I basically mean something that goes against your own personal taste that you loved.
Mine are the Connie Willis time travel books. I hate time travel and i cannot imagine a more boring conversation than time travel logic. I don't care about the theory of time travel. I'm not super interested in world war 2 either (two are set there) especially in Britain.
I HATE books where the plot relies a lot on missed connections. I find it lazy. I also kind of don't like affected twee britishness. And her books are a little that.
Anyway, I absolutely loved her books. Somehow, she always makes me really care about the characters and the one on anglo saxon england (doomsday book) made me ugly cry which hasn't happened in a long time.
Any examples for you? Something completely outside your wheelhouse that hit a spot you didn't know existed.
by Middle-Accountant-49
6 Comments
The One by John Mars. I hate books that centre around romance, and I tend to prefer books that are more focused on character development, but I was hooked on this. I couldn’t stop reading.
Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher – I don’t like romcoms/romance in general but it is somehow the coziest book in a way I didn’t know I enjoyed. The audiobook is a gem.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky – I generally HATE hard sci fi but the characters and the world building were deeply compelling without getting too annoying about the tech.
Let me preface this with the fact that i am a practicing witch. I was raised as one.
Christian romance novels. I read one when I was in a reading slump and devoured whole series. They’re easy reads, and always have happy endings. I’m not into the smutty stuff anyway.
Redeeming Love was the last one I read and it was good.
I also got into more folk horror lately. I finished Brom’s Slewfoot recently and adored it.
I love this question! For me, it’s the early books by Sophie Kinsella. I *hate* that kind of vapid, predictable story for the most part. But I really devoured a bunch of hers. They’re not memorable to me other than that I was proud of myself for giving them a chance when normally I’d have turned up my nose at any of her books.
I never got into the series ones, Shopaholic and whatever the others are, but some of her standalone books that I liked were *Can You Keep a Secret?* and *Remember Me* are the only two I remember clearly.
I just finished Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V E Schwab. I somehow did not know it was about vampires until I’d already picked it up. I have never ever read anything with vampires that I liked and the concept of vampires altogether has just never been appealing. This book was a very rare exception. I gave it a 4.5 ⭐️ rating on Storygraph.
Not all Connie Willis time travel books are based in WW2. Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing Of the Dog are not.
1348 and 1888. They were a lot better IMO. The second being a comedy.
What I find annoying about a lot of her stuff is the disorganised people,miscommunication, mistakes etc. The WW2 ones are some of the worst and it annoys me. Even her other books are like this, Passage for instance.
Also she isn’t British so doesn’t really write from experience.