April Reading Recap
April Reading Recap: 8 Books I Read this Month
By: Brittany Shields
Hello spring!
I finished 8 books this month— two of them I’ve been reading for awhile (The Steadfast Love of the Lord and The Risen King which was a devotional I read leading up to Easter).
I managed to mark off another book from the Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge.
Two qualified for prompts on the Shelf Reflection’s 2025 Reading Challenge.
And three were on my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2025.
Most notable about this month’s reading is probably that I started the Throne of Glass series. I know the ACOTAR is really popular and I was told TOG was less spicy so that’s what I went with. It’s always hard for me to start new (long) series because I never just read a series straight through - I have too many other books on my TBR. So reading a series is a longer time commitment for me. Since I heard so many good things about TOG I decided to try it. Let me know if you like it and what you love about it to motivate me to keep going!
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1. Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect (Ernest Cunningham #2) by Benjamin Stevenson
Genre: Mystery
[Fulfilled ‘The second or fifth book of a series’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2025 Reading Challenge]
“Seven writers board a train. At the end of the line, five will leave it alive. One will be in cuffs.”
This is my third Ernest Cunningham novel— yes I read the Christmas one out of order. That being said, I would definitely recommend reading them in order. Especially the first two.
This series has a very consistent tone and writing voice that I love. They’re all told first person from the perspective of Ernest Cunningham, a writer who keeps having murders happen around him that he just so happens to be good at solving.
The schtick of the series is that these are all ‘Golden Age’ mysteries. He describes it in detail in book one, but basically it’s supposed to be like an Agatha Christie novel where all the clues are available to the reader to solve the mystery, the narrator doesn’t lie, there is nothing supernatural, and no secret twins.
This particular book is set on a luxury train traveling across Australia. Ernest is on the train for a writing conference when someone ends up dead.
Read my full review to get more plot details and how this one fits into the series. You’ll also find some pictures about the locations the train excursion stops at and some other book recommendations set in Australia.
2. Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass #1) by Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Fantasy/ YA
[Fulfilled ‘A book with a king or queen’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
[Nominee for ‘Best YA Fantasy/Sci-fi Fiction’ in the 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards]
“‘You could rattle the stars. You could do anything, if you only dared. And deep down, you know it, too. That’s what scares you most.’”
As I mentioned earlier, I know I’m late to the Maas train but I’m looking forward to reading more of this series. Some elements of it remind me of Tahereh Mafi’s This Woven Kingdom series which I’ve enjoyed.
It’s got some common tropes to the fantasy genre, but the main premise of this first book, which feels very introductory, is that Celaena was a trained assassin, somehow was betrayed, and is serving a sentence in the labor prison when the prince comes to her with a proposal: be his champion in the king’s competition and after being the King’s assassin for a few years, earn your freedom back.
Of course, the realistic alternative to saying yes is death so Celaena accepts the invite and the book tracks her progress through the competition as she lives in the Glass Castle. What she wasn’t prepared for was the darkness that lurks and forbidden magic that is being used to kill off other competitors. She has to survive more than just the public competitions.
Also there is the romance side of things. It’s not a full blown love triangle but we’re flirting with it here.
Check out my full review to see what some of the puzzle pieces I’m hoping come up in the next book, see a reading guide and pronunciation guide, as well as a content advisory.
3. Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2025]
“‘Thoughts swirling, they wonder what clues the police will find. The group chat? The social-media posts? The video of the horror that brought them here?”
This is my third Alex Finlay book. I’ve read The Night Shift and What Have We Done?.
I have learned that Alex Finlay’s writing style involves a lot of unlikable characters and besides the returning FBI agent, Keller, this book is no different.
Parents Weekend is not a spectacular book because I saw the ending a mile away but it’s still a decent enough read. Just like the other two, it reads very quickly so your time commitment to the book is low.
This book takes place over parents weekend at Santa Clara University in California. We are first introduced via multiple POVs the different parental units of a group of friends and then the primary conflict is revealed: none of the kids show up to the scheduled parent’s dinner and foul play is suspected. Of course it’s a bunch of irresponsible college students so it could also be nothing.
But the longer they go without news of the students the less likely they are to find them alive.
Read my full review to get the character list, some random comments, a content advisory, and my ultimate recommendation.
4. The Risen King: 40 Devotions for Easter by C.H. Spurgeon (Edited by Jeff Medders)
Genre: Devotional
I read this book during the 40 days of Lent this year and it was an encouraging yet convicting time! This is by no means a book purely for anticipating Easter because the message of Easter is for every day. Read this at any time of year and you will find truth and hope for your soul.
