April 2023 Review and Sunday Post

April has been an interesting month. I started it in a bit of a funk spending too much time playing video games, but it ended with me devouring books as if they were food. With a massive fifteen books read, including five audiobooks.

Work wise, I have been working either in the Emergency department of one of my local NHS hospitals or in one of two local private hospitals, one of which I really don’t like and the other one I like it so much I am contemplating applying for a job there. The strange thing is I couldn’t tell you what makes them so different, as superficially they are almost identical.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

I love games and this book is based on a love of the 80’s and 90’s computer games I grew up playing. It is also a book about friendship, love and how not to wallow in self pity after a traumatic event. Both Sadie and Sam are self absorbed and quick to offend but I liked them regardless, and they do grow up.

Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death

by M.C. Beaton

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

This was a good one. Agatha is back in her village and investigating a series of murders in a nearby village and with it a host of new interesting characters. Her love life is increasingly more complicated and I wish she would just get over her neighbour already.

---

The Boy in the Suitcase (Nina Borg, #1)

by Lene Kaaberbøl  and Agnete Friis 

Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

It was an intreguing premise and I enjoyed the audiobook version of this book. I have tried other nordic noir books and found them far too bleak but this, although dark was at least slightly hopeful. Probably the female protagonist made the difference.

---

August Blue

by Deborah Levy

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

I liked it but I don’t understand it. Like most of Deborah Levy’s fictional work there is a seemingly simple story of a child prodigy dealing with the imminent loss of her adopted father and mentor. There is also much here in the form of metaphor and subtext that has gone right over my head. The woman she keeps on seeing all over the world being a case in point, is it meant to depict some kind of fractured psyche or identity crisis I wonder.

---

Sunday Posts: 

• 2nd April: A Month of Gaming and Comfort Reading – Sunday Post
• 9th April: Happy Easter – Sunday Post
• 16th April: My Reading Mojo is Back, Finally – Sunday Post
• 23rd April: A Week of April Showers – Sunday Post

Book Reviews:

I will be linking this to the Sunday Post over at the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz and because this is a monthly one too Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up at Feed Your Fiction Addiction .