I read nine books in the month of April. It was a truly eclectic mix of genres, as usual. I started my month off by revisiting one of my favourite authors from my teen years, which felt very full circle (especially receiving an ARC of it! My teenage self would be screaming). I continued a series that I started in March by finishing the final two books, and I think I can safely say it has become one of my all-time favourite fantasy series. I read the new literary fiction release that has everyone on BookTok talking about it and another viral BookTok favourite which didn’t end well… Intrigued? Well keep reading to find out which books I’m talking about.

• Seek the Traitor’s Son by Veronica Roth

Dystopian fantasy / Science fiction

‘The human heart isn’t a drinking glass, with only so much room for love at any given time. That it’s more like the void of space, infinitely expanding and endlessly strange.’

My review: Elegy Ahn is the youngest child of the Sword of Cedre, an epic warrior tasked with defending Cedre from the constant threat of invasion by their neighbours, the Talusar. Centuries ago, the nation of Talusar was infected by a Fever, a virus that kills approximately half of its victims. The other surviving half, however, are gifted with supernatural powers. The rarest of these gifts is that of precognition, possessed by only ten individuals called the Augurs. When Elegy, perfectly happy with her small role defending her country, is summoned to the Augurs to hear a prophecy that will foretell the part she will play in Cedre’s victory in the war. Except that the Augurs can’t be sure whether the prophecy is meant for Elegy or the ruthless Talusar general Rava Vidar, and one man, the son of a Talusar traitor, is at the forefront of each of their destinies. 

This story was nothing like I was expecting. I went in thinking it would be your typical romantic dystopia centring around two people drawn together via a prophecy. Instead, I was met with a world with incredibly complex and detailed worldbuilding and characters that were very much not your average cookie cutter protagonists. Instead Elegy is dealing with a lot of complex emotions about what the prophecy has foretold, not least of them enormous amounts of guilt about her growing feelings for Theren. 

The worldbuilding is definitely heavy and it took a while for it to completely click. As much as I loved Elegy and Theren, the side characters did steal the show! Even the baddies were so well-fleshed out and had real and understandable motives for their actions, which I love. We need a Hela spinoff Veronica 

This definitely bordered more on sci-fi than fantasy, I’d say. I feel like the world is really in the mood for sci-fi right now, with the release of Project Hail Mary. Seek the Traitor’s Son scratched that itch – a dying Earth, the human conflict of investing resources into searching for solutions versus finding another home on another planet – but gave it a slight romantic subplot and a religious fervour that drives humanity even further apart. Like I say, it probably wouldn’t be my first port of call to recommend to strictly a fantasy reader, but if you’re looking to branch out genre-wise, this was a true dystopia with just the right amount of romance sprinkled in. If you’re a fan of Star Wars or Dune (bold comparisons, I know), I think you’d also love this! I just wish the second book was out already so I could dive straight in…

Will you be reading Seek the Traitor’s Son when it releases May 12th? A massive thank you to BookBreak UK for the ARC and for facilitating the fantastic readalong that I partook in.

• In Her Defense by Phillipa Malicka

Psychological thriller / Courtroom drama

‘Trust becomes dangerous when you hand it to someone who never intended to protect it.’

My review: In Her Defense is a courtroom thriller, which explores the line between healing and harm. When a highly sensationalised libel trial begins, between a TV star and her daughter’s therapist who seeks to distance her client from her parents, alleging abuse, Augusta or ‘Gus’ Bird is seated front and centre. Because only she knows what exactly unfolded between Mary and her therapist Jean Guest in Rome. Is Jean a well-meaning psychologist or a villainous manipulator?

I do love a courtroom thriller, and frequently find myself fascinated by true crime podcasts or documentaries where the minute details are picked apart in front of a jury – so it follows that I would love this. Instead, I was oddly disappointed by the amount of time we actually spent in court. The majority of the story actually takes place in Rome, related to us in the past by Gus, with only occasional flashes to the progress of the trial.

