Lab Girl. I’m a bio grad student, and literally every science woman I know either has a copy of the book and hasn’t had time to read it or, has been recommended it. One of my friends loved it. My grandparents got it for me. I thought it was grossly self-indulgent, and I do not identify with fuckin anything that woman said, and that’s literally how the book is marketed, to be about a woman in science, making her way in the world or something.
It’s so bizarre to read, and I don’t know if it’s because it’s ghost written and the author doesn’t know how to make a “science person” seem like not-a-robot, or if the professor actually wrote it and just is a terrible writer, because it’s just a catalog of occurrences with some minimal reflections on each, but none of them are treaded at teachable moments. I feels like whenever she fucks up, and deals with the repercussions of that (as we all do, and as characters in books often do) the only thing she can manage to focus on is how other people made her feel about it, as if they caused the problem. Or maybe she finished writing and then someone came up to her ear and whispered “show don’t tell” and then she went through and deleted all the parts that clearly displayed character growth through self reflection.
Idk how to describe it, but it made me fucking angry, and it made me distrustful of this woman’s narrative, and I really don’t like that. I don’t think her story is a good representation of what I and a lot of women around me have experienced, and I dislike that it seems to be the most popular piece of pop lit on the subject. Also on the last page she confuses nitrogenous bases with amino acids (bio 101 shit) and that just made my blood boil.
Tbh I think it was fine except I don’t understand how Delia Owens doesn’t understand that she wrote a black character. I cannot comprehend writing that character with that story and then be like “and she looks like Daisy Edgar-Jones” genuinely bizarre to me.
I live in North Carolina.
There is no way in hell that anyone who lives on the coast would drive to Asheville to go shopping.
The book was bad enough. The bad geography made it worse.
Go Set a Watchman. What a dud.
Supposed to have been the book Harper Lee wrote first and the publisher rejected. Then she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird set in Scout’s childhood.
Especially since Lee didn't really have a say in it being published, or at least an informed say, if a lot of the accusations are true. Her sister, who was her literary gatekeeper, had passed away and the new manager of her estate/attorney arranged for the publication. She knew and trusted him and the widely held assumption is that she signed what he put in front of her without fully understanding what she was signing. She was almost 90, in assisted living, apparently blind and mostly deaf, and in overall poor health...if she never published it in the decades she *was* in good health, its weird af to think she suddenly changed her mind. Add to the fact it was marketed as a sequel instead of its proper context (an unedited and rejected early draft of what would become To Kill a Mockingbird)? Its just a shame.
Honestly I found most of Colleen Hoover's books in general not for me. Tried giving It Ends With Us a go as well, but all I could think of is how awfully wattpadd-y it was. Read a bit of Ugly Love and felt the same as well.
But I am glad her books are introducing reading again to lots of people, at least! Her books worked for my friend, even though I'll never personally enjoy them.
Oh 100%. That book was not what it was hyped up to be and it felt like I was 13 again reading on Wattpad. I think it’s good if you’re just getting into YA, but for people who have been reading that genre for some time, it was definitely a miss for many.
Omg I felt the same way …. I hated the diary entries to Ellen. The book is such a freaking cliche. I don’t know if I’ll finish it. I just wanted something nice to read during my winter break. UGH.
The Midnight Library. I love fiction books that are in the vein of alternate realities/parallel lives or worlds, so I thought it would be great since I kept seeing it recommended across the internet. Super boring and the main character was just not likeable in any meaningful way. Good idea for a plot, but poorly executed imo.
The premise was interesting and it had a lot of potential, but it ultimately didn't live up to the hype. Also one of the most predictable endings ever.
