Is blogger’s block a thing?  I don’t know, I just made it up.  I’ve been thinking about this for a little while, primarily because my blogging and reading for the past few months has been very quiet.  I’ve had a very stressful few months to be honest and sometimes life just happens all around you whether you want it to or not.  What I do know about these sort of periods is that you have to follow your own gut instinct and at that point mine was to retreat a little, not to mention I simply didn’t have the concentration levels I would have liked.  So, that’s the reason I’ve not been terribly visible of late.  I have kept up with my SPFBO judging commitments and continued to post a weekly review, along with my lovely partners the Critiquing Chemist, but I’ve fallen way behind both with other reading and reviewing (although I have fit in a few good books).  I certainly owe an apology to all the publishers who have granted me review copies for books that I was so excited to read and haven’t yet reviewed and also to all my lovely blogging buddies who I’ve fallen behind in visiting.

So, the one thing I know for sure is that I’m not yet ready to give up my book blog.  I feel that life is maybe back on a normal(ish) keel for now and so I’m keen to dive back in.  Let’s see how it goes.

Where to begin then.  Well, firstly, I’m hoping to pull together quite a number of outstanding reviews:

1. The Vanishing of Margaret Small by Neil Alexander
2. Love Will Tear Us Apart by CK McDonnell
3. A Gift of Poison by Bella Ellis
4. The Tyranny of Faith by Richard Swan
5. The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
6. A House with Good Bones by T Kingfisher

Plus my two final finalist reviews for SPFBO.  So, lots of posts incoming.  In order to not go on a total mission I’m not going to post any memes for now although I’d like to get back to my Sunday catch up post.

I have got behind with a number of review books and so I’ve decided that my best course is to read the books that are due to be reviewed for the rest of this month and then try and slot in one or two of the backlist books that I wanted to read during February and March but fell behind with.  Hopefully this is something that I can get along with okay.

So, books that I’m hoping to read going forward:

1. The Cleaving by Juliet E McKenna
2. Atalanta by Jennifer Saint
3. The Other Lives of Miss Emily White by A J Elwood
4. Games for Dead Girls by Jen Williams
5. The Bone Shard War by Andrea Stewart

These are my remaining April books.  I’m not sure I’ll fit them all in but I’ll give it a good try.  Have you read any of these?

I’ve got some fantastic books to look forward to in May that I’m really excited to share but will leave that for a future post.

In terms of blog hopping.  I’m going to start catching up with everyone soon. I’ve made the decision that I probably won’t try and read every post that I’ve missed between January til now (although obviously I’m scared of missing anything good!) because if I try to read everything I’ve missed I think I’ll just sink.  So, I’m going to try and draw a line under everything and start afresh.  I’ll probably still flip through a lot of the reviews but maybe not leave a comment at this point.

Anyway, that’s the plan.  Of course we all know the saying about the best laid plans…

Wish me luck.