April Wrap Up

April went by both far too quickly and too slowly at the same time. Time is moving in strange ways and despite the weird and wonderful ways in which it works, April was a really good month for me. I celebrated my birthday at the beginning of April, spent some time with friends in Glasgow and celebrated another friend’s wedding. Somehow, in between all of that, I managed to read quite a bit, which was really nice!

Books read:

• The River of Silver – S.A Chakraborty
• For The Wolf – Hannah Whitten
• The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea – Axie Oh
• Blue Is The Warmest Colour – Jul Maroh
• One For All – Lillie Lainoff
• Spear – Nicola Griffith
• Dead Man In A Ditch – Luke Arnold
• Squire – Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas
• Our Violent Ends – Chloe Gong

In terms of reading, I got through more than I expected and probably the most I’ve got through ever. I normally average 4-5 books a month, so to get through 9 is pretty cool for me. I do put it down to mixing up my reading a little bit – I read a couple of graphic novels, listened to a couple of audiobooks and alternated between my Kindle and physical copies.

I have to say I pretty much loved everything I read in April, with the exception of Blue Is The Warmest Colour and For The Wolf. While I loved the artwork for Blue Is The Warmest Colour, the ending felt rushed and I felt like there was something missing that I can’t quite put my finger on.

With For The Wolf, again, I liked the concept of the Wilderwood and its history, but it was a shame it was never explained and expanded on. I do have to say that I liked Whitten’s writing style and there was definitely something that kept me reading, so I will probably pick up the sequel at some point. Having said that, the use of blood magic was difficult to read and I did struggle with that, so if you do plan on reading it, please be careful.

Everything else I read was a solid 4.5 to 5 stars and I’m taking that to mean April was a very good reading month. Particular highlights were One For All (a Three Musketeers retelling with a main character who has POTS), Our Violent Delights (review to come – still reeling from that a bit!) and Dead Man In A Ditch (Luke Arnold’s audio narration is absolutely fantastic). To be honest, I loved all of the other books I read and I could go into detail for each and every one of them, but I will refrain for now.

Goodreads / Storygraph reading challenges:

Another 9 books means I’m up to 27 books for the year and 54% through my reading challenge! It feels both pretty cool and pretty terrifying that I’m over halfway through my challenge and we’re not even halfway through the year yet.

Again, no progress on my Hodderscape challenge, but I’m hoping to read a couple of books for that in May, so hopefully May’s wrap up will have more of an update!

Other things:

I managed to clear a couple of Kindle books in April and I managed to read 5 new to me authors as well – April was definitely the month I got things back on track! Again, hoping to keep this momentum going into May, but now that I’ve said that, I’m sure something will change somewhere! (Although, I am very excited about my May TBR, so who knows? Maybe I will stick to it!)

My Illumicrate backlog reading has now been pushed to June – I’m writing this here, so that I will hold myself to it. I have 4 stunning books to read, so I better get to it!

Again, writing this here, so I can hold myself accountable – I’m going to try and balance the reading with other stuff a bit more. I’ve got a couple of games from the creators of Hades that I’m itching to play and I feel like I’ve neglected my Switch a bit.

On that note, here’s hoping April’s good vibes carry on and May is a good month too!