Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Loved that were Out of my Comfort Zone

Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

I’m a creature of habit.  I admit that I tend to stick to genres that I am comfortable with, namely historical romance.  I never really thought that I would love YA books as much as I do now, but I am glad I picked the first YA book that I enjoyed so much about three years ago.

 This weeks’ theme are books that I loved that were out of my comfort zone.  Sometimes, I do try to stray from the straight and narrow and pick up books based on their covers.  I know, that sounds so shallow of me, but I do tend to pick up similar covers and titles despite not reading the blurb.  Anyway, my picks this week will be a mixture of awesome covers, buzz books, and plain curiosity.  This will be a mixture of adult fiction and YA fiction so brace yourselves!

• Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost – I am not much of a PNR reader, and I have read a few that were OK.  Halfway to the Grave really blew me away and I immediately binge read the whole series!  Even if I don’t read contemporary PNRs, I still remember that I read and LOVED HttG.  I mean, BONES and one kick-ass heroine!
• Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas – I really dragged my feet when I first read Throne of Glass.  I am not a fan of high fantasy (this is sort of high fantasy, right?) and was a little hesitant to start reading this book.  I read this last year and reread it again at the end of last year then immediately binge read the next two books.  I WAS BLOWN AWAY AND DEVASTATED AND I CAN’T EVEN!  So yes, I admit, I am obsessed and I did not expect this at all.  I may not like high fantasy and I may not like to read The Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings, but THIS book!
• Unearthly by Cynthia Hand – I am NOT a fan of angel books.  Only because they tend to be preachy, and I honestly am a little bothered by that.  However, I decided to listen to the audio and I was hooked!  I loved that the MC ended up with the guy I was rooting for!  As you can tell, there was a sort of love triangle, and I am not really a fan of love triangles.  For being an angel book, this wasn’t preachy at all and I really enjoyed it.  Now, I may not be picking up all the angel books out there and binge reading them all, but I am willing to give this genre a second chance.
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – Before reading The Hunger Games, I did not read dystopia type of books at all.  I had already seen the movie before I read this book so I knew what to expect.  However, I did not expect the book to BLOW ME AWAY!  I was hooked, and I binge read the whole trilogy!  Even if the series had a sort of happy ending, which I blogged about here, I thought it was perfect!
• The Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare – I had already read The City of Bones before reading this book.  heck, my husband already finished TMI up to the 4th book, and I only read the first one.  The series did not interest me as much, but when I saw this book, I decided to take a chance.  I mean, this is a historical steampunk YA, anyway and I had never read anything in that genre before.  I really didn’t expect to like this series at all, plus I also hadn’t heard any buzz about this series.  I really didn’t have any high expectations and didn’t really know what to expect, so I was really surprised that I enjoyed the series so much!

• These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner – Ahhh These Broken Stars was the first book that made me want to go back to reading YA again!  I had given up reading YA after I read Twilight, so I was a little hesitant to try this.  The cover seduced me, though.  I mean, LOOK AT THAT GOWN!  So, I am a sucker for gorgeous gowns, so I basically picked this book up because of the cover alone.  I read the blurb, thought it was interesting and started reading.  I could not put it down.  This was when I discovered that there were a lot of awesome YA books published.  The rest, as the say, is history!  I love reading sci-fi, but this was the first YA sci-fi that I read.  I am never looking back!
• Angels and Demons by Dan Brown – After The Da Vinci Code came out and there was all this bad press about that book, I read it.  Well, basically there was a copy lying around the house so I helped myself.  Initially, I thought this was a non-fiction book based on what everyone was saying, the banning and burning of this book, and whatnot.  So, I was really surprised to find out that this was FICTION!  OKAYALLTHEBANNINGWASJUSTFORNAUGHT!  Anyway, I thought the book was ok.  I didn’t love it and I also didn’t hate it.  I was talking to one of my high school friends one day and he recommended Angels and Demons.  He pitched it to me by saying that this book was better than The DaVinci Code and forced his copy on me.  WELL DOCTOR (he’s a physician now, btw) THIS WAS THE PERFECT MEDICINE!  I LOVED IT!  I mean THRILLING did not begin to cover it!  It was more fast paced than TDVC and the ambigrams!  I did read the other book, The Lost Symbol but it didn’t work for me.  Pierre read Inferno and he said it was good.  The Philippines was mentioned.  So I thought I would give it a chance.  That was a couple of years ago.
• After the End by Amy Plum (Hubby’s review) – I honestly didn’t know what to expect.  This book is sort of like an urban sci-fi-ish feel to it and the reason I bought it was because I thought Pierre would enjoy it.  He said it was ok (like he ALWAYS says), so I decided to give it a shot.  He did say that the book had a unique POV.  So, I got the audiobook from the library and I enjoyed it!  I think it was mostly because the male POV really sounded like what a regular teenaged boy (?) sounded like.  Plus the sarcasm!  The second book didn’t really impress me at all, though.
• The Sweetest Sin by Jess Michaels – Before I read this book, I didn’t know that there were historical erotic romance novels out there.  I can’t remember where I got a copy of this (I had a Sony e-reader before) book, though but I enjoyed it!  I was also able to read the other two books in the series and I was just amazed how great the romance was despite it being an erotic romance novel!  Around this time, I also found out that Jess Michaels was also Jenna Petersen, one of my favorite HR authors!
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green –  As I’ve said in various comments/tweets, I do not read realistic contemporary. especially if there is dying and cancer involved.  But because of the buzz and the movie coming out, I decided to give it a go.  I was surprised that I liked it.  I didn’t even cry as much as I expected to.  This is the only John Green book I’ve read, though and I’m not sure if I even want to read his other books.

I honestly had a hard time picking which books to show because the types of books that I read and more or less the same.  I know I should really try to read different types of genre, BUT I’m trying.  Baby steps, baby steps!  I think the only types of books I don’t read are espionage (Robert Ludlum) and lawyer type (John Grisham) books.  Don’t get me wrong, I love watching them, just not reading about them!

I will say though that I hardly read reality contemporary because FEELS.  I think this calls for a new blog post!

Have you read books out of your comfort zone?  Have you read any of the books on my list?  Let’s talk!