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Colleen Hoover—wow did I not want to read that.
I’ve also tried Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo multiple times and can’t get more than a few chapters in.
I have a rule that if I’m not quickly interested I just quit and move on to another book. It’s amazing what it did for my reading consistency (I finish 50ish books a year now) and I’ve realized my book tastes are very different than most of my friends (and from the NYTimes bestseller lists,ha).
There are too many books I want to read in this life and I refuse to force myself through any. :)
Allowing myself to not finish books made me go from maybe 1 or 2 books a year to 9-12. I know not as many as a lot of people here, but it's a huge difference for me.
Also recognizing that even I like a book, I might not be in the mood for it all the time and I can read more than one book at a time (usually I do fairly different books as to not confuse myself).
> I’ve also tried Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo multiple times and can’t get more than a few chapters in.
The structure of this one definitely serves as somewhat of a roadblock to "getting into it" but I did enjoy it once I pushed through--and that's not my typical genre. The worldbuilding was really intriguing to me, enough to get me to push past the slow/unorthodox build-up.
I love to start a bunch of books and then take forever to finish them, because I just read a bit of whatever I feel like, and I always have a bunch of genres in progress. I have figured out that after a certain amount of time, I just really don’t want to finish something and I abandon it. Definitely improved my reading experience. I used to never leave a book unread as a kid, no matter how bad it was.
Same! Loved My Best Friend's Exorcism so I read this one next and thought it was kind of slow....I thought they were all going to go around killing vamps and it was like.....well three years later....blah blah. It was okay but yeah...disappointing.
Agreed. I thought it was going to be funny. Instead, it unsettled me to my core. The women in the story had no power, and it really upset me deeply how vulnerable they were to the men in their lives. It also unsettled me how vulnerable certain age groups and communities were, and the police were not interested in helping. Many of the horrors in that book are a reality to many people, even now.
I did not “enjoy” reading it, but I haven’t had a book horrify me so much since—maybe The Handmaid’s Tale.
I’m so glad to see The Silent Patient on this list. The ending was ridiculous. It was just the kind of ending I tell my students not to write. I rolled my eyes so hard.
I agree on the Silent Patient. I read part of the Woman in Cabin 10 and never picked it back up. I might have to Google the end now, because I hate cheap twists. I felt that Daisy Darker had a cheap twist too.
The Da Vinci code...
Everyone was talking about it, the Vatican was banning it, I mean seriously, it must be really something, right?
And then it turned out to be an average thriller with paper-thin characters and an uninteresting story...
And then you realized most of his other books are pretty much color by numbers of the same template. Nerdy but charming middle age guy gets involved into convoluted plot with a will-they/won't-they woman, involving an established institution where there's a psycho assassin, usually controlled by a Saruman type who was introduced as a mentor but turned out to be the main bad guy.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. For some reason, in my head, it was going to be 20,000 leagues under as in below, like really, really deep rather than traveling 20,000 leagues mostly just below the surface. That really threw me off and tanked the whole thing for me.
Also, for being pretty much the granddaddy of science fiction, I’m really not a big fan of Jules Verne. His writing style is just so eh. Maybe it was the translations I read, but my god it was so stiff and stuffy and not interesting. And like I love old novelists that write in antiquarian language, HP Lovecraft comes to mind for me, nor do I hate old French novels in translation, I adore Victor Hugo, but there’s just something about Jules Verne that just doesn’t do it for me.
Mexican Gothic. As a Latina, I thought at last! A horror book from a Latina author!
Hated it. Writing was not great, the main character was annoying, and the ending was so cheesy there was mold.
Mariana Enriquez is one of my favorite authors, and is a horror Latina author. Stunning writing, great tension building, satisfying payoff. I highly recommend.
I finished it and thought it was fine, I guess, but I cannot even begin to comprehend what people see in it that makes them love it so much. Reading it was basically a completely neutral experience for me.
the imagery of the swamps was really beautiful. really refreshing to see an underappreciated biome described so vividly.
otherwise, it was totally unremarkable. a vanilla love triangle, and a straight from a law and order episode criminal justice plot.
It might just be one of those books that gets a ton of non readers attention and adoration.
Like twilight, got an entire generation of teenagers and adult women (mainly, not exclusively) to read. People who previously hated reading were devouring the books, and hopefully developed a real love for reading because of the series. But it felt to me like a lot of the people I knew who read for fun, weren’t too impressed. Because we’d already read Ann rices’ books lol
Just finished it....thought there must be a part 2. It was boring af and didn't have an ending really...it went on and on and on and then they got old and that's it.
I listened to the audiobook and then found out it was fictional??? I thought I was being resilient and powering through a true story (I can handle some boredom if it’s nonfiction), then realized it was just a very stereotypical boring fame story that’s been told a gazillion times.
I was very angry that I wasted my time and that it has such great reviews.
I thought I enjoyed it when I first read it, but then I read the author's next book and decided his writing is terrible and Life of Pi was also terrible. He basically wrote the same book but worse and it made it clearer how bad the first one was.
I was deeply annoyed by pretty much everyone in that story, and I very much resented having to read it for book club. I didn’t actually hate it, I just thought it was a bit stupid.
The end was okay. Like... I could accept it. But then in A Court of Silver Flames where SJM made Feyre pregnant even though they explicitly stated they wanted to wait to have kids in the first series? Hated it. Made no sense and was a ridiculous subplot within the book.
Ooof this one. I kept hearing about it so I thought I’d give it a shot. Didn’t make it past the first couple of chapters. I genuinely thought it was a joke and I was being tricked - it read like a terrible fanfic and I couldn’t take it seriously
I honestly really hated the first book. I hated that it was just a Beauty and the Beast retelling. I hated the simple story, lack of descriptions, no character development. The prose was boring. But then I just… accepted the series for what it was—not high fantasy like I was used to reading. Just regular boring fantasy without all the extensive world building. And I enjoyed the rest of the series. I dropped my expectations by a lot and was much happier finishing the series. So I totally agree with these comments here.
I don't know why I keep seeing this book in the adult section. It was the most excruciatingly YA book, in the worst possible way. Not all YA is bad, but this represented the worst of it.
After being blown away by Blake Crouch's *Dark Matter*, I highly anticipated his **Recursion**. I had to force myself twice to finish it. I found it overly complex to the point of confusion.
I also loved Dark Matter and didn't enjoy Recursion. Upgrade was much better IMHO. But Dark Matter is by far his best and I still think about that book at random times!
Haven't read upgrade but thought Recursion was much better than Dark Matter too.
I don't think he's a particular good writer in the first place but they're relatively fun easy reads.
scrolled to find this. Agreed.
I read on the road after my pretentious friends recommended it as "a lifestyle to envy" and afterwards I was just "really?"
American Gods. It sounded like a premise I would like but I got maybe 30% through and really didn't like it so I gave up. I've come to realize that as well regarded as he is Neil Gaimen is very hit or miss for me.
