Hello fellow readers! I am here with my last round up for April and I feel really accomplished that I have already wrote all my reviews for it! I read 7 books to end out my month and had one more dnf. I also had 3 ARCs, 3 backlists and one re-read! Hope you ended the month with some good books! Let me know what you recently finished in the comments below!
The Sign For Home by Blair Fell – 2 Stars This book follows a deafblind person named Arlo who is looking for an interpreter to help him with a writing class he is taking at a community college. We follow both Arlo and his new interpreter Cyril. While in his writing class Arlo starts to re-think his memories and that maybe he wasn’t always told the truth about his past. I had a lot of problems with this book and the first one is that the synopsis pitches this as a romance and that Arlo goes on a journey to find his long lost love. Now this is a spoiler but he does not go to find her till 85% into the book. The entire first portion is his daily life and then flashbacks to when he was 17. This book was not a romance but a book on self discovery, knowing this may have helped me have a better frame of mind when I went into it. My other big problem with this is a personal trigger and that is using religion as a weapon and means of control. Arlo is a Jehovah Witness and this is a main part of his story and while that is not my religion I personally struggle with how it is portrayed in this book. I think there are people out there who will love this book and also need it for the representation that is in it. The author’s note went into some detail about that and I can appreciate where she was coming from. Again my problems with this book are mine and I hope if this book is something you were looking forward to reading that you still give it a chance. Thank you Atria for my #gifted copy of this book for review.
Giant Days Vol 1 by John Allison – 3 Stars This is a cute graphic novel that follows three roommates in their first year of college. Will try and pick up the next volume at some point.
The Wedding Season by Katy Birchall – 4 Stars Freya is dumped the day before her wedding in a broom closest by her partner of the last 12 years and her wedding was the first of the wedding season of which she had 8 other’s to attend to after hers. While trying to live like everything is fine, Freya’s two best friends devise a list of things she must do at each wedding to her focus and not feel depressed that she ended up not getting married. Along the way Freya meets someone who also helps forget that Matthew, her ex, destroyed the life she thought she wanted. Overall I really enjoyed this book, at times I was very frustrated with how self centered Freya came across when wanting everyone to feel sorry for her but since I have not been in this situation I can’t say for sure that that is not an appropriate reaction. Matthew was a piece of work and I hated every time he was in the book but I loved her best friends and everything they did for her even when one of the weddings was theirs. I grew up watching Friend Green Tomatoes and there is a scene towards the end of the movie where the main character hits a car with her own and yells “To Wanda” because she was tired of being walked on. There is a scene at the end of this book where I wrote the note “To Wanda!” because someone finally got their due! At times this book was sad, happy and encouraging and I loved that. The reason it is not a full 5 star for me is because this book was again marketed as a romance but the romance was on the back burner to her self discovery of who she was and who she thought she wanted to be. There is a romance in this and it was good one and I loved him a lot but again it was not the main focus. Thank you St. Martin’s Press for my #gifted copy for review.
Set On You by Amy Lea – 3 Stars Crystal is a curvy influencer who just wants to share with other people that you do not have to be ripped and skinny to be in shape or work out at the gym. She creates a drama in her head when another gym goes uses a machine that she had put her stuff next too, she starts to refer to him as her nemesis and starts antagonizing him. Of course in this romance it works out for her as he is grandson of her grandma’s new fiancé. The two get thrown together and sparks begin to fly. When I first started this one I was really enjoying it but I didn’t love the second half as much. I felt like there were too many conflicts and they kept popping up with the family illness, the keeping of secrets then the complete over reaction to an instagram post. Speaking of the instagram posts, I really hated them, didn’t read them and felt like they took me out of the story. Instagram is not know for lengthy worded posts, they do happen occasionally but the majority are pictures with the lengthy worded cations but not the ones in this book. They were multi paragraphed and felt like long winded tweets. I felt like they could have at least said pic description for the posts. I recently finished a book that did this much better, it had just a symbol showing there was a picture then did the caption for it. This one made a lot more sense to me. I did really like the message that Crystal was putting out there that all body types can use gym equipment and not everyone looks the same. Over all the book was ok but not my favorite. If you like romances set around gyms and personal fitness ten you might like to try this one out. Thank you Berkley for my #gifted copy for review.
Kulti by Mariana Zapata – 5 Stars This was a re-read for me and I still loved it. This follows A woman’s soccer star and her grumpy coach! This is an age gap romance and not a grump sunshine trope but Kulti (the coach) is a very big grump and I am here for it.
A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem by Manda Collins – 4 Stars This was a spur of the moment pick for me and I am glad I finally picked it up. Im trying to fill the void that Veronica Speedwell has left and this one did an ok job of it. This is a mystery and historical romance as well between a Lady who runs a newspaper and an inspector with Scotland Yard.
The Siren by Katherine St. John – 4 Stars I finally got to this book after getting from the publisher last year. This book was an experience and I was in it. The beginning started out slow for me but when I hit the 60ish% mark I couldn’t stop reading. This book follows the cast of a movie that is shooting in the Caribbean during hurricane season. Once the hurricane hit things got a little crazy in this one. Highly recommend if you want a thriller set around Hollywood types.
House of Hollow by – DNF I tried this one again and I just couldn’t do it. I was bored and I even went to read the end and I still had no desire to finish it.
BeckyBookstore 