Show Us Your Books - What I Read in April

It's that time again, book nerds! My favorite day of the month, the Show Us Your Books linkup with me Jana of Jana Says!

Here's what I've read since the linkup on April 14:

Euphoria by Lily King - I'm a fan of anthropology - I find it fascinating in its heydey, which is when this novel takes place. Not a ton of in depth characterization and some starts and stops in the plot made it a motley little book, but one that I found to be intelligent and worth it despite its faults. I flew through the 250 pages in less than two nights and enjoyed it.

Dark of the Moon by John Sandford - This is the first in a series with the character Virgil Flowers. I like John Sandford books - I can depend on him to provide a good story and keep me entertained without a ton of brain output. I'm going to continue on the Virgil Flowers path.

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven - My heart swelled with joy and withered and broke about 10 different times reading this book. Young adult with some very heavy and adult themes. This was an excellent read.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin - A lot of times throughout this book, I was like where is this going? and each time realized that I really didn't care. I like books about quirky characters, readers, small towns, and improbable circumstances. This book had them all.

Last Train to Babylon by Charlee Fam - I don't see a ton of books about people wading through their early to mid twenties all fucked up knowing so much less than they thought they would about the world even though that's how many people FEEL at that time. This book was a glimpse into that and also dealt with some heavy women's issues. I liked it and thought it was well written.

Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover - This was basically a book about attraction and sex with a cloak of love and pain thrown over it to make it marketable to the masses. There was a lot of sappy and ridiculous but I was sad as hell about some of the chapters that took place in the past. If you don't like sex in your novels, don't read this book. Otherwise, it was a quick and mindless read which I like sometimes especially after reading heavy shit like All the Bright Places and Babylon above.

Stolen by Christopher Lucy - Reading this really let me visualize how Stockholm Syndrome works. I know about it and have read about it before, but this made it click. Even as a reader I knew I should be more pissed off and repulsed by Ty than I was. This is a story built on writing and two characters with the land itself playing the third, most important character. This is not an action novel but it's a worthy read.

Two books I started and couldn't finish:
The Girls of Mischief Bay by Susan Mallery - If you need to hammer the issues of each character home so much that I'm struggling with the repetition by page 30, I'm not going to enjoy the rest of the book. I can typically overlook that to a degree but this was relentless and didn't allow me to pick up any thread of a plot in between.

The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence - I might have tried reading this book at the incorrect time. I truly believe we need to be in the right frame of mind to receive some books. This might be one of those, so I might give it a go in the future. I was not in the mood for the crazy level of detail the narrator went into about everything. But I might be in the mood in the future.

This link up happens the second Tuesday of every month. The next one is Tuesday, June 9. 

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Non-bloggers, what have you read recently? Let me know what you recommend and what to stay away from. Bloggers, link up your posts below.

An InLinkz Link-up