April Reading Wrap Up | A 1 Star Book?!?

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]I say it every month, but how has another 4 weeks gone by already? It's scary me to say, but here is my April reading wrap-up. And I have read a lot compared to normal. Complete mixed bag, and I feel like April feels like it's gone on forever cuz looking at the books at the bottom of this pile, I feel like I've read them months ago and I've already done wrap-ups of them, but I haven't. It's been a wild month. It was the first month of having a fantasy book club. So, out of the load of books I've just showed you, one of those was also a 540-page fantasy book. So, I'm really proud of myself because I thought with that fantasy book in the mix, I'd probably only read like a couple of books. But, it always helps when it is 21° outside.

[00:00:42]This never happens in England, and I'm not complaining. Underneath this jumper I've got on, I'm actually quite tanned.

[00:00:48]I'm loving life. But, there were some good books, there were some not so good books. Let's go through all of the books I read in April. Starting off with my first audio book of the month, I listened to Conviction by Jack Jordan.

[00:01:01]If you haven't seen me talking about it everywhere, we and I'm actually sat in front of them, but I hosted a book club event for his new book Deception last week, and I was like, "Hold on a minute, I've not read one of his most famous books." This is being adapted as we speak into a TV series, and I was like, "I need to have read it first." So, I was listening to that as we came into April. I think I was about 50% of the way through as March ended. I really enjoyed this. The audio was really good.

[00:01:31]The narrator was great. I feel like Jack Jordan's books are always a bit different. They have a real moral dilemma at the heart of every single book, and this was definitely fun. I really, really enjoyed the listen. So, would 100% recommend the audio of that.

[00:01:44]I listened to it on BookBeat, which I have an affiliate link for, which is always in the caption if you did want to listen to it for free. So, that was the first book. We then I dropped absolutely everything to read the new Lisa Jewell.

[00:01:59]This was my most anticipated read of the whole year. I literally abandoned all responsibilities to read this because I needed to read it before I saw a single review. It says on the back here Lisa Jewell's darkest thriller has arrived and I wouldn't say it's her darkest thriller. It is dark, 100%. If you liked Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell, then you're going to love this. It had very similar vibes. I feel like it was kind of a cross between Then She Was Gone and The Family Upstairs. I The one thing I will say about this is it very much goes back to Lisa Jewell's old style, which was very similar to Then She Was Gone in the fact that there's this horrible sense of dread running throughout the whole book. You know something horrendous has happened. You're not relying on a massive plot twist in the book. It's more just finding out what actually happened and why these horrendous things took place. So, no major plot twists. There were some that definitely still shocked me, but it wasn't what I would say is kind of trending in thriller books more now, which is the popcorn thriller, big twist, big shock factor. That wasn't what this was going for, I don't think.

[00:03:03]I think it was going for that dark suspense and it completely achieved that. I did really enjoy it. It wasn't my favorite Lisa Jewell. I definitely think None of This Is True is my favorite and it's going to be really, really hard to top it, but I did enjoy it. It was good fun and I think you guys are going to really enjoy it. I think it comes out July. It comes out in July, so get your pre-orders in. Then, if you haven't seen, I vlogged me reading When the Moon Hatched. This is a 540-page fantasy book. It was the first book we picked for our fantasy book club and don't think I picked the right book to try getting into fantasy with because, as I found out and as I now know having watched a load of other videos on this and reviews on this, this is a really, really complicated fantasy book and even a lot of people that regularly read fantasy have really struggled with this, and a lot of them don't like it because of that. All of that being said, if you haven't watched the vlog of me reading it, I actually really enjoyed this. I think I settled on a four star, which upon reflection, I think was a little bit generous. I think maybe I should have gone for 3.5, but I had a good time. I enjoyed the romance. I'm just a bit annoyed because I think the sequel comes out in a couple of weeks, and when I first finished this, I was 100% going into the sequel because I needed to know what happened.

[00:04:25]But now, it's been a couple weeks. I've kind of forgotten half of what happened, and can I be bothered to reopen that can of worms and get back into the complicated world I was in when reading this?

[00:04:36]Probably not. But, it made for a good discussion, and I'm really proud of myself for getting through it. I actually flew through it in a couple of days as well. So, I will still be going into more fantasy books over the next couple of months because I run the fantasy book club. I have no choice.

[00:04:50]But, hopefully, they won't be as complicated as this going forward, and I actually find some that I really enjoy.

[00:04:56]So, I think my final rating for that will probably be three and a half stars.

