How My April 2024 Went

The last few days of April and early May kept me busy with packing and visiting family, but I’m back and finally sharing what I was up to last month!

• books
• tv shows/movies
• music
• orders

Daily Life

I’ve been a bit busy and this blog post was put on the back burner, so I’m not as in depth for this post as I was with my previous ones.

April 6: I visited Kelli and Alexis in Clarksville to try new coffee flight flavors at Wesbrooks Coffee!

We actually had lunch at The Mailroom first before we downed the coffees.

April 8: My best photo of the eclipse. I could see it through the glasses whenever it’d peek through the clouds!

Darby enjoys doing this with his crate. Such a goober.

I also went to Sweet Sofia’s to get the fresas con crema!

April 12: Darby got to have a small play date with Birdy and Goose! He got to play with Biscuit as well since she was staying with them.

April 15: My eczema flared up again, so that’s been fun dealing with it.

April 17: My friend, Louise, got a different job, so I have been dropping in to check on Luna! She got to meet Darby’s charcoal Lab friend, Remy! They’ve become fast friends, and thankfully he tires Luna out.

April 20: We ordered 615Chutney for dinner! Stephen wants to like Indian food, but he hasn’t found a dish that he loves yet. Hopefully he’ll find one soon. Luckily for me, I got two meals!

Their Chicken 65 tastes like Chick-fil-A nuggets. They are delicious and totally worth it, though! The Biriyani had bone-in chicken, which was good but I wish it was chunks of chicken instead just because I’m messy.

Honestly, not much else happened for the rest of the month, aside from packing! My eczema lasted for like two weeks, so I barely went anywhere.

Darby ended up staying with Birdy and Goose whenever I went out of town, so that’ll be in the next post!

Books

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I haven’t read as many books as I’d like to, I’m still in a bit of a slump, but I’m slowly making it through.

• Good Fortune by C.K. Chau
  • synopsis: A whip-smart and charming debut novel that brilliantly reimagines Pride and Prejudice, set in contemporary Chinatown, exploring contemporary issues of class divides, family ties, cultural identity, and the pleasures and frustrations that come with falling in love.
    
    When Elizabeth Chen’s ever-hustling realtor mother finally sells the beloved if derelict community center down the block, the new owners don’t look like typical New York City buyers. Brendan Lee and Darcy Wong are good Chinese boys with Hong Kong money. Clean-cut and charismatic, they say they are committed to cleaning up the neighborhood.
    
    To Elizabeth, that only means one thing Darcy is looking to give the center an uptown makeover. Elizabeth is determined to fight for community over profit, even if it means confronting the arrogant, uptight man every chance she gets.
    
    But where clever, cynical Elizabeth sees lemons, her mother sees lemonade. Eager to get Elizabeth and her other four daughters ahead in the world (and out of their crammed family apartment), Mrs. Chen takes every opportunity to keep her investors close. Closer than Elizabeth likes.
    
    The more time they spend together, the more conflicted Elizabeth feels…until a shocking betrayal forces her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, trust, and the kind of person Darcy Wong really is.
  • genres: romance, Asian literature, retelling
  • rating: 3
    • You know, I claim to not like the grump-sunshine trope, yet I loved Pride and Prejudice and claim it’s one of my favorites. Maybe I need to read it soon to determine if this is still true because modern books with the trope make me feel meh.
    • I was curious as how the Lydia situation was going to be handled in this book because, you know, she was a minor in Jane Austen’s book running off with an older guy.

• If Only I Had Told Her by Laura Nowlin
  • synopsis: If only I’d told her that I loved her years ago, then I wouldn’t be here now.
    
    Finn has always loved Autumn. She’s not just the girl next door or his mother’s best friend’s daughter, she is his everything. But she’s not his girlfriend. That’s Sylvie, and Finn would never hurt her, so there’s no way Autumn could know how he truly feels.
    
    Jack, Finn’s best friend, isn’t so sure. He’s seen Finn and Autumn together. How could she not know? And how is he supposed to support and protect Finn when heartache seems inevitable?
    
    Autumn surrounds herself with books and wants to write her own destiny—but one doesn’t always get a new chapter and fate can be cruel to those in love.
    