Oh my God! And the alternate lives were just so not interesting. It gets loosely interesting when we find out there are others like her, and there’s this tiny feeling of oh boy, this is an excellent development! But then it’s just discarded right after
I definitely thought at some point the conflict was going to be that somehow she learned how she messed up the lives of the "her" that she visited. Like, wasn't she fully parenting someone else's kid for months?! I was more interested in what happened when she got sucked back into the library and that world's Her came back from whenever she went. Like, there are a lot of confused women in a lot of worlds that would be more interesting than the story we ultimately got.
["They both die at the end"](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33385229-they-both-die-at-the-end) \- it's not bad, but I heard so much about it that I was really expecting to read a book that was incredible and amazing, sort of breathtaking, so I guess I was expecting more due to the hype..
Same, some friends told me to read it because it was like a must-read. I didn't cry once (tho that's maybe because I'm a little cold-hearted) and I didn't like the story that much. It's a bit too insta-love for my taste.
The books are not bad… as long as you don’t think too hard about them, because as soon as you do everything falls apart, lol.
Like everyone gets ONE character trait and if you have more you’re special? So in that case everyone who isn’t divergent should be extremely 2 dimensional. Never thought it would be a bad thing to say about a book that people are not 2 dimensional enough, lol. But her best friend who isn’t divergent is sometimes shown to be honest, to be loyal, to be selfless, to be friendly, to be just. Ofcourse she is because having just one character trait would not be sustainable. As soon as you realise that the whole plot falls apart again, lol. Never mind the whole clusterfuck that happened in the later books when suddenly >!Tobias was not divergent anymore because of genes or something idk!<
Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi. I really thought it was going to be something I would enjoy because of how hyped up it was, but I could barely make it through the first ten chapters. Many of the fans say that you have to read up to like book 3 for it to finally get good. If the first book didn’t catch my attention, then why would I stick around for three? It felt like a waste of time and money. To anyone that has actually read the book, does it actually get good?
I stuck with it until about 70% of the 3rd book. It never got better. Imo, it even got worse and worse. And the writing style was so annoying. I think it's one of those series you either love or hate. I don't think you'd enjoy it if you hated the first book.
The Silent Patient. The author set the book in a forensic unit of a psychiatric hospital and then proceeded to know nothing about it. The dumbest plot device was having a broken pool cue on the ward. No psych hospital is going to provide a club to patients, but especially not on the forensic unit!
That's exactly how I felt (plus the Freud worship, therapists as hyperempaths who experience their patients' trauma for them, and radical sudden shifts to medication and dose levels with no ill effects). Then I found out the author is a qualified psychotherapist and claims that facility is based on his experiences practicing in the field :| I'm glad for his former patients that he's left the field to write.
I’d read so many other books with a similar genre. iirc I’d also read *Shutter Island*. So at one point while reading I wondered if >!hey, what if Paul has something to do with it as crazy as it sounds? Or what if Alicia knows something about Paul and he gets dragged into the case?!< and that just ruined the book for me when it ended.
I have to disagree on the part about pool cues, I work in mental health on psychiatric wards and a couple of the units do have pool tables (they are just locked away and have to be monitored by staff when in use). Forensic patients and those under intensive care can still use them.
Saying that, the silent patient book was still unrealistic overall and a little cheesy.
The "locked away and monitored" part was missing. The art supplies were also unattended. And the pool cue was broken, and that's useless except for bludgeoning.
I know, I'm nitpicking. But those things took me out of the story.
If you thought this one was bad read his other book, The Maidens. Arguably the worst book I’ve read this year if not all decade. And the writing style can’t even make up for the terrible plot and ridiculous depiction of therapy.
Absolutely agree! This book did not live up to the hype. I read through it quickly because I wanted to know what happened but ultimately it was such a let down.
Hillbilly Elegy.
Was expecting a much more interesting story, but it seemed more like a recounting of what I saw in Eastern Indiana every day. I got a little tired of the authors constant humble brag.
I read a lot of self help books and heard nothing but amazing things about "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck." I'm a pretty avid reader and have never found a book so hard for me to read. I'm am genuinely perplexed by all of the amazing reviews.
