Books I Read Because of the Hype

Hey hi hello friends, and welcome back to my blog!

Let's all be honest with each other, we've all picked up a book or two purely because of the hype surrounding it. Whether we were part of the bookish community or not. I'm sure all of us fell on to the Hunger Games hype train back in 2010. And how about the resurgence of Avatar: the Last Airbender this year? (Okay, yes, I know that's a TV show, but the principle is the same.) 

Being a part of the online book community, we tend to see more hype surrounding a lot of different books. Depending on who you follow, or what type of content you gravitate towards, we all see certain books get hyped up more than others. So I'm going to talk about some books I chose to read based on the hype I saw for them. 

*All photos are from my Instagram, @allyemreads

The books that made the biggest splash for me would have to be The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. I saw them recommended here and there by a few booktubers (Hannah from A Clockwork Reader and Cece from ProblemsofaBookNerd in particular) but it was Zoe's (ReadbyZoe) 24-hour readathon of the whole series that really got me wanting to read these books. I picked them up in 2018 and the rest is history. This is my favorite book series of all time, no contest. 

A totally different direction would be Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. By far the biggest hype for this series comes from Merphy Napier and Elliot Brooks. I feel like they mention this series at least once every video (of course this is an exaggeration, but not by much honestly). This series was really my first dive into adult epic fantasy. And now that's like, at least a good third of what I read in total. I really need to reread this series, because Sanderson foreshadows everything apparently and it takes at least another read through the series to find every hint. Plus, it's just a great book series and I wouldn't mind experiencing it again. 

Alright, truth be told: I only picked up the Lara Jean trilogy by Jenny Han because of the first movie. Naturally when a movie adaptation comes out, the book gets a ton of buzz, and To All the Boys I've Loved Before was no exception. I knew I really wanted to watch the movie, and I also knew that I wanted to read the book before I did that. So on a whim I bought the three books of the series and then marathoned them. While they weren't my favorite books ever, I still really enjoyed reading them, and of course they did so much for young Korean-American women everywhere. 

The last book I'll talk about today is House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig. If you follow Booktube, I think you all know who was responsible for this. The head of this hype train was none other than Heathur from aphroditereads. She did so many videos on this book last year. And they were well-deserved, honestly. This book is phenomenal. But I probably wouldn't have picked it up had it not been for Heathur's undying praise for it. 

Okay, that's all I have for today! Of course, there a ton more books I read because of the hype. Should I do a part two? Let me know if you want that!

Until next time!