The Looooong and the Short of It with a Giveaway: April 2022 Wrap-Up Post and What to Expect in May

April, well, April pretty much sucked for me. It went by so fast, and I missed out on the one thing I was really looking forward to, my state school librarian conference. And it all started with my stepdad ending up in the hospital. Followed by him going home and we thought things were on the right path, only for him to go back in two days after he left. Then my mom wasn’t taking care of herself and ended up in the hospital two days after him. He got to go home while she was still there, so my brother had him come stay with his family. And then, about two days later, my stepdad was back in the hospital. My mom went home shortly after him, she’d had horrible diabetic issues that she’d never had before, and now has to give herself insulin and check her glucose every day, something she never had to do before. My stepdad ended up finally getting released from the hospital and we had him go to a rehabilitation/skilled nursing place while my mom was unable to take care of him, and we also wanted to make sure he didn’t end up back in the hospital. Well, we took him back home after about a week there because the facility didn’t seem to really be doing anything that my mom wasn’t able to help with at that point. Between running back and forth from the hospital and between different floors/areas of the hospital to visit both of them, and taking care of their dogs until we ended up sending the dogs to stay first at my brother’s vet followed by a local pet resort called Pete & Mac’s, I was exhausted. Lots of things came to a head, we thought we had my mom on track to really get invested in getting their current house which is too big for them and has stairs they don’t need to deal with, not to mention no easy way to deal with taking their dogs outside, cleaned out and prepared to sell so they could move. But as she got her strength back she went back to her stubborn ways and now we’re just hoping we can at least get her to start looking at clearing things out to make it easier to sell in the future.

Then, just a few days before we were going to bring the dogs home, we got a call from Pete and Mac’s that one of them, Millie, had passed away in the night. She was 12 years old, and had health issues, but none that we know of to cause it. However the people at Pete & Mac’s were so sweet and nice about it. It was a hard last Friday of the month. We went ahead and brought the other one, Lucy, home that day when I got off of work. You could tell she was very sad. They’d found her laying right next to Millie when they found Millie that morning. In honor of sweet Millie, here is a picture of her in her younger days.

Did you make it through my paragraphs of woe is me and how my April was horrible? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t, it’s quite the downer. My reading also got a bit of an impact from that whole thing, although I guess I did still get more than last month somehow. And at the library conference last year I’d gotten a LOT of reading done, so I missed out on the extra reading time, and just a few days away by myself too. Now I’m really looking forward to my trip to Scotland in July.

I got 16 books, two more than last month, 13 physical or digital, and 3 audio. Maybe I got more because of more time in the car? Although the amount of time spent on audiobooks was less, but maybe they were shorter. There was also one that was more of a novella too. And technically one or two of these were actually started last month.

• # of pages read: 4595
• Amount of time spent listening to audiobooks – Some of the time on one of these was last month technically, but I don’t count them till I finish. So my time spent was 22 hours and 46 minutes for 3 audiobooks.

Now here are my stats from Storygraph:

April Reviews

So, of the 16 listed in last month’s wrap-up, I read all but 3, one was a DNF, one was a blog tour that ended up not being for review, and the third had it’s pub date pushed till May.

• [2 Apr] Playing by the Rules by Monica Murphy ★★★★
• [3 Apr] Wedding Games by Evie Alexander ★★★★★
• [7 Apr] Throwback by Maurene Goo ★★★★½
• [13 Apr] Spell Bound by F.T. Lukens ★★★★
• [13 Apr] Better Off Wed by Portia MacIntosh ★★★★★
• [18 Apr] Vacation Wars by Meghan Quinn ★★★★★
• [22 Apr] This Delicious Death by Kayla Cottingham ★★★★½
• [26 Apr] French Holiday by Sarah Ready ★★★★★
• [27 Apr] Dough You Love Me? by Stacy Travis ★★★½
• [29 Apr] One for All by Lillie Lainoff ★★★½
• [29 Apr] The Dachshund Wears Prada by Stefanie London ★★★½
• [29 Apr] Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton ★★★★★
• [29 Apr] Never Vacation with Your Ex by Emily Wibberley, Austin Siegemund-Broka ★★★★★
• [29 Apr] The Right Side of Reckless by Whitney D. Grandison ★★★★★
• [30 Apr] Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker DNF
• [30 Apr] Beyond the Thistles by Samantha Young ★★★★½

Challenge Wrap-Up

Even though I didn’t get more done without my conference, I am still working on books from my Reader Award committee, which adds to this goal. My goal for the year was 12, I got 4 in January, 4 in February, 3 in March, and I added another 3 this month, beating my goal! All of these have been reviewed in the monthly L-L-L Litte Review posts I’ve been doing.

