Books We Loved, Apr. 2025

The ushering in of a new month—not to mention another season—means a new set of books we loved. For April, we suggest a psychological thriller, a dual-time exploration of a family mystery, and a historical novel set in 1930s India about a short but, for the heroine, life-changing friendship. Read on to find out more.

Ashley Elston, First Lie Wins (Pamela Dorman Books, 2024)

First Lie Wins is as much a psychological thriller as a gritty noir. Ashley Elston lets the story unfold slowly, with tantalizing details making us anxious to know more. When we first meet our narrator, currently using the name of Evie Porter, she’s using an assumed personality to get closer to a rich, handsome businessman, Ryan Sumner. She seems to genuinely like Ryan, who treats her kindly, but she’s obviously a grifter, up to no good. Yet the reader respects her for her cleverness and attention to detail. With each successive chapter, some set in “Evie’s” past, we learn more about her, her marks, and her motivation for working for a mysterious man who commands a network of people like her, who can assume different identities and meet the needs of his anonymous clients.

Soon it becomes obvious that while Evie has engaged in some shady business, both fairness and friendship play a big part in the decisions she makes, which sets her at odds with her manipulative boss, who she knows only as Mr. Smith. Soon he plays his hand, making it clear that if she doesn’t meet his dictates in her current job, her true identity will be taken away from her, and she’ll never be able to return to her roots.

It seems the only way to go is forward. Will Evie have the brains to outwit the cunning, malevolent Mr. Smith by discovering his true identity, enabling her to live life on her own terms?

This page turner will keep you on your toes, wondering how Evie will deal with each new crisis.—GM

Elise Hooper, The Library of Lost Dollhouses (William Morrow, 2025)

This new novel by the author of four previous books, most recently Angels of the Pacific, explores the power of family secrets—and, more generally, the often hidden lives of women—through the contrasting stories of Tildy Barrows, living in San Francisco in 2024, and Cora Hale, a painter and miniaturist whose career spans the 1910s to the early 1970s.

When we meet her, Tildy is the head curator of the Belva Curtis LeFarge Library, a private institution founded by a wealthy woman with an eclectic taste in books, architecture, and art. After losing both parents within five years, Tildy—still under thirty—takes refuge in her work, especially in strict schedules and the avoidance of surprises. Although she revels in the library’s rich decorations, her own life is colorless, symbolized by an apartment decorated solely in white. One day, a chance encounter with a group of schoolchildren leads to Tildy discovering a hidden room at the library that contains two exquisite dollhouses. One she recognizes as a miniature of Belva LeFarge’s Paris house; the other she can’t place, although it looks like a British aristocratic manor. But it’s when she discovers a tiny portrait of her mother in the LeFarge house that Tildy feels compelled to find out where the dollhouses came from and how they ended up in the secret room.

Meanwhile, Cora’s narrative, which begins in 1910 with her arrival in Paris as a troubled seventeen-year-old, gradually reveals both the origins of the dollhouses and the link between them and Tildy’s family.

As Elise Hooper notes toward the end of the novel, “Libraries are viewed as such solemn places—but why? Reading is magic.” This wonderful novel will sweep you into another world, one where the tiniest objects reveal secrets that everyday life would gladly obscure.—CPL

Alka Joshi, Six Days in Bombay (MIRA Books, 2025)

Alka Joshi made a public splash with her first novel—The Henna Artist, which spawned two sequels. In this fourth novel, which is not connected to the previous trilogy, Sona Falstaff, a hospital nurse in 1930s Bombay, is struggling with the legacy of her mixed heritage, as she works as a hospital nurse to support herself and her aging mother. India itself is a state of flux as demands for independence increase in intensity and volume. When the painter Mira Novak is admitted to the hospital, her vibrancy, passion, and generosity awaken a yearning to explore that Sona didn’t even know she had. Then Mira dies, six days after entering the hospital. The job Sona loves—and desperately needs—is threatened by suspicion that she somehow contributed to the painter’s death.

Sona soon discovers that Mira has left her a set of four paintings with instructions to deliver them to their rightful owners. Now she faces a choice: fight for her job and play it safe at home, or take a chance on finding her true self in the wider world, whatever risk that involves?

The contrast between Sona and Mira, the friendship that develops between them, and the slowly revealed history that lies beneath Sona’s reluctance to take chances are all beautifully laid out in this well-written novel, making it a delight to read.—CPL