Gus herself is quite unlikeable – as I usually find with thriller protagonists. I often think that they make stupid decisions just to keep the plot moving, and this was definitely how Gus behaved. Each other character, Anna, Jean, and Mary are all equally unlikeable and I found it difficult to find anybody to root for. I’m never usually a fan of the popular, rich girl and her clingy, needy, hanger-on friend and this was no different.

I do think the topics were well done and sensitively handled, and I think it was a brilliant concept for a novel and such an intriguing premise. I seem to have read two books this month that tackle topics around influencers broadcasting their children’s lives online for the world to witness (keep reading to see the other), but it’s a theme that I’m really interested in. Ultimately, I was slightly disappointed by this. An addictive read, and one that definitely kept me hooked until the end, but it did fall flat in its execution.

• Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch (Gentlemen Bastards #2)

High fantasy / Heist adventure

‘When you can’t cheat the game, you’d best find a means to cheat the players.’

My review: Reeling from the events of book one, Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen have escaped Camorr with their lives and sought refuge in the city state of Tal Verrar. Except, unable to resist when such splendour looms over the horizon, they begin to hatch a daring plot to steal from the city’s notorious Sinspire. A notorious gambling parlour for the elite, nobody has escaped with so much as a single coin from the Sinspire and lived to tell the tale.

But their schemes are put on the back burner when someone else in Tal Verrar is in need of the Gentlemen Bastards’s expertise, and they’re willing to go to whatever lengths to get Locke and Jean on board. Long story short, the two find themselves sailing the high seas, masquerading as pirates. The thieving may suit them down to the ground, but it turns out commandeering a ship is a hell of a lot harder than it looks…

This was another absolutely cracking instalment in the Lies of Locke Lamora. More wonderful characters, new and old – including some badass female pirates that totally stole the show. Captain Zamira Drakasha of the Poison Orchid and her first mate Ezri Delmastro stole my heart (and, dare I say, Jean and Locke’s too?) The friendship between Jean and Locke is really at the forefront of this novel, as they grieve and recover from Camorr. They take care of each other in their most vulnerable moments. I also loved how we changed setting – seeing Jean and Locke tackle somewhere new, not their homeland, was exciting and it gave the book a very different feeling from its predecessor.

Once again, Scott Lynch never takes the easy way out. Rest assured that everything that could go wrong, does go wrong. Some of the plot twists show you that absolutely nothing is off the table, so the stakes couldn’t be higher. Lynch is literally fearless in what he will do. Locke and Jean are by no means invincible – in fact, they spend the majority of this book getting their asses handed to them. What makes them so fun to read about is the crazy, ingenious solutions they find to problems that look inescapable to any sane person. Lynch has an incredible style of writing where Locke will begin to put a plot in motion, assembling seemingly completely random elements, leaving the reader in the dark as to the details of his scheme. Then in the execution of the scheme everything all comes together in a manner in which you could never have predicted!

I was savouring every single page of this, chunky book though it is! Second book syndrome? Scott Lynch has never heard of her. If anything, the stakes were higher (which I didn’t think was possible). If you want something nautical and swashbuckling – think Ocean’s Eleven meets Pirates of the Caribbean – with Lynch’s usual humour and expertly plotted story, I cannot urge you enough to pick up this series. It astounds me every day that this isn’t more popular and I’m going to make it my single-handed mission to make everybody in my life read this, and hype it up online at every opportunity.

• The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (Gentlemen Bastards #3)

High fantasy / Political intrigue

‘I can’t name the poison that’s killing your friend. But the one that’s killing you is called hope.’

My review: Following the catastrophic events of the end of Red Seas Under Red Skies, the third instalment The Republic of Thieves finds Locke slowly dying from an incurable poison. When a Bondsmagi seeks out a dying Locke and a desperate Jean, with a promise of a cure, they have no choice but to accompany her to Karthain – the home of the Bondsmage and the Gentlemen Bastards’s greatest enemy. There, she offers them an ultimatum; Locke’s life for their help in fixing an election.

