Top 10 Tuesdays: Book Titles I Would Change

I think this week’s prompt is the most difficult one for me so far this year! As I mentioned last week, titles are not something that I tend to pay much attention to. I have a few specific peeves when it comes to titles, but at the end of the day, I don’t really care what the title is as long as the book is good. For example, I don’t really like titles that are overly long, which seems to be a trend with a lot of YA books, or when the title doesn’t make much sense. On the other hand, it also bothers me when there are a lot of titles in a genre that follow the exact same format. A lot of thrillers, for example, have two word titles that are just “The” something, and attempt to sound ominous, such as The Friend, or The Teacher. For this week’s topic, I had to stray away from the prompt a bit. I have no idea what I would want to rename these books, especially because I haven’t read several of them yet, but these are all titles that I don’t really like.

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

1) Lumberjanes: Beware the Kitten Holy by Noelle Stevenson — This is one title that has always really bugged me! I hate that it is “Kitten Holy,” which makes no sense when it could just as easily be Holy Kitten. If I recall correctly, it was written this way because it was an anagram, but I don’t see how switching the order of the words would make a difference.

2) Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff – I’m very excited for this book, but I’m not such a fan of the title. I don’t like the way that “empire” and “vampire” sound so much alike, because it makes the title feel a bit awkward to say out loud. It’s like they were trying to make the title rhyme, but didn’t even quite accomplish that. Even if they had, I’m not such a fan of rhyming titles either.

3) The Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton – This is another book that I’m excited to try, but the title sounds way too close to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Between the similar numbers and the very similar character names, it seems a bit confusing. I wouldn’t necessarily rename this one, because from what I understand, it fits the story very well and it also is very intriguing, but the timing definitely wasn’t great.

4) Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys – This is really nothing to do with the book itself, but when I hear “Shades of Gray,” it automatically makes me think of 50 Shades of Grey and that puts me off a bit. It’s not really fair to fault the book for a similarity in the title to another series, but it’s another case of bad timing. Both this book and 50 Shades were first published in 2011, two months apart, so I’m sure I’m not the only one who naturally assumed some kind of connection.

5) Meet Cute by Helena Hunting – I have not read this one yet, so I’m mostly going by the feedback I’ve seen from other reviewers, but I’ve repeatedly seen comments indicating that the title of this book is misleading. The title and the cover both imply that this book is a light and fluffy romance, but it seems that this is not the case. I’ve seen several other reviewers comment that this book actually gets quite dark/heavy in places, and readers might want to know that before picking it up.

6) Mister Tender’s Girl by Carter Wilson – I get that this title is supposed to be a play on the name Slenderman, but I just don’t find Mister Tender very creepy-sounding at all. It’s such an interesting case to be the basis for a thriller, but I think they could have done a much better job with naming the character. Instead of getting stuck on the idea of making it sound vaguely like Slenderman, they should have gone in a more unique direction.

7) Ghosted by Rosie Walsh – Technically, this isn’t the worst title, but it’s also a bit misleading. I thought this book was going to be a thriller about the main character, Sarah, finding out what happened to Eddie, the man who ghosted her just after they seemed to be falling for each other. This book was not at all what I expected, and I wasn’t such a fan of the direction it took. The title does kind of fit, and is definitely better than the UK title (The Man Who Didn’t Call), but I think it did contribute to my impressions of what the book was going to be before I read it.

8) Lacy Eye by Jessica Treadway – I don’t know why, but this title has always bothered me. I think it’s because the term “lacy eye”  doesn’t make sense to me. It sounds like it should be “Lazy Eye,” which also doesn’t sound like a great title either. I’ve owned this book for a while but haven’t picked it up yet. It sounds like such an interesting story too, but I keep putting it off and I’m sure the lackluster title is a small part of that.

9) Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores by Jen Campbell – This was such a fun concept for a book, and I wish the title had done a bit more to reflect that! This book is a collection of funny questions, comments, etc. or otherwise weird interactions Jen Campbell and other bookstore employees have had with their customers. They range from extremely specific requests to people who have no idea what they want, to those who really have no clue what a bookstore actually does. For a book with such funny stories, it would have been great to see a funnier or at least more creative title.

10) Jonathan Cleaned Up — Then He Heard a Sound by Robert Munsch – I don’t like to pick on the names of children’s books, but this one has always annoyed me! I love Robert Munsch’s books, but this was one that I never cared for as much. I don’t like the title because it is awkwardly long and wordy. It does technically fit the story, so I have no idea what else it should be called either, but it’s definitely not as catchy as most of the rest of his titles.

 

 

 

 

 

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