**With my tea already made and set up on the table, I go right over to my shelves. I have to keep my eyes peeled and pick off the books that I read in March and April. I slide each one off the shelf and pile them on the table on my left side. Four, five, six . . . I look through my reading journal and try to figure out what book is missing from my pile. Ah, yes. My second March read. Once I find it from the shelves, I sit back down and start to write.**

Welcome back to the Bookishcore blog. Since I have already shared my reads for January and February, I wanted to move into my March and April reads. As always, let me know if you have read any and what you thought.

The first book I read in March was Call It What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer. Brigid Kemmerer is an all time favorite author of mine so I have been trying to make my way through her books. This one is a ya contemporary following two characters going through difficult situations. Her contemporaries are always hard hitting stories and I love them for that. I really enjoyed this story. It was emotional and you can really get an understanding of what these characters are going through and how it makes them feel. Her characters are always very flawed and don’t always make the best choices, which makes the story even better. I read this one in two days and was really invested in reading more. I rated this one a 4/5 stars.

My second read was Onyx by Jennifer L Armentrout. I actually didn’t mind Obsidian, the first book, and wanted to continue on. The books may be a bit cheesy, but they really suck you in and you get invested in the story. Since this is a sequel, I won’t go too much in depth, but I really enjoyed this one. I liked getting to see what Kat and Daemon were up to and the banter between the two is always entertaining. Obsidian is about a girl named Kat who moves to West Virginia and befriends her new neighbor, but can’t seem to get through to her new friend’s annoying twin brother. Little does Kat know, her new neighbor, the annoying boy next door, is an alien. Cheesy? Maybe. Entertaining? Definitely. I rated this a 3.5/5 stars.

The next book I read was Promchanted by Morgan Matson. This was an anticipated release of mine since Morgan Matson is a favorite author, but this one let me down slightly. I wrote a review for this book, which will be my next post, so if you want to learn more about the book and my feelings on it, give that a read. Here, I will just say that this seemed like a great concept to me, but the execution was not my favorite.

My next read was Little White Lies by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. I have been loving Jennifer Lynn Barnes since I read The Inheritance Games in 2021, and also loved The Naturals series by her. This was another one, like Promchanted, where it was not my favorite book by the author. This one is a bit harder for me to explain though, since there was nothing inherently wrong with it. It follows a girl who has a flighty mother and doesn’t know anything about her father. She gets an offer from her estranged grandmother to come live with her for nine months and become a debutante, in exchange for a large sum of money and the chance to figure out who her father is. Sawyer, our protagonist, takes her up on the offer and meets a whole family she never knew about. This was an interesting read, but just not one that fully captured my attention. I was hoping for higher stakes and more mysteries, like in the author’s other series, but this one felt a bit more . . . tame, I suppose. This was another 3.5/5 stars, and I do still want to read the sequel.

Going into my April reads, the first book I read was Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. Usually, it takes me a lot longer to get to a sequel, but I really liked Fourth Wing and the sequel was just calling to me. I will not go too much into this one, seeing as it is a sequel, but I enjoyed this one. I don’t think it was as good as the first book though. I didn’t really like how in this one the relationship is a bit more established. I think the characters were arguing for way too much of the book, and Violet needs to see Xaden’s point of view a bit more. Even though I have some complaints about this book, I still really enjoyed it. I loved getting to see the characters again and loved the action. Like I said, I can’t get too into it, but know that I liked it and the ending definitely made me a bit emotional. I gave this a 4/5 stars.

The next book I read was Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood. This is my second Ali Hazelwood, after reading The Love Hypothesis a year or two ago. I have come to the conclusion that her books are not for me. The Love Hypothesis was a low 3.5 stars for me, and Check & Mate was one I enjoyed less. This was a very fast read, and I thoroughly enjoyed the chess aspects, which made this novel very unique. Other than that, there was not much I enjoyed. I did not like the two main characters, Mallory and Nolan. Mallory’s whole personality is beating herself up for something that was not her fault, which I understand, but she can’t seem to grasp that there were other people at fault. Nolan had no personality and the romance seemed very surface level. I felt no connection whatsoever between these two so it was a bit of an uncomfortable dynamic. I also thought that Mallory’s family, especially her middle sister, were extremely ungrateful. Mallory is taking care of everything in the house, including cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, and practically raising her sisters, but her family makes rude comments about her. She is eighteen and has to run the entire household because her mom isn’t, and then they have the audacity to make comments about things like her cooking. Her sister also complains that she is never around, but she can’t be because she is providing for everyone. I also felt like her two sisters, who were twelve and fifteen, were slightly unrealistic. All they do is swear and speak in ways way too inappropriate for their ages whenever they are on the page. Look, I don’t know what twelve and fifteen year olds are saying, but I felt like they were unrealistic in that sense. Overall, I was not the biggest fan of this book, and I don’t think that I plan on picking up another Ali Hazelwood, at least right now. This was a 3/5 stars for me.

The last book I finished in April was Destroy the Day by Brigid Kemmerer, which was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. I love Brigid Kemmerer’s books, and have been loving the Defy the Night series. One of my biggest issues with this book is that the two protagonists that we know and love, Tessa and Corrick, are separated for probably 70% of this book. It makes it hard to feel invested when our romance is not blooming because the characters are not together. Though I hated that they weren’t together, I did enjoy the feelings that each showed. The other thing I did not really like about this one was Harriston’s POV. I do see why it was included, because it allowed us to see the political unrest in Kandala, but he was not a character I enjoyed reading from, and found myself excited to move on to either Tessa or Corrick. Even though I had some issues with this story, I still enjoyed it. The characters, the story, the politics, and the romance are all so well crafted and keeps me wanting more. I am thoroughly obsessed with this series and every other book by this author. I am still going to give this a 4/5 stars, just like I gave the first two, even if I didn’t enjoy it as much, because I love the characters and world and am sad to leave them behind. I just wish we had more Tessa/Corrick moments.

Those are all of the books I read in March and April. Let me know if you have read any of them and what your thoughts were on them.

xoxo,

Just another reader