April 2026 Reading Wrap-Up

Hello and welcome to my April 2026 reading wrap-up! April wasn’t a great reading month for me, to be honest. I completed 10 books, DNF’d several, and had only 1 true 5-star reading experience. I also soft-DNF’d a few that I still want to read but weren’t working for me at the time. But instead of dwelling on what I didn’t finish, let’s jump right into the ten books I did.

PLEASE NOTE: The title of each book links to its corresponding Goodreads page in case you want more information. Beside each title are affiliate links to each book on Bookshop.org (a great resource for Americans and Brits who would like to order books online but still support their local independent bookstores) and also on Booksellers.ca (the Canadian version of the same concept). I’ll receive a small commission from any purchase you make through the affiliate links, which I will put towards paying the blog bills.

My least favourite read of the month

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney ( on Bookshop.org | on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐

This is a much-beloved thriller, and it did keep me turning pages… but it relied heavily on a thriller trope I hate, and I could tell it was doing it right from the start, so I figured out the Big Twist pretty early and was disappointed by it. There were also a couple of major plot holes that only burrowed deeper and deeper until the last page, when they basically became a massive sinkhole that swallowed the entire plot whole. From my perspective, anyway. I’m in the minority on this.

Some fine-but-not-great reads

Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster by Jacob Soboroff ( on Bookshop.org | on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐⭐

This is the first time I’ve read a nonfiction in which Trump’s juvenile social media posts are historically relevant, and that just makes my soul very tired. Not to mention the amount of times this professional journalist says “literally” or uses an f-bomb for dramatic purposes. Someone will read this book 100 years from now, curious to know the first-hand details of one of America’s worst natural disasters (hopefully it still holds that title 100 years from now), and that’s the view of today’s world that they’re going to get.

I miss the 1900s.

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this book. It’s interesting and informative, but often repetitive and surface-level.

Molka by Monika Kim ( on Bookshop.org | on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐⭐

Phew, this book is… uncomfortable. I found the first half extremely hard to read, since a lot of it is from the perspective of a world-class pervert. That isn’t the kind of mind I enjoy diving deeply into, you know? It also took a while for the horror elements to show up, and until they did, I considered DNF’ing it.

The good news is, the horror elements are more or less worth the wait. There are some genuinely creepy moments, outside of the skin-crawly pervert stuff. Maybe the wait was intentional, so the reader will be cheering for (view spoiler) all the harder by the time it arrives. It’s certainly effective.

The bad news is, the female-rage of it all was a little over-the-top for me. I don’t like stories where every single male character is evil. I have some lovely men in my life, and I’m sure there are lovely men in Korea, too. But somehow every single man Dahye meets wants to take advantage of her, and that felt too contrived for me. Also, it makes Dahye look annoyingly weak and naive. I don’t know, I was really frustrated by the whole thing.

Overall, I think this is one of those books that will divide readers quite a bit. I’m firmly settled in the “parts of it were great, but on the whole it didn’t work for me” camp.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for the ARC.

As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson ( on Bookshop.org | on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐⭐

This is the third book in the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy. I understand why Jackson wanted to end the series this way, I really do. It’s very full-circle, and I appreciated that. But I feel like the setup could have been tighter. I spent most of the book screaming, “Why haven’t you thought about THIS? It’s obvious!!” and then rolling my eyes when the “this” turned out to be something that gets them in trouble. That always feels to me like the author cutting corners to get to the destination they want, and it’s a pet peeve of mine.

I just… hmm. I’ve always wondered why so many fans were outraged by the ending of this series, and I get it now. I didn’t love the way this went. Loved the final outcome, though, and I always love Jackson’s writing style.

A couple of good non-fiction reads

The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin’s Greatest Enemy by Josh Ireland ( on Bookshop.org | on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is a very (almost excruciatingly) detailed account of the assassination of Leon Trotsky and the people and events leading up to it. Trotsky’s name has always been familiar to me, but this isn’t a chapter of Russian history that I knew a lot about. This book was great for filling in those blanks in my knowledge, while also telling an intriguing true crime story. It started to lose me a bit in the middle, when a lot of detail was offered about things that didn’t seem worth the intense focus in the long run, but the chapter describing Trotsky’s murder was brilliant.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Dutton for the ARC.

The Weather Detective: Rediscovering Nature’s Secret Signs by Peter Wohlleben ( on Bookshop.org | on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I really enjoyed this, as I always enjoy Peter Wohlleben’s books. His passion for nature is contagious, and he’s great at teaching the reader without being dry or overly serious. And he can also talk about climate change and the human impact on the natural world without making me depressed. He doesn’t preach doom and gloom, he offers tips on how to deal with the world as it is.

I only had two small quibbles with this book. One is perfectly understandable: it’s written from a European perspective. Wohlleben is from Germany, so it makes sense that he talks about European weather and wildlife. I know enough about North American weather and wildlife that I could code-switch in my brain while reading and relate it to my own area, but I did wish that he’d made at least passing mention of tornadoes. They’re becoming more common in Europe these days, after all, and I would have loved to learn more about them from him.

My other quibble is that any talk of weather kind of disappears after a while. The second half of the book is almost a gardener’s handguide, talking about soil types, invasive plants and insects, and how to deal with local (European) wildlife. I enjoyed each section for what it was, but I wish there’d been more weather talk. The sections on how weather works and how to predict it just by looking around you were by far the best parts of the book. I learned a lot.

A few good scares

These Familiar Walls by CJ Dotson ( on Bookshop.org | on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I wasn’t sure how to rate this, but I’m giving it 4 stars simply because it could and SHOULD have been 5 rather than the 3.5 it felt like by the end. I really enjoyed the plot, Dotson’s writing was solid, and there were some genuinely scary/creepy moments that would thrill any horror fan. There were just two things that could have been changed to make it a straight-up masterpiece. I talk about them in my Goodreads review, under the spoiler cut.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this ride. I just wish it had lived up to its full 5-star potential.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC.

Come Closer by Sara Gran ( on Bookshop.org | on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book was actually stressful. 😅 And really clever. And kind of hilarious? But mostly stressful. What would YOU do if you started to suspect you were possessed by a demon?

The Burning (The Fear Street Saga #3) by R.L. Stine ( on Bookshop.org | sadly not available on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was the final installment in the Fear Street Saga trilogy, which tells the story behind the Fear Street curse. These books are so cheesy and predictable, but SO ADDICTIVE, and they take me right back to when I was a kid and voraciously devoured them. And I stand by my opinion that The Fear Street Saga are some of the best books Stine has written. This story gets DARK, the deaths get GORY, and Stine doesn’t even bother to try wrapping it up neatly at the end (often a weakness in the rest of the Fear Street series).

It’s just a slashing good time, man. I’m so glad these are still available. And still with the covers I remember from the 90s!

My only 5-star read of the month

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid ( on Bookshop.org | on Booksellers.ca )

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Full disclosure: I watched the movie first. Knowing the ending might have helped me relax and enjoy the journey more than I would if I hadn’t. But I do love this kind of mind-bendy novel, and I have a suspicion that Iain Reid might be becoming a new favourite author of mine.