Themed Challenge Wrap-up

The themed reading challenge, hosted by Wendy at Caribousmom started at the beginning of this year and ends on June 30^th. For this challenge, participants picked 4 books that shared the same theme. Since I had a few paranormal romances sitting on my bookshelves, I chose that as my theme.

Books read:

1. Blood Brothers by Nora Roberts

2. Dead Girls are Easy by Terri Garey

3. Lord of the Fading Lands by C.L. Wilson

4. Undead and Unwed by Mary Janice Davidson

Favorite book of the challenge: All of them. Seriously I loved all of them. Dead Girls Are Easy and Undead and Unwed made me laugh out loud and who doesn’t like that? I lost myself in a new world in C.L. Wilson’s Lord of the Fading Lands (which is really fantasy romance instead of paranormal, but I didn’t know that at the time. The label on the spine of the book says paranormal ;>)). Last but not least, I like most of Nora Roberts’ trilogies and Blood Brothers was no exception. To me, this is Nora Roberts at her best and I can’t wait to read the next book in the series (which is sitting up there on my TBR shelf staring at me—I can feel it).

Least favorite book of the challenge: None. See long answer above.

Any new authors read in this challenge? With the exception of Nora Roberts, they were all new to me and I’ll be reading more of all four of these authors!

What I learned: I shouldn’t decide that I dislike a genre of books until I’ve read many examples of that genre. I’d read a few paranormal romances before I joined this challenge and I didn’t like them very much. I had basically written all paranormals off as an overdone fad.

But I found that not every paranormal has vampires in it and I’m glad I got a chance to branch out a bit. Because apparently, I like paranormals with ghosts, demons, and/or witches (I loved Nora Roberts’ Three Sisters Island trilogy) and ones that make me laugh ;>). If anyone has any recommendations for paranormals minus the serious vampires (I like the funny ones ;>)), send ‘em on--I’d love to hear about them!

Thanks for hosting this challenge, Wendy! I enjoyed picking and reading books for it.