This book consists of 40 devotional readings 1-2.5 pages long (of a small book) each ending with a short reflection paragraph and a short prayer. All of the material is taken from sermons given by Charles H. Spurgeon. The book was compiled by Jeff Medders.
The devotions were very short but most of them packed a punch! Deep thinking here and bringing to light new facets of familiar passages for me that I really enjoyed.
Read my full review for some of the things that stuck out most to me and read some quotes from the book. You’ll also find a link to more devotional recommendations.
5. Future’s Dark Past (Time Forward Trilogy #1) by J.L. Yarrow
Genre: Science Fiction
“‘You two are either going to kill each other or be the best team ever. I can’t decide which.’”
It’s always a gamble when you read books from authors you’ve never heard of that are up and coming. The gamble on this book paid off!
I was pleasantly surprised by this time-travel science fiction novel and am looking forward to continuing the series— especially because this one leaves you on a cliffhanger!
As can be typical of time travel novels, this one involves an earth that has destroyed itself in nuclear war. The future is bleak. So when Hope Bannister gains access to a wormhole that takes them to the past she is determined to change things in the past to keep the war from happening.
If she and her elite team of genetically altered super humans can’t change things, the whole native race of another planet will be obliterated in an attempt to move the earth people somewhere more habitable.
if you just want to enjoy a good time travel novel with elements of AI and space, then I think you’ll enjoy this book.
But you can check out my full review for more plot and character details and how the time travel method functions. There are also some more comments on what I liked, didn’t like, and hope to see in the next book.
6. The Steadfast Love of the Lord: Experiencing the Life-Changing Power of God’s Unchanging Affection by Sam Storms
Genre: Theology/ Christian Living
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2025]
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. (Jn 6:68) If God’s love isn’t real and steady and ultimately steadfast, what hope do any of us have? To what philosophy of life will we turn?”
We might never be able to explain all the evil or the tragedies and hardships we encounter, but I love what Storms says,
“I cannot, I will not, allow my intellectual shortcomings to account for the problem of evil to blind me to the bright light of the everlasting, unchanging, soul-saving, steadfast love of God.”
And so this book looks at what Scripture tells us about who God is and how he loves us. If we have lost our hope, then we need to do a better job of calling to mind the truths that God has revealed to us about himself. Sam Storms does a wonderful job sharing them with us.
I give a lot more details and quotes, describing some of the topics he covers in my full review like ‘what is love?’ ‘what does steadfast mean?’ or ‘will God ever give up on me?’ You’ll also find a list of further reading material.
7. A Dead Draw (Tracy Crosswhite #11) by Robert Dugoni
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
[Fulfilled ‘A book translated into at least 25 different languages’ (Dugoni’s books have been translated into 30+ languages so I counted it) prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2025 Reading Challenge]
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2025]
“‘Revenge can be a powerful motivator.’”
This one felt a little different than (other books of this series that I’ve read). Granted, there is a year break in between reading each one so my memory of them might not be the best.
Tracy Crosswhite is a detective based out on Washington. The series follows her different cases. She pursued this career because her sister was murdered as a teenager and she dealt with her grief by going after other killers. The first book in the series talks about that but this one brings up her sister quite a bit.
A Dead Draw felt a little more technical with some of the descriptions of guns and shooting and the legal stuff in the trial. He brought in an autistic character and some commentary on video games.
I probably could have done without some of the gun details, but I didn’t have a problem with the other themes. It made the book feel a little more layered than usual, which isn’t a bad thing.
This particular case has some Western vibes and a final showdown in a ghost mining town. Someone is out for revenge against Tracy for a previous case.
You can read more plot details, some random comments, and a plot hole that caused me to take a whole star off my Goodreads rating.
8. Beside Every Successful Man: A Woman’s Guide to Having It All by Megan Basham
Genre: Nonfiction/ Self Help
“Real love isn’t just gazing into each other’s eyes. It’s looking out together in the same direction.”- David McCullough
If I saw this book on the shelf, I probably wouldn’t pick it up. The cover isn’t very compelling and the phrase ‘A woman’s guide to having it all’ sounds artificially self-helpy and immediately turns me off. In short- it’s not really my type of book.
However, despite the ‘bleh’ marketing quips, I did find some very helpful insights in this book.
I would sum up the overall push of this book to be about how wives can come alongside their husbands to help them achieve their professional goals. This book is not about women as a whole elevating men as a whole. It’s about a wife who loves her husband and desires to help him succeed.
Read my full review to see what insights stuck out to me the most, principles that can be applied more broadly than just careers but help us understand our husbands and how we can love them better. You’ll also find a short critique and my ultimate recommendation.
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