April Reading Wrap-up

My birthday month is finally upon us, so it’s time to do an April reading wrap-up and see how it compares to the TBR I made last month.

Graph from StoryGraph showing books read (9), pages read (2451), average rating (4.21), my top reads, and a graph showing my page count for the month, three pie charts: fiction vs nonfiction (86% vs 14%), and reading format (digital 89% vs print 11%). It also shows a chart with the number of books I read in each genre.

I started out April very strong, finishing four books in the first eight days of the month. Unfortunately, that fire died down as I started rewriting my women’s fiction book and as my desire to read physical books declined. Because two of the ARCs I had to read were physical, I slowed down significantly and procrastinated a bit, so I only got The Floating World finished and not Love at Second Sight. I really blame this on getting a Kobo Libra Colour because I’m obsessed with reading on it. I don’t even want to read on my phone anymore.

I’ve also now hit 46 books read this year, so I’m inching even closer to my goal of 50 books, which I should hit this month barring catastrophe. Two of the nine books I read this month were client books and the other seven were personal reading. As mentioned in previous wrap-ups, the client books aren’t counted in the page count, ratings, or genre breakdown on StoryGraph. I had several clients ask me to read excerpts of their book this month, and since they’re not full-length books, I didn’t count them in my books read.

April had my highest average rating this year with a 4.21. I don’t give star ratings on my blog because I think it’s more helpful to know what I actually thought, but I do like using them on StoryGraph just to give myself a quick idea of what I thought of the book. My only five-star read this month was The Wedding People, which I will review on the blog at some point, but I did enjoy the majority of the books I read.

Cover collage from Storygraph showing covers of I Think They Love You, A Legend in the Baking, The Wedding People, The Blood Trials, Holier Than Thou, Kaya Morgan's Crowning Achievement, The Floating World, and two Beta/sensitivity reading covers

I read four of the seven books on my April TBR, which isn’t bad. I would have liked to get to them all, but there’s always May. I also read Kaya Morgan’s Crowning Achievement, which was a book on my Black Romance Book Fest TBR, so that’s a win for me. The past two months, I haven’t been able to finish Grown Women, so I’m going to take it off my TBR for now.

Calendar showing when I read each book this month along with the page count for ever day

I did read every day this month, but I was reading late at night, so I forgot to update it on StoryGraph, and I have no idea how much I read to go back and update it, so I just let it stay empty.

Since BRBF is this month, I’m going to prioritize finishing everything I want to read for that, so I can make sure I have the books I need to get signed. But since it’s my birthday month, and I have several book events to go to this month, I’m not going to stress myself about what I do or don’t read.