Simple, right? Except Locke and Jean have spent their lives dodging the law, not trying to rig it for their own gain. And, most terrifyingly of all, the opposition has recruited the only person on this side of the Sea of Brass who is capable of taking them down; the last Gentlemen Bastard (or should I say Gentlewoman…?) Locke’s lovelorn paramour, Sabetha Belacoros. Raised alongside Jean and Locke under the guidance of Father Chains, Sabetha escaped Camorr five years ago and hasn’t been heard of since. Until now.

If the first book entered around revenge, and the second was piracy and heists, this book is very much political intrigue and more romance than the series has seen before. A note on the romance: definitely don’t go into this series expecting anything romance-heavy, otherwise you’ll be sorely disappointed. Even then, the romance fell slightly flat for me. As much as it pains me to criticise this book at all, I didn’t particularly warm to Sabetha. Usually this wouldn’t bother me – I love an unlikable female character – but I think the issue lies in the fact that we’ve spent two books (or equivalent to 1,200 pages) with Locke, and in that time, the reader has grown to absolutely adore that skinny weirdo. So to see the way Sabetha treats him on occasion hurt me as much as it hurts Locke. It definitely errs on unrequited love, although it’s implied that Sabetha feels something for Locke. I hope in future books that we’ll see more of Sabetha and understand her reasoning more.

So ultimately, the romance was definitely the weakest aspect of this book, but it was something I was totally able to overlook, given how fantastic every other element of the story is – the characters, the plot, the twists, the writing. Once again, the plot is insane – you cannot predict the direction that Lynch will take the story in.

I desperately didn’t want this series to end, and now it has, I’m in that grieving-for-a-good-book stage. Nothing else is hitting the same and feels like it never will. Every time I catch a glimpse at them on my bookshelf (which is often, since they’re in pride of place), I feel this mix of giddiness and sadness. I seriously contemplated going back to the very first book and going on the whole ride again, and I would have if not for the building stacks of ARCs. Maybe I’ll give it a year before revisiting. Iwill also be doing a full series review at some point, to collate my reviews for each individual book and the series as a whole.

Also, I have to briefly summarise the mental breakdown that ensued when I realised this wasn’t a completed trilogy, and instead the third book ends on a horrific cliffhanger. This book released in 2013, and despite having a title for the fourth Gentlemen Bastards book (The Thorn of Emberlain), a blurb and a cover, there’s been mainly radio silence on any possible release date for thirteen long years. However, Scott Lynch did release a short story about Locke in 2024, so there is still cause for hope! Rest assured, the minute we have a release date, it will become one of my most anticipated reads ever, and until then I will wait (im)patiently.

You’d think I’d have learned by now to check that series are completed before embarking on them. Still, it wouldn’t have changed anything. The Gentlemen Bastards are by far and away my favourite fantasy I’ve read this year and probably in the last couple of years! Maybe of all time…

• Daggermouth by H.M. Wolfe

Dystopian / Romance

‘To the system that thought it could grind us down. That thought it could silence and erase us. We are the power. Our eyes are open.’

My review: After reading three such chunky fantasy books in quick succession, I needed a bit of a palate cleanser. So I picked up Daggermouth, an indie published book that is set to be trad published later this year. It’s a dystopian romance, in a very similar vein to Silver Elite, so if you enjoyed that book, it follows that you’d possibly enjoy this, although I do think the execution was a lot weaker than Silver Elite.

Pitched as Conform meets V for Vendetta, Daggermouth follows Shadera Kael, an assassin from the Boundary whose next assignment is to kill the President of New Found Haven’s son, Greyson Serel. In their elite society, so separate from the slums of the Boundary, royals wear masks of ornate metals and patterns. To see another’s face is as good as a death sentence for both. The only exception is the Vow ceremony, in which spouses-to-be unmask to each other. So when Shadera finally has a dagger to Greyson’s throat, he does something she could never have predicted. He removes his mask, allowing her to see his face. In that very moment, the guards catch up to Shadera. Naturally, the only solution to save both their skins is for Greyson and Shadera to wed.

