Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Fooled Me

This fabulous meme is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish, and this week's topic is books that were totally deceptive. It's been way too long since I participated in this meme, so I'm glad to be back at it! Some of these books tricked me in good ways, others in bad ways, but you'll have to read the whole list to learn which is which :)

Links lead to my reviews.

1.) Firelight by Sophie Jordan — pretty cover + lots of buzz about it! Plus, dragons aren't all that common in YA these days. But in reality: mostly about an angsty teenage girl who cannot make up her mind.

2.) Sunshine by Robin McKinley — hello, it's Robin McKinley, author of the incredible Beauty. Plus, I'd read some positive reviews of Sunshine. But this book turned out to be such a slog, with a protagonist I kept wanting to pummel.

3.) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins — when I first heard about it (years ago now) I was all, "kids who fight to the death? Ugh, sounds kind of violent for my tastes..." But I received it as a gift from my mom, gave it a try, and absolutely tore through it. One of the best book presents ever!

4.) Anna & the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins — If I'd seen it in a bookstore without having heard any blogger buzz about it, I quite possibly would have passed it by. Thank you, book blogosphere, for drawing my attention to it so repeatedly that eventually I gave in and read it! And quite thoroughly enjoyed it.

5.) Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl — I read this book and then went, "Um, why exactly was everybody raving about it?" You can read all the reasons why I was unimpressed here. Suffice it to say, I have not bothered to pick up the next book in the series.

6.) Enclave by Ann Aguirre — I was kind of wary of this one since I'm not (or at least I thought I wasn't) big on post-apocalyptic stories. I usually prefer dystopians. But I was totally gripped by Enclave! (Admittedly, there are dystopian elements in this book, too.)

7.) Forgotten by Cat Patrick — a girl who forgets the past and "remembers" the future? Cool premise in theory, but in execution? So many problems. I was quite disappointed with this one.

8.) The Host by Stephenie Meyer — I'm not much of a sci-fi reader, but once I got into this book, I had to keep reading. Demolished the whole 600+ pages in about 2 days, I believe.

9.) Popular by Alissa Grosso — this sounded like one of those shallow YA books about high school cliques. It wasn't really on my radar in any meaningful way until it was suggested by the publisher for my Psychtember event last year, as it has a mental health aspect. I'm not going to spoil, but I loved the twist!

10.) The Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead — vampire books generally don't appeal to me, and I resisted these for a long time. They've gotten a huge amount of attention and love from bloggers, but I guess I figured they wouldn't really have all that much substance to them. Finally I tried the first one and was hooked! They are amazingly addictive and consuming.

What books have fooled you, one way or another?