The Book Courtship Tag

Hello and welcome to Thursday! I have another book tag for you, this time stolen from Magini Books.

Phase 1 – Initial Attraction: a book that you bought because of the cover?

Colorworld by Rachel E. Kelly. I loved this cover and the other two in the series are equally gorgeous. Sadly, I ended up not really getting into the book. I recommend clicking the image to view the full size version, as it’s a bit hard to tell just how pretty it looks in thumbnail size.

Phase 2 – First Impressions: A book that you got because of the summary?

This is the way I choose most books, but I will put The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig as my actual answer, as the premise sounded really original and I jumped at the chance to read it.

Phase 3 – Sweet Talk: A book with great writing?

I know I do go on about this book a lot, but The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl by Melissa Keil. She nails both teenage narrative voice and a really Australian small-town atmosphere. Love this book.

Phase 4 – First Date: The first book of a series which made you want to pick up the rest of the series?

The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Shepherd. This YA version of The Island of Doctor Moreau pulled me right in from the get-go, and knowing that the subsequent books were based on The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Frankenstein respectively, I knew I had to get my hands on them immediately. (Warning if you go looking for these: they are dark, violent and do depict violence against animals in some detail)

Phase 5 – Late Night Phone Calls: A book that kept you up all night?

I’m actually more likely to stay in bed on a Saturday morning and neglect my housework than stay up all night, but either way, I’ll go with Unwind by Neal Shusterman, which portrayed a gripping and horrifying dystopian future that I wanted to see through.

Phase 6 – Always on my mind: A book you could not stop thinking about?

The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville. After reading it, I went and looked up the guy whose life it was based on, and was reading the digitised notebooks of his work, and getting excited each time I found things in the notebooks that were referenced in the novel.

Phase 7 – Getting Physical: A book which you love the way it feels?

I’m not usually a fan of hard covers, since I do a lot of my reading on the go and hard covers are heavy and cumbersome, but when Time Lord Fairy Tales came in for me at the library, I was immediately in love (to the point of asking it for my birthday before I’d even started reading it). The picture of the cover doesn’t really do it justice.

Phase 8 – Meeting the parents: A book which you would recommend to your family and friends?

Given that YA and Fantasy are two genres my mother isn’t especially interested in, but even she was impressed by the opening chapters of Seraphina by Rachel Hartman when she started reading it while visiting me recently, I feel this is a good choice to recommend to basically everone.

Phase 9 – Thinking about the future: A book or series you know you will re-read many times in the future?

I’m not generally a re-reader, but considering I have been thinking about grabbing the audio books of the Chaos Walking series and listening through them again, I guess that can go here.