How I Broke Up With One Genre

For the longest time, I only read romance. Every book that I read had to be strictly romance or have a strong romantic subplot. That was my thing. And then I started watching BookTube.
If you don't know what BookTube is, simply go on YouTube and search "BookTube." You will find an oasis of videos focused on new, old, and random books that will break your budget if you are a book buyer like myself. By discovering these videos, I was exposed to a variety of genres outside of romance.
The book that really broke my habit was Andy Weir's The Martian. I had not seen the movie, or heard anything about a movie being made when I first learned of the book. All I knew was that the book was about a man trapped on Mars.
That sounded really interesting to me! I am not a very scientific person at all, but the idea of being trapped on Mars sounded like something I would want to read about.
So I did.
I have to admit that being in the mist of a chemistry class did help me to understand some of the scientific details of the story, however from a writers standpoint the story was genius.
Weir's main character Mark Watney was left on Mars by the rest of his crew due to a freak accident. Since then, he has had to figure out how to survive on his own until he can be rescued, or the next mission comes to Mars years later.
Because he is alone, the story is primarily written with very little dialogue. The feeding of the story comes through detail. Lots of great detail.
This book is indeed consider Science Fiction, something that I would have never considered reading without the input of BookTube bloggers.
I think that sometimes as readers we have to "break up" with one genre to find some of out favorite reads. The Martian is definitely one of my favorite books that I have read recently. There is also nothing wrong with reading romance. I still do. But expanding out of one genre is one of the best things that I have ever done.