I don’t know why, but April felt like it crawled by. Every time I looked up, we were still in the beginning half of the month. Regardless of how quickly the month moved, I was able to get in 4 books last month. some I enjoyed others, were just okay. Let’s get into the books that I read in April.
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DO THE NEW YOU: 6 MINDSETS TO BECOME WHO YOU WERE CREATED TO BE BY STEVEN FURTICK
Do you ever get a glimpse of yourself that is exactly who you want to be, but always seems just out of reach? The happier, kinder, less stressed, more courageous you? The ideal version of you isn’t imaginary at all. It’s actually the authentic you trying to break through. And it’s not a future version of yourself you have to chase. The true you may be new to you, but it’s not new to God. It’s the you he knew all along.
Steven Furtick explores and unpacks six practical mindsets everyone can adopt to get from who you are today to where God is taking you. These simple, powerful, memorable phrases will shift your focus, feelings, and actions to align with God’s vision of you. God isn’t just calling you to do you. He’s calling you to do the new you—the unique and powerful person he created you to be.
I was a part of a group that read this book and it was the best book I’ve read so far this year. I’ve never watched a message by Steven Furtick but this book made me want to. The way that he makes these simple mindsets easy to digest, while also gathering you and adding scripture, is the perfect book if you are looking for practical steps to walk into the new you God sees.
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
INVISIBLE WOMEN: DATA BIAS IN A WORLD DESIGNED FOR MEN BY CAROLINE CRIADO PÉREZ
Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias, in time, money, and often with their lives.
This book has made me feel like everything I know is a lie. Car safety. Clinical trial data. NIH regulations. FDA. All of it. This was a fascinating, information-dense, and heartbreaking book about how women were, and still are, left out of data for most of the systems, practices, and procedures that we see and use on a daily basis in this world. The worst thing about it is people know that this is happening and are either choosing to ignore it or choosing not to change the status quo because there’s “complaining how there’s “no real difference between men and women.” While this book opened my eyes to things that I didn’t know, I didn’t love how it ended. I didn’t love that there were no real solutions to the things that are impacting women, negatively, worldwide, and wanted more than a call to action.
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️☆
AS THE WICKED WATCH BY TAMRON HALL
I love a good mystery especially when it’s modeled after some of our favorite famous people. When I learned that Tamron Hall wrote not one but two mysteries, I knew I had to pick it up. I was hoping that it would be better than it was but it was still an interesting story.
When crime reporter Jordan Manning leaves her hometown in Texas to take a job at a television station in Chicago, she’s one step closer to her dream: a coveted anchor chair on a national network. Jordan is smart and aggressive, with unabashed star-power, and often the only woman of color in the newsroom. Her signature? Arriving first on the scene—in impractical designer stilettos. Armed with a master’s degree in forensic science and impeccable instincts, Jordan has been able to balance her dueling motivations: breaking every big story—and giving a voice to the voiceless.
From her time in Texas, she’s covered the vilest of human behaviors but nothing has prepared her for Chicago. Jordan is that rare breed of a journalist who can navigate a crime scene as well as she can a newsroom—often noticing what others tend to miss. Again and again, she is called to cover the murders of Black women, many of them sexually assaulted, most brutalized, and all of them quickly forgotten.
All until Masey James—the story that Jordan just can’t shake, despite all efforts. A 15-year-old girl whose body was found in an abandoned lot, Masey has come to represent for Jordan all of the frustration and anger that her job often forces her to repress. Putting the rest of her work and her fraying personal life aside, Jordan does everything she can to give the story the coverage it desperately requires, and that a missing Black child would so rarely get. There’s a serial killer on the loose, Jordan believes, and he’s hiding in plain sight.
I was thrilled that the focus of the first book of this series is how Black girls are not protected, especially when it comes to the way news and police handle missing Black children. Tamron accurately captures how frustrating, and emotionally taxing it all is when you constantly are bombarded with the lack of will or want from the people that are supposed to protect us. I love how fast-paced this book was, it made it easy to push through in a day in a half. The reason I didn’t give this more than 3.5 stars is I didn’t love how the book ended and it felt rushed in certain parts that I feel she could’ve taken a little more time with. Overall, it was a great palette cleanser from Invisible Women and was a quick read.
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️☆
WATCH WHERE THEY HIDE BY TAMRON HALL
This book came out last month, so it was lucky that I could grab it from the library and not have to wait to long to pick up the next book in the Jordan Manning series.
After dropping her child off at preschool, Marla Hancock, a stay-at-home mother, disappears. She had recently left her verbally abusive husband in rural Indiana and moved in with her sister, Shelly, who simply can’t believe that her sister would ever willingly vanish without her children. But with limited support from the town’s police department or media resources, Shelly fears that Marla’s disappearance won’t get the attention it deserves, or worse, will go unsolved. So, several weeks after filing a missing person’s report, she reaches out to TV journalist Jordan Manning for help.
After her investigative and reporting skills helped solve multiple murders, Jordan Manning’s career in the newsroom is on the rise. She has gained a reputation as more than your typical news reporter: a “fixer” with a vigilante edge, dogged and undeterred to seek the truth. But even with this new status, Jordan still feels pressure to prove herself as a young Black professional. When Shelly reaches out, she feels compelled to do all she can to find Marla. Jordan’s search twists and turns in ways she could never have imagined, illuminating scandals and secrets that place her own life in grave danger.
I was hoping that this book would be as captivating and fast-paced as the first unfortunately it was the exact opposite. This book felt disconnected from the first book and so rushed. Because of that, you don’t have to read the first book to jump in, unless you want to know a little more about her core friends that she talks about in this book. Also, I found myself saying out loud, “Okay what? What’s going on here? “Because there were so many things included that took away from the story.
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
