Thursday Thoughts: April in Review

Total Books Read: 22

Life On The Refrigerator Door - Alice Kuipers
Don't Look Back - SB Hayes  
Light - Michael Grant 
Colin Fischer - Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz 
Kidnap In The Caribbean - Lauren St John

The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld - Stephen Briggs and Terry Pratchett
Shipwrecked - Siobhan Curham 
They Called Him Lightning - Mark Falcon 
Geekhood: Mission Improbable - Andy Briggs 
Follow Me Down - Tanya Byrne 

The House On The Cliff - Franklin W Dixon
Why Me? The Very Important E-mails of Bob Servant - Neil Forsyth 
Ruthless - Sara Shephard
Tide - Daniela Sacerdoti
The Testing - Joelle Charbonneau

Burglars Can't Be Choosers - Lawrence Block
The Burglar In The Closet - Lawrence Block
Heroic - Phil Earle 
Inferno - Sherrilyn Kenyon 
Anita Blake Vampire Hunter: Circus Of The Damned: The Charmer - Laurell K Hamilton and Jessica Booth

Butter - Erin Jade Lange
Twerp - Mark Goldblatt 


Random Thoughts

More adult books than usual for me this month (only 5, but still an increase on previous months.) The best of those were undoubtedly the first two in Lawrence Block's Burglar series - I'd read most of his others featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr but finally got an omnibus of the first five and devoured them. (I'm not listing rereads here, which is why I've only got books one and two up.) For a winning mixture of comedy and mystery, you can't go wrong with Bernie!

A couple of slight let-downs in the latest in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Chronicles of Nick series and Mark Falcon's They Called Him Lightning, which wasn't up to the average Western tale for me, but overall a pretty good month. One of the highlights for me was tracking down a gorgeous reprint of one of the original Hardy Boys books by Franklin W Dixon, which was very enjoyable - and looks brilliant on my bookshelf.


Book of the Month

Close call for third, but SB Hayes just takes it with the wonderfully atmospheric thriller Don't Look Back, which gave me chills!

Second goes to a novel by an author I hadn't read before, and is an unusual choice for me because it's MG not YA - Mark Goldblatt's Twerp, a tale of a 12-year-old boy growing up in 60's New York, is a stunning coming-of-age story. Funny, moving, and managing to teach an important lesson without ever seeming to preach, this may well be my MG Book of the Year.

As good as Twerp was, though, there was never any real competition for the overall winner for Book of the Month. Michael Grant's LIGHT was the most-anticipated series finale for years for me - certainly since the final Harry Potter. I'm pleased to say it lived up to, perhaps even exceeded, my sky-high expectations. This is a series which has it all - wonderful characters, breathtaking action, fantastic heroism, and chilling evil. The climax was absolutely stunning, and is a clear winner for me.