April Reading Recap: Smut, Thrills & Bad Decisions

April began with a reading slump for me, one that I thought would be hard to beat, especially after some events took place in my personal life, as well as getting to spend my free time in other ways than reading.

At first, I started putting a lot of pressure on my shoulders, especially since at the beginning of the year I had set a personal goal to achieve, which is to read 60 books by the end of 2026, meaning 5 books per month.

But based on my previous experience reading, I decided to take things slower, as I've always been a person with lots of passions and never had enough time to enjoy a bit of each one of them daily. So it's kinda normal to have phases in my life when I focus more on some than others. In fact, I had months when I read 10 books, and some when I only read 2 or 3, so I still believe I'll reach my reading goal for 2026.

Truth is, I only started to actually read on a daily basis in the 2nd part of the month, and I am confident I could finish all 5 books I wanted to read in April in 2 weeks only. However, I made a wrong decision to start a series from which I had a lot of expectations, fooling myself that it won't take longer than 1-2 days to finish each book. But I was wrong. Anyway, more about that when the time comes.

1. The Crash

by Freida McFadden
★★☆☆☆

To combat my reading slump, I decided it was about time to read one more book from Freida McFadden, as she does a great job to keep me curious and engaged while reading her mystery/thriller writings, but it turned out to be a really bad pick this time.

I actually heard bad feedback on this one before, but I never make my choice in terms of what to read next based on other people's opinions. Sadly, after reading The Crash, I realised that I felt the same.

The book got me a little déjà vu with Don't Lie from the same author, but while I loved that book, this turned out quite the opposite. I don't even know what bothers me the most between lots of predictable twists or the lack of unexpected and crazy events taking place in the last hundred pages as the author got me used to, but either way, this book is my least enjoyed read from Freida.

The Crash by Freida McFadden

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2. Butcher and Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #1)

by Brynne Weaver
★★★☆☆

The Ruinous Love is a trilogy that I kept postponing reading since I heard lots of mixed thoughts about it. And if you are not into dark romance or haven't read books that include lots of eroticism, then I don't recommend these books to you.

However, I really felt like breaking the string and moving my attention to something new, both a new author, but also a new genre of books, as the trilogy mentioned is known as a darkcom, which stands for dark romance & comedy.

When it comes to comedy, Butcher & Blackbird really made me think about the strange love/hate relationship between the two crazy characters everyone heard about: Harley Quinn and Joker. But as much as I loved the two, I can't say the same about the protagonists of the book I finished reading.

First, there are plenty of disturbing details, from explicit content when it comes to crimes, to a lot of p0rn that might feel overwhelming even for some of the most experienced readers. But what bothered me the most, actually, was that there was no story twist I couldn't guess. This turned the whole journey into a very long and boring read, making me feel like I already knew what was going to happen next. Not to mention that I ended up spending a lot more time reading it than planned, as I am not the kind of person to read more books at the same time, so it sort of kept me in the same place before moving further.

Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3. Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2)

by Brynne Weaver
★★☆☆☆

As soon as I finished B&B, I thought I would give the 2nd title a try as well. I was hoping to see a new and more interesting direction of the overall story, but despite having a book that now follows the story of two new protagonists (Rowan's brother and his partner), I could also see the similarities with the 4th volume of the Dark Verse series by Runyx, entitled The Finisher.

I won't say exactly what made me think of that book to avoid revealing spoilers, but if you've read it, you'll surely know what I'm talking about.

But back to the 2nd book of The Ruinous Love series, which is also where the name of the trilogy comes from, it actually turned out very similar to the 1st title of the series. From very alike events to the same predictable plot twists of the story, a lot of smut and disturbing details, the single aspect that felt different but still didn't bring any bonus to the overall book was the controversial aspect of religion, which I'm sure won't be understood by a lot of people. So yeah, not very happy with this read either, but ready to finish the series by reading the last volume as well.

Leather & Lark by Brynne Weaver

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

4. Scythe & Sparrow (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #3)

by Brynne Weaver
★★★★☆

As a person who was literally looking forward to finish with this trilogy and almost forget about it right away, I had as little expectations as possible since both of the first two titles were a crap. However, as soon as I finished reading Scythe & Sparrow I figured out that all my efforts reading this series, as well as the time spent doing it, were finally rewarded in one way or another since the 3rd volume wasn't that bad.

It actually followed a whole new direction with the story being shared before the events taking place in the other 2 books which at first it seemed really weird, but I appreciated it considering how bad I found the other two books.

Just as you might have guessed, the 3rd book follows the story of Fionn and Rose where Fionn is the 2nd brother of Rowan from the first volume. So each of the 3 brothers has its own book with its own (weird) love story and life events.

Funny part is that, Fionn was my least favorite character of the book, but however it quickly became my favorite after reading his story. Which even makes me recommend this book further, without even being needed to read the other two since the events are not that important. But as I was at the beginning of this post, it's really important to do your homework before jumping into a book series because it will keep you busy for a while and it's really sad to get stuck because of a bad series.

Not to mention that a lot of books are translated nowadays with AI which creates a whole chaos, changing the meaning and overall story of the book. So if the book is not good enough, the AI will surely ruin it entirely.

Scythe & Sparrow by Brynne Weaver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Check out my previous monthly recaps:

^{Gabriela Travels is a Curator for Worldmappin and Hive Gaming communities, but also the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences.

At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe.

Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (300+ articles written on this field), but also approaching other topics as well, like game and book reviews, lets plays, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 750+ blog posts.

Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, owning a YouTube channel for each of the two.}

~ @GabrielaTravels ~