I've been on a Taylor Swift kick ever since Lover came out. Which ALWAYS happens when she releases new music. Naturally, I've been waiting for a book tag in the record's honor--Vicky over at What Vicky Read has us all covered!


Obligatory shout-out to Dee. If I say Taylor Swift's name three times in front of a mirror, spin around ala Bloody Mary, I'm pretty sure she'll pop up.

If you were to go back in time to when I was in high school, you'd find my my bulky old computer with a sticky note pressed to the side. Written on said sticky note, courtesy of my (still!) best-friend Sammy, was partly a doodle of a teardrop and the lyrics to Taylor Swift's song Teardrops on My Guitar.

I've been a fan of Taylor Swift for so long that it is nearly impossible to think back to a time where I didn't love her music. Lover is one of her best compositions to date and I'm completely, as always, in love with the way Taylor Swift writes her music. I have so many sensory memories attached to each of her albums.

Also, I'm going to do multiple books per answer to keep my format even. Well, okay, that's only kind of true. It's also because I'm super excessive. 

So, without further ado...

Tag Rules:

1. Give credit to the creator (that would be ME! aka Vicky)
2. Tag 5 Friends
3. HAVE FUN!

There are so many books and so little time. My brain can only retain so much information at a time! I recently did a TBR backlist purge and shaved off A LOT of books from the pile because, again, so little time. But, these are the ones I know I want to read but always just... forget about.

I feel like I have two moods when it comes to reading in the summer: (1) Contemporaries. Give me all the fluffy contemporaries that I can read with a glass of wine and a little sunshine. OR (2) Reread "old" favourites.

Picking Harry Potter, Addicted and The Shadowhunter Chronicles as my favourites? Wow. Shocking. Honorable mentions are The Hunger Games and Caraval. See? I do have some self-control, after all!

There are SO many great female characters out there. Tella and Scarlett from Caraval are two of my favourites! I also am very fond of Lada from The Conqueror's Saga and every member of the girl gang featured in Undead Girl Gang.

To be fair, this is pretty much all I read and kept up with during my childhood. I wasn't a big reader! Honestly, though, it's as much a part of me as anything at this point.

I mean, there are a lot! Most of which, I've already listed. So, I'm going to go with ones I haven't yet mentioned in this post. I think that you guys know that these three titles are 100% my brand!

My literary origin story began with a lot of Harry Potter and a lot of books by Lurlene McDaniel. I still love to read books that pack a serious emotional punch. I'm not crying, you're crying.

I have a lot of ships. Most of said ships are total OTP material. I am an all or nothing kind of girl. If we're kind of narrowing things down today based on mood, I'd pick Jamie and Charlotte in the Charlotte Holmes series, Magnus and Alec in The Shadowhunter Chronicles and Lily and Lo, Rose and Connor and Daisy and Ryke from the Addicted/Calloway Sisters series. Honorable mentions: Nate and Blair from the Gossip Girl books, Katniss and Peeta in The Hunger Games, Farrow Keene and Moffy Hale from Like Us and Evelyn and Celia from The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

I've been very fortunate to enjoy a lot of "hyped" books through the years.

Saying goodbye is so very hard to do. I was going to include Harry Potter and Addicted in this one but I feel like I've already done so WAY TOO MUCH in this post so! The Infernal Devices is one of those series that I've read so many times, I cannot count. I reread Daisy Jones & The Six almost immediately after finishing it for the first time. The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was another one I reread pretty quickly after the first read.

BABES, DON'T THREATEN ME WITH A GOOD TIME. Again, but Better is the first one to come to mind solely because I just read it a few months ago. Then, obviously, I had to include a classic at some point in this list. And, OBVIOUSLY, when I saw that there was a tie-in edition of Bleak House with Gillian Anderson on the cover I had to include that. (Plus, it's Dickens, and London, so.) Lastly, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is one of my favourite fantasy reads of the past decade and it would be a crime to not include it on this list.

Speaking truthfully, I'm trash for trash. I don't necessarily think that these books are trash--they lack a specific amount of substance and are just entertaining. They make me smile and cringe and all that jazz. Gossip Girl is my number one. The ride or die. [Whimpers: books only.] We all know this. The same can be said for The Thousandth Floor and Pretty Little Liars. I could list about a dozen more from my teenage years, but I won't.
Honestly, I have a lot of books that I'd say fit the bill for this one. I'm going to go with standalones, though, because I feel like these three are some of my favourites. My copies are all worn out and annotated and well loved. Sharp Objects is, perhaps, my favourite novel of all time, with The Girls and The Goldfinch creeping up on it.

That feeling I got when reading Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe for the first time! Phew! Fortunately for us, LGBTQIA+ titles have been growing and expanding. This year, I was fortunate enough to receive so many great titles. Birthday and Going Off Script are just scraping the surface, and we still have a long ways to go in gaining more representation, but they were two of my favourites this year!
Taste is super subjective, you know? And sometimes, things just don't work for me. I'll just leave it at that.

Ah, yes, my favourite three topics. Music, literature and ME! Real talk, we all know Magnus Bane from The Shadowhunter Chronicles is basically me in male warlock form. I relate to him immensely! The same can be said about Connor Cobalt and Rose Calloway in Addicted/Calloway Sisters. End statement.

*Whispers* PLEASE be my friend. Because I've already recently listed who I'd want to be fictional BFFs with a few weeks ago for Top Ten Tuesday, I decided to shake things up and add ones that I didn't include. I love all the ladies in Dead Queens Club, Bri in On the Come Up and most of the characters from Vampire Academy.

I love being surprised by fiction. I wouldn't necessarily say that I expected to not like these books but I did go in with some lower expectations. I think this really benefit me. The Hating Game was super hyped when I read it, but I had just read a similar title and I wasn't keen on it. BUT, The Hating Game was SO good. I expected to like A Lesson in Thorns to a degree but I ended up adoring it. As for Restore Me, I was skeptical for a minute there about Mafi extending the original trilogy to a series of six, but I really think that the series is all the more better now.

This one is tough because I kept bouncing around between Red, 1989, Reputation and Lover. Which is, you know, over half of her discography. BUT, I just love them all so much that I don't know how to choose? I have the most sensory memories attached to Speak Now (good and bad) and Red. I have so many. Lyrically, I think that Red and Lover may be my favourite, but Reputation holds the most hype songs for me. See? I can't decide. I think I'll say Red, though, just because.