Books I Read Due to Hype

In one of my older Top Ten Tuesday posts, the main reason I mentioned for picking up a book was hype. Whether we love or hate hyped books, it’s the universal truth that we who are atleast a bit active in the community cannot escape it. And it’s also true that reading and talking about the hot and hyped releases gets a lot of engagement, so I find it to be a great way to have conversations and make more friends. When I started analysing all my reads for the past couple of years, I realized I read way too many books due to the hype surrounding them. And while I cannot list them all here, I’m gonna talk about some which became instant all time favorites, and others which didn’t live up to my expectations.

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Hyped Books I Adored

Throne of Glass is obviously the one series I’m obsessed about the most, and I wouldn’t have read it if it wasn’t so talked about on booktube and the blogging community in general. I read ACOTAR trilogy first and while I really enjoyed that too, ToG was an instant favorite and I binge read the whole series (except Kingdom of Ash) in a week. And it’s not an exaggeration when I say it’s the most talked about series on my blog.

Another one that I talk about a lot is the Six of Crows duology. I was just amazed by the brilliance of Leigh’s writing in this one and also realized my new found love for ensemble casts, found families and morally grey characters. Definitely worth all the hype in my opinion.

Nevernight is another trilogy that has a lot of hype surrounding it and I was very much carried away by it. I was very troubled when I didn’t enjoy the first 100 pages of the first book, but I pushed through and wow was that the right choice. I didn’t think I would love such dark books, but apparently I do.

It is the absolute truth that Red, White and Royal Blue is probably one of the most hyped book release of 2019, and when I realized it has politics and royalty and a gay romance as it’s main themes, I knew I had to read it. And I can’t even describe how much this book has made me happy. I read it back to back twice before even attempting to write a review, and have reread it a few more times after, so it’s no surprise that this is probably going to be my favorite read of the year.

Captive Prince is an extremely polarizing series in the community, so I don’t even know why I decided to pick it up. The one thing I did was to read about all the trigger and content warnings for book 1 before I began, which definitely made it easier to get through it. But I can’t deny how much I fell in love with the rest of the trilogy and consider the main characters to be one of my most favorite couples ever.

When I first saw how huge Priory was, I decided I was never gonna read it. But I kept reading rave reviews and everyone was gushing about it, so I just got carried away by the hype and picked it up. And it turned out to be such an amazing read. I didn’t think I would have so much fun reading such a big book.

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Hyped Books that Disappointed Me

I enjoyed Schwab’s Monsters of Verity duology, so I did want to try other books by her. And the hype about this series was too hard to ignore in the months before the release of Vengeful, so I ended up picking Vicious. They are not really bad books per se, but I didn’t like most of the characters and that never bodes well for me.

If you read my rating for The Cruel Prince, you would think I loved it but the truth is, I was scared to write an honest review because of the insane hype surrounding it. I wanted to just fit in and make friends in the community, and didn’t want to hate on such a popular book. Thankfully I got over myself and wrote a much more honest review for The Wicked King. I will not say this series is bad because I think it’s entertaining enough, but I don’t think it lives up to the hype and I definitely don’t root for the couple. However, I will still be reading the finale because I wanna know how it all ends.

Another series that has a pretty strong fanbase, especially across booktube is The Raven Cycle. And I really wanted to be a part of the frenzy, so I read them all. I did like the characters and the friendships, but for the life of me I could never tell you what happened across these four books – I don’t think I have ever been so confused about the plot of a series.

Another series I read till the end despite never giving it more than 3 stars is the Red Queen. In this case, I didn’t really like the characters (except maybe Maven) but found the world quite fascinating and wanted to know how it all ends up. And due to the very disappointing open ending of War Storm, I even read the short story bind-up Broken Throne because I really wanted that closure.

Furyborn was one of my most anticipated releases of 2018, and it sadly ended up being the most disappointing one too. This was definitely a case of the hype creating a lot of expectations in my mind, and then the actual book not living up to all that. The hype surrounding Kingsbane has been similar and I probably will end up reading it, but I’m not rushing to pick it up yet.

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Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Do you read hyped books as well? What are some of your favorite and disappointing hyped books? Please feel free to share all your thoughts in the comments below….