April has been a pretty great month. There were tons of awesome new book releases, and I managed to complete everything for the Magical Readathon. The weather is finally a bit nicer, and everything in my neighborhood is in bloom, which is really beautiful. I spent a small fortune on landscaping this month, and now our flower beds look so much better. I know this is going to make me sound old, but I’m also excited we have a new grocery store close to my house. lol. It opened up right across from my neighborhood, and I love the convenience of being able to go right down the street to pick up what I need. Those are pretty much the major highlights. So, let’s jump into my reading progress for April.

Books I’ve Read

I barely squeaked by in my classes for the Magical Readathon this month. I did it, though. My character, Padwin, successfully completed the 2023 Spring Equinox. I finished my last prompt right before midnight on May 1, which was just in time for it to count. I ended up swapping out several books from my initial TBR, but I got all the prompts done. Here are the ones I ended up reading (rating links to my review when available):

• Astronomy (Two Letter E’s in Title): Engines of Chaos by R. S. Ford (4.5⭐)
• Alchemy (Metal in the Name): Song of Silver, Flame Like Night by Amelie Wen Zhao (4⭐)
• Art of Illusion (Match Clothes to Cover Color): Cross Fire by Fonda Lee (4.25⭐)
• Spells & Incantations (Target Length: 389-415): Cataclysm by Lydia Kang (4.5⭐)
• Psionics & Divination (Clouds on Cover or in Title): Scattered Showers by Rainbow Rowell (4.5⭐)
• Conjuration (Recommended by Friend): Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher (5⭐)
• Lore (Book with a Map): The Dragon Republic by R. F. Kuang (5⭐)
• 12 Month Challenge: Lie With Me by Philippe Besson (5⭐)

The main reason I struggled so much with finishing the prompts was because I was too busy mood reading. lol. As you can see below, I ended up reading a lot of stuff that didn’t fit with my readathon selections, which brought my total number of books for the month up to 23. Here’s all the stuff I mood read (rating links to my review when available):

• Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker (3.5⭐)
• A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab (4.75⭐)
• Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai (4⭐)
• The Bone Shard War by Andrea Stewart (5⭐)
• The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian (4⭐)
• Spellbound by F.T. Lukens (4.5⭐)
• If I See You Again Tomorrow by Robbie Couch (4.5⭐)
• The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (4.75⭐)
• Quest for Planet X by Tessa Gratton (3.75⭐)
• The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater (4.75⭐)
• Bridesmates by Sydney Smyth (3.75⭐)
• Dragonfall by L.R. Lam (3.25⭐)
• Happy Place by Emily Henry (5⭐)
• A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas (4.25⭐)
• The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi (4⭐)

Progress On My 2023 Reading Goals

Goodreads Challenge

I’ve set my annual reading goal at 100 books for the year. I read 23 books in April, which is a little less than last month. The slower pace was nice, though, and I might try to slow things down even more for May. I’m beginning to feel a bit burnt out. This brings me to 93 books for the year so far! It looks like I’ll definitely be finishing my Goodreads challenge early this year. 🙂

NetGalley Progress

I want to end the year with at least 150 reviews completed for NetGalley and a feedback ratio of at least 81%. In April, I completed 6 reviews for NetGalley, which brings my total up to 119 reviews. My ratio increased slightly to 85%!

Make Some Progress On My Backlog

This year I’ve set the goal of having at least 25% of my reading be from my owned TBR purchased prior to 2023. This could include books on my physical or digital shelves, excluding ARCs. In April, I read 5 books from my shelves, which was only 22%. This keeps books from my shelves at 23% of my total reads for the year. There were so many new releases and ARCs to read this month that older books from my shelves didn’t make up as much of my reading as I would’ve liked. Oh well. There’s always next month. It’s also not too far off my goal. So, baby steps.

Re-Read More Books

Last year, I didn’t get to re-read much of anything. This year I’d really like to return to some of my favorites. So, I’ve set the goal of re-reading at least six books. Unfortunately, I didn’t make any progress on this goal in April, which means I’m still at zero for the year.

Participate in Challenges

I’ve got a few different challenges going this year. Here’s a quick update on each one of them! I finally did graphics for some of them. lol. I plan to add at least one new graphic for these each month, but we’ll see how that goes…

POPSUGAR Challenge

I’ve completed 30 out of the 40 main prompts and finished 50% of the bonus prompts, as well. So, I’m still slowly chugging along with this one.

12 Months, 12 Books, 12 Friends Challenge

The Year-Long Scavenger Hunt

This scavenger hunt is being hosted by Jordyn @ Birdie’s Book Nook. So far, I’ve found 31 out of the 31 prompts! So, I’m on to trying to accomplish another round! As a reminder, I only use each book to fulfill one prompt, but the number of each I’ve collected has no bearing on how I count it. Here’s where each of the prompts stands so far:

Magical Readathon: Adventure in Aeldia

This month there was a break from the adventure to complete the spring term at Orilium. We’ve already covered the results of my classes above. So, I won’t repeat myself here.

Finish Five Series

I plan to finish or catch up on the following 5 series by the end of this year:

• A Chorus of Dragons by Jenn Lyons
• Timekeeper by Tara Sim
• The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman

I made some progress on this goal in April. I finished the fourth ACOTAR book, A Court of Frost and Starlight, and the second Poppy War book, The Dragon Republic, in April. I should hopefully have both of these series finished next month.

Final Thoughts

I did a few blog and meme posts in addition to my reviews, and you can find those in my blog archives if you are interested in checking them out.

Overall, this has been another good month of reading. My average rating was 4.37. My favorite was probably Happy Place, but there were so many this month that I loved. What was your favorite book from April? Let me know down in the comments!

Thank you to everyone who has visited the blog and engaged with comments and/or likes! I appreciate all of you and always enjoy reading your input in the comments. I hope everyone has a great May!