It Must Be Mine!
Everyone has a favourite "type" of book, that one trope or aspect you can't pass up if you run across it. Generally, it's something that transcends genres: vampires, pirates, stories set in the 1920s, stories where the main character has a wacky pet, re-tellings of Sleeping Beauty... you've got a magic 'buy it now!' button in you, you know you do. You get sucked in with just one or two words, because there is no way to resist the awesome of your favourite (and in your opinion, criminally underused) type of book. You may even have gone through a dozen bad books with this magical element just to find one really good one.
My eight-year-old is a sucker for faeries. She'll read other things, but if there's something new about faeries, it jumps straight to the top of her list, and she'll finish that sucker in a matter of hours.
Me? I like anything unexpected, where the author takes a trope and turns it on its head. Make the hero the secretary and the heroine the billionaire tycoon. Make that awkward teen who gets turned into a vampire stay horribly awkward after the transformation. Make the villain be the dude who gets the girl in the end. Make the cast of your entire adventure saga a family of bunnies, or fleas, or bunny fleas.
So what's your magic "must buy!" button? How criminally underrated is it? And for bonus credit, does anyone have recommendations for a good middle grade book about faeries?
My eight-year-old is a sucker for faeries. She'll read other things, but if there's something new about faeries, it jumps straight to the top of her list, and she'll finish that sucker in a matter of hours.
Me? I like anything unexpected, where the author takes a trope and turns it on its head. Make the hero the secretary and the heroine the billionaire tycoon. Make that awkward teen who gets turned into a vampire stay horribly awkward after the transformation. Make the villain be the dude who gets the girl in the end. Make the cast of your entire adventure saga a family of bunnies, or fleas, or bunny fleas.
So what's your magic "must buy!" button? How criminally underrated is it? And for bonus credit, does anyone have recommendations for a good middle grade book about faeries?