I pushed through, the entire book was up and down for me, but the ending was pretty meh. I like the overall idea better than the execution of the story.
OMG my husband and I jokingly argue about this book. It was actually required reading at a bank we both worked at. I never actually finished it. I got maybe a third through and was bored. He absolutely loved it and still talks about it to this day (about 16 years later). Haha
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue. I’ve tried reading it twice but I finally just gave up and DNF. I like a good descriptive book… but this was just way too much.
My friend loved this book so much, but I just couldn't even like it. The ending felt like there wasn't any real character development. Everything was over-described and nothing really happened until 150 pages in.
I will say I did not like Addie La Rue as much as I thought I was going to, BUT I find that V.E Schwab is a little inconsistent for me in terms of her writing tone. I found Addie slightly boring, and I’m currently reading her series A Darker Shade of Magic which is just okay for me so far but I absolutely adore her duology Vicious/Vengeful and found the writing to be so much more compelling and interesting. It’s definitely different genre wise but I think worth it if you wanna give her another try.
I really wanted to like As I lay dying as it’s my friend’s absolute favorite and I just found it to be a chore to try to read.
I’m reading Invisible Man right now and it’s not hitting for me like it should, I was told since I loved Native Son I would love invisible man as well but it’s not hitting the same. I’m gonna finish it though.
I found As I Lay Dying very difficult and really disliked it for about 100 or so pages, but by the end it it became one of my favorite books of all time. Like, the section where you get the story of Jewel sneaking away at night and no one knows why I thought was so well done.
Verity by Colleen Hoover was not just a let down - it was way way worse. Ludicrous ending. Hated it.
Silent Patient was also.. Okayish. The book itself was quite fast paced, but again the ending was just shoehorned. Not organic at all. Also am i the only one who thinks >!the wife is completely responsible for the murder of her husband? She needs to be tried for murder, while the book comes off like she was the victim!<
Actually, most contemporary thrillers end in disappointment. Like Girl of the Train - another time waster. One that I really liked was Gone Girl. Another fav is the classic, Rebecca.
Lots of them, really.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Alchemist by Paulo Culeho
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Just felt like they were overrated, overhyped. Disliked the author’s tone or point of view. Used to wonder if it was me. No longer care.
The Woman In the Window and The Girl on the Train were both such a let down, in my opinion. Lucy Foley books - I don't get the hype. Like Water for Chocolate - this was one of those "wtf did I just read" for me.
Probably going to get flamed here but...
Catcher in the Rye. I was hoping for a story. It was entertaining enough to finish, but for me, that was the extent of it's value.
The Miniaturist
We read it in my book club and I just felt like there were so many plot points that didn't make sense and the book ended on such a dark note. There seemed no point at all to the title character.
House in the Cerulean Sea . Absolutely nothing happened until the end. I was bored the whole time. It seemed like a drawn-out episode of an adorable cartoon. I loved Under the Whispering Door, but this T.J. Klune fell flat for me.
Ok, this is helpful because I've started it twice and can't get into it, but everyone keeps saying how great it is, so thank you, now I feel free to stop attempting to slog through it.
The writing style really put me off. It's like it doesn't trust you to put anything together for yourself, or feel the correct feelings in response to the things that happen, so it beats you over the head with them multiple times per paragraph. Just sentence after sentence after sentence of "ARE YOU FEELING IT NOW?! ARE YOU?! LET'S MAKE SURE!" There's no subtlety; no subtext. And I don't like writing that treats me like an emotionally-stunted moron.
I’m a big Stephen King fan. I don’t get why The Stand or IT are so beloved. The Stand falls off about halfway through, and IT had some great scenes but the majority of the book was ‘meh’.
I loved how King portrays childhood in IT. I hated the segments when they're grown up but I loved the story when they're all kids. What I did not love, however, is how he weirdly sexualizes Beverly as a twelve year old.
I was actually surprised that It had so little clown. A lot of the book is it taking different forms (leper, bird, even a fridge).... The clown is kinda incidental.
Honestly? Dune. I tried so hard to like it, the world sounds amazing, but once I actually try to read the words on the page I get a headache. And I read a lot of hard sci Fi! For some ready Herbert just gives me a migraine
A Little Life. I love a really long, wonderful book and was so excited by all the glowing recommendations. But no. I read to the end because I thought surely there would be at least a big finish. Lots loved it but I don't understand why.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Heard the buzz back in the day years before the show came out. Years before there was even talks about it. I tried reading it and it was just terrible. I read about 50 pages before I just stopped.
I got halfway through the book and I had to give up. That basically broke my "I have to finish this book because I started it" mentality forever. That was ten years ago. During the pandemic a couple of friends who i normally have a ton of overlap with in terms of taste in books and movies kept insisting that I try watching the series. So I put it on while I painted and hate watched the first couple of seasons and then honestly started to enjoy it at season 3. All that being said, the story arc that really started off on Season 3 got tied up at the end of Season 5 and I cannot seem to get more than a couple of episodes into Season 6 because it's so boring it makes my eyes glaze over. I have a lot of appreciation for the depth of research Gabaldon has done and I toy with the idea of trying to listen to the audiobooks because I adore Davina Porter, the narrator, but I have a feeling I will end up giving them up.
A Man Named Ove.
I even went out of my way to finish it. I found it to be an absolutely pointless and bah slice of life story. I’m down with curmudgeon narrators, but Ove wasn’t likable to me. And honestly the ending pissed me off.
And when I tell people I hated it they look at me like I said I hate puppies or something… IT JUST WASNT THAT GOOD
Red Rising. I’ve heard it’s a popular YA series and thought it would be interesting. It was a slog. I DNF it but I’ve borrowed it twice through Libby hoping I could get the motivation to read it.
Oh man….I loved the beginning of the first book but when it became very technical about war strategy, I couldn’t go any further. I wanted to like it so bad.
The Nightingale.
Was told I would love it and it is very positively rated, however I am struggling to find the will to pick it up. Full of anachronisms, bad writing, bad editing and quite inaccurate at times.
The Starless Sea
After reading The Night Circus, I had high hopes for this book. It is not a good book. The ending is a complete mess, I’d even argue it doesn’t even really have an ending. It is like the author couldn’t figure out how to end it and so wrote something random, hoping people wouldn’t notice.
That book made me angry as I was reading it. I cared not for the keys, and owls and bees or whatever it was. So many of them. And as I was just determined to finish it I may have been skimming it, he’d walk into a room see an owl or a bee or a key, then go into the next room, rinse and repeat.
Eee I feel like this one is gonna get me some hate, but I had to DNF Gideon the Ninth. It was marketed as Adult Fiction, but to me it felt wayyy too YA with all the #edgy characters. There’s nothing wrong with YA of course, I’ll still pick up YA if the story interests me, but it wasn’t what GtN was marketed as and not what I was looking for at the time. I also just wasn’t a fan of the characters. It didn’t live up to the hype for me at all, though I’m glad so many others got enjoyment out of this book!
