Tuesday Ten: Deceptive Books

This week's topic from The Broke and the Bookish is about books that were totally deceiving. These are the books that, for whatever reason, weren't what you expected from the marketing/cover/blurb. This is one of the rare lists where I had a hard time coming up with enough books that I felt really and truly fit the bill, so I left it at eight books.

1. Paradise

Jill S. Alexander

Based on the cover here, what I expected was a romance novel. You know. Romance. With the classic romance formula of boy-likes-girl, girl-likes-boy, but there's something keeping them apart and then in the end they overcome whatever the obstacle is and end up together. Like that. But this wasn't a romance; it was much more a story of Paisley's band and her decision to rebel against her mother to be a drummer than a story of the boy she finds herself attracted to. Additionally, the book's ending threw me for a total loop.

2. The Piper's Son

Melina Marchetta

Alright, I loved this book. But it so wasn't what I was expecting. From the summary, I expected it to be about Tom, his music, and his group of friends. I didn't expect it to be just as much about his aunt than about him, or for the rest of his extended family to play such a huge role and his friends (or, ex-friends) would just be secondary characters. I ended up loving it, but it took a while to adjust to what the story was instead of what I expected it to be.

3. After The Kiss

Terra Elan McVoy

This is another book I loved, but the summary led me to believe that the kiss mentioned in the title would be the inciting incident for the book when it reality the kiss doesn't happen until after page 100. So of course the story wasn't what I expected.

4. Across The Universe

Beth Revis

What I expected here was a romance/sci-fi. I mean, look at that cover. And the summary. But what I got instead was more of a sci-fi/murder mystery, with the romance only a (very) small part of the story. I enjoyed the book, but it wasn't what I thought it would be.

5. Girl Meets Boy

(edited by) Kelly Milner Halls

Now, this is one that disappointed me. I love the cover and from both this and the summary I expected to find stories of love told from both points of view. In some respects, this is what I go. But more often than not, the romance/love aspect was almost secondary in the stories and many of them were about very different issues, with the romance acting as a sort of backdrop or, sometimes, just a consequence of other events happening. This is one case where the reality of the book disappointed me because I was expecting something else.

6. Deadly

Julie Chibbaro

This is a very science-driven historical fiction that takes place around the time of "Typhoid Mary." Unfortunately, from the cover I was expecting (once again) a romance, possibly a murder mystery.

7. Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance

Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin

This book is a little different than the others. While the story itself was pretty much what I was expecting based on the summary, the tone of the story was not. I went into the book thinking it would be a light, cute, fun, upbeat love story and was surprised at how jaded (and often mean) the characters came across. This gave the story a decidedly darker feel that I wasn't prepared for and accounts for a lot of the reason I didn't end up caring so much for the book.

8. Invincible Summer

Hannah Moskowitz

After reading Moskowitz's first novel, Break, I wasn't exactly expecting a light beach read, but even so this one surprised me with just how dark it was. The cover and summary don't allude to how dark the story and characters get.