April 2025 Reading Recap

Reading and writing when you don't have a creative spark.

April was a pretty fabulous reading month! In addition to getting back into audiobooks, I had a couple of free weekends where I was just able to sit and read for long stretches of time. I don’t know if that will be the case this summer, so I’m trying to enjoy the space while I have it!

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📘 Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

I like the publisher’s summary of this one – “A mind-blowing murder mystery on a ship full of magical passengers. If Agatha Christie wrote fantasy, this would be it!” As the only non-magical passenger of the ship, Ganymedes Piscero must become the hero he was never fated to be in order to save himself and the empire from destruction. I liked this one until there was a plot twist that, while it worked in the novel, didn’t work for me personally. But that’s really just some baggage I’m bringing to the story, not a critique of the book itself. Overall, it was a delightful, quirky, genre-bending novel that was fun to read.

📘 Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven

Arden and Evelyn have loved each other in lifetimes over thousands of years, and have killed each other in every single one. Evelyn can remember some of these lives, but cannot remember why she and Arden have to die before they turn 18. The problem is that Evelyn wants to stay in her current life, and she needs to stay alive to help her sister in a battle with cancer. I got this one from the library because V.E. Schwab, one of my favorite fantasy authors, recommended it, and I can totally see why. It has vibes of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which is a favorite novel. I loved how it moved through time to share stories from many of Evelyn and Arden’s lives, and was surprised by how the story came together.

📘 Metal Slinger by Rachel Schneider

Brynn lives among an exiled, sea-faring community, training to be a guard. Her life is upended after a disastrous visit to the mainland and a dark and brooding stranger's arrival at her island home. There was a lot about this book that I liked – Brynn is interesting, and her odyssey to the mainland and relationship with the people there was compelling enough that I read this book in a single day. But then there’s a plot moment near the end that I am not convinced was earned, and sort of colored my whole view of what came before. It’s a polarizing read!

📘 The Tell by Amy Griffin

For all her life, Amy Griffin has been a runner, even to the point where constant motion starts to affect her body, her relationships, and her mental health. What follows is a book about what made Amy run, and how she finally learns to stop. This book has gotten a ton of publicity, which I think hurt it a little bit. It’s a beautiful memoir that explores memory, trauma, and making sense of our own stories. But it felt like knowing so much about where it could be going took the wind out of the sails of the narrative just a bit. Really good, but not quite as great as I initially hoped.

📘 Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Ernest Cunningham

My mom and my sister have really loved the books in this series, about a guy who writes “how to” books about writing murder mysteries, who then finds himself in the middle of them over and over again. Overall, I like this one! I enjoy books that make fun of book tropes, break the fourth wall, and play with our expectations as a reader, which this one does in some really great ways. A fun read!

📘 Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

Another little publisher blurb because of writer’s block: “When a father goes missing, his family's desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another.” This books was really excellent – Angie Kim has a very deft way of exploring Big Issues in her stories, without losing the characters and plot along the way. In this case, she explores what it means to be a biracial, Korean-American family, as well as supporting a child with a genetic condition where he cannot speak for himself. I thought this one was really good.

📘 James by Percival Everett

This book just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, so I’m not sure that anything I could say about it adds much to the discourse. I can say, I wish I’d read or dug into the inspiration material, Huckleberry Finn, more before I read the book because I felt like there were things I was missing along the way. But even with just a cursory memory of that story, this one is really an impressive feat that has a lot to say about the contemporary world through the lens of the past.

📘 Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su

This was, for sure, the weirdest book I read in April, but I think it might be the one I liked best? Vi’s life is not going particularly well. When she finds a living blob outside of a bar, she brings it home like a pet. When the blob becomes sentient, Vi tries to form it into her ideal boyfriend. I can’t really describe what I liked about this one so much – it’s dark and kind of sad, but also so funny and odd and warm and lovely. It’s weird and I think I loved it.

🎧 Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez

After a couple of her books, I think Abby Jimenez might not be an author for me. Her books are objectively great, but I think they have a touch too much realism for me, if that makes sense? The conflicts are just a little bit too big for what I want to read in a romance novel. But then in this one, the ultimate resolution for the conflict felt really out of left field. Like I said, objectively great books, just not quite for me.

🎧 Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

The marketing for this book – about two authors competing to write the biography of a reclusive heiress – has been so weird. I’ve seen it called a thriller, which seems totally wrong to me. One online friend said that this book is more romance than Romance. Another said it felt like a Taylor Jenkins Reid book, which I think is maybe the most apt comparison – there is a romantic plot of the story between the two writers, but I don’t think their romance really drives the plot (or even the third act conflict). This one felt like a bit of stretch for Emily Henry, which I really liked!

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Final Thoughts

One of the reasons this is coming so late in the month is that I have had almost no creative energy in May. My communications coworker started maternity leave at the end of April, and I’ve really struggled to find a creative spark since then. Things are staying on the rails, but it’s taking a lot to coordinate and manage projects by myself.

That said, I still feel like I’m reading at a pretty good clip. I finally passed 100 consecutive days reading, which feels very exciting. Now, that’s all thanks to audiobooks… but I’ll take it!

I’m curious — what do you do when you need a creative spark? Do you force the energy back, or just accept the energy of the season you’re in until it comes back around? Any pieces of media or pop culture that help get you out of a rut? I would love to hear!