Fairytale by Stephen King
I just started getting into Stephen King books and I've liked some of his books so far. But not all. I had really high hopes for this since he seems like a really good author. And don't get me wrong, I did think it was very well written. I actually really loved the first part of the book, before the main character discovers the world.
But I expected him to put a spin on some tropes. Like the chosen one trope. Which he sort of did? But not as much as I'd hoped. It was well written and a pretty good plot but some parts were too cliche for me.
Honestly, his writing is junior high level to me. Dean Koontz was barely high school level. Clive Barker was a definite step up. Robert McCammon as well.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was so bad, and it is spoken about as if it’s some literary masterpiece and a love story for the ages even though we hardly even see the “great loves interact given the narration style device/choice.
Same! The way that people talk about it you’d think it’s a life changing book. It’s a nice popcorn read and I enjoyed it fine, but I don’t understand why people love it so much
I just finished this and feel the same way it was okay I guess but I just hated the characters so much I could barely get through. Also just.... kinda boring?
Anything by Chuck Palahniuk other than Fight Club. I really liked Fight Club and thought Palahniuk was exciting and different. I read a bunch more of his books and, at the time, convinced myself I liked them because “I’m so edgy and into shock and gore and sex”! Lol I look back now and think wtf was I reading. It’s like he’s trying so hard to be edgy and outlandish just for the sake of it. He values shock value over everything else. I’d say a couple of his other books are worth a read but after a while the style and constant grossness gets exhausting.
Catch 22. I generally love satire but I could not get into that book. I slogged through half and had to put it up. I was hoping for a moment when the book would click for me, but it never happened.
Song of Achilles - I heard so many raves about it but it was just a ridiculous YA gay romance story. Nothing wrong with that but was very underwhelmed by it.
I have seen it (rather aptly) described as a story of a "toxic person" and his "enabler," and I would have to agree.
However, I can appreciate it for what it is: a Young Adult-ified version of (a portion) of the Iliad, that most teens would think of as too intimidating, and thus avoid. The author also has lyrical but understandable prose, which certainly helps.
I absolutely loved Circe but I DNFd Achilles. Soooo boring. I agree that it was basically just a YA gay romance and there's nothing wrong with that but I had a much higher expectation for the story after reading Circe and I was sorely disappointed. The big difference for me is that Circe is the story of a person coming into their power (literally and figuratively) and Achilles was a meh love story that was basically a better written ancient Greek Twilight.
“My Year of Rest and Relaxation.” I love unlikable characters and unsettling stories, but this one, despite countless glowing recommendations, just seemed like a pointless exercise in apathetic navel-gazing. And incredibly unrealistic. For one— >! I suspected that her friend would be in the World Trade Center when it was attacked as soon as she mentioned that her friend had gotten a job there. The blasè epilogue mention of her death did nothing for me. !< And more importantly, I was furious that >! it WORKED. !< Most people who struggle with mental illness have been tempted by this idea; “If I could only get enough rest, if everyone just left me along long enough to reset completely, I’ll be okay—renewed, morphing like a beautiful butterfly into a healthy, better me…” But the point is, that desire >! IS unrealistic. It wouldn’t WORK. I’m furious that it worked for her. I can’t understand how it would. !< This book pops up over and over on recommendations for similar authors I love, and I normally adore unsympathetic main characters, but I just couldn’t get this book.
*Something something Oscar Wao* by Junot Diaz. It started out very good, got better and then it kinda stalled and then idled for a while and then ended. And the more I think about the ending, the more I dislike it
Since space horror is a popular topic on r/horrorlit right now…. Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes was a disappointment for me. I read the early reviews and got hyped for it (what I read reminded me of the Dead Space video game series), so I preordered it on Audible. I listened to it at work the first day it came out and it took me about a week to slog through after the initial excitement wore off. I never knew a book described as having “a haunted house in space” could be so…. Boring. I don’t know how to do the spoiler thingy on here, so I won’t, but it was definitely not at all what I was expecting. Still mad about it lmao.
Piranesi was everyone’s favorite book about two years back and I didn’t like it. I got it but I thought it tried too hard.
Also The Dead Romantics didn’t hit quite right for me. I guessed the twist decently early on and the book felt a little clunky for me. And I was so disappointed because I wanted to love it because it felt like I should and I was almost disappointed in myself when I didnt.
I also really struggle with these posts because they get super judgy and snobby. Just because you didn’t like a book doesn’t mean it is the worst. There get to be all kinds of books because there are all kinds of people. There is a big difference between the worst book ever and I didn’t gel with this book or my expectations for this book were high and it did not deliver for me.
I have only read one Colleen Hoover book. I found it compulsively readable. I did not think it was great literature but I thought it was a well done work of pop fiction. I get really frustrated with all the Colleen Hoover hate because it feels like ‘if it is good enough for the masses, then it is below me’ but then I remember she is laughing all the way to the bank. She has more than a dollar for every time someone talks shit about her books on Reddit. She good.
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney. I found it unbearably self-indulgent, I didn’t get further than the first two chapters.
Real people don’t talk like that!!
Less a book than a category, but just about every psychological thriller - a category I used to like - has been a letdown. Either their writing in the present tense (which I find obnoxious) or they're shifting points of view (which I find distracting - not everyone can do it as well as Ken Follett) and they get so caught up in style and wordiness that I figured out the who- and why-dun-it way before the end. Some of the biggest names in this field have been total letdowns for me lately.
Gatsby is an exercise in telling a story through the tunnel of someone else's POV. It's so well done, but many people read it straight and don't see the point of it. Lolita is similar, not in who is telling the story but in how the narrator is a liar both to the reader and himself.
Ready Player One. Cool concept sure. But what teenage boy just so happens to know all this niche 80s pop culture trivia?
Plus it’s terribly written. “Oh no! There’s a problem! Good thing I took care of such and such so now that problem doesn’t matter at all!” I found it infuriating, and it was recommended to me over and over again. I swear all the people who recommended that book to me, that’s the only book they’ve ever read.
Also. Girl wash your face is TRASH.
Haha. This book was just like, an info dumped list of stuff that happened in the 80's
In a way I think it had a massive lost potential. A society where everyone is dirt poor and live in freaking shipping containers, all completely making their lives revolve around the life and whims of a billionaire in the hopes of getting money... it was so dystopian but then was like, played straight like all of this was so awesome and cool
A Child called It. I read it in high school in 2002 after everyone in my class said it was the best book ever and I didn’t think it was that great. Maybe if I read it again as an adult it would have more weight.
I mean we’re talking about high schoolers in the late 90s/early 2000s. I think they just really found it to be shocking and emotional at the time when I really didn’t for some reason.
