April Reading Wrap Up

Well April was a month, but despite everything going on I was still able to get through a fair few books! So let’s go through them in chronological order.

First up, a book I won’t name but that gives me 287 pages towards my page count for the month.

Next I finished my reread for The Skulduggery Pleasant Grimoire by Derek Landy. This does unfortunately have a few publishing issues and innacuracies, but overall it’s incredibly enjoyable and I gave it 4*

Then I read Until the End by Derek Landy and OMG!!!! Okay to be realistic, this is most likely actually a 4* read. But because it’s the last book in phase 2? Well it gets a 5* for now 😂

Beowulf by Maria Davana Headly is a translation of an Old English epic poem into modern English, and also as a feminist translation. Fucking fantastic, I can totally see why this was told around the camp fires! 3.5* on CAWPILE but I think that will be going up.

Then I bought a secondhand book and read it straight away, From Ostia to Alexandria with Flavia Gemina by Caroline Lawrence. It had one specific issue with language, but overall very interesting and a fun companion non-fiction to the middle grade series! 3*

The Book of Mirrors by E.O. Chirovici was lent to me back in 2016 by one of my best friends… yeah I finally read it. And it was… fine. How disappointing! A story about the death of a famous professor many years prior. 2.5*

Going with a translated classic, from Swedish, The Brothers Lionheart is an absolutely gorgeous children’s book about brothers love that is officially one of my favourites! 4*s and likely to go up!

My non-fiction of the month was Natives by Akala and this was a fantastic discussion on the intersectionality of race and class in the UK. It certainly gave me a lot to research, which I love! 4.5*s!

An audiobook for the month, I went with Comfort Me With Apples which is a short horror novel (novella?) that delves into feminist topics and Adam and Eve. Fantastic and I want to read more like it! 4*

Gallant by V.E. Schwab was a little bit of a let down, but a fantastic concept of a book. An orphan reunited with a family that has to guard the divide between our world and the shadow world of death. It wasn’t in depth enough for me, 3.5*

The Count of Monte Cristo was finally finished this month!!! I’ve not written my review up yet (not even going to lie, it’s fully because it intimidates me) so keep an eye out for that next week, hopefully Monday, but it was a fantastic read and I gave it 4*s!

Second to last, The Book Jumper, this also doesn’t have a review just yet (because chronological order controls my life) but I really enjoyed it. Very much the same vibes as The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I felt that the ending wrapped up too quickly and that’s the only thing that dropped it down to a 4*

The Embroidered Book (another one that will have it’s full review up next week) is a chunker of a book that I was determined I would finish by the end of the month. On my tbr from the Goldsboro book box, this historical fiction COMPLETELY surprised me and I gave it 5*! 170s Europe with incredibly accuracy? Sign me up!

And that was everything I managed to read in April! I didn’t do balancing the books this month, because of everything going on. But I started with 118 books on my tbr and I finished with 120. No penalty but I do have more of a challenge in May! And I read 4887 pages last month. Impressive! And Until the End, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Embroidered Book definitely contributed to that.

What is your favourite book from last month? I have some amazing books but The Embroidered Book has *stuck* in my mind ever since I read it!

Until the End, a review

Until the End is the 15th and final book in the Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy. And wow. Oh wow. I have to actually figure out how I’m going to put my thoughts into words for this review. Wish me luck!

This is the first Skulduggery Pleasant book, that I’ve been reading with the Dead Famous Readalong gang where it’s not a reread for me! All the drama, this book was damn wild. There was so much new that was going on, brand new to the series, as well as threads being pulled together from the past 14 books. I loved seeing “easter eggs” from earlier books as well as still learning more about this world and these characters! I don’t think this is the last we’ll have seen of Skulduggery Pleasant just yet.

Well damn. Well. Damn. This was a helluva book. What do I even say? How do I even not spoil this? SO much happened. SO many twists and turns. I read this all in one sitting on the 13th April (because my Waterstones may or may not have broken embargo and let me pick up my pre-order a day early) sitting up till 0530 in the morning. But I just couldn’t put it down! I needed to know what Landy had done!

I think the way Landy handled the *topic from the end of the last book* (Landy really hates spoilers) was done incredibly well. There was a lot of collaboration, foreplaning, and it just showed how much this group all care about each other and how much of a little family they’ve become.