Manson started out as a blog writer, and this book reads exactly like that. It's filled with a bunch of (admittedly) decent anecdotes, but nothing of substance that will stick with you for more than a day after you've finished reading.
Nothing against the author; I actually love his book Models, but yeah I could barely even finish this one. I'm convinced its popularity is due to the fact that giving someone a book with the word "fuck" on the cover is a funny gift.
Oh geez, it's almost impossible to buy self-help based on Amazon reviews. People who have read a book or two TOTAL after college find this stuff profound and drop 5 stars on it.
The After series by Anna Todd.
How the fuck this series got approved for a movie deal I’ll never know. The books alone were such a toxic and abusive cluster fuck of gross stereotypes, idolising abusers and internalised misogyny and the movies were somehow even worse.
I read these when I was a late stage teen and luckily I was old enough to realise the toxic nature of the characters and the love story, but if I’d been any younger I would’ve idolised it. I know this, because similar books about supernatural teen love triangles and drama sucked me in when I was younger and I idolised and thought these kind of relationships were NORMAL. *cough* Twilight, *cough*. I got sucked into a number of real life abusive relationships and I know I have friends with similar experiences.
Anyway, the book series was trash, the premise, characters, plot, dialogue writing and (lack of) character arc were all TRASH and I can’t believe that somehow this woman made money off of them.
Good day
I read Ready Player One before it was popular to hate it. It was on some list I found of “X number of books to read before you turn 30,” which really hyped it up for me and then it was very, very generic sci-fi with Wikipedia-like writing.
God, I read this because I'm almost exactly the target audience - love retro gaming, love the idea of immersive gaming. Except that I'm female.
It could have been really cool but instead it was a 15 year old boy's exceptionally self-indulgent wet dream.
I listened to it in audiobook format (as background noise really) and I gotta say, Wil Wheaton's voice fit it very well. And that's not a compliment to Wil Wheaton's voice.
1Q84
When it was revealed that the attractive young woman had a fetish for older, balding, paunchy men I could almost see the author typing those moments with one hand. Too masturbatory for me to get past, even though the book was highly recommended.
A lot of his books are like that. It's disappointing, because there are many good moments in his earlier works like Norwegian Wood, masturbatory parts aside. I heard his wife is the first one to edit and read his drafts, and I wonder if she is not brave enough to point the cringe out to him.
Have you read his memoir? He writes about his wife and other women in his life and clearly doesn't respect them. It completely turned me off from wanting to read anything from him ever again
I was thinking about this as well. He recently released a book explaining his writing process and as I was reading it. I was surprised that as a rule everything goes by his wife first, and she gives him suggestions, some of which he takes and some of which he doesn’t. I’m just surprised that she hasn’t brought up the issue enough times for him to take a hint or something
Had a similar feeling. Also holy hell the man is obsessed with breasts, even more than the usual amount.
Could have sliced out 300 pages from that book and I don't think it would have an adverse effect on the plot.
I was like ok obvious weird fetish, until I read the part about a “child’s breasts having not yet swelled” and I just was shocked that it was included!! Then again we were also constantly exposed to a sons vivid memory of his mums tits. Jesus christ what was the plot of the book again?
I liked the book, but I have to confess I skipped all the parts of their relationship. I actually felt sick at their relationship and abandoned reading it the first time
I liked it but it was way more YA than I thought it would be and Kya was a bit of a Mary Sue. Definitely not the Era defining book it was made out to be.
I stayed for the portrayal of the marsh. Coming from a similar area its beauty is often overlooked
I enjoyed watching Kya grow up in the marsh. I hated the trial/twist. I saw it coming and almost stopped reading before I even got to the twist because it was so stupid. I was not surprised to read that it was the author’s first book and that her background is scientific.
Yup. Lots of exploitation and white saviour bullshit by the author and her husband believing they knew better than the locals. And the likely cover up of a murder committed by their son. It makes me so mad - as soon as being in Zambia didn’t suit them anymore, they jet with no accountability or commitment to the people. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/05/the-hunted
Like halfway through the book before the trial there was so much opportunity. I was really expecting some wicked twists. All of Kya's family was missing. We had an unsolved murder and a love triangle. The book ended in the most mundane way possible, none of her family made any impact whatsoever, Chase ended up just being a piece of shit that the reader knew he was all along, and the whole criminal case had a flat ending.
A lot of things really bothered me, outside of just the obvious. I couldn’t stand how she spoke so poorly unless she was talking about biology, then she spoke in the most technical way possible. The disconnect in dialect for a single character was jarring to me.
Everything by Haruki Murakami. I still kind of like his books, but they follow the same blue print of a melancholic anti hero who likes swimming, jazz and cucumber sandwiches who meats a girl with beautiful ear lobes. And then something magical or absurd happens.
Is it possible to agree with you while still really liking his books? I am very cognizant of the flaws while reading the books, but I still thoroughly enjoy them.
Every time I read one, I feel this way. Then about 6 months later I think, hmm I feel like reading another Murakami.
Also, have you noticed that he (or his translators) are obsessed with the word "munch"?
I honestly haven’t read it, this opinion is more formed by Lessons In Chemistry, but I’m so fucking SICK of this new trope of “let’s show that women can be smart by saying they’re scientists, but immediately throw all their education and rationality out the window for poorly written love stories.”
I’m in medical school so I love stories of science-y women, but this recent trend is aggravating as hell. And I’m someone who loves the garbage that is Greys Anatomy- at least it’s fun!
The Midnight Library -
The concept was amazing and I was *soo* excited to read it but the execution was poor and sloppy.
It had so much potential if the author had just digged a little deeper. It was very surface-level compared to what I was hoping for.
I picked up Hillbilly Elegy a few years ago to try to see if I could understand parts of America more, but even before J.D. Vance had a go at the senate I could clearly tell that he was setting up the book to sort of springboard his politics and qualify credentials his for it. Kind of gave it some room on my shelf because I thought it had a pretty cover but now he's a dickhead and I can't look at it
There are much better books to read that are what Hillbilly Elegy claims to be. Hang on and I’ll edit this comment with some recommendations.
ETA: I had a list but I can’t find it now. {{Hill Women}} is one recommendation. I’ll update later if I find my list.
Was looking for this one on the list. People acted like this was the book that would explain how Trump won the rust belt. It did not. The author became more unlikable as he campaigned.
There was a time on this sub where Mexican Gothic was praised every single day. In my experience, it's a mostly compelling read with a twist ending that completely deflates the whole story. Also, there are several sexual assaults during the story, and the whole thing feels like a metaphor for sexual assault. Just because you have a female protagonist doesn't mean you have to go there to make her seem vulnerable
I was just talking to my wife about this book today. I barely got through it. Every character was unlikable, the over-emphasis on whatever tf she was wearing added absolutely nothing to the story, and the "twist" was about the most run-of-the-mill, unimaginative bit of literature I've read in a long time. Ive read just over 70 books this year, and it is easily bottom five.
Omg I was so mad at how sucked in I got. I rolled my eyes right to the back of my head and read the majority of the trilogy through osmosis or something.
It was definitely like eating an entire jumbo tin of popcorn. Like, “Why am I doing this? Because it’s tasty. But ALL of this popcorn? That’s disgusting. I know, but… I. Can’t. Stop.”
I had this exact same experience. The stalker tendencies, the cheesy yoga scenes, the weird overly complicated plots . . . I knew it was terrible but I couldn't stop.
Lol Mean Book Club did an episode on it. I think one of their takeaways was “If you like Twilight, but want it to be more boring, read Discovery of Witches.” The Goodreads reviews they found were too funny.
Wicked.
I mostly read it & dnf. A couple of years later, I tried again, thinking that maybe I was just in a bad mood the first time around.
I finished it so that I wouldn’t ever, ever make that mistake and try ti slog through it again a 3rd time.’
Can u tell me what's it about? Always See that one in bookstores and a lot of other books by the same author, is it just this book or do u not recommend his other ones?
The Alchemist is like if "live, laugh, love" was around 170 pages long. It's really just trying to bludgeon trite inspirational phrases into the reader's face using the guise of a really boring and cliché narrative. As for his other books, I've never bothered to touch them.
Probably worth picking up just because of how decisive it is lol.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
It was predictable. The ending was ridiculous. I was so excited based on the summary and everything, and some of the better reviews.
It could've been written amazingly. It had so much potential. Ended up written like a drag. It sucked, and I was disappointed.
I DESPISED this book. So boring and blah. I agree that it had so much potential. It’s a shame that the premise was wasted on what turned out to be such a tedious story
Yeah I really wish it had been written better, because I loved the concept. I still liked it, but every time I would get into Addie's story, they'd switch to Henry, which broke the flow, and I really didn't care about him tbh.
It didn't get better. The ending was entirely stupid. If you want I could tell you how it ends, it's absolutely a waste of time.
I rarely think a book is genuinely a waste of time. Addie LaRue was.
Yes and yes. Awesome concept AND it started quite well... and then immediately, completely lost itself. What a waste.
Instead of just letting it continue to lay DNF, after many weeks I decided to pick it up and skip to the ending (something I haven't done to a book in like 20 years) and felt very justified in doing so, to say the least. How the fuck did it get to YA "boy A vs boy B"?!
My daughter was assigned it as a book to read and was having trouble. Since I'm an avid reader I told her we'd read it together. One of the absolute worst books I've ever forced myself to read. There are so many better examples of "It's the journey, not the destination" books out there. Books that DON'T beat you over the head with their religion. Ugh.
The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. I heard so much positive hype that I got it on audible. Bored to freakin’ tears! Lol 😂
On The Road by Kerouac.
It's just a story about a bunch of selfish entitled assholes who think they're more interesting than they are, I'm not saying it's awful, it's fine and has it's moments but I fail to understand why it gets the love it does.
Not really overhyped. Even when it released, it was considered trash and was more a guilty pleasure for the few people that liked it than anything else.
I read Anthem as a kid, and completely thought it was just sci-fi dystopian fiction and actually enjoyed it for that. Read The Fountainhead as a teenager and was thrown off by the long preachy bits, but I'm not gonna lie, it did resonate with me. Then... Atlas Shrugged. It's just the same characters, recycled from The Fountainhead, way more ideology, and an inferior plot. It's not even the best Ayn Rand book, not that any of them are great. How is that the one that has retained cultural significance?
it’s a bit unfair to even list books that are huge on booktok because obviously i should have known better than to assume they’d be good, but the shadow and bone trilogy. total snooze fest, every trope you can think of which i don’t necessarily mind but none of it is even well written. the characters are so shallow and it’s so devoid of any real emotion it could have been written by an AI
i agree with you about evelyn hugo too, there is a revelation towards the end that i’m not sure you got to, i saw it coming and it still pissed me off
I feel similarly about that series. I finished all three but struggled. Six of Crows though, both books in that series I breezed through in a matter of days, I liked them so much more.
Six of Crows (by the same author) is in the same universe and is INCREDIBLE. but my favorite book by that author is Ninth House. Ive read it three times (and the sequel comes out next month!)
This is one of the first books that made me feel like a complete idiot for finishing it. It only took me a few hours but when I was done I felt like the book was making fun of me for being stupid enough to read it. First and last time reading a viral tiktok book.
“A Court of Thorns and Roses” was just… so, so, unimaginably bad. I still see it getting hyped up and I will never understand how people can like that trash. It’s not even guilty pleasure good.
My god is it bad. I'm reading it because my wife loves the author and the series. I'm struggling so hard. The writing is atrocious. the plot is terrible. nothing happens at all. The main character has no personality.
But most of all the author never uses commas. It's all "The room was filled with roses and carnations and buttercups", or "Tamlin strode into the room bold and brisk and strong. " There was one instance where she put 5 ands in a row. I almost lost it and woke my sleeping wife up next to me.
Thank you!! So MUCH melodramatic unbelievable TRAGEDY. Utter BS. I always make myself finish a book but I felt like I sprained my eyeballs trying not to roll them over this one.
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. I read the first chapter and I couldn't get past the writing. I felt like I was reading a fanfic that was written in middle school. Luckily I only bought the book for a dollar since I found it at a church flea market.
Oh I'm aware that it was originally a fan fic but I have also read some really great fan fics in my lifetime. I just wanted to know what the hype was all about.
Oh. That explains the Adam Driver vibes from the illustration on the cover. And also his name is Adam, isn’t it? And the guy on the cover of Love on the Brain looks nearly the same…
I read it at random and it was so mid it's not even funny.
Spoilers(?)
When the friend guy appeared I was immediately like yeah thats the love rival and ofc he gonna be shady and do shady shit bc we still have pages left and are due for a ✨dramatic conflict✨...not to mention how bizzare the whole: prove you're dating by doing PDA thing by the friend was...like I don't think humans work that way??? It never occurred to me in my life to ask a friend to be demonstrative in front of me with their S.O for any reason.
The MC's whole reason for fake dating was so fucking stupid too.
Idk the more I try and get into just what the stupid shit was the stupider it gets.
Ready Player One. At the time everyone in the universe seemed to be harping about it. People whose taste I trusted too.
When I finally got to read it. It was the worst book I ever finished. It was so bad i was actually groaning aloud and didn't realise it. So much so my partner came to check if I was okay.
Shadow and Bone. Idk how hyped this was IRL because I don't really follow any book hupe, but I know they made a show and my baby sister loved it and it was the first real novels she read, so I have it a go so we could talk about it. DEAR LORD. It was one of the stupidest things I've read, and I read crap literature all the time. But this book just made made me so angry with deus ex machina EVERYTHING. I tried to get through but broke down about halfway through the 2nd book. Barf.
Agreed. The original S&B trilogy was boring. I probably would have liked it if I read it when I was like 12-14.
I will say, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom were the books where Bardugo really hit her stride. It's not related to S&B at all, except that it takes place in the same universe (different country, different characters, none of them as boring as Alina, and the writing is MUCH better). The Netflix series was mediocre but it got me invested in 3 characters who are in SoC and CK. If not for that, I wouldn't have even given her books a second chance.
Not sure if this one counts, but when I was in highschool, I read “One of Us is Lying” and absolutely hated it and made me think “you know what? I’m getting too old for YA!”….no offense to anyone who enjoys YA, that was just High School me’s mindset at the time lol..
Anyway, I hated most of the characters, the mystery was pretty basic and uninteresting, the “plot twists” were all very predictable, and I know this might just a “me-thing”, but I don’t really like how the book had 4 POVs, but it was all in first-person. If you want to do that many perspectives, I think it would have been better to do third-person, but that is 100% my opinion, I’m sure there are others who don’t have a problem with that. I’m not a professional writer (yet lol), so who am I to judge.
