Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Purple Booker. Here are the rules if you want to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

Today’s teaser comes from Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins:

But this room looked like it had been decorated by the unholy lovechild of Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake.

A short quote, but it made me laugh. Also, yes, this is yet another book that I started last night. We had a power outage and since I didn’t want to use any of my devices (trying to conserve the batteries), I picked up a paperback (or as my friend Jess calls them, a dead tree copy). This was another series I had wanted to try to finish, so I figured why not. It’s a fairly light read.

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is:

Top Ten Favorite Tropes

This one was actually pretty easy for me. Over the years, I have tended to gravitate towards a lot of the same tropes or themes. I’ve been trying to break out of that a bit, but it’s hard!

1. Boarding Schools – Preferably magical, but I like non-magical ones as well. When I was a kid, I always wanted to go to one, so I guess I live vicariously through books now.
2. Road Trips – I love a good road trip, but I like reading about them a lot as well. Especially if the characters are searching for a specific person or a specific thing.
3. Libraries – Anything that connects to a library, especially a magical one, is solid for me. I think libraries are magical anyway, but put a portal to another world in one, and I am good to go.
4. Scavenger Hunts – This one is a bit different and I haven’t seen it as much, but I love it. It also typically goes along with a Road Trip. My favorite example is 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson. I love that book!
5. Urban Exploration – I love big cities. They always have a history to them that is wide a varied, usually with a darkness lurking underneath.
6. Strong Platonic Friendships – Not every “couple” needs to fall in love, okay? My favorite example is Harry Potter and Hermione Granger (from the books, not the movies). So many people wanted them to end up as a couple, but to me, it was better that they were best friends. What’s wrong with being besties?
7. Heists – This is a new one for me, probably from some of the newer books I’ve picked up this year. I’ve started to really dig that Mission Impossible vibe, which is funny since I’ve never really liked those movies all that much.
8. Starting Over – Maybe this is because I have gone through this process myself, but I like seeing a character who has faced a lot of challenges in their lives take a chance and start over. Blank slate. Fresh start.
9. Servants – This one sounds weird, but I’m talking about something like Downton Abbey or Upstairs, Downstairs. The people who take care of the aristocracy know EVERYTHING, but they are almost always taken for granted. My examples here are TV shows, but I like this trope in books as well.
10. Chosen One: This is sometimes very cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason, and when done well, it makes for a really fun story. Bonus points if that prophesy could point to multiple people and we need to find out who the chosen one is.

Please share your teasers and/or top tens in comments!

Categories: Teaser Tuesday, Top Ten Tuesdays

Tags: books, teaser tuesday, top ten tuesday