Beyond Reality discussion

Last month we talked about popular books that didn't live up to the hype. Let's talk about books that DID. What insanely popular books (in any genre) did you absolutely love, and what did you love about them?

The Raven Scholar. 5* and the first thing added to my "favorites" shelf in a long time.

Actually, I don't know if there was hype because I don't pay attention to hype or non-hype. And I thought the beginning was clumsy. But otherwise . . . great. And she keeps track of story questions that you might have (like from the clumsy beginning) and keeps track of them and answers them well. Yes, I have read books where authors were not as good at this. Highly recommended.

This is a difficult one to answer. I also do not pay much attention to hype most of the time. Its mostly just what I hear on groups such as this one.

That said, I think I'll toss out This Is How You Lose the Time War
I knew very little about the book before the group read it, but since then I have heard a lot of praise that I feel it really deserves.

Perhaps ditto for Piranesi
Another I feel deserves the praise it gets.

Random: I wasn't that crazy about This is How You Lose the Time War, but I absolutely LOVED Piranesi. Totally hypeworthy

I thought The Night Circus was worth the hype. And The Handmaid's Tale, though I did manage to read that before it was made into a TV show, so I'm not sure if the hype was before or after.

I think the hype for the Handmaid's Tale was for the TV show. I liked the book and never watched the TV show

The small amount of hype before was probably just in the Canadian Literary world. Which I do pay attention to, but not a lot of others do. :)

I don’t really pay much attention to hype but I think Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky was pretty widely praised and I thought it was terrific—imaginative, compelling, thought-provoking. I see he is returning to this series with a new book comping out in spring, Children of Strife.

Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune is another book that seemed to garner lots of praise, well-deserved , IMO.

Well there was the Harry Potter craz back in the day.

For me, it was The Da Vinci Code. I read it only because of the hype. It was ok, it was not worth the hype but it was enjoyable. When I trued to read the next, The Lost Symbol it was dreadful

Yes, Ken, I stopped reading Dan Brown because the next one, The Lost Symbol, really was dreadful.

Actually, I think his best was Angels & Demons, which was the first in the series, before The Da Vinci Code