    Told through three different perspectives, If Only I Had Told Her is a love story brimming with truth, tragedy, and unexpected bonds that heal us.
  • genres: romance, young adult, mental health, coming of age
  • rating: 4
    • It was nice to get more of Autumn’s story after the first book. I liked Jack’s perspective even though he was a minor character and not really mentioned in the other book.
    • I’ll give the miscommunication trope a pass in teen books because, well, same. I was terrible with communicating and I know I could’ve handled so many things in my past better. My communication skills of today are still questionable, but I’m a bit better.

• First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
  • synopsis: Evie Porter has everything a nice, Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence and a garden, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.
    
    The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.
    
    Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job will be different. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.
    
    Because the one thing she’s worked her entire life to keep clean, the one identity she could always go back to—her real identity—just walked right into this town. Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge…
  • genres: mystery, thriller, suspense, psychological thriller. crime
  • rating: 4
    • I’ll stretch my imagination a bit and run with this plot because it was engaging and fun.
    • At first, this book was not clicking with me. Rather, my brain felt temporarily broken when I began this book because I kept thinking, “What the heck is going on?” and I had to re-read the synopsis a couple of times to see if I was missing something.
    • The story was clever, and the big twist was a nice reveal to me. The characters seemed likable, and I was rooting for Evie.
    • I needed a good mystery book to help me through my slump.

• Little Gods by Meng Jin
  • synopsis: On the night of June Fourth, a woman gives birth in a Beijing hospital alone. Thus begins the unraveling of Su Lan, a brilliant physicist who until this moment has successfully erased her past, fighting what she calls the mind’s arrow of time.
    
    When Su Lan dies unexpectedly seventeen years later, it is her daughter Liya who inherits the silences and contradictions of her life. Liya, who grew up in America, takes her mother’s ashes to China, Liya’s memories are joined by those of two others: Zhu Wen, the woman last to know Su Lan before she left China, and Yongzong, the father Liya has never known. In this way a portrait of Su Lan emerges: an ambitious scientist, an ambivalent mother, and a woman whose relationship to her own past shapes and ultimately unmakes Liya’s own sense of displacement.
  • genres: historical fiction, Asian literature
  • rating: 2
    • This was not the book for me, nor the time to read it since I needed something lighter. I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters, although I could’ve with Liya since she’s trying to locate her birth father.
    • The tone is sterile and serious. The three POVs were interesting, and some of the history was revealed in them. It felt anticlimactic and I’m like, that’s it?

• Women of Good Fortune by Sophie Wan
  • synopsis: Set against a high-society Shanghai wedding, a heartfelt, funny, dazzling novel about a reluctant bride and her two best friends, each with their own motives and fed up with the way society treats women, who forge a plan to steal all the gift money on the big day.
    
    Lulu has always been taught that money is the ticket to a good life. So, when Shanghai’s most eligible bachelor surprises her with a proposal, the only acceptable answer is yes, even if the voice inside her head is saying no. His family’s fortune would solve all her parents’ financial woes, but Lulu isn’t in love or ready for marriage.
    
    The only people she can confide in are her two best friends: career-minded Rina, who is tired of being passed over for promotion as her biological clock ticks away; and Jane, a sharp-tongued, luxury-chasing housewife desperate to divorce her husband and trade up. Each of them desires something different: freedom, time, beauty. None of them can get it without money.
    
    Lulu’s wedding is their golden opportunity. The social event of the season, it means more than enough cash gifts to transform the women’s lives. To steal the money on the big day, all they’ll need is a trustworthy crew and a brilliant plan. But as the plot grows increasingly complicated and relationships are caught in the cross fire, the women are forced to face that having it all might come at a steep price…
  • genres: romance, chick lit, Chinese literature
  • rating: 4
    • Three women taking back their life and making their choices, let’s go!
    • I thought this was a fun book. Books with a heist always seem to keep me hooked, and I was curious to know how this heist was going to play out.
    • Although, based on the synopsis, Lulu appears to be the main character, she’s the one I feel like I knew least about after I finished the book.
    • I ended up not liking Rina or Jane. They’re incredibly flawed and seem like they could be real people, but I wouldn’t say they’d be the women I’d choose to be friends with.
    • Interestingly enough, all three love interests were good guys and I liked them more. I felt bad for them at different times.

• The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell
  • synopsis: 2017: 19-year-old Tallulah is going out on a date, leaving her baby with her mother, Kim.
    
