Things That Make Me Pick Up a Book
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.
The topic for this week is about the things that make you pick up a book. This is a similar topic or question to my read-bait series of posts, where I discuss the words or phrases within a book’s synopsis that immediately draw me in. I’ll highlight a good portion of those (because the majority of them still ring true!) and also some of the other factors (aside from what’s directly in the synopsis) that make me pick a book up or add it to my TBR. There’s another TTT here with some topics too, in case this isn’t thorough enough! The books you see mixed in are those that really hit the nail on the head for Lauren-bait.
Read-Bait Topics or Words
- Wishes being granted or fulfilled (could be by a genie or some paranormal/magical realism etc.)
- Travel-related meet cutes (people who fall in love/meet on a train or in an airport etc.)
- Disappearances
- “Everyone is connected somehow” (coming together over shared event, etc.)
- Winning the lottery and/or rich people
- Bucket lists
- Family drama or reunions (people coming back together or secrets being unveiled)
- Memory loss
- Stuck in limbo between life in death or stories in heaven (with unfinished business on earth)
- Parallel universes or choices (where the book splits into two timelines)
- Time travel
- Road trips cross-country or in another country
- Christmas or holiday books
- Fairies (more in the traditional sense but lately it’s expanded for sure)
- Magical piece of clothing or something similar (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants vibes)
- Groundhog Day theme (repeating the same day over and over)
Book Formats or Appearances
- Pretty covers (way too many posts to even link more!)
- Epistolary (letters, emails, IMs, text messages)
- Time goes back and forth between past and present events, alternating chapters
- Multiple points of view
Specific Settings
- Resort setting, camps, or retreats of some kind
- Carnivals or circuses
- Boarding school (lots of posts about this)
- Snowed in or stuck in a storm
- Cozy settings like a bed and breakfast or ski resort
- Internships or set in a workplace with teen coworkers
- Mansions or creepy manors
- Small towns
- Return-to-hometown
- Beach/coastal towns or islands
Types of Romances
- Best-friend-to-more
- Best friend’s brother or brother’s best friend
- Celebrity falls in love with a normie
- Sex positive YA
- Hate-to-love and full of banter
- Forbidden in a Romeo-and-Juliet way
- Second chance (dated before and get another shot, or childhood friend comes back)
- Summer romance in a beach town setting
- Winter romance and/or snowed in together
- Stuck together somehow (in a storm, etc. – oh no there’s only one bed in this hotel room)
- Fake dating
Gosh we share so many!!!! I feel like most of those would make me pick up a book too.
Yesss, so good!
Pretty book covers get me every time, too. xD And oh my gosh, hate-to-love with banter is life! I just can’t get enough of it. This is a great list! So many things I agree with. 😀
Wooo!
The groundhog day theme is always interesting to read about.
My post: http://www.lydiaschoch.com/top-ten-tuesday-things-that-make-me-pick-up-a-book/
Right? It’s fun!
Looks like we enjoy books with the same sort of settings. I love creepy old house settings, small town settings, snowed-in/trapped settings, boarding school settings, and returning home settings. Those get me every time!
Happy TTT!
Yay!!
I think your list just won the entire Top Ten Tuesday this week. Sure, it’s not a competition, but YES. Just, yes.
Hahaha thank you
I agree with all of these! I especially LOVE time travel romance books or parallel universe books. They always mess with my mind so much.
Krystianna @ Downright Dystopian
Yesss, so great!
I love all those romance tropes as well! My favorites are hate-to-love, stuck together somehow, and fake dating! 😀 Those three will always get me to read a romance.
Yesss, the best!