Five Books I'm Glad Were Recommended To Me

Normally, I find new books to read through Goodreads or Amazon and increasingly through other book blogs, and since I read so much, I'm usually the one recommending books to other people.  But every once in awhile, a friend or family member will personally recommend a book to me.  Here's a list of five books that were recommended to me and I'm so glad they were - I may not have picked them up otherwise, and they are all incredible!

 

 

• Defending Jacob (William Landay): This one was recommended to me by one of my co-workers; it's a legal thriller about an assistant district attorney whose own son is charged with murder.  There are so many twists and turns, and the ending is shocking.
• Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (Seth Grahame-Smith): My sister and I joke that she uses my bookshelves as her own personal library; I'm always giving her new things to read.  But this time, she told me about a book that she loved, a fun, funny, fantastical riff on the life of President Abraham Lincoln, as a vampire hunter.
• The Giver (Lois Lowry): My sister and her husband loaned me this book, and the rest of the series, to read.  It's a dystopian classic that I had never read, and I loved it.
• I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith): My college roommate gifted this beautiful book to me; in this quirky and funny coming-of-age story, a teenage girl in England keeps a journal about her home (a dilapidated castle), her family (eccentric and poor), and characters they meet along the way.
• The Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling): I'm kind of embarrassed to admit - I had no intentions of reading the Harry Potter series.  When the books and movies really exploded in popularity, I was already in my late teens and felt like I was too old for what I thought to be a kids' series.  A couple years after I graduated college, one of my former roommates was gushing about the books and said I had to read them.  I'm so glad I did, because they quickly became some of my favorites!  Now I own all the books (I try to read the series once a year) and all the movies, and my dear husband lets me plan trips to Universal Studios to get my Wizarding World fix.