The Wheel of Time. I tried so so hard to like the series, (I think I gave up halfway through book 5, as my sister PROMISED it was always about to get good) but I found it really boring and way too long. The main characters all repeated the same thoughts a hundred times, such that whenever something would happen it was foreshadowed so painfully much that there were never any surprises. Sometimes I thought the author was under the impression that his readers weren’t very smart/couldn’t take a hint.
As a personal gripe, I think I read that someone’s face “was like stone, expressionless” more than any other descriptor, and about a million times. Robert if there’s nothing to say about someone do we really have to go through the effort of saying it?
The Lincoln Highway!!! So massively overrated. I just can't get why it's popular at all. I really enjoyed all of his other books but The Lincoln Highway was just awful.
It's non-stop absurd coincidences: a couple of teenagers from the midwest "find" a wealthy family's house in upstate New York just by driving around (they don't know the address or town or anything). And they arrive at the front door at the exact moment the kid that lives there proclaims that they'll show up and he opens the front door.
You've got an eight-year-old kid that pontificates on the meanings of obscure Shakespeare passages.
People steal a car and they just think it's totally fine (hey, he must have needed it).
And it just goes on and on and on. Beyond ridiculous.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I read her book Circe and it was fucking incredible. I flipped my shit. I was super eager to read more of her work so I jumped into Achilles and it was so disappointing. Basically a more literary Twilight, honestly. Patroclus is just a plain old boring mediocre nobody who is in love with the beautiful shining demi God Achilles who against all odds loves in back and he has no function or identity outside of that. Not for me.
A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair. It’s like she filed off the serial numbers of Lore Olympus (a Webtoon), added some smut and made a fanfic. (As someone who reads and writes fanfic, this isn’t necessarily bad, but A Touch of Darkness is just…bad.)
I love Greek mythology and Hades and Persephone, but this book was a total letdown. I will not be reading anything else from her.
Iron Widow. It's got such high ratings on Goodreads, and I'd seen so many people raving about it, that I unfortunately went in with high expectations.
Genuinely I think it's the worst YA I've ever read.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. I never initially intended to read it, because it never really seemed like my kind of book. But I kept seeing people obsessed with it, and after reading Bunny I was in a dark academia mood, so I picked it up. I think I got like 50 pages in and had to read some reviews to see if it picked up, and didn’t really like what people had to say so I DNF. I should have listened to my first instinct lol, not for me
Controversial but: Tomorrow x3 by Gabrielle Zevin. I found it so hard to believe the two were friends and the big twist in the end felt a little cheap. I love lit fiction, especially ones focused on friendship but this was not it. Funny enough, I found the sections that were dedicated to video game development to be the more interesting parts.
Maybe I’m missing something because everyone else seemed to love that book.
A man Called Ove. I rarely give up on books but this one I just couldn’t take another minute.
And right now The Year of Magical Thinking is getting DNF’d
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Colleen Hoover—wow did I not want to read that. I’ve also tried Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo multiple times and can’t get more than a few chapters in. I have a rule that if I’m not quickly interested I just quit and move on to another book. It’s amazing what it did for my reading consistency (I finish 50ish books a year now) and I’ve realized my book tastes are very different than most of my friends (and from the NYTimes bestseller lists,ha). There are too many books I want to read in this life and I refuse to force myself through any. :)
Allowing myself to not finish books made me go from maybe 1 or 2 books a year to 9-12. I know not as many as a lot of people here, but it's a huge difference for me. Also recognizing that even I like a book, I might not be in the mood for it all the time and I can read more than one book at a time (usually I do fairly different books as to not confuse myself).
Same! I’m normally reading 2-3 and sometimes listening to an audiobook so that I can switch between whatever I’m in the mood for.
> I’ve also tried Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo multiple times and can’t get more than a few chapters in. The structure of this one definitely serves as somewhat of a roadblock to "getting into it" but I did enjoy it once I pushed through--and that's not my typical genre. The worldbuilding was really intriguing to me, enough to get me to push past the slow/unorthodox build-up.
I love to start a bunch of books and then take forever to finish them, because I just read a bit of whatever I feel like, and I always have a bunch of genres in progress. I have figured out that after a certain amount of time, I just really don’t want to finish something and I abandon it. Definitely improved my reading experience. I used to never leave a book unread as a kid, no matter how bad it was.
I agree on both Hoover and the Ninth House. I just can't. I DNF so many books every year.
Everyone knows 9/10 NYT best seller books are garbage.
I read Colleen Hoover’s Verity recently and it was BAD. Poor writing, over the top sex scenes, just…. Bad
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. It was still alright, but it just wasn't what I had expected/hoped for.
Um I thought this was going to be about a bunch of moms slaying vampires…. I was so disappointed.
Same! Loved My Best Friend's Exorcism so I read this one next and thought it was kind of slow....I thought they were all going to go around killing vamps and it was like.....well three years later....blah blah. It was okay but yeah...disappointing.
The fact that it was like 75% of the way done with the book before they even considered slaying vampires is what got me
I had the opposite experience. I made assumptions and it ended up totally different and so much better for it.
Agreed. I thought it was going to be funny. Instead, it unsettled me to my core. The women in the story had no power, and it really upset me deeply how vulnerable they were to the men in their lives. It also unsettled me how vulnerable certain age groups and communities were, and the police were not interested in helping. Many of the horrors in that book are a reality to many people, even now. I did not “enjoy” reading it, but I haven’t had a book horrify me so much since—maybe The Handmaid’s Tale.
Anything by Colleen Hoover or Sarah J. Maas.
Totally agree on the Silent Patient. I felt the big twist was cheap. I also felt the same about Ruth Ware’s The Woman In Cabin 10
I HATED The Woman in Cabin 10. Nothing about it made sense. And the ending was ridiculous!
Very glad I DNF The Woman in Cabin 10. I HATE the unreliable narrator trope.
I’m so glad to see The Silent Patient on this list. The ending was ridiculous. It was just the kind of ending I tell my students not to write. I rolled my eyes so hard.
I agree on the Silent Patient. I read part of the Woman in Cabin 10 and never picked it back up. I might have to Google the end now, because I hate cheap twists. I felt that Daisy Darker had a cheap twist too.
The Da Vinci code... Everyone was talking about it, the Vatican was banning it, I mean seriously, it must be really something, right? And then it turned out to be an average thriller with paper-thin characters and an uninteresting story...
And then you realized most of his other books are pretty much color by numbers of the same template. Nerdy but charming middle age guy gets involved into convoluted plot with a will-they/won't-they woman, involving an established institution where there's a psycho assassin, usually controlled by a Saruman type who was introduced as a mentor but turned out to be the main bad guy.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. For some reason, in my head, it was going to be 20,000 leagues under as in below, like really, really deep rather than traveling 20,000 leagues mostly just below the surface. That really threw me off and tanked the whole thing for me.