And here is when it kind of lost me. The President’s power and tyranny is reinforced throughout the story and, for a dictator whose corruption stretches so far, I find it difficult to believe that there was no way around this problem. Here, I’ll even proffer one myself – kill Shadera and all guards who witnessed the indiscretion. (Obviously I do not endorse this, but I’m just saying there were about a million other ways to resolve this than making his son marry an assassin from the slums who actively wants to murder him).

There were so many plot holes in this that I simply could not get past. Usually, I’m able to suspend my disbelief pretty well (I’m a seasoned fantasy reader, after all), but a lot of this just felt absurd. Another issue was the problem of an antagonist. The President is pretty much the only evil person, and he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It all felt quite caricatured – despot ruler, bad! Rebellion, good! It really did lean into all the cliches – Shadera was your typical stabby, assassin FMC and Greyson was brooding, tall, muscular and misunderstood. Overall, it did its job as an easy-to-read palate cleanser, but some of the weird plot decisions made by the author that were very obviously made to facilitate tropes (such as arranged marriage, forced proximity etc) frustrated me beyond measure. It’s times like these when I don’t think tropes work – when the entire plot feels like it’s bending itself out of shape purely to put the characters in these situations.

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Literary fiction / Satire

‘Life on this ranch feels less like a life and more like a nightmare, a contrived stage performance, a scene that never ends.’

My review: Yesteryear is the book that everyone seems to be talking about right now, and this one has been on my radar for a while – even prior to its release this month. It follows Natalie Mills, a tradwife influencer, who is transported back in time to the era which she has so romanticised – the harsh pioneer 1850s. Her perfect husband, her perfect children, even her charming farmstead… everything is slightly off. It’s an absolutely explosive premise, especially in this modern age where so many of us are fed tradwife content, which I think is why it’s gained so much traction online.

Natalie’s father-in-law is running for president, and comes from an extremely wealthy and influential dynasty (think the Kennedy’s). As such, Natalie and Caleb are extremely wealthy, which Burke uses to explore the fact that this type of lifestyle is incredibly privileged. The perception Natalie gives online that they don’t have any outside help on the farm – where in reality they have upwards of thirty workers at any given time – is also heavily touched upon. I really loved how Burke explored if Natalie’s online content furthered her father-in-law’s career, and influenced his promotion of traditional Christian values and nuclear families.

Natalie herself is an incredibly unlikeable protagonist. She’s self-absorbed, narcissistic, occasionally cruel and her inner dialogue is incredibly vicious. In fact, there aren’t a whole lot of likeable characters in this book, except Natalie’s children. She presents herself as someone wholly different to who she is, gentle, loving mother and wife. In fact, she’s disparaging of everyone around her and unbearably supercilious. She’s still fixated on things that happened in high school and college and is deeply unhappy with her life, despite how picture perfect she makes it look online.

Yesteryear’s real strength lies in how uncomfortably close it is to home. We’ve all seen those types of videos on our FYPs – women churning out children so much that even they seem to have lost count, making things from scratch, milking cows and collecting eggs from chickens. Yesteryear offered a fictional? glimpse into the behind the scenes of such content – I say fictional? because I think it’s probably a quite accurate representation.

In the end, I don’t think Burke actually draws any conclusions about the ethics of tradwife culture, but rather allows the reader to make their own. That could be an issue for some people but I personally really like those types of books. I touched on this earlier in my wrap-up, but the conversation around the choices Natalie made for her children and the exploitation of the children in online content was really interesting to me, especially considering the choices Clementine, Natalie’s eldest daughter, made in the end.

• The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Crime thriller / Historical fiction

‘To be a human is complex, and often painful; to be an animal is comfortingly simple and good.’

