The books I read in March

& what I’m reading this month

It was coincidental, but I read a lot about loneliness in March. To keep me company through the downpour that fell over Lisbon, there was the alienating grief in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the solitary obsession with a complete stranger in Creep, the terrifying stillness that permeates Minor Detail, and the innate longing for home in The Haunting of Hill House.

Despite this—or perhaps because of it—March wasn’t a lonely month. I spent it surrounded by lovely people, for one, but my reads definitely played a role in it, too; there is something to be said about seeing the world through the eyes of isolated, alienated characters that, paradoxically, makes you feel somewhat…held. Accompanied. I’m beginning to believe that, if there’s a formula for a loneliness antidote out there, one of its ingredients might be the small but mighty act of reading about it.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

I can’t believe it took me this long to read My Year of Rest and Relaxation, but as it usually is the case with any extremely hyped read, the more I saw this book everywhere, the less I wanted to read it. So I waited, and waited, and waited—I ended up reading Lapvona first, and enjoying it very much—until a friend offered to lend me her copy last month, and with the days growing longer and (at least momentarily) warmer in Lisbon, it felt like the perfect time to finally read Moshfegh’s most viral novel to date.

Not that MYORAR’s unnamed protagonist gets out of the house much. The rich, beautiful twenty-something we follow in this novel only leaves her Upper East Side apartment to get coffee at a bodega nearby and to see her psychiatrist, who prescribes her a potent (and illegal) cocktail of drugs on a regular basis. The rest of her time, she spends sleeping; she’s on a mission to sleep an entire year of her life away before waking up, blissfully reborn, to what she hopes will be a brand new world to her. Call it a sleep cleanse.

Dry-witted, satirical and at times disarmingly sad, MYORAR is a book about grief, loneliness and alienation. It first came out in 2018, it’s set in 2000, and it spoke intimately to my media-burned-out self in 2025. As much of a dumpster fire as the world might be, being able to log off remains a privilege, and in MYORAR, Moshfegh takes that privilege to a new extreme and explores it through a selfish, self-centered, emotionally hollow—tender, broken—narrator.

The pacing is a bit clunky, with some portions of the protagonist’s life speeding by while others drag their feet. This affected the flow of my reading experience at the time, but looking back now, it feels very much deliberate in its intention to show how time becomes non-linear when depression and mourning cling. I flew through the book regardless.

It was an interesting experience to pick this up after reading so many of the “sad girl” novels it certainly inspired. The trope does tend to get repetitive, so I was mentally prepared for a novel that, as well executed as it might’ve been, would fail to be anything I hadn’t seen before. But MYORAR was still able to stand on its own, certainly thanks to Ottessa Moshfegh’s unique voice. I’m becoming a big fan of her sense of humor and versatility; both Death in Her Hands and Eileen are currently on my shelves, and I’m excited to read them in the near future.

Read it if… You’re a fan of satire and character-driven books where very little happens. Or if you love a good nap.

Don’t read it if… You’re looking for something more plot-forward within the subgenre. In that case, consider Creep (review below!).

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Creep by Emma van Straaten

When I saw this on Libro.fm, I was immediately intrigued by the concept of a cleaning lady who becomes obsessed with one of her clients. With such unbridled access to her crush’s home, I could only imagine the kind of stuff she’d get up to. Would she lick his toothbrush? Roll around in his bed? Eat his trash?

In hindsight, Creep was the perfect audiobook: it was short, beautifully narrated, and the kind of story that yes, requires your attention, but still allows you to multitask as you listen. There were no strange words, no convoluted plot, or fifty side characters. It was quick, entertaining and straight to the point, not unlike a true crime podcast.

Main character Alice was the perfect picture of the lady psycho next door as she pined after Tom, a man she’d never met in her life, while she cared after his home. Things got creepier and creepier, and eventually escalated. I, being the troubled soul that I am, would have liked things to escalate even further, but Creep’s self-restraint is what makes it the kind of book I’d recommend to people who are now beginning to explore the sub-genre: it’s not exceedingly bloody or violent, thus approachable to most people in that sense, and as far as character studies go, it never gets too out there or experimental while having a solid foundation.

If, on the other hand, you’ve read a couple of books in this space already, just know that, to me, Creep stayed a little too close to things that had already been done before. It felt a little too… safe, for my liking.

Read it if… You’re new to the “feral girlie” subgenre and are looking for a quick, fun, suspenseful read.

Don’t read it if… You’ve read a thousand books with a similar summary already. If you’ve read the Ottessas, the Monas, the Elizas… this might not bring anything new to your shelves.

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Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

I thought I was losing my mind when I first started Minor Detail. The book is divided into two parts, and despite it being only 144 pages in total, it took me a long time to get through Part One, which follows an Israeli soldier in Palestine in 1949. We become witnesses as the soldier and his men capture, rape and kill a young Palestinian woman, only for this to be forgotten by history.

If you’ve read it, you’ll know that the writing begins as mechanical and repetitive, heavily descriptive, coldly reporting the soldier’s every move but never, ever giving you any access to his thoughts or inner world. I knew very little about what awaited me in this book, so I grew frustrated with this writing style very quickly. Surely I was missing something?

Then comes Part Two, set many years later, where a Palestinian woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. And if Part One was stagnant and suffocating, Part Two was bright and alive and technicolor, fast and slow and almost sadistically tense. I couldn’t stop reading.

So—joke’s on me for ever doubting it—turns out that Adania Shibli knew exactly what she was doing, and I finished Minor Detail in absolute awe of how brilliant, how meticulously crafted this was. It certainly deserves all the awards and more, and it became one of my favorite reads of 2025. It made for a great book club discussion, too.

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Read it if… This one is for everyone. Mandatory reading!

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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

When I picked this up, I was a woman on a mission: I wanted to read more horror classics, and I was interested in studying how the good ones get made. Has your mother or grandmother ever asked you to taste the soup they made and then list each ingredient? I challenged myself to do something similar with The Haunting of Hill House, and ended up learning a lot about how Shirley Jackson tells a scary story—or how she told this particular scary story, anyway.

She does it beautifully. The beginning had me hooked right away, and then it was just one delectable moment after another. The Haunting of Hill House is, at its core, a book about isolation and loneliness, and I was surprised to find it so modern. It turns out that fictional women have been “on the verge” for quite a while: main character Eleanor is just as vulnerable and snarky as the unnamed narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, just not as fond of her bedroom.

The dialogue was sparkling and inspired, the descriptions fascinating to analyze—Jackson rarely wastes time describing how the house looks, focusing instead on giving it the full-bodied dimension of an entity that is very much alive—and the plot itself was surprisingly minimal. The horror is within you in this story; no monsters in sight.

I was looking for a masterclass in writing suspense, and I found it for 14€ at my local indie. Lucky me!

Read it if… You’re looking for a (moderately scary, suspenseful) horror classic that could’ve been written yesterday.

Don’t read it if… You want a bloody, plotful slasher.

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What I’m reading in April

So far I’ve finished:

• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

I’m currently reading:

• Butter by Asako Yuzuki

• The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica

I’m hoping to still read:

• No Judgment by Lauren Oyler

• The National Telepathy by Roque Larraquy

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