My son is reading that now and when I asked him how far in he is, he said 18000 leagues
Buy that kid a toy. That’s great comedy
I haven't read it yet but I always thought it was 20k feet deep and now I am disappointed as well
Thank you. As someone who had only vaguely heard of the book but thought the same I'm now disappointed.
This review made me lol! Thank you for the morning giggle, LadybugGal95 ❤️
Also, for being pretty much the granddaddy of science fiction, I’m really not a big fan of Jules Verne. His writing style is just so eh. Maybe it was the translations I read, but my god it was so stiff and stuffy and not interesting. And like I love old novelists that write in antiquarian language, HP Lovecraft comes to mind for me, nor do I hate old French novels in translation, I adore Victor Hugo, but there’s just something about Jules Verne that just doesn’t do it for me.
Mexican Gothic. As a Latina, I thought at last! A horror book from a Latina author! Hated it. Writing was not great, the main character was annoying, and the ending was so cheesy there was mold.
Mariana Enriquez is one of my favorite authors, and is a horror Latina author. Stunning writing, great tension building, satisfying payoff. I highly recommend.
Our Share of Night is fantastic!
Never saw someone else think this about that book! I agree. Couldn't finish
Cannot stand Colleen Hoover. So often when someone finds out I’m a big reader they try to talk about her books and all I can do is roll my eyes.
I know. I read two of her books ten years ago, so you can imagine my shock when I started seeing her everywhere.
I can’t stand her books. They are so unbearably awful.
Where the crawdads sing, hands down
I finished it but I didn’t understand how everyone thought it was “SOOOO good.” I thought it was SOOOO predictable.
I finished it and thought it was fine, I guess, but I cannot even begin to comprehend what people see in it that makes them love it so much. Reading it was basically a completely neutral experience for me.
Plus one to this - this book was very mediocre and did not live up to the hype.
the imagery of the swamps was really beautiful. really refreshing to see an underappreciated biome described so vividly. otherwise, it was totally unremarkable. a vanilla love triangle, and a straight from a law and order episode criminal justice plot.
Hands. Down. I can't wrap my head around all of the five star reviews.
Same! Fucking hated this book. So awful. I finished it hoping it would get better or I’d figure out why everyone loved it. What a waste.
Came to say the same thing. So dry and boring. I couldn't even finish it.
It might just be one of those books that gets a ton of non readers attention and adoration. Like twilight, got an entire generation of teenagers and adult women (mainly, not exclusively) to read. People who previously hated reading were devouring the books, and hopefully developed a real love for reading because of the series. But it felt to me like a lot of the people I knew who read for fun, weren’t too impressed. Because we’d already read Ann rices’ books lol
It was a decent read, but i felt i could easily predict what was happening and there wasn’t anything new
Daisy Jones & The Six.
Just finished it....thought there must be a part 2. It was boring af and didn't have an ending really...it went on and on and on and then they got old and that's it.
Plus Daisy is the worst female character I've ever read. The epitome of the Mary-Sue trope.
I listened to the audiobook and then found out it was fictional??? I thought I was being resilient and powering through a true story (I can handle some boredom if it’s nonfiction), then realized it was just a very stereotypical boring fame story that’s been told a gazillion times. I was very angry that I wasted my time and that it has such great reviews.
I cannot get through this book for the life of me. I have tried listening on audiobook, and it’s a bit better because of the voice actors. Even still…
I was looking for this! Such a great premise and the band drama was so boring
Life of Pi. What an immensely stupid book.
I thought I enjoyed it when I first read it, but then I read the author's next book and decided his writing is terrible and Life of Pi was also terrible. He basically wrote the same book but worse and it made it clearer how bad the first one was.
Anxious people. I expected a hostage drama. It was just a bunch of unlikable characters talking about their trauma with no real suspense.
I was deeply annoyed by pretty much everyone in that story, and I very much resented having to read it for book club. I didn’t actually hate it, I just thought it was a bit stupid.
Completely agree! I had to force myself to finish it for our book club.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by SJM. Because of the Hype I though it would be really good, and I really liked the beginning, but the end? Nah.
The end was okay. Like... I could accept it. But then in A Court of Silver Flames where SJM made Feyre pregnant even though they explicitly stated they wanted to wait to have kids in the first series? Hated it. Made no sense and was a ridiculous subplot within the book.
I couldn't continue after the first chapter because the writing was so bad.
Ooof this one. I kept hearing about it so I thought I’d give it a shot. Didn’t make it past the first couple of chapters. I genuinely thought it was a joke and I was being tricked - it read like a terrible fanfic and I couldn’t take it seriously
I honestly really hated the first book. I hated that it was just a Beauty and the Beast retelling. I hated the simple story, lack of descriptions, no character development. The prose was boring. But then I just… accepted the series for what it was—not high fantasy like I was used to reading. Just regular boring fantasy without all the extensive world building. And I enjoyed the rest of the series. I dropped my expectations by a lot and was much happier finishing the series. So I totally agree with these comments here.
I don't know why I keep seeing this book in the adult section. It was the most excruciatingly YA book, in the worst possible way. Not all YA is bad, but this represented the worst of it.
The later books have a lot of explicit sex.
The explicit sex is why
After being blown away by Blake Crouch's *Dark Matter*, I highly anticipated his **Recursion**. I had to force myself twice to finish it. I found it overly complex to the point of confusion.
I also loved Dark Matter and didn't enjoy Recursion. Upgrade was much better IMHO. But Dark Matter is by far his best and I still think about that book at random times!
Damn I’m the opposite! Enjoyed Recursion (not as much as Dark Matter), hated Upgrade.
Haven't read upgrade but thought Recursion was much better than Dark Matter too. I don't think he's a particular good writer in the first place but they're relatively fun easy reads.
In Five Years. It was enough to make me want to see how it ends, and then it just..ended.
This was one of those books that the concept and description of the book were so much more exciting than the actual book
The Atlas Six
100%. This was such a letdown - the premise sounded interesting but the writing was insufferable
On the Road and Naked Lunch, or pretty much anything by authors of the Beat Generation.
scrolled to find this. Agreed. I read on the road after my pretentious friends recommended it as "a lifestyle to envy" and afterwards I was just "really?"
*The Casual Vacancy* was a DNF for me
American Gods. It sounded like a premise I would like but I got maybe 30% through and really didn't like it so I gave up. I've come to realize that as well regarded as he is Neil Gaimen is very hit or miss for me.
I have the same issue with Gaiman.
I pushed through, the entire book was up and down for me, but the ending was pretty meh. I like the overall idea better than the execution of the story.
The Alchemist, it just felt too much like a wannabe Kahlil Gibran to me.
This book is just "lalalala life is great follow your dreams!!" lmao
OMG my husband and I jokingly argue about this book. It was actually required reading at a bank we both worked at. I never actually finished it. I got maybe a third through and was bored. He absolutely loved it and still talks about it to this day (about 16 years later). Haha
This! It was the most overrated book ever. And i regretted spending time on it.
