Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by Ambrosia at 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!

This week’s teaser comes from Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare.

Not all Shadowhunters could hear ghosts, unless the ghosts chose to be heard, but Will was one of those who could. As he approached the old cemetery, their voices rose in a ragged chorus – wails and pleading, cries and snarls. This was not a peaceful burial ground, but Will knew that; it was not his first visit to the Cross Bones Graveyard near London Bridge.

My audio book hold has still not come in for this one, although my hold for book #3 did come through. So to save time, I’m going to go ahead and read my physical copy of this one and switch over to the audio book if I get it. I can’t help it – I’m impatient. I forgot how good the Infernal Devices trilogy was!

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

Ten Books Read Because of the Hype

I don’t usually get sucked into the hype about certain books, mostly because I tend to stay in my own little bubble. There were a few, however, that I read because they were just everywhere and I had to see what all the fuss was about.

1. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling: As much as I don’t like talking about these books these days, you couldn’t miss them back in the early 2000s. They were literally everywhere. I actually saw the first movie before reading any of the books, but once I read them, well . . . they’re hard to put down. Do they hold up now? Mostly, I think. It’s been a while though.
2. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer: I’ll admit, I only read this because so many Harry Potter fans were talking about these books as well. While I enjoyed this book (and the rest in the series), I didn’t think that they necessarily deserved the crazy hype that surrounded them. They were decent, but not the best thing ever like so many people thought.
3. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros: Flipping over to more recent phenomenon, who hasn’t at least heard of Fourth Wing? It’s everywhere and one of the flagships of the “romantasy” genre (which, to be honest, I think is a little silly – as if fantasy didn’t have romance in it before now?). I did really enjoy it, but I was confused about how it was so insanely popular. None of the concepts in it were particularly original, but there was something in there that sparked a huge following.
4. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas: I had read the Throne of Glass series a few years ago, but everyone and their cat kept mentioning ACOTAR. So I read it. And read the whole series. Definitely an enjoyable read. Sarah J. Maas seems a bit like a one trick pony, but she definitely does that one trick really well.
5. A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer: This was another one that seemed to be everywhere back in 2019. I was on a fairy tale retelling kick back then, so naturally I loved this one. I still haven’t read the next books, but they are definitely on my list.
6. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: This one got so much hype because of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. For anyone not familiar, during the month of November, those taking part in NaNoWriMo try to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It’s really tough – I’ve only been able to do it once. Morgenstern became something of a hero among Wrimos due to having her debut novel famously coming from her NaNoWriMo project. So of course I had to read it, and it became one of my absolute favorite books ever.
7. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: This book has been well known for many, many years, but it has become a lot more popular as of late, partly because of the TV show, but also because of the U.S. political landscape. It was one of those books that I had always heard of, but never actually read until 2017. Does it live up to it’s reputation? Absolutely. And the sequel, The Testaments, is even better.
8. Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard: I remember this one being super popular around the YallFest community. It took me a long time to get around to reading it, but once I did, I definitely enjoyed it, although I don’t know if it deserved the huge amount of hype it got at the time. It’s a good book, and a good series, but it’s very trope-y and can be slightly predictable.
9. The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown: Ugh, you know this book was everywhere back in the day. Back then, I didn’t read much mainstream fiction, but I couldn’t help but be pulled into the hype surrounding this one. I really liked it a lot, even own a copy of the illustrated version that has tons of pictures of all the artwork and the architecture (I definitely recommend reading it that way – it makes everything feel so much more alive). This was before I realized that Dan Brown definitely has a formula that he uses for pretty much all of his books. If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all, just with different window dressing. Still enjoyable though.
10. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: The movie was terrible, and while the book is flawed, I still absolutely loved it. And this book was everywhere. Everyone had an opinion about it, some positive some very negative. To me, it’s not that deep – it’s just so much fun. I highly recommend the audio book, which is narrated by Wil Wheaton (yes, of Star Trek fame). I’m a big fan of his anyway, but he does an excellent job.

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Please leave your teasers and top tens in comments!

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Categories: Teaser Tuesday, Top Ten Tuesdays

Tags: books, teaser tuesday, top ten tuesday