Hello!

After a very mixed reading month in March, going from spending three weeks finishing ‘A Game of Retribution’ to reading 50% of ‘A Game of Gods’ in one day, I’m going into April with a renewed sense of capability in my ability to read! I’ve stopped being stubborn about reading without the support of an audiobook and I’m ready to be more consistent and finish more books this month!

This month was meant to be when my TBR got significantly shorter – usually, the way I make my TBRs is I have a bunch of categories that I wanted to be able to meet within my TBR, such as my monthly book club pick, some of my 24 in 2024 books and making the most of my subscription services which included Kindle Unlimited and Audible.

Last month I decided that I would no longer include KU and Audible on the list for the sake of it – reading from KU was just taking time away from reading my physical TBR and it just felt forced. I don’t read fast enough to justify having KU so I’ve officially cancelled that subscription now. With Audible, I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m relying heavily on audiobooks for co-reading at the moment so I have no doubt that I’m making the most of that subscription! So theoretically, this has taken four books off my monthly TBR list…

But April appears to be a popular month for new releases as I’ve got three pre-orders coming in this month! So overall, including a couple of books I should have read in March, my TBR for April is 9 books long, so not shorter in any way, shape or form! But I am more optimistic – having (nearly) finished over 1500 pages of the Hades x Persephone saga by Scarlett St Clair, I think I’m ready for anything!

First up, for my little solo book club I’m reading The Player of Games by Iain M Banks – the premise sounds pretty cool and it’s giving my sci-fi, Ready Player One vibes. Plus, it’s not too long which is the general priority of the books I choose for this month honestly!

Then, for my little book club subsidiary side project challenge of reading one book from my Famous Five box set by Enid Blyton each month, I’ve got my March read to catch up on Famous Five: Five Run Away Together and then my April read Five Go To Smuggler’s Top – these books are usually refreshing and nice palette cleansers between my other reads so I’m looking forward to getting caught up on these this month.

In my intention of reading two of my 24 in 2024 list each month (mostly unsuccessfully so far), I’m going to be reading The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien and The Fine Print by Lauren Asher this month. ‘The Hobbit’ is also the book my husband choose as our March book club pick, so reading it also helps me catch up on the book I absolutely should have read last month, but the fact this book ticks two boxes also makes my little virgo heart very happy.

And for another subscription I’m trying to make sure I make the most of (though I haven’t read any of my 2024 Illumicrate books yet… oops), my March Afterlight subscription arrived just this morning, so I will be reading The Kiss Countdown by Etta Easton this month! The one thing this tbr is mostly lacking is romance books so I am really looking forward to reading this space aesthetic contemporary romance about fake dating an astronaut!

The three new releases that I preordered this month are The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson, which was released on April 2nd so I do already have my copy of this one. I loved the first two books in the ‘A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder’ series but I really didn’t enjoy the third one, so I’m a bit dubious about Holly Jackson now but I was sucked in by a pretty special edition and all the content creators I’ve seen who have been reading ARCs of this book have been absolutely obsessed with it. I know I love a YA mystery so I’m letting myself be dubiously excited!

Next, releasing on April 17th, is But Everyone Feels This Way by Paige Layle – a non-fiction book from an autism advocate who actually helped me realise that I may be autistic and start my own journey to diagnosis! I’m a big fan of Paige’s content and I’m really intrigued to see how her narrative style translates to the page.

And last, but by no means least, on April 23rd Funny Story by Emily Henry is coming out – this is another one that I’ve seen so many good reviews of from people who’ve received ARCs and I’m really stoked to read my second Emily Henry book! I somehow deluded myself into thinking I’m a huge Emily Henry fan when I’ve only ever read one of her books before – I loved ‘Beach Read’, but I’m looking forward to figuring out whether I like this author generally or if I just liked the one book.

And that’s all 9 books I’m going to try and read this month! All whilst I’ve just finished off ‘A Touch of Chaos’ by Scarlett St Clair… With some quick maths, I have 26 days to read 9 books… That’s just short of 3 days per book, which might be a bit ambitious. I could do more maths to figure out the actual number of pages I need to read per day, but I could also spend that time reading so I’ll stick with that rough estimate!

As always, let me know what you’ve been reading and whether you’ve read any of the books on my April TBR!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx