Lili Lost in a Book: Monthly Wrap-Up: April 2023

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Monthly Wrap-Up: April 2023

In April I read 4 novels and 1 novella for a total of 5 books and 2107 pages! (And I also DNFd my first book of the year this month... yay 🙃). That's about 100 pages less than last month, but it's not too bad.

2 were part of a series and 3 were standalones

And I finished a series! Yay! (That one was a genuine 'yay' lol)

1 was an ARC and 4 were finished copies
2 were 5-star books, 1 was 4-stars, and 2 were a 3-star books
2 were from new-to-me authors, and 3 were previously read
3 were adult, and 2 were YA
4 were fiction, 1 nonfiction
1 was urban fantasy, 2 sci-fi, 1 mystery thriller, and 1 about medical science

Books read this month:

I started off the month with some more Julia Huni. The fact that I'm all caught up on the Space Janitor series, and now I'm almost caught up with the Colonial Explorer Corp series makes me so sad because I love this world! The Saha Declination was SO good! Siti is on her senior mission before she graduates, but things go all sorts of wrong for her and her friends! It was insane and I enjoyed it! Lol.

And omg I FINALLY finished Chain of Thorns! I swear, I had been reading this book since February (although to be fair, I did take a break from it for a while lol). The Shadowhunter world is another world I love, and Cassie Clare always writes the most lovable characters, but good god was this book long! It's not my favorite series in the Shadowhunter Chronicles, but I still did enjoy it! I miss the characters already 😢

I was very excited to read Lying in the Deep, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I don't usually suffer from secondhand embarrassment, unless it's a contemporary, but even then it's never been as bad as reading this book. The MC made bad decision after bad decision and... I usually enjoy a good trainwreck, but I didn't here. It wasn't a bad book, it just wasn't for me.

The Scourge Between the Stars was a short, suspenseful space horror book. I wasn't totally blown away by it, but I didn't hate it. I think my favorite thing about the book was the complicated relationship between the main character and the droid, especially as things on the ship got more and more dire.

And the last book I read in April was my 3rd nonfiction of the year! Quackery was so good! It was informative but fun. Seriously, some of the cures from back in the day... wild 😳

Favorite book of the month:

Obviously I loved my Shadowhunters, but I also really enjoyed Quackery! An informative, nonfiction science book with humor thrown in is a thing I'm realizing I really enjoy.

Least favorite book of the month:

And my least favorite book is the one I DNFd 🙃 I DNFd it at 23%, so I did give it a shot. The premise sounded interesting, but good god I could not take the racism or sexism in the book! The crew consisted of seven people, with two of them being female. At one point one of the guys was like, "oh it's a good thing the women are both attractive because it could be a long year..." like they weren't two professionals there to do a job and instead were there to entertain him 🙃 No thank you.

Books reviewed this month: