The "Out of My Comfort Zone" Book Tag!

Recently, Emma from emmmabooks created a brand new tag (you can see her video here that seemed like a lot of fun! This tag is all about coming up with answers outside of your comfort zone, and it has one major rule:

You have to pick ONE GENRE that you frequently read about… and then, you can’t use ANY books from that genre while answering the questions!

Since I read a lot of YA contemporary, that’s the genre I’ve chosen to disqualify from my answers for this tag. (I’m still allowing adult contemporary, and you’ll see why in a moment.)

Let’s get going!

1. A book that is an exception when it comes to genres or elements you don’t typically like:

This was an easy one for me, but it’s an entire series: The Infernal Devices trilogy by Cassandra Clare. I normally can’t handle love triangles at all and think they’re awful, and I almost never have an issue choosing a side, but I think this series has the best love triangle in the history of literature (no, really) and I was never able to choose sides because I loved both sides SO MUCH.

2. A book you enjoyed from a genre you previously held some stigma against:

If you’d asked younger me to try adult contemporary romance—specifically the steamy, lust-y stuff with shirtless dudes on the covers? NO. WAY. I can admit now that I was misjudging the entire genre and projecting my own fear of being slut-shamed for enjoying books with sex. ? The irony isn’t lost on me that I spent my entire teen life reading and writing explicit fanfic, but gods forbid I pick up a steamy novel…

Anyways, the magical book that changed my mind was A Girl Like Her by Talia Hibbert (which I never would’ve picked up, if Amber hadn’t raved so much about the amazing rep in it).

3. A book you didn’t know was out of your comfort zone until you started reading it:

I had to think about this one, but decided on The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. I knew this book involved child abuse, but didn’t know much about the synopsis beforehand. You can imagine my shock when I learned that the entire book is a preteen boy’s perspective on watching his neighbors abuse their newly adopted family member nearly to death just because she’s a girl. This book was BRUTAL and, while I applaud why Ketchum wrote it (to bring awareness to the real events it was based on), I’ll never touch it again.

4. Pick a friend who motivates you to pick up books you might not normally be interested in—is there a book they convinced you to give a try?

I think one friend who has been introducing me to a lot of books out of my comfort zone lately is Sionna. She reads a lot of paranormal fantasy, which isn’t out of my comfort zone so much as it is a genre I’ve only recently gotten back into (it was my fave as a teen but I left it for the last several years until 2018). I haven’t been let down by any of her recommendations yet!

5. A book that is out of your comfort zone, but you would like to read:

One that’s really had my attention lately, and I want to order soon, is The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. I don’t read much nonfiction, and when I do, it’s usually memoirs from celebs I love (like Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime). I almost NEVER pick up nonfic about tragedies like this one about these poor women who had radium products tested on them during the WWI era, but I hear so many rave reviews I just have to read it.

6. A book or genre so outside of your comfort zone that you’ll probably never give it a chance:

This was actually pretty hard for me to pick a title for, but I’ll just say that I’ll most likely never return to Christian fiction—and I don’t think I’ll ever pick up Amish romance novels, either, if you consider those two similar enough to count them both.

TAGS:

If you’ve already done this tag, or don’t want to do it, don’t feel pressured at all! And if I didn’t tag you but you want to do this, consider yourself officially tagged ♥

BLOGGERS:
Kathy // Sionna // Kaleena // Kelly // also Kelly<3 // Heather // also Heather! // Ellyn // Norrie // Bex // Becky

BOOKTUBERS:
Seihren // Holly // Sylwia // Gabby // Chelsea // Kayleigh