Wrap Up: April 2018

Good morning, everyone and happy Monday! Or, is it a happy Monday? I guess some of you might be enjoying a day off today (I know both my parents have today off too because tomorrow is a national holiday here in Germany) so I hope you take full advantage of that! You know, maybe finish that book you keep meaning to read (*hints at self*) or just take a day to take care of yourself!

For today’s post, I wanted to wrap up all of the books I’ve read this past month and let me tell you guys something: April was such a good reading month? I read a total of 10 books and had an average rating of 3.875 stars – so basically 4 stars. And that’s AWESOME. Since this post is bound to get pretty long as it is, let’s just jump right in!

Books I Reviewed

As I’ve done for the past few wrap-ups, I’m going to refer you guys to the reviews of books I’ve already shared on the blog to save us all the trouble of having to read too much for a wrap-up, especially if it’s another good reading month.

   

So, if you want to read more about my thoughts on Starfish click here and for my mini-reviews of Percy Jackson, Shatter Me and The Raven Boys click here!

 Books I Haven’t Reviewed (Yet)

My original plan was to read Geekerella during the Easter Readathon too but unfortunately, that didn’t happen! However, as you can see I did finish it this month after all!

As you might be able to tell by the title of the book, this was a Cinderella retelling – and that’s exactly what you got. Unfortunately, this also meant that there wasn’t much in terms of surprise elements to the story or anything like that. The second you start reading this book, you know exactly what you’re going to get.

Luckily, I didn’t mind that too much! I read Geekerella in a day and while I knew exactly what I should expect, I still had a good reading experience! And as was just announced, there’ll actually be a companion novel to this book in which we fellow Darien’s co-star Jess, called The Princess And The Fangirl!

Hey, my name is Swetlana and just in case you didn’t know: I am obsessed with all things Shadowhunter Chronicles.

Now that you know this, it probably comes as absolutely no surprise to you that I jumped on reading this novella in no time (in fact, I read it on release day). We’ll be getting a new novella bind-up Ghosts Of The Shadow Market in 2019, but before that, we’ll get one of the novellas each month and you guys, I am SO excited for this? This one is about one of my all-time favorite characters in this universe: Brother Zacharia! And there’s honestly no such thing as too much about content about this character. Ever!

So yeah, as you can see by my rating I loved this book. Wholeheartedly! I teared up, I cried, I laughed and loved every second of it. I had similar-ish reactions to the mention of certain characters in Lord Of Shadows so I should have known what this book would put me through but I was still quite surprised! I, honest to god, cannot wait to read more stories each month. Can you believe our wait for Queen Of Air And Darkness has just been made so much better (or worse, if things continue on this level emotionally)?!?!

In a very full circle type of situation, I got my wish granted to read Leah On The Offbeat early and I couldn’t have been more excited. You might’ve actually seen my immediate reaction to it on Twitter (spoiler if you didn’t: I kind of lost it).

Anyway, I don’t actually want to talk too much about this particular release because I will be sharing a review next Monday (I know I had originally planned to post it earlier, but the publisher send out an email asking us to wait until after the UK release) but just take a look at my rating or check out any of my social media – I haven’t been able to shut up about this book for days now – that’s how much I loved it. So yes, you absolutely should get your hands on this!

If any of you guys follow me on Twitter, you may or may not have seen me fangirl over Alice Oseman recently.

I basically blame Jackie for introducing me to this author and making me want to inhale all her books – especially her upcoming book I Was Born For This which literally sounds like it was written in parts for me. Alice has shared the first two chapters of her upcoming book on her YouTube channel, so PLEASE check them out and if you can, pre-order yourself a copy! I know I’m impatiently waiting for my copy to ship (update: IT HAS BEEN SHIPPED)!

But! That’s not even what we’re here to talk about, is it? But it’s related to this book because after I heard the narrators for Alice’s upcoming book I knew I wanted to check out her previous books in audiobook format too (especially this one as it has the same female narrator), so that’s exactly what I did!

And you guys. You guys. You know how sometimes you just want a nice and fluffy contemporary to read? Yeah, that’s what I thought this would be but it turned out to be so much darker and heavier in the subjects it covered but I loved it so much more for it. Please, if you go into this book make sure you check for trigger warnings online!

Something I’ve seen Alice do is integrate diversity into her books just as naturally as it is in our everyday life! Radio Silence features Frances, a bisexual British/Ethiopian female character, Aled a who is demisexual (and it’s actually on the page. And discussed) and Daniel who is a gay South Korean immigrant. There are many more characters in this book that have a diverse background but these are the three that we spent the most time with, so I thought I would include them!

Honestly, if you like your contemporary a bit more heavy hitting – this might be what you’re looking for! Plus, if you like exploring fandom and its relationship to the celebrity – this book covers that too! And it does it well too, in my opinion!

The next book I finished was a buddy read with Lia and also a reread for me in order to get myself ready for the release of A Reaper At The Gates by Sabaa Tahir! But I don’t want to actually talk about this book too much here because I was thinking of doing a separate post on why you guys should read this series in the next few weeks! I just wish the UK publisher had responded to my email about an ARC because then I could yell at you guys even more and try to make you read these books – but that never happened.

Just know that I really love this series so far and I am impatiently waiting for Reaper because I just need to know what happens next. This particular book went places I did not expect and I am somewhat afraid to see where else Sabaa is going to take us with this upcoming book!

Now, if you’ve read this post and counted the books, you might have realized that I only talked about 9 books even though I said I finished 10. There’s a reason for that and I’ll probably talk more about this in my May wrap-up, just know that I did finish another book.

So, we’ve talked all about the books I read this past month but I also really want to know what you guys have read in April! So, down in the comments please let me know if you’re happy with your own reading month, what your favorite reads were and if there was something you didn’t end up enjoying as much as you had hoped?

Did you get to read any highly anticipated releases for April? Or are there about a hundred on your list for May? I’m already wondering how I’m going to read all those May releases I’m freaking out about (one of which has already been shipped and I CANNOT wait) on top of any other books that might spark my interest! I mean, I’m still not caught up on those Fall 2017 releases. xD

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