April 2026 Reading Recap

Ahh, April.

Nice weather. Then snow. Then nice. Then rain. Then frost. And we end it… sort of nice-ish.

What a ride!

April in Toronto!

Did some reading though. As per usual, here are the books I read in April, ranked and mini-reviewed.

1 — The Creative Entrepreneur by Carolyn Dailey

A non-fiction book comes in first place!

Throw the tomatoes!

The Creative Entrepreneur is amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone thinking or working as an entrepreneur, creative or not.

Each chapter is an interview with notes and highlights from entrepreneurs across the creative space. A chef, musician, architect and many more. They share their origin stories, challenges along the way and how they run and grew their businesses.

It’s inspiring, insightful and a really neat look at the back end of some large creative businesses.

5/5

2 — The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

In elementary school we had a kid named Josh. Josh said that you can’t like Percy Jackson and Harry Potter because they’re rivals. I picked Harry Potter.

I hate Josh.

After years of wanting to give the iconic series a chance, I finally did. (The book was on sale at the bookstore the other day.)

It’s great. Fun, exciting, the god lore is cool. No further explanation needed.

Will read more.

4.5/5

3 — The King’s Ransom by Janet Evanovich

Book two of Janet Evanovich’s other series was fun. (She writes the wildly popular Stephanie Plum series!)

The Recovery Agent series follows an insurance investigator as she unwinds mysteries and thefts in exotic places around the world. This one features Egypt!

Mummies! Pyramids! Camels!

It’s a romp through Europe as she unravels where the mysterious mummy went. All with her ex-husband tagging along.

They aren’t incredible or anything, but they’re fun, consistent and fast-paced. Perfect for transit and travel.

4/5

4 — Trust by Hernan Diaz

Trust won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023. Along with a list of other awards and achievements over 22–23.

We follow the story of an obscenely rich banker and his wife through the 1910s, 20s and 30s. (You may remember there was a big moment in the stock market back then…)

The story is told over four different methods. A novel, a memoir, an autobiography and a diary. As the story progresses, we see the differences in how they tell the story and what took place. It’s an interesting puzzle as the pieces come together.

It’s good. I see why it won all sorts of awards. It’s incredibly well-written. The ending was a fun twist. I just didn’t love it.

3.5/5

5 — The Edge of Nowhere by J.A. Johnstone

The William Johnstone/J.A. Johnstone books are westerns.

Typically, they’re similar to the Recovery Agent series above. Fast-paced, low effort to read, silly and fun stories. Perfect transit and travel books. (I’m trying to get that to be a thing.)

This one dragged. It’s the first I’ve read from the Johnstone’s that had me bored. It felt a touch formulaic. The characters felt more like stereotypes than real. (Which is strange. Usually the characters are the best part.)

I’ll stick to the characters I like! (Thankfully there are literally tens of books with those characters.) (Are you tired of brackets yet?)

2/5

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That is April!

It went way too fast.

I was on the road a lot if you couldn’t tell. The transit and travel books were great to hop in and out while I had downtime.

Best find was definitely the Creative Entrepreneur. What an excellent resource. Truly fantastic.

Percy Jackson is another great find for me. I put it off for far too long. It’s nice to have a YA series to enjoy. They read so quick and easy. Great little refresher books between long reads.

Anyways… let me know what you think! Reading anything interesting?

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My first book is out! Find it here.