April 2024 Aardvark Book Club Hints & Selections

Aardvark Book Club is a monthly book subscription box (in both the U.S. & Canada) in which members choose up to 3 hardcover books. In addition to past months’ selections, Aardvark provides 4-5 newly published books to choose from each month. You can also discuss the books with other members in the Aardvark app. You can use the promo code READBETWEENTHESPINES to get your first book for $4.

As the end of the month approaches, Aardvark Book Club starts posting hints for their upcoming month’s selection. While the type of hints changes from month-to-month, they remain fun to follow along with. I typically make guesses as to what books they will be in my Instagram stories, but I thought I would also share them here.

The first set of March hints show that there will be 6 Aardvark selections again this month! I usually wait until the second hint is out to post my guesses. However, I prepared this month by creating a bit of a predictions list, which I was super happy I did once I saw the first set of hints.

I will be updating this post every day once new hints have been posted.


Hint #1

This clue explores aspects of our picks in relation to one another. Do with that what you will little Sherlocks. 🕵‍♀️

Because the first set of hints are all located on two images, I am going to approach them in a slightly different way.

I am going to identify them as follows:

Book 1: 🔴 Pink circle
Book 2: 🔵 Turquoise/blue circle
Book 3: 🟡 Yellow-orange circle
Book 4: 🟢 Green layered circle
Book 5: 🌚 Grey circle
Book 6: 🟣 Purple circle

This is the order indicate in the hint’s first image/slide.

Level 1: Beginner Mode

Line 1

This appears to be a line going from A to Z. I’m guessing it indicates the first letter of the book’s title. The English alphabet has 26 letters, meaning that the halfway point would equal M. We know that one of the books is Expiration Dates, meaning the letter “E” and likely the pink or blue circle.

Line 2

This line goes from short to long. Now, this could indicate the title’s length in words or characters or the book’s length. Again, knowing that Expiration Dates is one of the books, we know we are either working with a two word title or 272 pages in length.

Line 3

This line is from past to present and only features two books. While this could also be in relation to the tense of the title, I think a better guess would be the period in which the book takes place. I think it is then fair to deduce that only two books (🌚 & 🟡) take place in the past while all others occur in the present or future.

Level 2: Intermediate Mode

Line 4

This line runs from rural to city. I think it is fair to assume that the city dot would be equal to the U.S.’s largest city, which is New York. It looks like two books (🔵 & 🟣) are set in other large U.S. cities.

Line 5

The left end point is labeled plot while the right end point is labeled character. I think this may be a scale of how plot- or character-driven the book is.

Line 6

This line starts at slow burn and ends at heart-racing, seeming to indicate that it is a pacing scale. Not all of the books are included on this scale. I am curious what this means for those books.

Level 3: Expert Mode

Line 7

The labels innocent and spicy suggest that this is a steaminess scale. Since only three books are marked on this line, I think it is a fair assumption to conclude only three of the picks include romance.

Line 8

This line is from magical realism to fantasy making it likely a fantasy scale. Again, not all of the books are marked, likely indicating that not all of the books have magic or fantasy elements.

Hint #2


Book # 1

Hint 1.1 (🔴): Title begins with C or D, On the shorter end of medium length (304), Set in present day or the future, Rural-ish setting, Primarily plot-driven (~70%), Heart-racing, Fantasy elements/world

Hint 2.3: Duolingo app, Earphones, Wine corks, Old skeleton key, Faber Castell (art) pencils, Blue bikini top in a leather shoulder bag

Hint 3.2: Uffizi Gallery, Piazzale degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy
This one was a little tricky. As soon as I saw the color of that river, I knew this was in Europe. I looked up Monteperso, which is right outside of Positano, and thus, the terrain looks very different than the hint.

Diavola

Jennifer Thorne

Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.

Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive.

It isn’t easy when she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t quite fit in. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow so much he’s practically dissolved, and her older sister, Nicole, is so used to everyone―including her blandly docile husband and two kids―falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet.

The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails―the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.

(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Publication Date: March 26
Publisher: Tor Nightfire


Book # 2

Hint 1.2 (🔵): E, Short (272), Present/Future, Los Angeles, 60% Character Driven, Not on pacing line, Just on this side of innocent, Magical Realism

Hint 2.1: Paris snow globe, dog leash, San Francisco pin, Pasadena post card, Slip of blank paper, and Doc Martens boots with a doggy bag leash attachment (as the bag)

Hint 3.6: Silver Lake Reservoir, Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA

Expiration Dates

Rebecca Serle

From the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years and One Italian Summer comes a love story that will define a generation.

Being single is like playing the lottery. There’s always the chance that with one piece of paper you could win it all.

Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they will be together. The papers told her she’d spend three days with Martin in Paris; five weeks with Noah in San Francisco; and three months with Hugo, her ex-boyfriend turned best friend. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake.

But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction, and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t, information that—if he found out—would break his heart.

Told with her signature warmth and insight into matters of the heart, Rebecca Serle has finally set her sights on romantic love. The result is a gripping, emotional, passionate, and (yes) heartbreaking novel about what it means to be single, what it means to find love, and ultimately how we define each of them for ourselves. Expiration Dates is the one fans have been waiting for.

