April 2025
Read More Reading Challenge: Spring is Here!
Spring is finally here, and with it comes a fresh start—so why not freshen up your reading list too? This month’s This or That Reading Challenge gives you two options: A Book That Is Part of a Series or A Book With No People on the Cover. Whether you love following characters through multiple books or prefer a stand-alone read with an intriguing cover, there’s something here for everyone.
If you’re a series reader, you know the joy of sinking into a world that doesn’t end after one book. Maybe you’re picking up the next installment of a favorite story, or maybe it’s finally time to start that series everyone’s been talking about. On the flip side, books without people on the cover often feel like a bit of a mystery—what’s inside could be anything from a sweeping fantasy to a spine-tingling thriller. No matter which path you choose, we’ve got some great recommendations to help you get started. Pick your book, track your progress, and keep up with your 2025 Read More! Reading Challenge.
Have you read these selections, or are you looking for a specific book tailored to you? Search for your next great read on Novelist!
A Book That is Part of a Series
Check out these selections!
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune
Genre: Fantasy
Description: Arthur Parnassus lives a good life, built on the ashes of a bad one. He’s the headmaster of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six magical and so-called dangerous children who live there.
More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
Genre: Fiction
Description: In this follow-up to Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Takako must help her uncle Satoru choose whether to keep the bookshop open or close its doors forever, which takes them on an emotional journey that reminds them again what a bookstore can mean to an individual, a neighborhood and a whole culture.
Beast of the North Woods by Annelise Ryan
Genre: Crime
Description: When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature in the latest puzzling entry in this USA Today bestselling series.
Before We Forget Kindness by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Genre: Fiction
Description: In the fifth book in the sensational, cozy Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, translated from Japanese, the mysterious café where customers arrive hoping to travel back in time welcomes four new guests. They must follow the café’s strict rules, however, and come back to the present before their coffee goes cold.
A Book With No People on the Cover
Check out these selections!
The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
Genre: Fiction
Description: Forced to return to the enchanted world they called home for six months 15 years ago to confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories, reclusive artist Rafe and famed missing persons’ investigator Jeremy search for their friend Emilie’s sister–and for everything they’ve lost.
Babel by R. F. Kuang
Genre: Fantasy
Description: A Chinese boy orphaned by cholera and raised in Britain is trained to work at Oxford’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation, the world’s center for translation and magic through silver working, where he must choose between competing loyalties.
The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren
Genre: Romance
Description: When his 100-million-dollar inheritance comes with a catch–he must be happily married for five years, Liam Weston, the uptight heir of a grocery chain, turns to his secret not-so-ex-wife Anna Green, a feisty, foul-mouthed artist, to fake their relationship and convince his one-percenter parents they’re in love.
Darling Girls by Sally Hempworth
Genre: Crime
Description: It’s not just secrets buried at Wild Meadows. For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. Rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother on an idyllic farming estate, they were given an elusive second chance at a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thought it was. And when a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?