1. The Hunger Between Us by Marina Scott
2. Twisted Love by Ana Huang
3. Lord of the Fly Fest by Goldy Moldavy
4. Always Jane by Jenn Bennett
5. My Second Impression Of You by Michelle I. Mason
6. Gold Mountain by Betty G. Yee
7. Spicy Pickle by J.J. Knight
8. My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth
9. Forging Silver Into Stars by Brigid Kemmerer
10. Rima’s Rebellion by Margarita Engle
11. The Lost Dreamer by Lizz Huerta
12. One for All by Lillie Lainoff
13. The Dachshund Wears Prada by Stefanie London
14. Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton

• Blogging:
  • 1. Keep my Netgalley percentage up to 80%. Still at 79%, I dropped one day toward the end of the month to 78%, but then as soon as I added a review it was back to the 79%.
  • 2. Discussion Challenge: None in April thanks to the craziness of my month.
• Reading:
  • 1. As always is my Goodreads goal of 200 books. I am a little behind, 2 books I think at the moment, but not worrying about it.
  • 2. My TBR Challenge above.
• Writing – Still didn’t get anything done this month.
• Book Buying Ban – I did pretty good this month, only $14.95 for my Audible credit, and then my Book of the Month will get charged again since I did use the credit this past month.

What to Expect in May

Well, May is always busy with end of the year stuff. And with my parents home now, but still recovering a little, not sure I’ll get any more reading done. Hoping we still get to take our Memorial Day weekend trip to Branson, and that I can maybe just get a lot of reading done there since my parents will be taking it easy if we do go. Plus I won’t want to spend a lot of money shopping that weekend since I’m still saving for my Scotland trip. Also hoping things will settle down a bit with my family that I can get back to my usual Sunday weekly wrap-ups and commenting on blogs again.

Here is my proposed TBR for May:

1. Four Found Dead by Natalie D. Richards – an ARC from the publisher I hope to read and post a review on the 3rd
2. Can’t Fight It by Allie Winters – an e-galley from this round of the SmartyPants Romance books, posting review on the 4th ore else the 18th
3. Tough Cookie by Talia Hunter – another SPR e-galley. My review will be posted on the 8th
4. I Want It That Way by Karen Grey – maybe reading an e-galley from the author and posting a review on the 10th
5. Letter Late Than Never by Lauren Connolly – listening the audiobook of this other SPR new release and posting a review on the 11th
6. Morsel Enemies by Alexia Chase – this is another possible e-galley through Indie Pen PR, although none in this series have been for review yet. If it is, I have planned to review on the 15th.
7. The Vinyl Frontier by Lola West – another SPR e-galley, review posted on the 16th
8. I’ll Always Be With You by Monica Murphy – maybe reading an e-galley of this for the author review team and posting a review on the 17th
9. Neutral Zone by Teagan Hunter – maybe an e-galley review and posting as part of a blog tour on the 18th?
10. Look Smart by Aly Stiles – another SPR e-galley, review posted either the 19th or 31st
11. Smart Move by Amanda Pennington – another SPR e-galley, review posted either the 19th or June 2nd
12. Planes, Trains, and All the Feels by Livy Hart – an e-galley review posted on the 23rd
13. How to Win the Girl by Sara Ney – an e-galley review for the author’s review team posting on the 24th
14. Troy Story by Carla Luna – an e-galley for a blog tour review on the 25th
15. Her Good Side by Rebekah Weatherspoon – an ARC to post the review on the 29th
16. Any other audiobooks I listen to. I’ll be driving to my Branson the last weekend of the month, so long drive means lots of audiobook listening time!
17. Any other books for the Gateway list that I get through
18. And hopefully more for my TBR challenge even though I’ve reached my goal!

Final Thoughts

So how was your April? I hope it was a lot better than mine! How are you doing on your reading/blogging/personal goals for 2023 so far? What are you looking forward to in May? I’m looking forward to the end of the school year and also hopefully my Memorial Day weekend trip to Branson.

Giveaway

Below are ARCs I’ve finished and also a couple of finished copies, the winner will get to pick out 3 books from the list, and I add any others I finish between the time I post this and the end of the month. Now that The Book Depository is closing, the only way I can really do international is if I can send you a $10 Amazon gift card somehow, so we’ll see how that works! Just fill out the Rafflecopter below the picture. My March Wrap-Up post got over 100 entries, so I picked two winners!

a Rafflecopter giveaway