Hello everyone! Happy Thursday! I have to say, April went by suuuuper fast for me. I feel like I blinked and April happened, now here we are wrapping it up!

If you missed March’s wrap up, catch it here!

Currently Reading:

I’m 31% of the way through The Stand. Am I enjoying it? Yes, much more than I was last month. The chapters have gotten longer and we’re getting more foreshadowing and development and it’s been a lot of fun.

I’m continuing with my re-read of the Uglies series and I’m close to finishing Specials. This series has been a roller coaster from completely loving the first book, to slowly starting to dislike the books, this one started off with me disliking it, but it’s slowly starting to win my heart over again!

I’m lastly reading Anger is a Gift by: Mark Oshiro and I’m very much enjoying it. Like I mentioned in my WWW yesterday I know that this is going to be hard-hitting and a book worth reading.

What I read this month:

I read a total of 7 books this month, a few of them were big books too, 400+ pages. My Instagram game was on this month too! 😃

Heartless by: Marissa Meyer
Lord of the Flies by: William Golding
A Shadow Bright and Burning (Kingdom on Fire #1) by: Jessica Cluess
Oliver Twist by: Charles Dickens
Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) by: Cassandra Clare
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Slytherin Edition) (Harry Potter #1) by: J.K. Rowling
Emma by: Jane Austen

Book Reviews this month:

Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5) by: Seanan McGuire
The Reader (Sea of Ink and Gold #1) by: Traci Chee
The Memory of Things by: Gae Polisner
You Are Awesome by: Neil Pasricha
Uglies (Uglies #1) by: Scott Westerfeld
Tweet Cute by: Emma Lord

Currently Watching:

Station 19 has gone in quite a few directions that I wasn’t expecting! They’ve really pulled some fast ones, but for the most part I’ve really enjoyed watching the show and watching all the dynamics between all the characters because they are all so different and special.

How to get Away With Murder is back from hiatus… and it’s back with a kick. When it went for a break last November I was kinda tired of the show, but now that it’s been months I’m reminded why I love this show. So sad that it’s ending for good… but this could only go on for so long. I’m very excited to see how they end it next week!

I’ve always wanted to watch Heroes so seeing it on Prime, I decided now would be a great time to start watching it! Holy… this show is something else! I’m super invested, obviously there are some characters I like better than others but the development and the backstories, this is some really good writing!

What I Watched this month:

I finally got around to watching the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the third part… wow did it get dark, but I loved it. I loved seeing Sabrina try and find herself and try to do right by everyone, even if it splits her in two… more on that in my wrap up of the season, see link below!

With being stuck in quarantine I’ve been going through Netflix and picking the first thing I see that looks good and watching it. That’s how I got to She’s Out of My League… which I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve seen before, but it was still very entertaining, and had a good moral lesson about how we perceive ourselves and how we see others, and comparing ourselves. I really liked it, plus I really like Jay Baruchel.

Kim’s Convenience wrapped up season 4 on March 31, I watched it a little later and HOW COULD THEY END IT LIKE THAT?! UGH. Umma has something wrong with her, although I thought that set-up was weird. And then you have Gerald and Janet like what?! Ugh, I need the next season. I love this show too much!

Grey’s Anatomy wrapped up another season this month. Ehhh the ending was weird, and if you recall my mini rant about how they treated Alex leaving last month, this season has just been all over the map. Honestly the whole Richard thing just felt a lot bigger than it was, and it just didn’t feel very Grey’s with the way it ended. Normally, this show is go big or go home, and they fell so far off from that, it was very anticlimactic.

So, now that we’ve all been home you’d think I’d want to get my bake on… WRONG. You would be very mistaken (although I did get some baking done in April woot woot!) to catch me in the kitchen. Instead, I took to watching baking shows on Netflix. My favourite at the moment: The Great Canadian Baking Show. Oh I just can’t get enough of this! I just found out there are 3 seasons, but Netflix only has 2 right now (just found out season 3 is coming in May, yippie!). UGH it’s so freakin’ Canadian, everyone just loves one another, and they all try to help each other out, they are just SO CUTE! Yes, I cried for both season one and two finales because I am THAT much of a sap!

