I don’t know what it is about April, but for as long as I can remember, my April updates on this blog have started with the same caveat; April sucks. Something bad always happens in April, and April 2023 was no exception.

Every six months or so, I get what I call the “hell week”. A week of premenstrual symptoms that blows every other month out of the water. It has an epic migraine that leaves me bedridden, and my pain levels are through the roof, and I hurt in places I normally don’t hurt. April was hell week month, and naturally as this all happened something else had to happen. One of our cats was ill for a few days, which made me very stressed and exacerbated the symptoms I was already feeling. Thankfully, we were able to identify the cause of his illness swiftly, and were able to treat him at home. But those few days were absolute hell.

I tweeted over Easter weekend that I thought I might have a chest infection, however, I realised that I wasn’t sure if what I was feeling in my chest was just the costochondritis. I imagined trying to explain how I was feeling to a medical professional when they inevitably asked, and I couldn’t pinpoint what I was feeling. Chris suggested trying a cough mixture instead as I was coughing badly, and that seems to have done the job. I’m not keen on taking antibiotics if I can help it because I’m from the generation where doctors threw them at anything and everything. As I was a sickly kid that meant I got a lot and now as an adult I’m starting to show signs of immunity with infections starting to need two courses of antibiotics rather than the normal one.

This month, I’ve been working my way through the Endwalker side quests. It didn’t feel right to me to move onto the post-expansion quests without completing each zone first. By the end of April 2023 I had completed all zones apart from the final zone, Ultima Thule. I also completed the two Endwalker beast tribes that I was doing. I really enjoyed the storylines for these two! I’ll continue to do one of them as it gives good experience points for levelling. The third beast tribe I still haven’t unlocked.

I managed to get my Dark Knight levelled fully to 90 and my Black Mage to 86 through those quests. I’ve been using classes that I’m not keen on playing in dungeons. While I like playing my Black Mage, it can get a little difficult for me to focus on in dungeons, and depending on what level the dungeon is it has a very slow rotation. It’s only at max level that it has a decent rotation, and I find it easier to play. It was the first class I played and after struggling so much with it before swapping to my bard, I don’t really want to go through that again.

My Gunblade has gradually been levelling up via the last expansions’ beast tribe quests (the Pixies) and is now level 77.

I seem to be stuck in a crime show rut again. I do watch crime shows more than any other genre, however, it’s usually interspersed with some fantasy or science fiction. The problem is, I have so many things on my to watch list that I don’t know where to even start; it’s overwhelming. So instead of just picking something, I just put it off and find another crime show to watch.

There is one non-crime show I started watching in April 2023 and that was the final season of The Flash. The previous season, season 8, was a complete mess, with the writers borrowing ideas from multiple DC Comics events and reinterpreting them in their own way. Season 9 seems to be going better so far, although it’s still not as good as the earlier seasons. I’m really enjoying having the Pied Piper back.

The other shows I watched in April were:

• Agatha Raisin – Season 1 to Season 4 – I’ve seen adverts for this show for years, and I’d avoided it because, to be honest, it looked more like a comedy than a cozy crime show. I decided to give it ago after reading what it was about, and fell in love with it straight away. The main character, Agatha, is a former PR agent who leaves busy London to follow her dream of living in the Cotswolds, and finds that her vibrant lifestyle doesn’t really fit in with quiet village life – until she helps solve a murder. From then on, she keeps doing it with the help of her cleaner, Gemma, and her magnificently gay PR former co-worker, Roy, with gradually more villagers joining in as the seasons progress. It’s a complete hoot!
• The Coroner – Season 1 & Season 2 – I’ll be honest, I picked up this TV show as a filler. I’d started watching it years ago and gave up after a few episodes because it wasn’t that great. This was before I got into cozy crime TV shows, and when I first picked this up, I’d been looking for something else. This time it did the job of filling some space. It’s a British show, and being a coroner in the UK is a legal job, not a medical one. So essentially it’s a lawyer investigating deaths alongside a police officer in a coastal town. It was alright, but it’s not a surprise that it got cancelled after two seasons, let’s put it that way.
• Miss Scarlet and the Duke – Season 3 – I adore this show and my only complaint is the seasons are far too short at only six episodes! It’s about a female detective set in 1880’s London (Miss Scarlet) and the cases she works, while butting heads with a police detective who she knows from her past (the Duke). The fact that the Duke is Glaswegian, and the writers have written Glaswegian attitude and sarcasm into the script at times, is icing on the cake.
• Magpie Murders – Season 1 – Based on the book of the same name by Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders is about a book editor (Susan) whose real world collides with fiction when one of her authors dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving her with an unfinished manuscript for his final book. The show mixes events from the fictional book with “real life” as Susan begins to realise that the manuscript echoes the author’s life and might point to his murder. It is very well done, and shows just how good Horowitz is as an author and screenwriter. I highly recommend this one.