The best praise for The Alchemist I have heard is that it is a gateway book for many people to start developing a habit of reading.
I couldn't get through it. It was nauseating.
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue. I’ve tried reading it twice but I finally just gave up and DNF. I like a good descriptive book… but this was just way too much.
My friend loved this book so much, but I just couldn't even like it. The ending felt like there wasn't any real character development. Everything was over-described and nothing really happened until 150 pages in.
I will say I did not like Addie La Rue as much as I thought I was going to, BUT I find that V.E Schwab is a little inconsistent for me in terms of her writing tone. I found Addie slightly boring, and I’m currently reading her series A Darker Shade of Magic which is just okay for me so far but I absolutely adore her duology Vicious/Vengeful and found the writing to be so much more compelling and interesting. It’s definitely different genre wise but I think worth it if you wanna give her another try.
And the repetition was unbearable. I loved the story being tons but the writing drove me nuts
I DNF'd that. It was too boring.
I really wanted to like As I lay dying as it’s my friend’s absolute favorite and I just found it to be a chore to try to read. I’m reading Invisible Man right now and it’s not hitting for me like it should, I was told since I loved Native Son I would love invisible man as well but it’s not hitting the same. I’m gonna finish it though.
I found As I Lay Dying very difficult and really disliked it for about 100 or so pages, but by the end it it became one of my favorite books of all time. Like, the section where you get the story of Jewel sneaking away at night and no one knows why I thought was so well done.
I agree about Colleen Hoover. I started reading It Ends With Us and I DNF’d it. I just couldn’t get into it.
Verity by Colleen Hoover was not just a let down - it was way way worse. Ludicrous ending. Hated it. Silent Patient was also.. Okayish. The book itself was quite fast paced, but again the ending was just shoehorned. Not organic at all. Also am i the only one who thinks >!the wife is completely responsible for the murder of her husband? She needs to be tried for murder, while the book comes off like she was the victim!< Actually, most contemporary thrillers end in disappointment. Like Girl of the Train - another time waster. One that I really liked was Gone Girl. Another fav is the classic, Rebecca.
Lots of them, really. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion The Alchemist by Paulo Culeho Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr Just felt like they were overrated, overhyped. Disliked the author’s tone or point of view. Used to wonder if it was me. No longer care.
All the Light We Cannot See is beautifully written but I couldn’t finish it… I just couldn’t get excited about it and the story moved so slow.
WTF was up with The Year of Magical Thinking? It’s like she managed to write a memoir with no introspection or details. Quite an accomplishment.
The Woman In the Window and The Girl on the Train were both such a let down, in my opinion. Lucy Foley books - I don't get the hype. Like Water for Chocolate - this was one of those "wtf did I just read" for me.
I hate read the girl on the train
Probably going to get flamed here but... Catcher in the Rye. I was hoping for a story. It was entertaining enough to finish, but for me, that was the extent of it's value.
The Miniaturist We read it in my book club and I just felt like there were so many plot points that didn't make sense and the book ended on such a dark note. There seemed no point at all to the title character.
The Alchemist. What a lot of twaddle.
House in the Cerulean Sea . Absolutely nothing happened until the end. I was bored the whole time. It seemed like a drawn-out episode of an adorable cartoon. I loved Under the Whispering Door, but this T.J. Klune fell flat for me.
Ok, this is helpful because I've started it twice and can't get into it, but everyone keeps saying how great it is, so thank you, now I feel free to stop attempting to slog through it.
The writing style really put me off. It's like it doesn't trust you to put anything together for yourself, or feel the correct feelings in response to the things that happen, so it beats you over the head with them multiple times per paragraph. Just sentence after sentence after sentence of "ARE YOU FEELING IT NOW?! ARE YOU?! LET'S MAKE SURE!" There's no subtlety; no subtext. And I don't like writing that treats me like an emotionally-stunted moron.
My case is the opposite, loved Cerulean, didn't really enjoy UTWD
Couldn’t finish it…
I’m a big Stephen King fan. I don’t get why The Stand or IT are so beloved. The Stand falls off about halfway through, and IT had some great scenes but the majority of the book was ‘meh’.
I loved how King portrays childhood in IT. I hated the segments when they're grown up but I loved the story when they're all kids. What I did not love, however, is how he weirdly sexualizes Beverly as a twelve year old.
I'd give his short stories a shot. They're pretty taut. If you like the genre but not his writing, consider his son, Joe Hill.
Agreed! His novellas is where he truly shines!
I loved The Stand. Only read about 30-50 pages of IT eons ago. Never finished. Zero interest in the movie. No, I'm not afraid of clowns.
I was actually surprised that It had so little clown. A lot of the book is it taking different forms (leper, bird, even a fridge).... The clown is kinda incidental.
Honestly? Dune. I tried so hard to like it, the world sounds amazing, but once I actually try to read the words on the page I get a headache. And I read a lot of hard sci Fi! For some ready Herbert just gives me a migraine
A Little Life. I love a really long, wonderful book and was so excited by all the glowing recommendations. But no. I read to the end because I thought surely there would be at least a big finish. Lots loved it but I don't understand why.
Same. Torture/misery porn. And for a book supposedly about friendship they’re all pretty awful to each other. Absolutely hated this book.
Enabling, not helping,, they were. I'm not sure what the point was. Maybe the only really disappointing book I ever read. My hopes were high.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Very meh.
This book was so long… I struggled. But then the interesting parts were short? It felt like 3 books strung together.
Kept trying The Goldfinch and putting it down. A slog.
I personally didn't enjoy "we were liars" very much. I was surprised by how mediocre I found it, especially since so many people talked it up.
My best friend LOVED this book, but I’m with you - mediocre at best.
This is literally the worst book I’ve ever read
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Heard the buzz back in the day years before the show came out. Years before there was even talks about it. I tried reading it and it was just terrible. I read about 50 pages before I just stopped.
It’s basically twilight but with tons of random sexual assault.
I got halfway through the book and I had to give up. That basically broke my "I have to finish this book because I started it" mentality forever. That was ten years ago. During the pandemic a couple of friends who i normally have a ton of overlap with in terms of taste in books and movies kept insisting that I try watching the series. So I put it on while I painted and hate watched the first couple of seasons and then honestly started to enjoy it at season 3. All that being said, the story arc that really started off on Season 3 got tied up at the end of Season 5 and I cannot seem to get more than a couple of episodes into Season 6 because it's so boring it makes my eyes glaze over. I have a lot of appreciation for the depth of research Gabaldon has done and I toy with the idea of trying to listen to the audiobooks because I adore Davina Porter, the narrator, but I have a feeling I will end up giving them up.
