mary stars three teenagers: Mary Wollstonecraft (of Frankenstein fame), Ada Byron (Lord Byron's daughter, who became a well-known scientist, better known by her married name, Ada Lovelace), and the automaton the two bring to life through a combination of science and magic. As the three have adventures together, they interact with several literary giants, including Percy Bysse Shelley and Lord Byron. 

My Lady Jane by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows—Even though this is the second to last book I've read in the series, My Lady Jane is actually the debut installment. It features another trio of teens: Lady Jane Grey; her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley; and her cousin, Edward Tudor, king of England. The novel is mostly about the three of them working together to keep their thrones secure from usurpers. It's bookish for one reason: the authors' Lady Jane Grey is a bibliophile of the highest order. Although she's breathtakingly beautiful, no one knows it because her face is always hidden in a book! It's another fun entry in an always entertaining series.

Midnight is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead—Books aren't the main theme of this dark Southern thriller, but they are the thing that brings the two main characters together. Ruth Cornier, now a librarian, has always used reading as an escape from her strict, smothering life as the daughter of a fanatical preacher. The town bad boy, with whom she falls in love, devours poetry as a way to infuse beauty into his ugly life. They bond over their shared affinity for literature, quoting lines of verse to each other and spending long hours reading together. 

Out of these three books, I enjoyed My Lady Jane the most. My Imaginary Mary was also enjoyable. While I liked aspects of Midnight is the Darkest Hour, others rubbed me the wrong way. The ending made me want to throw the book against the wall in frustration! Gah. It made the whole novel feel dissatisfying.

I've actually already read my first bookish book for this month. Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson was my book club's pick for February. It's a cute, clean rom com set in a Nashville publishing house. I read the majority of the novel in February, but I didn't finish it until March 1, so I'm counting it for this month. I'll talk about it more in April.

End of Story by A.J. Finn—Finn's newest thriller has a premise that seems to be popular lately (think The Last One Left by Riley Sager, The Fiction Writer by Jillian Cantor, and The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James): a dying person who became famous for being accused (but not convicted) of a crime invites a writer to their home in order to finally reveal what really happened. In this case, it's a reclusive mystery novelist whose first wife and youngest child mysteriously disappeared twenty years ago, never to be heard from again. Nicky Hunter, a creative writing teacher, is summoned to the home of Sebastian Trapp to write down his memories for posterity. She doesn't believe he killed his wife and son, but the more he unburdens himself, the more unsure she becomes...

The novel is off to a bit of a slow start, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless. 

This one, which comes out on March 19, looks promising:

The Lost Book of Bonn by Brianna Labuskes—Emmy Clarke is an American librarian who is sent by the Library of Congress to Germany in 1946. Her job is to help the Monuments Men find and catalog books that were stolen by the Nazis. An intriguing message scrawled inside one volume sends Emmy on a quest to return the precious tome to its rightful owner. As she researches the book's provenance, she discovers a remarkable story about a brave group of Jewish women in Berlin who risked their lives to stand up to the Nazis.