and welcome back and listen let's just get straight into it this is my April wrap up I can't contain myself guess how many books guess how many books I read in April never read 16 books a month before I think before this my highest was 14 so like I really slayed slay energy this month it's giving it's giving share so today we're gonna be doing my April wrap up if you're new here I don't go through every book I read in the month like giving my opinions because I often vlog them all there's a vlog coming this weekend actually that will show you how I read so many books this month what I do is I do my reading statistics which I'm obsessed with I love reading statistics I'm such a nerd I think that's so interesting I love when I hear other people's so we go to them first then we do my disappointments my surprises and my hits so we're kind of going through like the best and the worst of the month for me that's just a lot more fun to film I think it'd be a lot more fun to watch and just like sing him which we go through like all these books so like three and four like in middle the road like it's just not that fun so I read 16 books this month in terms of pages read that is 4,387 which I don't know that's the most pages I've ever read so I read a lot of short books this month so the average pages per day is 146 the average book length was 274 pages so that shows you that I did read kind of few shorter books this month and that's what helped me read 16 but who cares look over there where my average rating was a 3.62 not my highest of the year so far not my lowest I had a few really good reads but I also had a few like middle of a road three stars so I don't know it doesn't feel like the best reading month in terms of quality I don't think interestingly the average time spent on my TBR for a book was eight and a half months I had owned the book on average for eight and a half months which is definitely the longest we've had whilst we've been tracking that I think our ones been like two months or something I've been reading a lot of books that I've just acquired but I read quite a few that have been on my TBR for quite a while this month which is actually I think that's quite positive I think you want a mix of both right there were some books on here that I literally just acquired that I read this month I think the longest book that had been on my TBR was 27 months that's quite a long time but I think you're eight and a half months I like that I got a few books that had been on my TBR for a longer off this month okay in terms of ratings I gave out two five stars one four point five star six four stars three three point five stars one three star one two point five star one two star and one one point five star in terms of the genres that I read I read oh my god I had nine fantasy I can't believe it was so much fantasy one graphic novel one magical realism one nonfiction one romance two sci-fi and one thriller no mystery this month or the thing is in May I'm worried so much mystery I've got a lot of mystery that I need to get to so I suppose that is going to balance it out in terms of the format I read one audiobook one ebook eight mixed media which probably means I had like the physical an audiobook or ebook an audiobook and six physical books so I typically do read a lot of mixed media I do like if I can getting the audiobook and the physical book and reading along I think it keeps me a lot more focused it just helps me read more essentially cause it's easier for me to get distracted in terms of audience I read oh it's interesting eight adult books one middle grade and seven YA so typically it's always been 50-50 between adult and then YA and middle grade which it is exactly this one like literally exactly but for the rest of the year I've been reading a lot more adult the reason I read so much YA this month is because I finished the Raven Cycle so that's three of those books I unwrapped one and wrapped up so it was kind of like skewed because of that but I I'm having to be a lot more like selective I think with the YA that I do pick up in terms of how I acquired the books one was from audible six were gifts two are from Kindred Unlimited four books I bought myself and three were sent to me by the publishers that's a pretty good mix oh series stats as many of you know I'm trying to finish a lot of series this year well I read five books that were partway through series but I read six books that were firsts in series and five that were stand-alone I started a lot more series this month I think I hadn't started any series this year until this month or maybe I started one in March so other than that I hadn't started any series this year and this month I started six but I DNF'd one of those series so it's fine well it's not fine because it means all of my progress I've made in finishing series this month this year is gone out the window I mean honestly the girl did it to her damn self but I've already made progress in some of those series and I'm hoping this month I'll finish two of those that I started this month so it should be fine and in author status I read one debut nine that I've read before and six that were new to me okay that is all our statistics let's get into the disappointments first let's talk about the books that made me sad bye for my most disappointing book of the month was the Gilded Ones by Namina for now I am so freaking sad about this I've got a whole reading vlog about this so like let's not get too into it see if you want to go through my whole experience you can go watch the wrapped up reading vlog for this month but um she wasn't it she wasn't it I'm sorry so we're following this girl she kind of finds out she's like a demon or has like demon blood and she gets they're like okay so these girls are hated in society right but also they're making the nation the king or whatever is making an army out these girls to like fight these monsters that are like plaguing the land so like we hate you but like you're like our most prized army ever the logic ain't it's um how did we get from point A to point B I feel like we need to recalculate he hated the writing this I'm so