Reading Outside My Comfort Zone: 5 Books On My TBR

Hello and happy Wednesday, you guys! I hope you’ve had a nice day so far (I sure did – got woken up by cuddles from my nephews!) and are doing well overall! 🙂

For today’s post, I figured I would talk about some of the books that I have on my mental TBR that don’t fit within my usual go-to of YA Fantasy or YA Contemporary. We all know I don’t really do monthly TBRs – I’m too much of a mood reader to do that but I figured by mentioning these books publicly it’s gonna kick me into gear to read them sooner.

This list features books from various age ranges and genres and I am super excited to read them all. 😀

The first book I want to talk about is one of the most popular Adult books that swept up the book community in 2018: The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo!

I don’t know about you guys, but I kept seeing this book everywhere last year and I didn’t see a single person who didn’t love it. Obviously, I’m curious what the hype is all about and since I want to read outside my comfort zone a bit more often, this is perfect.

Thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with this particular concept before? I know there are others out there where the main character tells someone else their story but I haven’t reached for them yet.

I haven’t read too much about this book because I want to go in as blind as possible, but from what I know the main character might be bisexual (I’m 90% sure on that) and is of Cuban descent.

The next book I want to read is a YA mystery/thriller that I got a review copy of during the summer of 2018 and I still haven’t gotten to All These Beautiful Strangers.

I really liked the synopsis for this book when I first heard about it and was really excited to get to it but then other books just kept stealing my attention over and over again. It’s a Thing, honestly. Just ask the book that’s currently on my Currently Reading shelf on Goodreads. xD

All These Beautiful Strangers moved up on my mental TBR because I just finished another YA mystery/thriller that I really enjoyed which naturally had me go ‘OH! I want more of this!’. I no longer know what this book is even about and I’d prefer keeping it that way until I actually read it.

Up next, we have a book/series that Merline over at Merline Reads has been praising for months now: The City Of Brass. It’s Adult fantasy which is something I don’t think I’ve actively reached for (Victoria Schwab’s Shades Of Magic is technically Adult too, I think) and I want to change that.

Again, I don’t really know much about this book as I added it to my TBR quite a while ago and haven’t checked the synopsis again since but Merline and I have had similar feelings on books recently so I’m purely trusting her on how awesome this book is!

If you guys have read this and would like to share some insight into this book that would hype me up even more? I’m 100% here for it! And if anyone wants to buddy read this – let me know too!

I’ve actually already started listening to the audiobook for Becoming a couple of months ago, but then other books demanded my attention so I put this on hold for the time being.

But I’ve always really liked the public image the Obamas had and followed the reelection campaign and stayed up all night to see Barack Obama be reelected. I’m pretty sure it was a school night too so I got zero sleep that day. xD

But yeah, I’m really curious to hear about the Obamas life from Michelle’s perspective and learn more about her history too as that’s something I don’t know much about!

I have read exactly one memoir before (Trevor Noah’s Born A Crime) which I quite enjoyed – I was already really interested in Trevor Noah from what he’d shared in interviews, the Daily Show, etc which made listening to his book more fun. So I’m hoping the same will happen for Michelle Obama’s memoir too.

The last book on my list is a very recent addition: Aru Shah And The End Of Time! I just finished Roshani Chokshi’s most recent release The Gilded Wolves (check out my review here) and now I want to read more/all of her previous work.

But since we’re talking about books outside my comfort zone, we’re not gonna discuss her previous young adult novels and instead focus on her middle-grade works!

I haven’t read that many middle-grade novels so far (Magnus Chase trilogy & Tahereh Mafi’s Furthermore duology) but I did enjoy the ones I have read, which is obviously what I’m hoping will happen here too!

As with all the other books on this list, I don’t really know too much about the plot other than that the main character has a tendency to make up stories which eventually sets her off on a pretty interesting journey – or something like that.

That’s some of the books currently on my mental TBR and I truly hope that by the time I’ve read and enjoyed these particular books, my TBR will have grown quite a bit again and that I find so many more fantastic books outside my usual go-to genre.

Don’t worry, I’ll still read and talk about Young Adult books the most but I figured it might be fun to see what else is out there – especially since I used to read mainly adult books as a teenager.

Do you guys have a list of books you’d like to read that aren’t within your comfort zone? If so, what are those genres and some of the books within them?

Do you make an active effort to reach for books outside your comfort zone or do you prefer reaching for books you’re sure you’ll love? Let’s discuss in the comments down below!