Folks, I think April was the best reading month I have ever had. So many excellent titles by so many excellent authors. From Samira Ahmed’s gut-wrenching and timely Internment—-one of the most impactful, important, books of 2019–to deliciously delightful contemporary romances like Jen DeLuca’s brilliant debut Well Met, Alyssa Cole’s best Reluctant Royals book yet A Prince on Paper*, and Lucy Parker’s endlessly witty The Austen Playbook, I hit the literary jackpot over and over again. I also got Flashed, Trashed, and crashed into. And I went to space with the just-as-good-as-everyone-says-it-is Polaris Rising. And I devoured a truly kickass Robin Hood retelling by Meagan Spooner, which sees Marian take on the mantle after Robin dies during the Crusades. Plus there was new KJ Charles! And new Cat Sebastian! Ugh, I feel so lucky to have had such a fantastic book haul! I could wax poetic about all of it.

But I do have one sticking point. I was a little bummed out by Anne Bishop’s Wild Country. I loved the core characters and could read an entire book that was just “slice of life” in Bennett, but I felt like the book meandered and the bad guys alternated between being boring and being unnecessarily violent to women. I love this world a lot, so I’m hoping any future books in the Others series will be more tightly focused.

*Was anyone else picturing Letitia Wright and Tom Hiddleston as Nya and Johan? Just me? Okay.

The Reading Rundown:
Internment by Samira Ahmed (young adult fiction)
Wild Country by Anne Bishop (urban fantasy, speculative fiction)
Flashed by Zoey Castile (out 8/27, contemporary romance)
Any Old Diamonds by KJ Charles (historical LGBT+ romance)
A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole (contemporary romance)
Well Met by Jen DeLuca (out 9/2, contemporary romance)
Trashed by Mia Hopkins (out 7/15, contemporary romance)
Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik (sci-fi romance)
The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker (contemporary romance)
A Duke in Disguise by Cat Sebastian (historical LGBT+ romance)
Crashing into Her by Mia Sosa (contemporary romance)
Sherwood by Meagan Spooner (young adult fantasy, Robin Hood retelling)

Backlist adventures: Molly O’Keefe’s The Story of Us, a secret baby romance that was originally published as a Harlequin SuperRomance in 2008.

On the wishlist/TBR:
Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev
The Pandora Room by Christopher Golden
Rebel by Beverly Jenkins
Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse