April Reading Wrap Up

April was a great reading month for me. I'm really trying to get through some books that have been on my shelves for years, and I felt like I started to make a little dent in this. It's forced me out of my comfort zone to try and read books that I thought I'd enjoy a few years ago and my reading tastes have changed a fair bit since then, but I actually ended up not hating anything I read this month.
As always, I'm going to start with the kindle reads, so let's go!

1.) Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert - 4/5 stars
It's been a while since I've read a straightforward adult romance, and this one is a great read. Chloe Brown is determined to make her life a bit more interesting again after having her confidence hit from a bad breakup and from losing some friends after her fibromyalgia worsened. When Red, her building's maintenance man, offers to help out with her bucket list for it, she doesn't quite anticipate just how involved they'll get. 
I really enjoyed this - I loved the fact that the main character in a romance book is a fat woman who also has a disability which affects her life in a multitude of ways but doesn't take away from how loveable and sexy she is to other characters in the book. The only thing I didn't get on with in the book were the sex scenes - I just didn't gel with the writing of them.

2.) Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert - 3/5 stars
This is the second book in the Brown sisters' romance trilogy. I didn't quite enjoy this one as much, in part because I didn't relate to Dani's character as much, and in part I think because I wanted more sister/family interaction, which I felt there had been more of in the Chloe Brown book. 
Dani Brown's a university lecturer who is determined to only have sexual, not romantic, relationships with people after a bad breakup. However, when Zaf comes along and is nothing but kind to her, she's torn between what her head says and what her heart says. Again, I didn't gel with the writing of the sex scenes in this book, but it was a read that I still liked.
3.) A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly - 4/5 stars
This was my most surprising read of the month - I really didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. A Gathering Light is loosely based on a historical murder in the US, and is split across two timelines. One is when main character Mattie Gokey is in her final year of schooling and caught between the duty of staying at home to look after her family and her desire to go to college. The other is further down the line when Mattie is working at a hotel and reading the letters of one of the guests who has mysteriously drowned. 
I loved the rural Southern slow style of this book, and it reminded me of books like Where the Crawdads Sing and The Colour Purple because of it.
4.) The Manifesto on How to be Interesting by Holly Bourne - 3/5 stars
This was a bit of a slow burn for me. I started off hating it, but as it progressed I warmed to the characters and writing a lot more. The book's about a teenage girl who wants to become an author, and decides - after another book she's written is rejected by every publisher - that what she needs to do is have a more interesting life. So she gets a makeover and starts to climb the social ladder at school, goes on a mission to lose her virginity, and strikes up an affair with a teacher, all whilst documenting everything on her blog. 
The book touched on a lot of important and taboo topics, including self harm and paedophilia. I struggled at first with the romance of the teacher-student relationship, but I think Holly Bourne wrote it very well: it was romantic from this teen's point of view, but as the book progresses the whole idea is challenged and ultimately torn down.
5.) An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena - 5/5 stars
Shari Lapena at this point is probably my favourite thriller author. Her books never disappoint and I've never quite nailed whodunnit in any of them. This one is set in an out of the way B&B that loses power and road access after a massive snowstorm. The bigger issue is that on the morning after the stormy night, the guests wake up to find one of them dead at the bottom of the stairs. After a second guest is killed, the guests start to worry about who is picking them off, who might be next, and become increasingly desperate to leave this holiday that's become a nightmare. 
I struggled a little at first with the sheer number of character perspectives in this book, but it added to the drama as you moved on: you were always finding out extra little titbits of info from different guests. The book was completely gripping and I didn't guess who the killer was until it was revealed (but it was still totally believable that they were they one who'd done it).
6.) One of Us is Next by Karen M. McManus - 3/5 stars
This is another author that's usually a safe bet for writing something I love, but this one just didn't quite hit the spot for me. Part of the problem is that it's the sequel to a book I read a few years ago now and I don't really remember much of it, so I felt like I was muddling through the book a bit. 
Set after the scandal from One of Us is Lying, this book takes place in the same high school where the kids are trying to recover from their collective trauma. When a text goes round threatening to spill a secret unless someone does a dare, most of the kids think it's another Simon copycat who doesn't have anything to actually spill. That is until the text goes ignored and a massive secret gets spilled. From here, things only escalate. This was another slow burn for me - by the end I was totally gripped and desperate to find out what happened, but at the start I felt a bit lost. The ending for me also felt a bit meh, and I would have liked things tied up a bit tighter.

What did you read in April?
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