Keeping up with my reading last month was a bit of a challenge. The first two weeks of the month were devoted to Frozen, Jr. and then recovering from Frozen, Jr. I was so tired, I swear I went to work, came home, went to bed and then repeated it all the next day! Thankfully, our two weeks of show insanity was followed by a week off, which gave me the opportunity to catch up on my life a bit.

The first book I ended up reading was a repeat: Matilda, by Roald Dahl. Our musical for next year is Matilda, Jr. and while describing it to my niece, I mentioned it was book. My sister happened to have a copy, so my niece and I read it together over the course of two days. I love returning to childhood classics, especially when it turns out I remembered more of the movie starring Mara Wilson than I did of the original content! (It’s similar, but as these things often go, there were some solid changes made to the film version.) However, reading it also gave me some ideas for the costumes, as Roald Dahl is a magician with words, and really painted a picture of what everyone looked like. I know the Royal Shakespeare Company/Broadway version used the book as their source material and not the movie, so it seems fitting to go by these descriptions.

Then I read You Are Not Alone, by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. This is the third book by these authors that I’ve read, and I enjoy their mysteries for the most part. I think of them as “chick-lit mysteries,” if that’s even a genre, as they seem to combine so many elements from both genres.

The story focuses on a young woman who keeps mostly to herself, who finds herself caught up in a strange mystery after witnessing a woman kill throw herself in front of an oncoming subway train. She becomes unable to let go of the woman, wondering who she was and what led her to her untimely demise, and eventually – and seemingly miraculously – ends up in her circle of friends. However, there is of course more than meets the eye. I made the mistake of starting to read this in the morning, which led to an entire day of reading an absolutely no productivity!

I’m already just about done with my first book for March, and then have a HUGE backlog of books to get through on my nightstand. We’ll see how many I can do over the next month!