Friday 5 – April Anticipated Reads

I can’t Find who started the Friday Five book blog meme. It seems to crop up in many different style such as “Five for Friday”, “Five on Friday” , “FridayFive Challenge”. I also can’t find a topic list like you would have for the Six on Sunday meme. Therefore I am just doing my own thing and setting my own topics just so I can chat books with you.

This week I am chatting about:

Five April releases I am excited to read

April isn’t a huge month in releases but there are some big names and continuing series that I am itching to read, including some of my personal favourite reads.

Amongst Our Weapons
Ben Aaronovich

Rivers of London #9

Release date UK: 7/4/22

About the book:

This next book in the bestselling UK series follows Peter Grant, an ordinary constable turned magician’s apprentice, as he solves crimes across London in a sensational blend of inventive urban fantasy, gripping mystery thriller, and hilarious fantasy caper.

Why I am excited:

Come on… do I need to explain… it is a Rivers of London book. One of my favourite series that I am constantly talking about of course I am going to pick this up the minute I can get my hand on it. I am hoping will be a bit early as I am attending a book signing earlier in the week.

A Catalogue of Catastrophe
Jodi Taylor

Chronicles of St Mary’s #13
eARC

Release Date UK:14/4/22
Blog Tour: 15/4/22

About the book:

When all is lost. When everything is ending. When there’s no hope. When you can’t win. That’s when you attack.

Punching well above their weight, Max and Markham set out to bring down a sinister organisation whose roots might be firmly embedded in the future but whose focus is the past.

Max’s focus is staying alive long enough to reunite with Leon and Matthew – alternately helped and hindered by St Mary’s. Who aren’t always the blessing they like to think they are.

And that’s not all. Are the effects of constantly leaping around the timeline beginning to make themselves felt? Is Max going mad? Or are the ghosts of the past finally catching up with her?

Why I am excited:

Another one that needs very little explaining. I adore the Chronicles of St Mary’s and I have excitingly been asked to be part of the Blog Tour for book 13. I can’t wait to read what kind of trouble Max has found herself in this time. Its going to be Mayhem!

Saint Death’s Daughter
C.S.E. Cooney

physical ARC

Release Date UK: 14/4/22

About the book:

Life gets complicated when Death gets involved.

To be born into a family of royal assassins pretty much guarantees that your life is going to be… rather unusual. Especially if, like Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones, you also have a vicious allergy to all forms of violence and bloodshed, and an uncanny affinity for bringing the dead back to life.

To make matters worse, family debt looms – a debt that will have to be paid sooner rather than later if Lanie and her sister are to retain ownership of the ancestral seat, Stones Manor. Lanie finds herself courted and threatened by powerful parties who would love to use her worryingly intimate relationship with the goddess of death for their own nefarious ends. But the goddess has other plans…

Why I am excited:

This just sounds incredible. A family of assassins, one of whom is allergic to violence and you know beings people back to life. The antithesis of their entire family. and there name is Miscellaneous! I just sound so intriguing how could I not be anticipating reading this one.

One foot in the Fade
Luke Arnold

The Fetch Phillips Archives #3

Release Date UK: 28/4/22

About the book:

In a city that lost its magic, an angel falls in a downtown street. His wings are feathered, whole—undeniably magical—the man clearly flew, because he left one hell of a mess when he plummeted into the sidewalk.

But what sent him up? What brought him down? And will the answers help Fetch bring the magic back for good?

Working alongside necromancers, genies, and shadowy secret societies, through the wildest forests and dingiest dive bars, this case will leave its mark on Fetch’s body, his soul, and the fate of the world.

Why I am excited:

I loved book one and two in the Fetch Phillips series. I love Fetch as a character and how he walks the line between stereotypical noir PI and traditional fantasy hero. These are urban fanstasy stories set in a high fantasy world and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

Sea of Tranquility
Emily St John Mandel

Release Date UK: 28/4/22

About the book:

In 1912, eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew crosses the Atlantic, exiled from English polite society. In British Columbia, he enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and for a split second all is darkness, the notes of a violin echoing unnaturally through the air. The experience shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later Olive Llewelyn, a famous writer, is traveling all over Earth, far away from her home in the second moon colony. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in time, he uncovers a series of lives upended: the exiled son of an aristocrat driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

Sea of Tranquility is a novel that investigates the idea of parallel worlds and possibilities, that plays with the very line along which time should run. Perceptive and poignant about art, and love, and what we must do to survive, it is incredibly compelling.

Why I am excited:

While I haven’t read Station eleven I have read a couple of Emily St John Mandel’s other works and really enjoyed them. I think this one sounds like it is going to be just as beautiful, mysterious and interesting to read as they were. It also is quite a bit different from the other fast paced fantasies on my list.

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So there you have five books I am highly anticipating and have on pre-order for April.

What are you looking forward to next month?

I would love to chat all things bookish with you! You can comment down below or find me on Twitter or Goodreads!

Happy Reading!