My review: Camp Emerson is a summer camp for teenagers on the ground of the Van Laar preserve in the Adirondacks. The Van Laars themselves are a wealthy family habitually struck by tragedy. When their 17-year-old daughter goes missing from Camp Emerson, a panicked search ensues. What makes Barbara’s disappearance all the more alarming is the fact that she isn’t the first Van Laar child to go missing. Her brother Bear vanished from Camp Emerson before Barbara was born. Two disappearances, twenty years apart. Barbara’s disappearance will throw everything the family thought they knew about Bear’s into turmoil.

Alice Van Laar has never fit in with her husband’s family, who are all outgoing and flashy sorts. Insecure and woefully lacking in confidence, her only refuge was her son Bear. Then, devastated by her beloved son’s disappearance, she becomes reliant on pills and alcohol. Peter, her husband, is remote and uninterested, both in her and in his children. Other characters of interest are Louise, Barbara’s counsellor, who may have secrets of her own to hide, and Tracy, Barbara’s bunkmate, who may have the best idea of where she has gone.

The storyline bounces between Alice’s first meeting Peter Van Laar in early 50s to Bear’s disappearance and Barbara’s birth in the 60s, to Barbara’s disappearance in the 70s. Moore managed to weave together the different POVs and time periods seamlessly, and this was definitely a strength of the novel. This is an incredibly slow burning thriller. Moore takes time to fully explore the characters, to go off on tangents about their pasts.

The character work was exquisite, but I couldn’t help feeling a little let down by the thriller element of this book. I think it would work better bordering more on literary fiction, as that is where the author clearly excels. But it was an engrossing read, even if I was slightly let down by the ending. In fun news, this has been picked up for a Netflix adaptation and I think this will make an excellent series! The camp setting, the class disparity, the wide cast of characters, each one under suspicion… I think perhaps it will work better on screen than it did for a novel.

• Dogs, Boys and Other Things I’ve Cried About by Isabel Klee

Memoir

‘That’s the magic of dogs: The simple, unrelenting magic is that they don’t even have to try. They heal just by existing, reminding us to live every moment to the fullest. Because what is life other than taking long walks, eating good food, and spending time with the people you love most?’

My review: This is a memoir by Isabel Klee, a content creator and dog fosterer. If you haven’t already, I do urge you to go check out her adorable dog @SimonSits. This memoir follows Isabel and Simon throughout her twenties. Here’s a snippet from the dedication: ‘To the dog you got in your twenties. The dog you got the you were unprepared and venturing out into the unknown. The dog who navigated the confusion of youth with you, who moved from apartment to apartment, who sat through every breakup and every first date. The dog who was the sole reason you got out of bed most mornings, while the heaviness of the world was weighing on your shoulders, who simply sat with you, existed with you, when loneliness felt like a living, breathing thing. […] The dog who now has white hairs sprinkled around their eyes, who is getting older just like you are.’

That quote really encapsulates this memoir better than I ever could. One minute your heart is bursting with love and the next you’re sobbing (actually, often it’s both). Well-written and with such heart, it made me wish I could give every single dog a forehead kiss, and Isabel too, for all the incredible work she does. It’s also such a love letter to New York City.

Other than dogs, it follows Isabel’s dating misadventures, living with other girls in a romcom-esque apartment, her relationship to the city itself. And of course, her job as a dog photographer’s assistant, which took her all over the world meeting dogs of all shapes and sizes. From every story of the individual dogs who came to Isabel, who allowed her to love them despite the horrific experiences they’ve gone through to her famous foster fail, Simon. The discovery of Simon’s epilepsy had me bawling, as well as the section about her childhood dog.

Thank you to Little Brown Book Group and NetGalley for the digital proof. Dogs, Boys and Other Things I’ve Cried About is out now, and if you’re a dog lover, I highly recommend you go and check it out! So heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.

• The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place by Kate Summerscale

Narrative non-fiction / True crime

‘Everything in life is but a peepshow.’