I really enjoyed season one of Jack Ryan so of course I went back for season two. Season two fell short for me; I wasn’t as invested as I was in the first. Don’t get me wrong I was still on the edge of my seat half of the time, but there was just something about this plotline that I didn’t care for. Also the fact that Jack felt he needed to become this agent who was hard-headed and felt he needed to save the day was a little annoying. I get why his character went in that direction, I just didn’t like it. I hope there’s going to be a season 3 because I still really like this show.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine wrapped up its 7th season and I enjoyed every silly plot or character duo dynamic. It was fun to see characters who don’t always get time together have these small plots. I like how progressive plots got and as always I loved the season regulars namely Judy and the Halloween Heist!

Oh yes, you see that right… I watched Tiger King. I was told I would enjoy it so I decided to check it out… oooh boy did I not know what I was getting into. I’m not going to say much because I’m going to have a TV Tuesday post about it in a few weeks (that’s one of the only reasons I kept watching… for the blog!) but wow what a story.

I re-watched Begin Again because this is one of my favourite movies and I was talking to Lauren about it last week and it’s on Prime so I just threw it on and enjoyed all the feels. I can’t even explain how good this movie is!

HOW did I know about this movie?! I came across Stranger Than Fiction on Netflix because I was just not in the mood to read and this movie stood out to me. I’m not a big Will Ferrell fan, but this film was really good. The whole premise was so interesting and really makes you think about writing and your characters. It was a lot of fun, would totally recommend to anyone!

TV Tuesday Posts:

Let’s Talk About… The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina… Season 3

Posts from the Month

WWW Wednesday #13 ☀️
WWW Wednesday #14 🌤
WWW Wednesday #15 🌥
WWW Wednesday #16 🌎
WWW Wednesday #17 ☁️

Spring Has Sprung Book Tag
Mystery Blogger Award VIII

I went into April very hopeful… hope that things would start to look up, hope that the weather would get better, and just overall hope that my mood would be better.

The weather did get better, we’ve had a lot more sunny days, which really helps. Seeing the sun just brings my mood up. When I get up and see grey and rain, it makes it that much harder to get up in the morning. I’m telling you, even though I get to sleep in until 7 now that I’m at home, I still dread getting up… I absolutely hate it. Knowing I have to get up and do work without seeing my work buddies is just depressing. Talking to them on the phone has been good, we even FaceTime each other because it just feels that much better to actually see the person you’re talking to, I still just miss being in the office with them.

As most people know April is O.W.L.S month! This year, to bring up my spirits and give me something hopeful to do, I decided to participate! If you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen that I’ve been updating my stories every day with my progress, and I even made it a little interactive by doing some polls to let you guys chose my reads for me. Honestly, it was a lot of fun, and I’m SO happy I decided to join in this year!

https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODgzMDgzMDY1NTI4Mjk5?igshid=10al5pno37lpn&story_media_id=2276690660054755613

Aside from the OWLS I bought books and created a few unboxing videos.

I started baking again! You can see from my above bookstagram photos! I made a lemon poppyseed loaf at Easter that went really quick, haha! The following week I opened to a random page in one of my baking magazines and tried my hand at making “Pecan Sandies”. In theory it should have been quite simple; 5 ingredients, 4 steps, how hard could it be? Turns out it was very hard. I couldn’t get the dough to mould and it was just too dry and crumbly so I ended up throwing half the dough out… the other half became those small cookies you see next to Oliver Twist… and they actually weren’t half-bad… who would have thought?

My mum’s birthday was at the end of the month so I tried my hand at baking a chocolate cake. You would have thought I would have made a cake before, but I haven’t. It wasn’t complicated and I think it turned out really well. The only thing I wish I had done better was the icing, it was too thin!

Like last month I spent a lot of time playing Wii sports with my brother for something to do, I think I’m getting better 😛 (look I beat him at bowling for once!)

I’ve also been keeping in contact with my friends through video chats and an app called Houseparty.

How has your month been? What did you get up to?

(Note, this is not my house below… merely something I saw on a walk one day and thought was super cute and made me happy!)