8 books to heal your winter blues in time for spring

It’s that season we’ve been waiting for.

For the first time in months, I’m awakened by natural light, not my iPhone. When I leave the house in the morning, I spot white and purple crocuses piercing through old snow.

With each little gesture of spring, I’m reminded of all I have to look forward to. There’s so many releases I’m excited about. Warmer weather, cherry blossom season and the new Hunger Games prequel. Soon April will arrive with both my birthday and the end of my graduate program, and hopefully that fuzzy-warm feeling of new beginnings.

Spring is a time for new energies and new starts, and so for this list I’ve focused on books that feature protagonists facing big upheavals in their lives. Other books cater to those who may be in need of a good laugh or a warm hug after the somberness of winter, or are looking for that special book that will pull them out of a reading slump.

If this resonates with you, then I hope you’ll enjoy my recommendations!

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

“Seems more plausible that Hell is some revenge fantasy concocted by unhappy people so they could punish all the happy people in their minds.”

In the Wedding People, protagonist Phoebe Stone escapes to a seaside hotel after her personal life hits rock bottom. There, she gets caught up in a wedding party that has overtaken the hotel for the week, and quickly gains the confidence of the bride, Lila, a younger girl she seemingly has nothing in common with, and her soon to be husband, Gary, whom Phoebe seems to have too much in common with. Espach’s novel explores the happiness fallacy and how to live an authentic life and be content. While Phoebe feels disillusioned and lost in these concerns, she’s in other ways a delightfully capable protagonist, who is able to help each member of the wedding party discover truths about themselves. I also really enjoyed that Phoebe has a PhD in literature, so that much of her reference networks come from her favorite authors (some of which we share). It’s a novel for bookish folks, and folks who have been married (and divorced), or people that have ever felt disappointment in where life took them, and perhaps nostalgia for where it didn’t.

Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell

“A tiny, exhausted part of him almost liked imagining it, how he’d go back to work in the garden, raising saplings for the new forest that even now overtook the old world, watching kids disappear into the wild.”

For a novel about the destruction of the world, this one is a strangely hopeful story. It zooms in on the experience of climate destruction for a small community off the coast of British Columbia, and follows as their community reinvents itself after the world “ends” and they lose touch with the mainland. It’s not a post-apocalyptic book in any sense of the word, but tells stories about people re-learning how to live, gaining skills many of us have lost to the modern world, while contemplating how life often turns out differently than we expect. This one’s on the list both for its hopeful vibes and to heal a reading slump, as it’s very short — perfect for a one-sitting reading experience.

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

“There’s a particular feeling in your body when something goes right after a long time of things going wrong. It feels warm and sweet and loose.”

Writers & Lovers is the book for those who feel like things have not been going their way for quite some time. Our main character is Casey (like the former protagonist on this list, also literary queen), who’s living paycheck to paycheck as a waiter while she slowly drowns in student debt but remains unable to finish the novel she’s been working (or not working) on for six years. It’s a novel for former child prodigies turned adults with burnout, those fearing their dreams will never come true, or those who feel like their life is in that weird in-between place where one life phase comes to an end but the next one hasn’t quite started.

My grandmother sends her regards and apologizes by Fredrik Bachman

“Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details.”

I’ve recommended Fredrik Backman before on this blog, and heaven knows I’ll do it again. For the theme of this post though, this one came to mind. It follows seven year old Elsa, who is a child prodigy or at least awfully bookish and advanced for her age. Struggling to fit in at school, she has escaped to the fantasy worlds of books or those dreamed up by her wonderful but crazy grandmother (the opening chapter details how she snook into a zoo and threw poop at a police officer). The novel takes place in the week or so after said grandmother passes, and follows the young protagonist as she tries to make sense of a world without her greatest defender and ally. It’s a heartwarming novel and also heartbreaking, as Elsa goes on a hunt for apology letters addressed from her grandmother to the various inhabitants of their apartment complex, and begins to uncover a network of secret connections between all her neighbors.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

“I penetrated the outer cell membrane with a nanosyringe."
"You poked it with a stick?"
"No!" I said. "Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick.”

If you read the blurb of this book, in particular if you’re not normally into Science Fiction, I fear you would be discouraged. I certainly was, because it sounded like such a run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi story; middle aged American guy wakes up in space with amnesia and learns he alone can save Earth from total destruction. Yet I knew within a minute of picking it up that this book would be a new favorite. I tell you, no book has ever made me laugh this hard. I reread it every time I need a pick-me-up. In particular, I recommend the audiobook because I’ve never heard a performance that seemed so in-tune with the authorial intent: each line is performed with perfect comedic timing. If you’re down after winter or in a bad reading slump or both, this book will make you laugh and cry until you feel dehydrated.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

“All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!”

If you’re going to read a classic around this time, the one that seems the most appropriate is Persuasion. It’s the last of Austen’s completed novels, and features her oldest heroine, 27-year old Anne Elliott. Persuasion is at it’s core a novel about second chances: about how just because something didn’t happen once, does not mean it won’t when a new season comes along. As such, it is a much more hopeful novel than say Pride and Prejudice, with it’s iconic “I’m 27 years old” spinster speech, showing both Austen’s changing and perhaps more open perspective, as well as the changing world she was writing in.

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

“I think you're the opposite of insufferable, I suffer you gladly.”

Blue Sisters follow the three Blue sisters as they return from their individual parts of the world (LA, Paris, London) to clean out their family’s NYC apartment. Reeling in the wake of their sister’s death, each of them — Avery, Bonnie and Lucky — are in bad patch of their lives, and facing big changes in their lives. It’s a novel for those who like the idea of modern retelling of Little Women, with cosmopolitanism and drugs, but it’s also a novel for those who enjoy themes of sisterhood, addiction and self actualization after trauma.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

“After a certain age, you can pretty much do whatever takes your fancy. No one tells you off, except for your doctors and your children.”

My roommate lent me this book this week and it’s been healing my reading slump! This is essentially a Fredrik Backman novel written by a British person, and it follows four pensioners at a retirement community trying to solve a murder. The setting is idyllic British countryside, small town vibes and an old convent whose murky history haunts the narrative. I still have fifty pages left of the book, and I think I know who the murderer is, but we’ll see, I could be wrong!

Update: I was wrong.

Those are my recommendations for now! Thank you so much for reading all the way here, and you’ll hear more from me shortly.