I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I often see people posting that book xyz got them into reading that genre. I find this concept fascinating because for me it was never one book.
Let’s go back to when I was 12 years old. I was a fairly quiet kid, I didn’t have the best childhood and I was always looking for an escape and for me that was reading. I never got the opportunity to read those books back then, I just grabbed whatever was availbe to me at the time, mainly Rahl Dahl and Enied Blyton books. The closest I came to a proper fantasy book was the Hobbit.
Fast forward to my teens and it was Harry Potter followed by Twilight, then House of Night and while I devoured those books they never qaualied my need to get lost in world full of fae.
After that dystopia took off and of course that included the Hunger Games, Divergent and the Selection Series.
It wasn’t until my early twenties that I had the opportunity to really find the books I wanted to read as a child. I’m pretty sure Need by Carrie Jones was the first book I ever read that mentioned fae, then it was The Iron King by Julie Kagawa. Not to mention the I went through a whole phase of reading paranormal romance, Ghosts, Angels and Aliens I read thema all.
Then came books like ACOTAR, Under Different Stars, Every Last Breath and Red Rising. Each vastly different but alluring in thir own way. All this brings me to now, I was looking at my shelves a few days ago and it always brings joy anyway but my inner child was just so happy that I have a collection of books that 12 year me could only have dreamed of.
What I’m coming to realise is that my reading journey has never been about one gateway book. It’s been a deep yearning to find stories I can completely lose myself in.
It’s like I was always reaching for those worlds.
I think this is why I find the idea of a single book “getting people into reading a genre” so interesting. I get why people say it, especially with popular books like ACOTAR or Fourth Wing. Those books are a starting point for a lot of readers and anything that pulls someone into reading a huge win.
But I do wonder if we sometimes simplify the journey too much.
Because for a lot of us, it wasn’t one book that opened the door. It was a shelf full of slightly different doors, left open over years, quietly shaping what we gravitated towards without us even noticing.
I’m so curious, do you remember a single book that pulled you into a genre, or was it more of a slow drift for you too?
Books & Other Pursuits 
Definitely a slow drift, and one guided and nudged by life outside of books as well.
For fantasy specifically … I guess you could say my reading and rereading of The Borrowers way back in the day was the first fantasy. Then Tolkien in high school, and the Protector of the Small quartet by Tamora Pierce. Other than rereading Tolkien several times, I didn’t really read much fantasy again until my early 30s (??), and Throne of Glass is probably what tipped me deeper into the rivers. But I was also in a place of life where the idea of a kickass heroine fighting for justice/a better life/etc was exactly what I needed.
With romance, it was a super gradual thing that started once I was working in the library. I picked up one on a whim, after a discussion with a patron, and was pleasantly surprised. It happened to be part of a series, so I worked my way through the series, and was hooked. Like with fantasy, the promise of happy ever after (or at least happy for now) endings was what I needed in the moment.
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