    Kim watches her daughter leave and, as late evening turns into night, which turns into early morning, she waits for her return. And waits.
    
    The next morning, Kim phones Tallulah’s friends who tell her that Tallulah was last seen heading to a party at a house in the nearby woods called Dark Place.
    
    She never returns.
    
    2019: Sophie is walking in the woods near the boarding school where her boyfriend has just started work as a head-teacher when she sees a note fixed to a tree.
    
    ‘DIG HERE’ . . .
    
    A cold case, an abandoned mansion, family trauma and dark secrets lie at the heart of Lisa Jewell’s remarkable new novel.
  • genres: crime, mystery, suspense, psychological thriller
  • content warning: rape
  • rating: 4
    • Another LJ novel with a creepy older man preying on women, not surprised at this point after reading a handful of her novels that have this element. This man was a minor character in this story
    • I could not read this book fast enough to find out what happened to Tallulah and Zach! I guessed correctly what might have happened, though everything else was off for me, so that was a fun experience to see how everything played out!
    • Kind of weird how Sophie hadn’t recognized a detail that was in a book of hers that was used by someone planting evidence for her to find.
    • Kim and the policeman had some buildup that never went anywhere, which was a bummer and seemed pointless after finishing the book.

• If You, Then Me by Yvonne Woon
  • synopsis: What would you ask your future self? First question: What does it feel like to kiss someone?
    
    Xia is stuck in a lonely, boring loop. Her only escapes are Wiser, an artificial intelligence app she designed to answer questions like her future self, and a mysterious online crush she knows only as ObjectPermanence.
    
    And then one day Xia enrolls at the Foundry, an app incubator for tech prodigies in Silicon Valley.
    
    Suddenly, anything is possible. Flirting with Mast, a classmate also working on AI, leads to a date. Speaking up generates a vindictive nemesis intent on publicly humiliating her. And running into Mitzy Erst, Foundry alumna and Xia’s idol, could give Xia all the answers.
    
    And then Xia receives a shocking message from ObjectPermanence: He is at the Foundry, too. Xia is torn between Mast and ObjectPermanence—just as Mitzy pushes her towards a shiny new future. Xia doesn’t have to ask Wiser to know: The right choice could transform her into the future self of her dreams, but the wrong one could destroy her.
  • genres: romance, Asian literature, young adult, teen
  • rating: 4.5
    • I wish this book covered more of what the school did and what the students learned, but this book sucked me in and I had to finish it in one sitting!
    • It’s crazy of the Foundry to give each student $150,000 for the school year.
    • Xia is 16. She was self-destructive, naive, immature, and careless with this opportunity. My goodness, it was hard to root for her, but she spiraled out of loneliness and happiness to finally be fitting in with someone.
    • It was a little refreshing to have a character make so many mistakes, but it was difficult to get through since she was making so many awful mistakes and life choices.
    • I loved the mystery of finding out who ObjectPermanence was, and I think she made the right choice in deciding who to choose.

I honestly didn’t expect to read the last two books since I haven’t been reading much lately, but I managed to read them within a day or two!

TV Shows/Movies

Still watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I’m on season 8 now!

Music

The Tortured Poets Department (2024) — Taylor Swift

This album’s sound is different, but I am loving it so much and cannot stop listening to it!

I stayed up listening to the first album, but it was 2 AM when The Anthology dropped and I had to wait until the morning to listen to the rest of it.

My top 5 favorites:

The Tortured Poets Department:

• “Down Bad”
• “loml”
• “But Daddy I love Him”
• “Fresh Out the Slammer”
  • This was not in my top until like a week later
• “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”

The Anthology:

• “The Black Dog”
• “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus”
• “I Look in People’s Windows”
• “Cassandra”
• “The Prophecy

Honestly, my least favorite ones at the present are “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” “Robin,” and “Clara Bow.”

Orders

I couldn’t pass this beauty up. I waited after the sale was over before committing to it, and it was still available a day later!

This is a lovely Echeveria Snowbird, which is an E. Laui x E. Blue Bird hybrid.

April 25: My Javy subscription arrived! It was my first time trying the sugar cookie flavor, and it’s fabulous! These flavors make up my dream team.

April 29: My Chinook sunflower seeds arrived!

That’s all for April! May has already been exciting, so now I need to update that post before I fall behind and get lazy.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful May so far!