Top Ten Tuesdays #168: Can’t Believe I Read

Posted January 30, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 3 Comments

Books I Can’t Believe I Read

Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review.

I wish I was better about reading books outside of my comfort zone. I stick to a heavy rotation of contemporary YA fiction, with a bit of fantasy, paranormal, “adult” fiction, and mystery/thriller thrown in. But, as you can tell from my chart here, I read more than 50% contemporary books. This list is going to consist of some of the books I “can’t believe I read” because they’re so far out of my comfort zone. I would consider those books to be adult mystery/thriller (or really anything adult non-contemporary), mystery/thriller books that are horror-ish, historical fiction without a lot of magic, dystopias (underhyped ones at least), and some paranormal-y romance books. So, you’ll see below that most of the books featured today fall under those categories.

  

I can’t believe I read A Madness So Discreet because it’s a little more psychological/horror-almost? And it was historical fiction?? There’s almost nothing about this book that screams Lauren but I ended up totally loving it. This book was the ultimate random read that lead to a pleasant surprise.

I can’t believe I read (and loved) The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue for somewhat similar reasons as above. I don’t do historical fiction much, unless there’s a heavy magical element involved, and this book had a touch of magic. It’s not suuuuper out of my comfort zone, but still felt like a happy surprise for me by the time I finished.

I definitely can’t believe I read The Martian because adult science fiction is soooo not me. I’ll admit that I recommended it to my dad without actually reading it, then he loved it and recommended it back to me. I enjoyed the audiobook A LOT, which probably made the book even better. I stillllll have to watch the movie too.

        

I can’t believe I read The Unquiet and Brave New Girl because the only dystopian books I read are the ones that EVERYONE has read, like THE HUNGER GAMES or THE MAZE RUNNER. I don’t pick them out myself unless they’re getting a bunch of hype. I never “burned out” on them like many of my fellow bloggers have, because my blog started just after the dystopia hype was dying down. The market isn’t oversaturated anymore.

I can’t believe I read The Raven Cycle AND enjoyed it as much as I did, because there’s nothing about the plot summaries that jumps out as a Lauren book. The writing is definitely lyrical (or something like that – I’m bad at describing writing style) and not exactly my cup of tea. I was so confused throughout most of the series but still managed to love every cinnamon roll character involved.

    White Hot Kiss (The Dark Elements, #1)    Magonia (Magonia, #1)

I can’t believe I read the Rebel Belle series because southern paranormal books involving debutantes…. not a single word in that sentence works for me usually! I don’t remember what the hell inspired me to start this series but it ended up being an extremely pleasant surprise.

I can’t believe I read White Hot Kiss… but I CAN believe that I stopped reading the series pretty soon after. Again, I’m not into paranormal romance really. TWILIGHT gave me my fill back in high school and I haven’t found any more suuuuper enjoyable ones since then. In any case, JLA’s book covers are enough to stop me from reading her books, but I’ve just noticed too much angst and annoying characters so far.

I can’t believe I read Magonia because I hate birds LOL. That’s not the only reason, but the cover makes me cringe with the stereotypical feather-into-birds (tattoo that too many people have). The content of the book itself was soooo bizarre and I haven’t gotten to the sequel yet, even though I am sort of curious to see what happens next.

3 responses to “Top Ten Tuesdays #168: Can’t Believe I Read

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