Top Ten Tuesday - Books That Surprised Me

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish-meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and each week she assigns a new topic. This week the topic is books that surprised me. I couldn’t think of ten, but I was able to get five. So, here are the top five books that surprised me.

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff - I've mentioned this book many times already because it is definitely one of my favorite books, but I actually avoided this book for a couple of years before I finally read it. For some reason I was just not interested in it at all. One day I was wondering a bookstore and I saw it on the shelf. The cover was pretty, so on a whim I bought it. I read it and found myself needing to buy the second one before I was even done with the first because I knew that I would need it!

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo - I read Leigh Bardugo's first series, the Grisha Trilogy, before I read Six of Crows and, while I liked reading it, it wasn't one of my favorite series. Then I read Six of Crows, I thought that it would be similar to the Grisha Trilogy, since it was set in the same world, but I got a story that was very different than what I was expecting. And I loved it. The characters are awesome. The story line was awesome. Just everything about the story just drew me in. It was amazing!


  
Stardust by Neil Gaiman – The movie Stardust, based on the book by Neil Gaiman, is my favorite movie. It has everything I could want in a movie. Magic, pirates, fighting, romance, everything. The book, however, was very disappointing. I saw the movie for the first time when I was about 9 years old and had no idea that it was based on a book until several years later. Once I did, I had to read it as soon as I could since the movie was so amazing. Unfortunately, it was so different from the movie, it was practically an entirely different story! The story itself was fine, but it was nowhere near as good as the movie.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater – The first book I tried reading by Maggie Stiefvater was Shiver. I didn’t like it. I tried to read it a couple of times, but it just wasn’t working. Then I did a reading challenge a few years later which made me give an author I didn’t really like a second chance. I decided to read the Raven Boys for this challenge, and I went into it not expecting to like it. However, I ended up loving the story. It was so interesting, and so different from Shiver, I did not expect it at all, but I was very happy that the book ended up being so much fun to read.

The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes – This book is a mystery/thriller book. Typically, I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but I picked up this one impulsively. It ended up being amazing. I’ve actually read the series at least twice now. It is definitely one of my favorites, and I highly recommend it.