Genre: Romance
Publication Date: March 19
Publisher: Atria Books


Book # 3

Hint 1.3 (🟡): J to M, Medium (320), Historical/in past, Rural, 50% Plot/50% Character-driven, Medium paced, Not fantasy, Not romance

Hint 2.5: Renaissance painting, Old pencil, Tomatillo?, Old Axe, Slingshot, Old notebook in a burlap bag

Hint 3.3: The Mark Twain Boyhood Home Museum & Tom Sawyer’s Fence, Hannibal, MO

James

Percival Everett

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view • From the “literary icon” (Oprah Daily) and Pulitzer Prize Finalist whose novel Erasure is the basis for Cord Jefferson’s critically acclaimed film American Fiction.

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

Genre: Literary/Historical Fiction
Publication Date: March 19
Publisher: Doubleday


Book # 4

Hint 1.4 (🟢): H to M, Between medium & long (368), Present/future, More rural/small town/city, 90% plot-driven, 75% heart-racing, Not romance & not fantasy

Hint 2.2: Wallet or planner, White rose, Black bishop, Crumpled yellow paper, Mushroom notebook in a green Dickies bookbag

Hint 3.5: Holt Wood, East Dorset, England, UK
I looked at Castle Knoll on a map since it is mentioned in the synopsis. I had to zoom out quite far to see the features of the hint. Because it is so zoomed out, it is difficult to name the exact village.

How to Solve Your Own Murder

Kristen Perrin

For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate…. Now it’s up to her great-niece to catch the killer.

It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.

In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?

As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.

Genre: Mystery
Publication Date: March 26
Publisher: Dutton


Book # 5

Hint 1.5 (🌚): S or T, more long than medium (352), in the past/historical, very rural, quite character driven, slow-burn, open-door romance, fantasy

Hint 2.4: Loaf of bread, Male wedding band, Anchovie?, Feathers, Spool of thread, Knitted blanket in a lined basket

Hint 3.1: Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada
The Selkie Wife is an ancient Celtic myth, but the synopsis mentions Nova Scotia. It took some work to find the exact location since Nova Scotia is all coast line.

A Sweet Sting of Salt

Rose Sutherland

Once a young woman uncovers a dark secret about her neighbor and his mysterious new wife, she’ll have to fight to keep herself—and the woman she loves—safe in this stunning queer reimagining of the classic folktale “The Selkie Wife.”

When a sharp cry wakes Jean in the middle of the night during a terrible tempest, she’s convinced it must have been a dream. But when the cry comes again, Jean ventures outside and is shocked by what she discovers—a young woman in labor, drenched to the bone in the bitter cold and able to speak barely a word of English.

Although Jean is the only midwife for miles around, she’s at a loss for who this woman is or where she’s from; Jean can only assume that she must be the new wife of the neighbor up the road, Tobias. And when Tobias does indeed arrive at her cabin in search of his wife, Muirin, Jean’s questions continue to multiply. Why has he kept his wife’s pregnancy a secret? And why does Muirin’s open demeanor change completely the moment she’s in his presence?

Though Jean learned long ago that she should stay out of other people’s business, her growing concern—and growing feelings—for Muirin mean that she can’t simply set her worries aside. But when the answers she finds are more harrowing than she ever could have imagined, she fears she may have endangered herself, Muirin, and the baby. Will she be able to put things right and save the woman she loves before it’s too late, or will someone have to pay for Jean’s actions with their life?

Genre: Historical Fantasy/Myth & Legends
Publication Date: April 9
Publisher: Dell


Book # 6

Hint 1.6 (🟣): R or S, On the longer end (368), Present/future, City, More character-driven, Pace N/A, Spicy romance

Hint 2.6: Dry spaghetti noodles, Box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Microphone, Sum Bun Sunscreen, Shoe/Cleat, Football in a hard-shell suitcase with wheels.

Hint 3.4: Little White Wedding Chapel, Las Vegas, Nevada

The Rule Book

Sarah Adams

College exes break all the rules when they reunite years later in this enemies to lovers, second-chance romance, the highly anticipated companion novel to the TikTok sensation The Cheat Sheet—from the New York Times bestselling author of Practice Makes Perfect.

Nora Mackenzie’s entire career lies in the hands of famous NFL tight end Derek Pender, who also happens to be her extremely hot college ex-boyfriend. Nora didn’t end things as gracefully as she could have back then, and now it has come back to haunt her. Derek is her first client as an official full-time sports agent and he’s holding a grudge.

Derek has set his sights on a little friendly revenge. If Nora Mackenzie, the first girl to ever break his heart, wants to be his agent, oh, he’ll let her be his agent. The plan is simple: make Nora’s life absolutely miserable. But if Derek knows anything about the woman he once loved—she won’t quit easily.

Instead of giving in, Nora starts a scheme of her own. But then a wild night in Vegas leads to Nora and Derek in bed the next morning married. With their rule book out the window, could this new relationship save their careers or spark the romance of a lifetime?

Genre: Romance
Publication Date: April 2
Publisher: Dell

Repeat Author


One response to “April 2024 Aardvark Book Club Hints & Selections”

  1. thx for your fun & clear analysis of their awesome hint games – I look forward to your posts (when you can) and enjoy your clean design aesthetic 🎉Lisa /healingtothemax

    Liked by 1 person

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