While, on the whole, I tend to be very predictable, even down to the books I read, sometimes Ruby, my reading dragon buddy, and I stray from our favorite genres. Sometimes it ends with a Did Not Finish experience. I’ve left the completionist mindset with books behind recently. I still feel a little sad breaking up with a book I haven’t finished, but there are only so many hours in a day that I can read, and I can’t waste them on books that aren’t working for me.

But sometimes it works out pretty well. This month’s books did just that.

Just so you know, the links below are Amazon affiliate links, so if you buy anything through them, I will get a couple of pennies from that.

Fall Risk

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, and Charlotte and Seth are not looking for romance. Armed with emotional-support bear spray, Charlotte is in self-imposed isolation and on guard from men. Having a stalker can do that to a person’s nerves. Just across the hall and giving off woodsy vibes is Seth, a recently divorced arborist. As in today recently. Heights, he’s fine with. Trust? Not so much. But when disaster traps them one flight up and no way down, an outrageously precarious predicament forces a tree-loving guy and a rattled girl next door to embrace their captivity. Soon their defenses are breaking away. Considering how close they both are to the edge, Charlotte and Seth could be in danger of falling—in love.

Romance is not my usual go-to genre these days. Nothing against it, but I love a good fantasy world escape. This short book though, caught my attention. The characters were fun, awkwardly imperfect. And the romance made sense to me. Definitely a fun afternoon read.

Library System Reset: Overdue: A Magical Library LitRPG Adventure

The Library once stood proud as a beacon of magic and power. For 500 years, it has been broken.

Quinn can barely handle her own life. When the Library of Everywhere discovers her compatible magical signature, suddenly she is the sole existing potential Librarian. Now it’s not only the weight of her world on her shoulders—Quinn must connect with the Library system before the universe itself disintegrates.

Son the Second really likes the LitRPG books. It’s a quirky genre that combines role-playing games with written stories. Usually, the first-person POV character is narrating as though they are suddenly playing out the game in real life. He recommended this one to me, so I took a chance on it.

It took me just a bit to get used to the genre conventions talking about game mechanics, but those soon faded into the background and I could settle into the story of an immense, magical library, doing what it needed to do to survive. A very fun concept and interesting world.

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What makes you willing to break ranks and try out a new genre? What are you reading now? Tell me in the comments.