Top 5 Tuesday: Books That Got Me Into Reading

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly series created by Bionic Book Worm and is now hosted by Meeghan Reads. This week’s topic: Top 5 Books That Got You Into Reading.

Since I fell in love with reading as soon as I learned how to read, I’m afraid my list would just be filled with children’s books such as Madeleine, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, etc.–probably not very exciting or engaging to read in my case. So instead I’m going to put a little bit of a spin on this week’s topic and choose the top 5 books that helped get me out of a reading slump at different times in my life.

1. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

I went through several reading slumps as a teen, mostly because of time constraints due to harsh coursework in school. I’ve always been the type to fall into routine pretty easily (probably thanks to my Virgo moon) so once I’d subconsciously decided I wasn’t allowed to read for pleasure and instead should only read my coursework, it was difficult for me to let go a little. Discovering this series filled with Greek mythology and demigods through my sibling helped revive my love for reading circa 2008.

2. Aunt Dimity: Snowbound by Nancy Atherton

This is such a fun series to read if you are into cozy mysteries. This specific book is #9 in the Aunt Dimity series but it was the first one I read and the first one I fell in love with. My mother actually discovered it one day when we were at the library searching for a book I could use for a book report. I was skeptical at the time because they were from the adult section and I strictly read YA as a young teen but I checked it out anyway since my mother had a history of finding some of my all-time favorite series for me (The Christy Miller series by Robin Jones Gunn is still near and dear to my heart and my mother one day just presented the first volume to me to read!) As soon as I read this one, I immediately started to request all of the volumes available through my library district. I now own physical copies of the books through volume 17 and own the rest (24 currently in total) in ebook form. I’d say they definitely qualify for my list.

3. I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have To Kill You by Ally Carter

This book was like a revolution through my high school! One girl read it for a book report in English class and it spread like wildfire from there because of how much she loved it and raved about it. We all thought it was such a funny title and all of the books in the series have fun, play-on-word names. It was fascinating to all of us as teen girls to read about someone our age being trained as a spy and deciding to use those skills to have a secret relationship with an ordinary boy. I felt so many things reading this book and immediately raced out to buy the next ones as they became available. The second book is still my favorite from the series.

4. Crush by Lacey Weatherford

This is such a guilty pleasure type of read. Cheesy, a little cringy, but so satisfying at the same time. Another discovery credited to my sibling, this book has a whole slew of 21 Jump Street vibes (the television show, not the movie) which we both were obsessed with for a time. It’s a totally cliché romance that features an undercover police officer infiltrating a high school in order to discover the source of some crime going on. It has a pretty heavy romance factor in it and an outrageous twist in the end but it plunged me into only reading Lacey’s and her daughter’s (who had just debuted around the time I read this) books for a while. I don’t read much in the contemporary romance genre any longer but it certainly made me fall back in love with reading at the time.

5. A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer

Yes, I am here to once again declare my love for this book and my immense appreciation of it in renewing my faith that I can actually fall in love with reading again. My full review for this book (spoiler alert: I gave it 5 stars) can be found here, but suffice it to say I LOVED it. Although I had read a few books prior to picking this up this year, none of them had truly captured my heart if I’m honest. And the previous one I read before this, The Shadows Between Us (spoiler alert: I gave it 1 star) nearly pushed me back into my prior year long reading slump I’d been in due to school constraints. I’m so happy this book saved me from that! It is such an engaging story with unique characters (ironic to say considering it’s technically a Beauty and the Beast retelling) and if you are a fan of fantasy reads, you don’t want to miss out on this book. You will find someone or something to fall in love with when reading its pages!

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Thanks so much for reading! What are some books that got you into reading? I’m expecting to see a lot of Twilight appearing on other blogger’s pages. Happy reading!

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