**I pull the brush through my hair and pull it back, tying a bow into it as well. I change into a light dress and get the urge to do a book tag. I have read some newsletters of people doing some lately, so I want to do one myself. I just need to find the right one. I search through all the newsletters of book content I read and flip through them until I find the one I was looking for. The Book Recommendation Tag.**

Welcome or welcome back to bookishcore. Today, I thought it would be fun to do a book tag. There are a lot of good ones out there, but I decided to do the Book Recommendation Tag, created by Steph Bohrer. I love Steph’s videos and always look forward to watching her latest vlogs, so I wanted to partake in the tag that she created. 

• A book you tell people is your favorite
  • We’re starting off with what may be the hardest question on here. I am not someone who has a favorite book. If I pick favorites, I have to pick a few in each genre, so to pick one is extremely difficult. For the sake of only choosing one book and not twenty, I am going to go with A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. I read this in 2021 and absolutely loved it. It’s one of the most magical stories I have ever read and I love everything about it: the characters, the plot, the romance, the balance between fantasy and romance. This was a five star read for me, one of my very few five stars, and I still think about it.

• A book that is your guilty pleasure
  • I don’t know if I really believe in guilty pleasures because I feel like they’re just books that you like but don’t want to admit to liking, just because it may not be the best written. What I would consider my guilty pleasure though would probably be the Lux series by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I read the first book last year and books two, three, and four, this year, so I am almost done with the series. This is about a girl with alien neighbors. It’s such a fun, entertaining story and I have been loving my time reading it.

• A book everyone loved but you didn’t
  • I could easily name a few books that would fit into this category, but I want to do one that’s really popular. A book that everyone loved but I didn’t was Powerless by Lauren Roberts. I read this last year and rated it a 3/5 stars. Everyone has been obsessed with this book, but I had a lot of issues with it. I enjoyed the scenes with the trials, but that didn’t take up a lot of time, maybe about 100 pages or so compared to this 500 page book, which bothered me since this book is pitched as a book with trials. When a majority of the book is not about the trails, I feel like you can’t describe it as such. I also felt like the characters had no personality. Their entire personality was based on the tropes they were built on and their physical characteristics, with Paedyn being the “strong female character with silver hair and blue eyes” and Kai being the “morally gray love interest with black hair and gray eyes.” That was their personality. Every scene between them was copy and paste of the last, with every interaction being Paedyn putting a knife to Kai’s throat, and Kai obsessing over Paedyn. He can’t think of anything other than her, and I can never get into the romance when all they do is think of the other. 

• A book you read the fastest
  • This one would go to Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer. I read this in one day. I haven’t really loved ya contemporaries in a while. I still read them, but they’re usually around 3 or 3.5 stars, so it’s rare when they are above that. Letters to the Lost was 4.5/5 stars for me. I was just so invested in this book and it was one that really made you feel for the characters. There were so many emotions in this story and I really loved it.

• A book that deserves more hype
  • There are so many books that I have read that deserve more hype. I have been trying to keep my answers to one book each, but for this one I’ll make an exception. One book that deserves more hype is Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain, a ya mystery about a girl returning to her small bayou town full of psychics to figure out what happened to her best friend. Another is The Depths by Nicole Lesperance, a ya horror/fantasy about a girl going to an island with a creepy little girl and birds that say her name. White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson is another one. She has a few hyped books, but this one isn’t as talked about. It’s a ya horror about a girl moving into a new house where weird things happen, like items moving around and her stepsister making a new friend who wants our main character gone. Another one I think needs more hype is Starflight by Melissa Landers. This is a ya sci-fi that I picked up and honestly didn’t think I would enjoy after it sat on my shelf for a while. I finally read it in 2020 and loved it. It was so good and extremely different from anything I had ever read. Finally, Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert. This is a ya kind of horror fantasy/magical horror type of story following two timelines with supernatural elements. All of these books were so good and need more hype!

• A book that is becoming a movie/tv show
  • From what I can see, We Were Liars by E. Lockhart is becoming a show! This was one of my few five star reads and one of my favorites in 2020. I loved the atmosphere and the mystery in this book.

• A book you have re-read the most
  • The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson. I think I said it in my review, but I have read this book four times. I have probably read some middle grade more, but looking at ya and adult, The Unexpected Everything has the most rereads for me. I just love everything about this story and I will probably continue to reread it in the future.

• A book from a genre you don’t typically read
  • I think my most read genres are probably ya thrillers, ya contemporary, and ya fantasy, so a book from a genre I don’t typically read is The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonia Iturbe. This is a historical fiction based on a true story following a girl’s time in Auschwitz. I really loved this one and highly recommend.

• A book that deserves all the hype it gets
  •  Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter! This was my favorite book of last year. It was just a cute, fun, ya contemporary about a romcom obsessed girl trying to get the attention of her crush with the help of her neighbor.

• A book you usually recommend when asked to give a recommendation
  • I don’t get the opportunity to recommend books often, and it really depends on the genre that the other person reads, but I have recommended The Lost by Natasha Preston. This is a young adult thriller and it was so different and kept me on the edge of my seat.

• A book that has your favorite character(s)
  • A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer has some of my absolute favorite characters. I love Rhen and Harper and they are some of my favorite book characters of all time. Brigid Kemmerer always has amazing characters in her books, especially her fantasy novels.

• A book you wish you could live in
  •  Not to keep repeating my answers, but A Curse So Dark and Lonely again. I loved the world of Emberfall so much. It was like a classic fairytale and was so magical. I have been on the hunt for more books like it ever since reading it. To go with an answer that’s a bit safer though, where there is less danger, I would also say The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson. Stanwich, CT is my favorite realistic fictional town. I like to keep track of all the places mentioned there.

• A book you thought you would hate but ended up loving
  •  Definitely Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco. I got the first two books as a gift and took forever to read them. I was in a two/two and a half year reading slump between the end of 2017 to the beginning of 2020, so I took a while to get to it. Plus, it starts with an autopsy scene so I thought I would hate the book. I didn’t love the first one, but I gave the second book five stars and loved it. It’s one of my all time favorite series now.

• A book that made you cry
  • There have been a decent amount of books I have cried in, but to keep this to one answer, I’ll go with Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson. This is a story about a girl reconnecting with old friends and spending time with her family in their lake house after being away for a few years. This is a great book to read in the warmer weather, but it really tugs at your heartstrings too. This is one of the books I have cried the most in, but I still really loved it.

• A book you wish you could read for the first time
  • There are so many books I could choose for this one, but I want to go with a thriller because the first read is the best one, so I would probably go with The Lake by Natasha Preston. Natasha Preston is one of my favorite authors. Her books are so thrilling and leave me on the edge of my seat, this one especially. It’s set at a summer camp, and with the setting combined with the creepy things happening made this an amazing book and one of my few five stars.

That about wraps up this book tag. I loved getting to see what books I would choose for each question, and it was much easier than the mid-year book freakout tag since I’m not limited to books I read this year. Let me know any of your own answers or if you have any that are similar.

xoxo, 

Just another reader