April 2018 Recap

I’m going to be honest and admit that April was pretty much a massive write-off for me.

Granted it wasn’t all bad. Blogging and reading wise I’d say I had a great month, and there were even a few highlights in my day-to-day life, but overall this was the month I just wanted to hibernate and not get out of bed until May arrived. Still, looking on the bright side, my year can only go up from here on out.

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Books I Read

The Empress by S.J. Kincaid – Five stars
Check out my review here.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi – Four stars
Check out my review here.

Lost Boy by Christina Henry – Five stars
Check out my review here.

Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu – Four stars

Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller – Four stars

Daughter of the Siren Queen by Tricia Levenseller – Five stars

From Twinkle, with Love by Sandhya Menon – Three stars

Ace of Shades by Amanda Foody – Four stars

Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli – Five stars
Check out my review here.

Leah on the Offbeat – Four stars

Angelfall by Susan Ee – Four stars

World After by Susan Ee – Five stars

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I am still behind on my Goodreads Reading Challenge, but I’m catching up. I was playing around with the idea of lowering my goal but now I’m more confident that I can catch up and I can read 125 books before the end of 2018. I got through 12 books in April, so I’m aiming to get through the same amount next month.

The best book I picked up in April was Lost Boy. Considering some of the other books I read this month, some of which were highly anticipated releases of mine for 2018, this is definitely a surprise but it was an incredible book. I love fairytale retellings but it’s rare I find a Peter Pan one I enjoy as much as I did this book.

The worst book I picked up this month was From Twinkle, with Love. I still enjoyed it, I did end up rating it three stars after all, but I just had a few issues with Twinkle’s character and some of the things she did, and as this book was told from Twinkle’s POV it made it hard to move past that and enjoy the other parts of this story as much.

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My WIP

I had planned to start re-writing my WIP this month, unfortunately due to the mess that was my April I never got around to actually writing anything.

What I did do was re-read my original draft from NaNoWriMo last year. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and I actually found a few scenes and chapters I can use in my new draft, which I am hoping to start writing next month.

I also have a new direction for two of my characters, which makes this about the hundredth new direction some part of my WIP has gone in. Slowly, little by little, I am recognizing less and less of my WIP from the idea I had last November when I started NaNo but that’s part of the fun of writing right?

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Life in General

Love, Simon was released in the UK at the beginning of April, so of course I rushed to the cinema to see it. Yes, it was as amazing as everyone has been saying it is, yes, I have already pre-ordered the DVD so I can watch it all over again, and yes, I would highly recommend it to everyone who hasn’t already seen it.

I also went to the midnight showing of Avengers: Infinity War with my friend the day it was released. It was an incredible film, but also shocking, heartbreaking, terrifying. I loved it, but why do we have to wait a whole year for the next one to be released?!

At the end of the month I went to Oxford for the day with my mum. We explored the city and saw some of the locations they filmed parts of the Harry Potter movies in, which was kind of exciting. Oxford is beautiful, and it also gave me another location for my Reading Around the World feature, so you have that to look forwards to at some point in the future.

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Sometimes when you’re having a bad month and feeling a little down the only answer is to buy books, which is what I ended up doing in April.

Books

• Renegades by Marissa Meyer
• Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray
• Defy the World by Claudia Gray
• Circe by Madeline Miller

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There are some incredible books being released in May, and two I really really can’t wait for are Legendary by Stephanie Garber and A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas. However the release of the latter means I need to try and get around to The Assassin’s Blade and Tower of Dawn, which have been sitting on my bookshelves unread now for longer than I care to admit.

I think May is going to end up being a quiet month for me. I don’t have a lot of plans and most of my money is going towards my big holiday this year which is coming up in June (not long to go now). So don’t expect a jam-packed May Recap from me at the end of next month.

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I hope everyone else had a good April, and I hope you all have an even better May as well.

Are you surprised by how quickly this year has gone so far (how is May here already?!) or do you have exciting plans for the summer coming up that mean you want the year to go by even quicker? Let me know what book you brought this month, has anyone else read Circe yet?

Happy reading!