• Karen Pirie – Season 1 – Another book adaptation, this time from the books by Val McDermid. Set in St Andrews, Scotland, DS Karen Pirie is given a 25 year-old-murder to look into after a true-crime podcast picks it up. Karen soon realises that she’s been given the case to tick a box (as a woman) and that no one expects her to actually solve it. This was another one that I really enjoyed as the main character is quirky, genuine and independent yet there was a vulnerability to her that often isn’t seen in crime shows with a female detective lead. This one stood out, and I can’t wait for season two. One warning though; this was a very dark show with distressing content.
• The Bay – Seasons 1 to 4 – This was another show that I kept coming back to and wasn’t sure if it was for me. I decided to give it ago and got hooked. Unlike most crime procedural shows, this one takes a different approach, with the focus being on the Family Liaison Officers (FLOs). I have mixed feeling about this show because sometimes it was very good and other times it felt like a complete mess. I much preferred the last two seasons when Marsha Thomason took over as lead as I’m not only a fan of her, and love seeing her in a lead role, but also like her character a lot more. The original main character was a complete mess, and in the first season, she had slept with the father of the two missing kids the night before in a one-night stand. No judgement there, but she then proceeded not to tell anyone or excuse herself from the case. Inevitably, it came out in a huge mess. It was one of those storylines that made no sense other than the writers decided they wanted drama for the sake of drama.
• Van der Valk – Season 1 –  This is probably the most bizarre crime show I’ve ever watched, and yet I was hooked because of the characters and cast. Led by Marc Warren who was in Hustle (watched last month) Van der Valk is set in Amsterdam. What’s weird is the entire main cast, the whole police squad, are English. As are most of the secondary characters. And yes, I did say it’s set in Amsterdam. It’s never explained why a bunch of English people are running around Amsterdam working for the police there, such as, working as part of an international team. It’s like the writers just wanted an excuse to play with themes of drugs and prostitution without laws getting in the way. Yet the stories are pretty good, the characters interesting and the cast good. I just watch it and pretend it’s not so utterly bizarre.
• Will Trent – Season 1 – I fell over this show randomly on Disney+ while going there to watch my usual weekly episodes of NCIS and NCIS: Hawai’i. It’s based on a book series by Karin Slaughter and is about a neurodivergent special agent who works for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. It’s a very different type of police procedural in many ways, especially as Will is dyslexic and struggles so much with it to the point that he can barely read.
• Professor T – Season 1 & 2 –  As soon as I heard about this show I wanted to watch it, however, I thought I originally saw that it had been cancelled. I was mistaken! It stars Ben Miller who was fantastic as the original detective in Death in Paradise. He plays a neurodivergent Cambridge University criminologist who also has OCD and is struggling with childhood trauma. Unlike other shows, I felt like this role was played with respect, especially his OCD. It didn’t surprise me to find that Ben Miller has OCD, and he opened up about his own struggles with it in an interview with Able 2 UK which you can read here. While Jasper is considered different, he’s not ridiculed for his ways, and he’s respected for his knowledge which he uses to help the police solve crimes. His experience with his own autism also helps him interact with a young autistic witness in one episode, and some of those scenes are among the best representations of autism that I’ve seen on screen.

In April 2023 I read less books than I usually do, and that’s because many of these were quite chunky.

I read:

• The Thirteenth Hour (The Cruel Gods, #1) by Trudie Skies
• The Iron Vow (The Iron Fey: Evenfall, #3) by Julie Kagawa
• Dragonfall (The Dragon Scales Trilogy, #1) by L.R. Lam
• Scarlet (Scarlet, #1) by Genevieve Cogman
• Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher

Here were my book reviews for April 2023!

[rcno-book-listing ids=”30596, 30532, 30650, 30534, 30731, 30786, 30805, 28797″ wc=250 readmore=”Read my review”]

I managed to get back to my weekly group therapy meetings this month, and towards the end of the month I was even managing to fit in some makeup before going to my appointments and meetings!

I don’t have much time, so I’ve been skipping foundation, concealer or BB Cream, and just using eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick. Even just using those have been making me feel better and less guilty about the products sitting there unused!

Above is one photo of me using Batman™ X Makeup Revolution This City Needs Me Forever Flawless Eyeshadow Palette and Makeup Revolution Cosmic Trip Lip Tint Pink Sky both from Revolution Beauty.

In the photo below, I used Makeup Revolution Precious Glamour MegaStar Eyeshadow Palette Diamond Edition and RevolutionPro Lipstick in Turnabout from Revolution Beauty. I’m not a fan of this shade of lipstick on me, I think it’s a bit too pale for me.

You can get money off your first order with Revolution Beauty by using my referral link and they ship internationally!

Neither “look” is anything that impressive, as they were completed in a whole five minutes, using my finger to hastily dab eyeshadow on my eyelids. I also took both photos several hours after I’d been wearing them and despite spraying a fixing spray on top, the makeup didn’t remain in the same condition as when I first put it on. I just didn’t have time to take the photos while getting ready. I need to try to do that and try to get better at taking them, with better lighting.

But I did enjoy having the chance to play with makeup again, and I was glad to be able to fit it into my schedule, even if it was a bit of a rush!

In other news, I decided to sign up as a panellist for The Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA) 2023 this year, and I was accepted! I want to read more books by independent authors and presses, and I like the work that BBNYA does. I’ll keep you all updated with how this goes.

Thanks for reading my monthly update for April 2023 and checking in to see how I was geeking by! As we head into May, here’s hoping for an easier month. You may have noticed there were no movies watched this month. Technically, there was one – Agatha Raisin starts with a movie special – but otherwise I just wasn’t feeling the movie bug this month.  Hopefully I’ll get some in next month to share with you.

Happy May the 4th to all my fellow Star Wars geeks. I hope your April was a lot less hassle than mine! <3

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