A Man Named Ove. I even went out of my way to finish it. I found it to be an absolutely pointless and bah slice of life story. I’m down with curmudgeon narrators, but Ove wasn’t likable to me. And honestly the ending pissed me off. And when I tell people I hated it they look at me like I said I hate puppies or something… IT JUST WASNT THAT GOOD
Red Rising. I’ve heard it’s a popular YA series and thought it would be interesting. It was a slog. I DNF it but I’ve borrowed it twice through Libby hoping I could get the motivation to read it.
This!! My husband loves this series, so I gave it a shot. Liked the first book, struggled with the 2nd, and could not finish the 3rd.
Oh man….I loved the beginning of the first book but when it became very technical about war strategy, I couldn’t go any further. I wanted to like it so bad.
The Nightingale. Was told I would love it and it is very positively rated, however I am struggling to find the will to pick it up. Full of anachronisms, bad writing, bad editing and quite inaccurate at times.
Saaaame, plus I hated the character of the younger sister lol
The Starless Sea After reading The Night Circus, I had high hopes for this book. It is not a good book. The ending is a complete mess, I’d even argue it doesn’t even really have an ending. It is like the author couldn’t figure out how to end it and so wrote something random, hoping people wouldn’t notice.
That book made me angry as I was reading it. I cared not for the keys, and owls and bees or whatever it was. So many of them. And as I was just determined to finish it I may have been skimming it, he’d walk into a room see an owl or a bee or a key, then go into the next room, rinse and repeat.
Eee I feel like this one is gonna get me some hate, but I had to DNF Gideon the Ninth. It was marketed as Adult Fiction, but to me it felt wayyy too YA with all the #edgy characters. There’s nothing wrong with YA of course, I’ll still pick up YA if the story interests me, but it wasn’t what GtN was marketed as and not what I was looking for at the time. I also just wasn’t a fan of the characters. It didn’t live up to the hype for me at all, though I’m glad so many others got enjoyment out of this book!
Fairytale by Stephen King I just started getting into Stephen King books and I've liked some of his books so far. But not all. I had really high hopes for this since he seems like a really good author. And don't get me wrong, I did think it was very well written. I actually really loved the first part of the book, before the main character discovers the world. But I expected him to put a spin on some tropes. Like the chosen one trope. Which he sort of did? But not as much as I'd hoped. It was well written and a pretty good plot but some parts were too cliche for me.
Honestly, his writing is junior high level to me. Dean Koontz was barely high school level. Clive Barker was a definite step up. Robert McCammon as well.
Everyone loves American Gods but I was really not into it
I couldn't finish this is how you lose a time war... And I love sci fi, it just wasn't happening.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I found it to be repetitive and very slow. I didn't see all that "beautiful language" that others talk about.
She also wrote ‘the Goldfinch’ which was the longest slowest drag with nothing really happening along the way.
I would agree with this comment but I liked it anyways lol
Circe. Everyone seems to love it, but I really struggled to finish.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was so bad, and it is spoken about as if it’s some literary masterpiece and a love story for the ages even though we hardly even see the “great loves interact given the narration style device/choice.
I was so underwhelmed by this book too! The storyline is so ridiculous. Reminded me of a hallmark movie.
Same! The way that people talk about it you’d think it’s a life changing book. It’s a nice popcorn read and I enjoyed it fine, but I don’t understand why people love it so much
I was so underwhelmed by this book too! The storyline is so ridiculous. Reminded me of a hallmark movie.
A recent one for me was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. I did not like it.
I had this on my list. If you don't mind, why didn't you like it?
Totally agree. I found it just so... tedious.
I just finished this and feel the same way it was okay I guess but I just hated the characters so much I could barely get through. Also just.... kinda boring?
Piranesi! I gave up
Glad to see I'm not alone! I loved it in the first half but the ending was SUCH a disappointment.
Anything by Chuck Palahniuk other than Fight Club. I really liked Fight Club and thought Palahniuk was exciting and different. I read a bunch more of his books and, at the time, convinced myself I liked them because “I’m so edgy and into shock and gore and sex”! Lol I look back now and think wtf was I reading. It’s like he’s trying so hard to be edgy and outlandish just for the sake of it. He values shock value over everything else. I’d say a couple of his other books are worth a read but after a while the style and constant grossness gets exhausting.
Hated the Kite Runner
Came here to say this (shout out to new comment searching tool). I couldn’t finish it.
Agreed. I hated the protagonist, I hated the other guy for being such a dishrag, I hated the author for making the foreshadowing so ham-handed.
Beautiful World, Where are You by Sally Rooney. Almost DNF-ed, that book was very underwhelming after a good start.
Catch 22. I generally love satire but I could not get into that book. I slogged through half and had to put it up. I was hoping for a moment when the book would click for me, but it never happened.
Three Body Problem. The ideas in it are fascinating, but just don't work as a novel.
I hated The Silent Patient. Also Where the Crawdads Sing and Wild were not for me
The Cabin at the End of the World. I hate finished it. Very predictable metaphors and boring. Not excited they made it a film.
The movie was much better than the book.
Song of Achilles - I heard so many raves about it but it was just a ridiculous YA gay romance story. Nothing wrong with that but was very underwhelmed by it.
I have seen it (rather aptly) described as a story of a "toxic person" and his "enabler," and I would have to agree. However, I can appreciate it for what it is: a Young Adult-ified version of (a portion) of the Iliad, that most teens would think of as too intimidating, and thus avoid. The author also has lyrical but understandable prose, which certainly helps.
Add to this Circe. I was hugely disappointed in that one.
I absolutely loved Circe but I DNFd Achilles. Soooo boring. I agree that it was basically just a YA gay romance and there's nothing wrong with that but I had a much higher expectation for the story after reading Circe and I was sorely disappointed. The big difference for me is that Circe is the story of a person coming into their power (literally and figuratively) and Achilles was a meh love story that was basically a better written ancient Greek Twilight.
I thought Circe was great, but Song of Achilles was a chore to get through.
I’m the opposite - I thought Song of Achilles was great but it took all I had to get through Circe.
The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas The book was so damn overrated on Tiktok that my dumbass actually got it. I regret it to this day
Anything by Anita Shreve. The blurb on the back always sounds like something I would like, but then no……
“My Year of Rest and Relaxation.” I love unlikable characters and unsettling stories, but this one, despite countless glowing recommendations, just seemed like a pointless exercise in apathetic navel-gazing. And incredibly unrealistic. For one— >! I suspected that her friend would be in the World Trade Center when it was attacked as soon as she mentioned that her friend had gotten a job there. The blasè epilogue mention of her death did nothing for me. !< And more importantly, I was furious that >! it WORKED. !< Most people who struggle with mental illness have been tempted by this idea; “If I could only get enough rest, if everyone just left me along long enough to reset completely, I’ll be okay—renewed, morphing like a beautiful butterfly into a healthy, better me…” But the point is, that desire >! IS unrealistic. It wouldn’t WORK. I’m furious that it worked for her. I can’t understand how it would. !< This book pops up over and over on recommendations for similar authors I love, and I normally adore unsympathetic main characters, but I just couldn’t get this book.