[00:04:59]This is kind of why I took a leaf out of Michaela's book and decided maybe it was best to rate books when I do my wrap-up instead of when I've just finished them because I do think four stars was too generous. Talking of book club, I then went into our regular book club's pick of the month, which is The Business Trip. This was such a flop for me. I was so gutted because a few of my friends really, really enjoyed this. We are discussing this tonight at book club, so I will be able to report back what everyone else thinks, but having spoken to a few people already, I don't think the reviews are overly positive. There are a couple people that I've also spoken to that have rated it five stars.

[00:05:37]I think this is just a very, very Marmite book, and I really, really didn't like it. The thing I always say, right, about Freida McFadden's books, for example, is if you go into a Freida McFadden book thinking this is going to be utterly ridiculous, really quite silly, but a bit of fun, you're probably going to enjoy it more. But, if you go in thinking it's going to be an incredible thriller book that's literary genius, then you might be disappointed.

[00:06:01]This feels like a Freida McFadden book, but not fun.

[00:06:05]>> [gasps] >> I just even if I'd gone into this thinking it was going to be a bit silly, I don't think I'd have enjoyed it. It just felt so unrealistic to me. And I can normally get on board with a thriller book that's not overly realistic, but this was just silly. None of the characters were likable to me whatsoever, and I just I did get through it relatively quickly. It's only just over 300 pages. Very much popcorn thriller, very much what's trending at the moment in thriller books, I think.

[00:06:32]But, for me, it was just stupid, and I really really didn't enjoy it. I gave it one star, and I don't give those out very often, but I just really did not like this book.

[00:06:43]So, that was a shame. I have no idea what it's going to be like discussing that book club tonight, but I guess I'll find out in a few hours. Luckily, I then went into something of complete different genre. I went into The One Day You Were My Husband by Rosie Walsh. Now, she wrote I'm just going to remind myself what it's called. The Man Who Didn't Call, which I saw in a supermarket a couple years ago, and really really wanted to buy it. I never did. I never picked it up, and I haven't really heard much about it since, but I know it's really popular. So, that drew me in straight away. We've also got quotes on the front that say things like "I was obsessed. A heart-wrenching love story. A mystery that shocks and surprises until the very end." That's the author of Broken Country that said that. So, that is always a good sign.

[00:07:24]And this was really fun. It wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be more of a page-turn type heartthrob romance, and it actually wasn't really.

[00:07:33]It had a lot more thrillery, mystery elements in it, which I really liked. I always say that I like in my romances there to be a bit of a mystery running throughout to keep me interested, and that was pretty much the whole story, and I I really wasn't mad about that.

[00:07:49]The plot twists in this, I vlogged reading it, but over on the other apps, not here. And my face when I found out, I was literally filming as I read the plot twists, and it was definitely a big shock. I will I really didn't see them coming, and I really like when a plot twist completely shocks me. So, overall, I really did enjoy this. I think I'll probably settle on three and a half stars for that. It was It was good fun, and it was something very different to what I normally read. And last, but by no means least, we actually have the book that you will have seen me vlog in last week's video, and that is Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter. Now, John Marrs actually picked this for me to read as part of the new series that I started reading people's recommendations. And this was good fun. It was It's really weird because the whole book is mixed media. There's no actual writing, paragraphs, chapters. It's all kind of a script of a TV show, but we also have messages, news article snippets, emails.

[00:08:51]The whole story is told through this mixed media. There's no normal chapters in between. The whole book is mixed media, which I did struggle to get on board with a little bit. It made it different. It made it something fun, but it does then become harder to get fully immersed in because you're kind of reading broken up bits of text the whole time. Overall, though, I did enjoy it. I think I settled on either three or three and a half stars. I haven't quite decided yet cuz I did only finish it not that long ago, but it was good fun. And like I said, something a bit different.

[00:09:21]I think maybe Maybe I will settle on a three star, but either way, I would still recommend it. Like I said, if you're just fancying something a bit different, and you've been reading a lot of the same kind of stuff, then it's definitely something different, and I didn't see the ending coming, and I quite enjoyed how the story played out. But overall, they are the six books I read in April.

[00:09:41]Like I said, that's actually more than I normally would, especially with a 540-page fantasy book in there. I'm impressed. I hope I managed to read just as many in May, especially with the two bank holidays we've got. I haven't got a May TBR video coming this month because someone, who I'm not going to tell you who, is actually picking three books for me this month. So, along with book clubs and stuff like that, it didn't leave much room for a TBR to be planned. So, the TBR jar is being given a rest this month, and we'll be back to using it in June, which should be good fun. As always, if you have made it this far, thank you so much for watching. Please do like, comment, and subscribe, and I will be back next Sunday with another video.

[00:10:23]Bye.