March 2025
This March, the Reading Challenge gives you choices to make! Pick This or That, with either A Cozy Book or A Book Featuring Found Family—or read a book from both categories! Here are some great picks to get you started:
A Cozy Book
Looking for a warm and comforting read? Whether it’s a charming small-town tale, a magical adventure, or a mystery with a hint of nostalgia, our cozy reads will wrap you up like a favorite blanket. You can always stop by the library to find your next feel-good book, or ask our staff for recommendations! Need more suggestions? Check out Novelist for even more cozy picks!
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Fantasy
Description: Tress is a pragmatic girl who lives on an island in a green sea, works as a cleaner, collects cups, and has a good friend in the local lord’s son. Charlie promises he won’t marry anyone else, and that he’ll send her a cup at every stop. The cups stop coming. Tress finds that Charlie has been taken for ransom and abandoned by his father. She cooks up a plan to leave the island and navigates an educational and dangerous journey.
Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen
Genre: Fiction
Description: Between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways. Right off the coast of South Carolina, on Mallow Island, The Dellawisp sits-a stunning cobblestone building shaped like a horeshoe and named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy. When Zoey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment on Mallow Isalnd, she meets her quirky and secretive neighbors, including a girl on the run, two estranged middle-aged sisters, a lonely chef, a legendary writer, and three ghosts. Each with their own story, Each with their own longings. Each whose ending isn’t written yet
The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai
Genre: Crime
Description: Down a quiet Kyoto backstreet, “food detectives” Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the proprietors of the Kamogawa Diner, through ingenious investigations, recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories, which hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness.
The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic by Breanne Randall
Genre: Romance
Description: Sadie Revelare has always believed that the curse of four heartbreaks that accompanies her magic would be worth the price. But when her grandmother is diagnosed with cancer with only weeks to live, and her first heartbreak, Jake McNealy, returns to town after a decade, her carefully structured life begins to unravel.
A Book Featuring Found Family
There’s nothing quite like a story about found family—where unexpected friendships turn into lifelong bonds. Whether it’s a group of misfits coming together, a community that feels like home, or characters creating their own version of family, these books will warm your heart.
Crow Talk by Eileen Garvin
Genre: Fiction
Description: The best-selling author of The Music of Bees returns with the story of the unlikely friendship between a lonely ornithologist and an Irish musician working to save an injured crow in the wild beauty of the Pacific Northwest.
The First Bright Thing by J. R. Dawson
Genre: Fantasy
Description: Ringmaster–Rin, to those who know her best–can jump to different moments in time as easily as her wife, Odette, soars from bar to bar on the trapeze; and the circus they lead is a rare home and safe haven for magical misfits and outcasts, known as Sparks.
Must Love Flowers by Debbie Macomber
Genre: Romance
Description: Nursing student Maggie, to escape her alcoholic father, rents a room in Joan’s home and finds a glimmer of hope for a better life, including a new romance, while Joan doesn’t know what to make of the mysterious landscaper who’s been revitalizing her garden — and who seems as lost as she is.
The Murder Inn by James Patterson
Genre: Crime
Description: The owner of the Inn at Gloucester, a place open to anyone running from trouble or hiding from life, former Boston police detective Bill Robinson must defend his town, his chosen family and his home when a newcomer in town launches a series of attacks.
Need help finding your next great read? Our library staff is happy to help, and you can also explore even more recommendations through Novelist!
Looking for more challenges? It’s time to put your reading game face on! This month, join Seymour Library’s March Reading Madness by voting for your favorite books in our Tournament of Books and see which title becomes the ultimate champion!