Getting Lost in a Book

Image Source: roomtogrow.co.uk

The one thing that has always transported me to another world and made me forget my surroundings is reading an amazing book. If you give me an incredible female main character and amazing plotline with many twists, then that’s all I need to imagine myself becoming the lead in the story and leave reality behind. I feel as though I’ve become the character herself, living out the plotlines of the book as I dive deeper into each chapter. Hours will go by without me even realizing it, or it will feel as if I’m awakened from a long dream after engrossing myself in the pages of a book. As a writer, books have become my main source of inspiration and also help spark my creative thinking. It’s no wonder they’re also the thing that lets me escape from life for a while and adventure into another world altogether.

My favorite genres and the ones with the most compelling stories are teen fiction, fantasy, and adventure books. One such book within those genres that had me entirely transported into the story was Shadow and Bone, the first book of the fantasy trilogy, The Grisha series, written by Leigh Bardugo. Not only did this series contain a compelling and intriguing story that follows female heroine Alina Starkov as she discovers she’s the rare Sun Summoner, it also encompassed all the qualities I love in a book: well-developed characters, intense love triangle between rivals, powerful magic, and a dangerous quest for the heroine to accomplish. I was left in tears after finishing the series, hooked emotionally and mentally into the story from the very beginning all the way until the very last page of the epilogue. 

Starting the trilogy my freshman year of high school, it was all I could ever talk about for months. The books let me put aside my worries for a while and live out a magically enticing fantasy story. It was fun for me to become Alina and fight her battles, seeing a new world through a different set of eyes. Plus, it was a bonus to feel like I was experiencing all of the romance, action, and drama unfolding within the story. And recently, within the last year, Netflix has come out with the book’s live-action TV series, making my dreams come true by bringing to life my visual imagination. The series was brilliantly done with the help of the author herself sitting in the writer’s room. All the aspects that made the story my biggest escapist tool were displayed within the TV series, giving me another way to travel out of reality and step into another beautiful illusion.