There was a great Doctor Who reference (can it even be called a reference if it’s an entire replicated plot?) that was so much fun to read. Landy can’t have planned that, but I love that he saw the opportunity and took it.

There were a lot of major plot points throughout where Landy did an amazing job at writing how the public at large would react to them. Both mortal and mages. It felt incredibly accurate and if it ever happened irl I know it would turn out like that! A mixture of good reactions, bad ones, and instinctive ones made in the moment.

Omen, of course, was a highlight of this book as he always is. We saw him develop even more and become an even stronger character in himself. It’s honestly been so lovely seeing him develop and I’ve loved how Landy handled his story arc. Him and Auger have had a fascinating storyline with the prophecy and their awful parents and I definitely want to see more from him in the future.

There were a couple of negatives. The first was one of the big bads of the story. There were two this time around, and one was amazing. Pretty much perfect. Mind blowing, everything. Twas great. The second one though? We didn’t spend enough time learning about this “big bad”, and so it ended up that… I didn’t really care? Because we knew next to nothing about why it was happening or anything about them.

And that leads on to my other negative, there was a very convenient plot point. Landy kinda backed himself into a corner with that one, and so without changing other aspects of the plot I can’t see any other way out. But at the same time it felt like he’d actually planned this all out, and that was disappointing. It was just such an easy fix, and that’s really not what I’ve come to expect from these books. But it’s the first time that we’ve had that from the SP series so I’ll let him off this once.

On CAWPILE I rated this one: Characters: 9, Atmosphere: 9, Writing: 9, Plot: 9, Intrigue: 9, Logic: 9, and Enjoyment: 9. Giving a score of 9.00 and a 5* rating.

Highlight here for trigger warnings: death, parental abuse, body horror, gore, violence, blood, kidnapping, medical trauma, police brutality, panic attacks, torture, gun violence, mental illness, abandonment.

Although I had one or two issues with the book, it was just so much fun overall that I really couldn’t bring myself to mark it down! If we ever get more from this world I think Landy has set everything up really well, there are questions I still want answers to and characters I still want more from. Let’s just cross our fingers that we see some more!

My April TBR Hopefuls, 2022!

It’s that time of the month again! I’m picking out all the books I wanna read in the next month and this time round I’m using Olivia-Savannah’s All The World’s A Page readathon for the prompts!

I’ve linked Olivia’s video here which tells you more about the prompts and the readathon, please do go check her out if you haven’t already because she’s a wonderful human.

Now I’m going to delve into the books! This time round? It’s just gunna be a list, I hope you don’t mind. I’ve got my tbr video going up in an hour on my YouTube channel if you do want more details on the books.

I want to listen to Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M Valente which I heard about from Kayla from BooksAndLala reading it a while back now. It’s supposed to have Stepford Wives vibes.

The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren was sent to me by the wonderful Veronica’s Shelf and I’m excited for this short Swedish classic.

One I was sent by Caitlyn from Mad Cheshire Rabbit for this Christmas past is Natives by Akala, I’ve been enjoying reading at least one non-fiction each month so far and I want to continue that.

The lovely Kari-ng for Books sent me The Book Jumper by Mechthild Gläser and I’m 100% here for diving into books in a setting mixed between Germany and Scotland (and it’s translated from German too).

Now that I’m up to date in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, I want to read the Grimoire by Derek Landy before I read the final novel!

And on that note, Until the End by Derek Landy, the last SP novel, is released on the 14th of April and you best believe I’ve got it pre-ordered! So of course I’ll be reading that!

The Illumicrate read for April is Gallant by V.E. Schwab and I’m looking forward to trying out some more from this author after reading a book from her in March.

Then a book that I’ve put on my tbr but I won’t be mad if I can’t get to it? Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley. It doesn’t fit any of the prompts for All The World’s A Page (that I’ve checked) but Kar-ing for Books gifted this to me recently and I’m just super excited for this feminist re-translation of the epic!

And then finally, I pulled a book out of my tbr jar in my YouTube video. So I need to read that too!

A fair few books, but at the same time they really aren’t that big. I think the biggest are the Skulduggery Pleasant books, and we all know I’ll fly through those. What are you wanting to read this month???