My review: This is a true crime novel that revisits the infamous 1953 murders at Rillington Place. In 1950, Timothy Evans of Rillington Place was hung for the murder of his wife Beryl and their daughter Geraldine. But when the bodies of women are discovered in the walls of Rillington Place, lining the floorboards and buried in the garden, each killed in a similar manner to Beryl and Geraldine three years prior, the question of Timothy Evans’s innocence cannot be ignored. And a new suspect emerges; John Reginald Halliday Christie. A sallow, faintly creepy man who seems to move through life with perfect anonymity, the real terror of Reg Christie is his unprepossing everyman persona. A quote from the book: ‘To most of his neighbours and his colleagues, Christie seemed restrained, punctilious, above reproach. He had duped them […] into thinking him an upright, proper and faintly prudish member of the community.’

Summerscale reexamines the case through the eyes of some key personages – one being Harry Proctor, a journalist for the Pictorial. It prompts some very interesting questions about the morality of true crime coverage and the tabloid frenzy that surrounded the Rillington Place murders. I enjoyed Proctor’s crisis of faith in the justice system and his own place within it, which was especially informed by the flashbacks to the case of Christopher Craig and Derek Bentley, another miscarriage of justice that Proctor had covered a few years prior, as well as how the two cases led to the eventual abolition of the death penalty.

Another lens is Fryn Tennyson Jesse, a crime writer (and a distant descendant of Alfred Lord Tennyson!) I found Fryn’s perspective to be less interesting than Proctor’s, although I did like learning how the sensationalised case attracted all the prominent novelists and artists of the 50s to Christie’s trial. I did also appreciate Summerscale’s going into depth about the issue of abortion and contraception that women faced in the post-war era, and how this led to backstreet butchers like Christie profiting.

This did give a fantastic insight into early 1950s London. Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, the death of Queen Mary, waves of violence against immigrants, the great smog, the repercussions of the war – the chilling case of Reg Christie spans it all. If you’re interested in that era of history, I would highly recommend this. It doesn’t offer a definitive conclusion to the mystery of Rillington Place, which has spanned more than seventy years, but I wouldn’t really expect it to. Instead, it was a comprehensive overview of the crime and the time period that was written in a very readable and fast-paced style. I will definitely be reading more Kate Summerscale – The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is top of my list.

• Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter

‘You duel, or you die.’

My review: Astrid has always known she was destined to die. She is a Nachstern witch and a Princess of Arturea. As is written in their law, the heirs to the queendom of Arturea and the kingdom of Vatra must duel. The winning heir will secure the Heart for their country – an infinite source to power. Astrid’s people desperately need the Heart to fight the blight that is scourging their queendom. The problem for Astrid is that her opponent is the fearsome Prince Zryan, the most renowned Vatran dragon rider in generations.

Meanwhile, Skylar is part of a travelling troupe of performers and thieves. She harbours a deep hatred of anything Vatran, ever since the King’s guard executed her mother, but the prospective of lucrative winnings from the crowd gathered to watch the duel draws her troupe to the Vatran capital. Except, her path is destined to intertwine with the royals more than Skylar could have ever predicted.

I do really enjoy a dual POV, especially between two FMCs – such as Twin Crowns or These Notorious Virtues. I really enjoyed both Skylar and Astrid’s POVs. The plot was incredibly fast-paced – it felt like we were getting new information and developments virtually every chapter. It’s a longish book for current fantasy standards, which I appreciated. It felt the authors took their time with the story.

It did read slightly more YA at times – for instance, it’s comped to Fourth Wing, and I think it’s slightly misleading. I’d say the comps to the early Throne of Glass books and the Red Queen books are more accurate. There is the occasional expletive, but I just felt like the writing style was a bit more young adult. However, it is heavy on the romance.

Thank you to Harper Collins and NetGalley for the digital proof. Blood Bound is out on the 7th May!

That’s it for April! A thoroughly good reading month, with an eclectic spread of genres. Favourites from this month would have to be Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves (to absolutely nobody’s surprise). Another read I really enjoyed was actually Yesteryear – it’s the sort of book that has lingered with me ever since I read it. I can’t wait to see what May brings me, and stay tuned because I have some exciting ARCs on my TBR!