sad I gave this 1.5 stars which is the lowest rating I've given this month other than I gave one star one one star last month but I DNF'd that but I still wanted to rate it because I like feel like I'd suffered enough but this is like the lowest rated book I've given where I've actually finished the book the writing just was not for me it felt very cinematic I feel like it was described very well a problem I often have with like low rated YA is that I can't picture it I can't picture what's happening and that was not a problem I had with this but the writing just like really brought me up the wrong way I didn't feel like any of the characters had any character development they were like just basically like do you remember did anyone have those books as a kid where you'd have dolls and you'd have like cut out clothes this is a very niche reference cut out clothes you like make like it should be like pages and books be like Kyle closing make outfits in the books yeah these are like cardboard kiles with like cute outfits put on them I like don't remember who any of these people were that there was so many people and I don't I couldn't tell you any of them were it was just very disappointing for me I had high hopes there so there's a series like DNF this is the first in a series I'm not gonna be continuing on with the series the ending was disappointing I really did not like much about this and I feel so bad saying it I hate being mean but it's the truth I feel for me too my next disappointment I think I gave this two stars but actually it perhaps is a one I think I'm gonna change it to a 1.5 also which takes my average rating for a month down a little bit but it is the this assembly of Doreen Gerard by Ryan Collett so I read this in a reading vlog where I read books that publishes it sent to me I've been on my tbr for the longest amount of time I want to clarify I do get around to a lot of the art I got sent however back in the day I would often like not request books like publishers it's still now publishers like reach out say do you want a review copy of this book and I would just accept all the books I've like never heard of that I really had never heard of the author the ins and ups didn't interest me it was just like a free book so I was like yeah yeah okay and now I really try not to do that well I don't do that so like don't think I'm just like stealing all of the books from publishers and not reading them that's not what's happening I make a concert effort to get around to ones that are sent to me and I've requested it so like please don't panic this is like one of the weirdest fucking books I've ever read and not in a good way like enough in a bad way in a terrible way in a menaced society way this book is as much of a menace to society as will she stir is she's a kind of a mental breakdown she's like going through it darling has been through it she's looking on her window one day and she witnesses two young boys get killed in a car crash basically and she's like time to run time to run and she meets this very witch woman who kind of takes her under her wing and they go traveling together running away from this policeman who is obsessed with finding her to talk to her about the case it's very strange and then the ending of this book is one of this I don't understand it was trying to tell me something it was trying to be avant-garde it was like walking into an art museum and it being like this is the meaning of life look how it shows the fluidity but the stagnation and I'm like it's a piece of fabric it's a piece of fabric it's a piece of fabric do you know what I mean that was the energy it was so strange and I just hated the whole experience of reading it I just made myself I should just be an FD if I'm honest but I wanted to like finish it because obviously it was sent to me and I wanted to give it a fair shot and yeah and then like um well this was actually like probably a five-star prediction for me and I ended up giving it 2.5 stars and that was disfigured by Amanda Leduc so this is non-fiction about disability and fairy tales and disabilities representation in kind of media and fairy tales and I read this as the this was the March book club pick but typically I end up reading the book of picks in the next month because I like to read them really close to the live show so yeah this was my March patron book club pick and we all pretty much didn't like it we were all kind of like low ratings and had very similar opinions which is surprising because I've only really heard good things about this for me the main problem with this was it was half memoir half trying to be academic well not trying to be because it says I'm not trying to be academic but like it is kind of what it's trying to be academic nonfiction it's half and half and I don't think the two meshed well because I think it trying to try to extrapolate from each other when really they you can't make those kind of conclusions we all kind of felt like that and I would have genuinely preferred it be a memoir I love the memoir sections about Amanda Leduc's life and what she's been through I really liked the parts talking about how fairy tales have kind of played into her life and her perception of her own disability but then when it can translated into like the academic history of fairy tales history of disability aspects we were jumping from point A to point Z like it was like whoop there were a lot of very like big leaps made in conclusions and like very some statements that some of us were like you don't have to say it's not a big leap to say it's not a you know and it got a lits it is it reminded me of when I was like in year one at university and you would find say in a reading you did like lots of different readings for your essay and you found a line from a reading that in the context of the reading does not support your argument but if you just take that one line out of context it does I'm a genius it felt like we had a lot of that so I was very disappointed because I had expected so so much from this and it didn't deliver so surprises I didn't have many surprises this month I would say you only I only really