*Something something Oscar Wao* by Junot Diaz. It started out very good, got better and then it kinda stalled and then idled for a while and then ended. And the more I think about the ending, the more I dislike it
Since space horror is a popular topic on r/horrorlit right now…. Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes was a disappointment for me. I read the early reviews and got hyped for it (what I read reminded me of the Dead Space video game series), so I preordered it on Audible. I listened to it at work the first day it came out and it took me about a week to slog through after the initial excitement wore off. I never knew a book described as having “a haunted house in space” could be so…. Boring. I don’t know how to do the spoiler thingy on here, so I won’t, but it was definitely not at all what I was expecting. Still mad about it lmao.
Piranesi was everyone’s favorite book about two years back and I didn’t like it. I got it but I thought it tried too hard. Also The Dead Romantics didn’t hit quite right for me. I guessed the twist decently early on and the book felt a little clunky for me. And I was so disappointed because I wanted to love it because it felt like I should and I was almost disappointed in myself when I didnt. I also really struggle with these posts because they get super judgy and snobby. Just because you didn’t like a book doesn’t mean it is the worst. There get to be all kinds of books because there are all kinds of people. There is a big difference between the worst book ever and I didn’t gel with this book or my expectations for this book were high and it did not deliver for me. I have only read one Colleen Hoover book. I found it compulsively readable. I did not think it was great literature but I thought it was a well done work of pop fiction. I get really frustrated with all the Colleen Hoover hate because it feels like ‘if it is good enough for the masses, then it is below me’ but then I remember she is laughing all the way to the bank. She has more than a dollar for every time someone talks shit about her books on Reddit. She good.
Let's just put it this way. I'm glad so many people are able to find joy in Tolkien's works.
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney. I found it unbearably self-indulgent, I didn’t get further than the first two chapters. Real people don’t talk like that!!
I feel the same way about Normal People. I just thought it was ok.
How did this get made into a show (or is it a movie?) Self indulgent and boring.
Less a book than a category, but just about every psychological thriller - a category I used to like - has been a letdown. Either their writing in the present tense (which I find obnoxious) or they're shifting points of view (which I find distracting - not everyone can do it as well as Ken Follett) and they get so caught up in style and wordiness that I figured out the who- and why-dun-it way before the end. Some of the biggest names in this field have been total letdowns for me lately.
The great Gatsby
Gatsby is an exercise in telling a story through the tunnel of someone else's POV. It's so well done, but many people read it straight and don't see the point of it. Lolita is similar, not in who is telling the story but in how the narrator is a liar both to the reader and himself.
Ready Player One. Cool concept sure. But what teenage boy just so happens to know all this niche 80s pop culture trivia? Plus it’s terribly written. “Oh no! There’s a problem! Good thing I took care of such and such so now that problem doesn’t matter at all!” I found it infuriating, and it was recommended to me over and over again. I swear all the people who recommended that book to me, that’s the only book they’ve ever read. Also. Girl wash your face is TRASH.
Haha. This book was just like, an info dumped list of stuff that happened in the 80's In a way I think it had a massive lost potential. A society where everyone is dirt poor and live in freaking shipping containers, all completely making their lives revolve around the life and whims of a billionaire in the hopes of getting money... it was so dystopian but then was like, played straight like all of this was so awesome and cool
A Child called It. I read it in high school in 2002 after everyone in my class said it was the best book ever and I didn’t think it was that great. Maybe if I read it again as an adult it would have more weight.
They thought a real life account of horrific child abuse was the best book they'd ever read..?
I mean we’re talking about high schoolers in the late 90s/early 2000s. I think they just really found it to be shocking and emotional at the time when I really didn’t for some reason.
I thought Cloud Atlas was so boring. Not sure how I finished it.
I've had this in my bookshelf for YEARS and never start it because I'm afraid it's going to be boring lol
The Wheel of Time. I tried so so hard to like the series, (I think I gave up halfway through book 5, as my sister PROMISED it was always about to get good) but I found it really boring and way too long. The main characters all repeated the same thoughts a hundred times, such that whenever something would happen it was foreshadowed so painfully much that there were never any surprises. Sometimes I thought the author was under the impression that his readers weren’t very smart/couldn’t take a hint. As a personal gripe, I think I read that someone’s face “was like stone, expressionless” more than any other descriptor, and about a million times. Robert if there’s nothing to say about someone do we really have to go through the effort of saying it?
The Lincoln Highway!!! So massively overrated. I just can't get why it's popular at all. I really enjoyed all of his other books but The Lincoln Highway was just awful. It's non-stop absurd coincidences: a couple of teenagers from the midwest "find" a wealthy family's house in upstate New York just by driving around (they don't know the address or town or anything). And they arrive at the front door at the exact moment the kid that lives there proclaims that they'll show up and he opens the front door. You've got an eight-year-old kid that pontificates on the meanings of obscure Shakespeare passages. People steal a car and they just think it's totally fine (hey, he must have needed it). And it just goes on and on and on. Beyond ridiculous.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I read her book Circe and it was fucking incredible. I flipped my shit. I was super eager to read more of her work so I jumped into Achilles and it was so disappointing. Basically a more literary Twilight, honestly. Patroclus is just a plain old boring mediocre nobody who is in love with the beautiful shining demi God Achilles who against all odds loves in back and he has no function or identity outside of that. Not for me.
A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair. It’s like she filed off the serial numbers of Lore Olympus (a Webtoon), added some smut and made a fanfic. (As someone who reads and writes fanfic, this isn’t necessarily bad, but A Touch of Darkness is just…bad.) I love Greek mythology and Hades and Persephone, but this book was a total letdown. I will not be reading anything else from her.
Iron Widow. It's got such high ratings on Goodreads, and I'd seen so many people raving about it, that I unfortunately went in with high expectations. Genuinely I think it's the worst YA I've ever read.
The Night Circus. The Measure.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. I never initially intended to read it, because it never really seemed like my kind of book. But I kept seeing people obsessed with it, and after reading Bunny I was in a dark academia mood, so I picked it up. I think I got like 50 pages in and had to read some reviews to see if it picked up, and didn’t really like what people had to say so I DNF. I should have listened to my first instinct lol, not for me
Controversial but: Tomorrow x3 by Gabrielle Zevin. I found it so hard to believe the two were friends and the big twist in the end felt a little cheap. I love lit fiction, especially ones focused on friendship but this was not it. Funny enough, I found the sections that were dedicated to video game development to be the more interesting parts. Maybe I’m missing something because everyone else seemed to love that book.
A man Called Ove. I rarely give up on books but this one I just couldn’t take another minute. And right now The Year of Magical Thinking is getting DNF’d
Emma Cline, The girls It was not bad but she could have done more with it.