I've always liked to read. I've always seen reading as entertainment, something you do for fun. Even when I was a kid and my mom would make me check out books from the library that I had no interest in reading and even when I was in AP English classes and reading books seemed overwhelming, felt like too much, and wasn't always fun, I still wanted to read. I simply wanted to read what I wanted to.
And nine times out of 10, I want to read fiction. There's just something about being immersed in another world where anything can happen, even if that world is realistic fiction and just like the one we live in. Sometimes it's just nice to get out or your head and your problems with a good fiction book.
So in honor of World Book Day, I've decided to share four of my favorite fiction books, in no particular order. (And if you want to see more of my favorite books or what I'm reading,
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look at my books highlight!)
This is a book I got on Amazon kind of out of the blue. I think I might have gotten in on Prime Day. I'd never heard of it before but the story sounded interesting and young adult fiction is right up my alley and it was on sale, so I bought it. (Honestly, that's how I end up buying a lot of the books I own.)
180 Seconds is about a college student named Allison who doesn't like to keep people very close as she spent a lot of her life in foster care, going from one family to another. A junior in college, she has been adopted and legally has a dad (though she may not call him that), but doesn't really have anyone else in her life except her long distance BFF, Steffi, whom she knows from their time in foster care together.
One day she's just strolling around campus and ends up in a social experiment where she's supposed to stare into a stranger's eyes for 180 seconds. She ends up really connecting with the guy whose eyes she stared into, and he basically changes her life ― but not in a "I found my soulmate and my life has been forever changed" sort of way. He helps her learn to trust and the importance of having people in your life whom you can count on. I do admit the staring into someone's eyes for 180 seconds thing is kind of weird, but I can definitely see how it could impact someone as long as it were the right someone.
This became one of my favorite books, because it was one of the first books where I felt seen, where I really connected and related to the protagonist. There are a lot of times in this book where Allison feels alone and like she has no friends and is just anxious about the entire concept of basically having no friends despite being a junior in college, where everyone around her is surrounded by other people and making lifelong friends. She struggles to make friends, and I 100% related to all of that. I just graduated from college when I read this book, and college is when I realized and accepted that I didn't have a lot of friends and that making friends was something I struggled with, so reading this really affected me and made me cry a few times.
