4 Books I Finished Recently

Published: by Crystal Paine on April 5, 2022  |  This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.

In 2022, I’m setting monthly reading goals. You can see the 9 books I picked to read in March here. (April’s book choices are coming soon!) Here are 4 books I finished recently…

Note: You can follow along with the books I finish this year and my star ratings over on GoodReads. Also, books are rated on a 1-5 star scale. I basically won’t finish a book if it’s one star (not worth my time!) and I’ll rarely give a book a 5-star rating unless it was just absolutely amazing or life-changing.

Jesus Everlasting

I struggled through this book. It’s interesting because in prepping for this review, I read the Amazon description of it and that’s not at all what I realized the book was supposed to be about. So it missed the mark for me.

It felt like it was kind of fluffy, some of the attempts to modernize the Biblical stories felt off base and out of context, and it just lacked the depth I was hoping for.

However, I know not every book is for everyone and certain writing styles hit different people differently… so maybe you’d love it!

Verdict: 2 stars

The London House

I’ve loved the other Katherine Reay novels and was excited about this one. There were parts that were interesting and I learned some new things about WWII, but it felt like the book skipped around a lot and was hard to follow (and I saw a number of Amazon reviewers said the same thing).

If you enjoy WWII novels and you like epistolary novels (much of the book was told through journal entries and letters), then you might enjoy this novel.

One thing I would have loved was to hear more about her research and to hear what parts of the book were based upon true facts. I felt like there was a lot of research that had gone into the book I just wasn’t sure what was fact and what was fiction.

Verdict: 3 stars

Come Sit With Me

This book is a compilation of chapters written by different women on the topic of friendship and loving others well in spite of our differences and disagreements. I felt like it’s such a needed topic in this day and age where there is so much division and struggling to have conversations with people who believe differently than us.

I resonated more with some of the writers than others and it felt like there was some repetition, but overall, I really appreciated the message of how to stay when it gets tough in a friendship, loving well, forgiveness, and kindness even when it’d hard.

Verdict: 3 stars

The Last Bookshop in London

I really enjoyed this WWII novel. It is a slower-paced novel but I love how it develops and how it showcases what it was like to live as an every day citizen in London during the war. It was a different perspective than any other book I’ve read about WWII and it really made me think what it would have been like to stay back behind while so many left to go fight and all of the sacrifices those who stayed behind made.

There are also a lot of literary references in the book, so if you love slow but well-developed novels, if you love literary-themed novels, and/or you love WWII novels, I think you’ll really enjoy this novel.

Verdict: 4 stars

What have you been reading recently? Any books you think I should read?