had one and it's not even really a surprise but it's under one roof by Ali Hazelwood so this shouldn't be a surprise because the love hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood is the only romance I've ever given five stars I just was not expecting as much from this because it is a very short kind of novella and I thought we wouldn't have enough time to like get the romance going and like you know get really get into the nitty-gritty the romance but we did we did it I gave this 4.5 stars so we're essentially following these two characters as they have to live together because they own the same house they kind of own 50% of this house so they have to live together and they hate each other and then they you know obviously we know the direction it takes and Ali Hazelwood you know she just gets what I want she gets the kind of tension that I want to be built throughout the romance I love how they kind of went apart and came together very slowly I thought it was very beautiful I loved the scene at the end of the romance you know reached its peak but I will say Miss Ali Hazelwood and these two books has been a little bit obsessed with the girl being small you know like oh my god I'm so small I'm like is this gonna be a theme because I don't really like that in sex scenes and I'm like is this gonna be a theme throughout all of her books like they're gonna be like oh my god I'm so tiny so yeah I think if that annoys you be warned because it isn't the love hypothesis and it isn't this and I'm just hoping it's not in the other two novellas because it's like girl come on this can't be in every single one of your books like we can't do that but um yeah I really really liked it it's only like three and a half hours the audio book so if you liked the love hypothesis I would 100% recommend that you give this a listen okay time for the hits time for the hits so I only had two five more only but I had two five stars this month the first of which was a skin full of shadows by Francis Harding so let's talk about this I did this vlog at the start of the month for novelic I worked with an app called novelic which is like a book club book recommendation app which I really really enjoyed and I did like a video getting recommendations from the app and this is one of the recommendations I got I'd never heard of this book never heard of this author before and now she is like a favorite author who I want to read all of her backlist this was absolutely incredible probably my favorite book I've read so far this year it's about this girl who couldn't kind of like consume spirits it's getting weird and oh it's hard to describe this book without spoiling it I definitely recommend that vlog because I did a much better job than I'm gonna do now and her mother dies and she's sent off to live with her father's family her father is dead but she's sent off to live with his family and things are not they seem there's a little bit suspicious little bit suspicious things going on and I just love this it's set in a time of civil war in the UK it's got mystery elements I often say my favorite books are books that merge historical fantasy and mystery all together in my absolute favorite the writing in this was just absolutely gorgeous like some of my favorite writing ever like I was just obsessed with the cadence of the words the way that scenes were built up the way the characters of the word developed the way that also the plot moved the plot was never stagnant it was constantly moving constantly evolving constantly interesting I loved this and I literally cannot wait to read all of Francis Harding's other stuff it's like so clever I love clever books that aren't making a shout from the rooftops about how clever I am but like subtly clever and I just thought this was absolutely gorgeous I cannot wait to read all of the rest of her stuff I'm gonna be eating up I've already got thanks for my patrons I was ill last week and Rachel sent me two of her other books which was so kind and really cheer me up so I have those two now and I cannot wait to get to them and then my last hit for this month my last five star was under the whispering door by TJ Klunes this was also in that publishers sent me these books vlog and I'm gonna cry I'm gonna cry in this we're following Wallace Price who has just died and he goes to this he's sent to this tea shop which is the place you go when you die to kind of come to terms with that and there's like a found family that develops there and um this book is just absolutely gorgeous I love House of Serenity I don't think it's quite up there with House of Serenity for me I don't think the perhaps the characters and the plotting is as great but the ending of this was just so gorgeous and I think what it talks about in grief and loss and it's it's perception on death and kind of like the thoughts that it's giving to that is just so gorgeous and kind of puts this hopeful spin on everything without being like oh my god sunshine and rainbow as you know while still honoring that hurt that comes with that you know I just so gorgeous and I'm trying not to get emotional but it was just very very poignant and I think TJ Klunes has a great skill of writing books like this that feel so important and beautiful at the same time that feel like they're tackling difficult subjects whilst still being hopeful and being magical and retaining that magic so I absolutely loved it I thought it was amazing probably not loved it as much as House of Serenity but I still really really loved it so there we have it everyone that is my wrap up for April let me know what you thought of any of these books I've mentioned today let me know how you did in April let me know how many books you read if you beat me please let me know well that is a competition but it is um let me know how many books you read how your reading went I would love to know if you've gone to the end of this video I'm just feeling like a heart emoji come at your favorite color as a heart emoji let's spread the positivity going into me um I love you all so so much thank you so much for watching and I'll see you very soon in another video bye