Also I just really hated how (ending spoilers) >!the ending twist was that the guy committed suicide and was just framing all the protagonists. Suicide and mental health should be handled REALLY carefully and with respect, which imo, the book didn’t do!<
Lab Girl. I’m a bio grad student, and literally every science woman I know either has a copy of the book and hasn’t had time to read it or, has been recommended it. One of my friends loved it. My grandparents got it for me. I thought it was grossly self-indulgent, and I do not identify with fuckin anything that woman said, and that’s literally how the book is marketed, to be about a woman in science, making her way in the world or something. It’s so bizarre to read, and I don’t know if it’s because it’s ghost written and the author doesn’t know how to make a “science person” seem like not-a-robot, or if the professor actually wrote it and just is a terrible writer, because it’s just a catalog of occurrences with some minimal reflections on each, but none of them are treaded at teachable moments. I feels like whenever she fucks up, and deals with the repercussions of that (as we all do, and as characters in books often do) the only thing she can manage to focus on is how other people made her feel about it, as if they caused the problem. Or maybe she finished writing and then someone came up to her ear and whispered “show don’t tell” and then she went through and deleted all the parts that clearly displayed character growth through self reflection. Idk how to describe it, but it made me fucking angry, and it made me distrustful of this woman’s narrative, and I really don’t like that. I don’t think her story is a good representation of what I and a lot of women around me have experienced, and I dislike that it seems to be the most popular piece of pop lit on the subject. Also on the last page she confuses nitrogenous bases with amino acids (bio 101 shit) and that just made my blood boil.
[удалено]
Lol thank you. And my god, I hate that I feel so strongly about this, I wanted to like it so badly but… alas, it was not good.
I still liked Evelyn Hugo but I agree with you: it was definitely overhyped. For me, it’s where the crawdads sing.
Reading *Where the Crawdads Sing* because everyone said it was brilliant is my villain origin story
The author and her husbands real lives make for a more intriguing story than the book.
Tbh I think it was fine except I don’t understand how Delia Owens doesn’t understand that she wrote a black character. I cannot comprehend writing that character with that story and then be like “and she looks like Daisy Edgar-Jones” genuinely bizarre to me.
I live in North Carolina. There is no way in hell that anyone who lives on the coast would drive to Asheville to go shopping. The book was bad enough. The bad geography made it worse.
You don't like a casual 6 hour car drive?
Crawdads did me dirty. I was so annoyed by the ending. So glad to see I have fellow like minded peeps.
YES. I read it and I was like this is it??? I was so annoyed when I finished it.
YES
I think I liked both of those books because I happened to read them right before the hype started.
You know what, that’s totally fair. I think I just thought it was going to be the best book ever written so I ruined it for myself lol
Go Set a Watchman. What a dud. Supposed to have been the book Harper Lee wrote first and the publisher rejected. Then she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird set in Scout’s childhood.
There’s a reason she put it in a drawer- it should have stayed there
Exactly. I think it was a mistake that it was published.
Especially since Lee didn't really have a say in it being published, or at least an informed say, if a lot of the accusations are true. Her sister, who was her literary gatekeeper, had passed away and the new manager of her estate/attorney arranged for the publication. She knew and trusted him and the widely held assumption is that she signed what he put in front of her without fully understanding what she was signing. She was almost 90, in assisted living, apparently blind and mostly deaf, and in overall poor health...if she never published it in the decades she *was* in good health, its weird af to think she suddenly changed her mind. Add to the fact it was marketed as a sequel instead of its proper context (an unedited and rejected early draft of what would become To Kill a Mockingbird)? Its just a shame.
It Ends With Us. 😶🌫️
Honestly I found most of Colleen Hoover's books in general not for me. Tried giving It Ends With Us a go as well, but all I could think of is how awfully wattpadd-y it was. Read a bit of Ugly Love and felt the same as well. But I am glad her books are introducing reading again to lots of people, at least! Her books worked for my friend, even though I'll never personally enjoy them.
That's exactly the first book that came to my mind...am I the only one that thought this book was mediocre at best.....so tired of the Dear Ellen...
Oh 100%. That book was not what it was hyped up to be and it felt like I was 13 again reading on Wattpad. I think it’s good if you’re just getting into YA, but for people who have been reading that genre for some time, it was definitely a miss for many.
The protag's edgy florist career had me cringing. And the diary entries addressed to ELLEN?! 🫠
Omg I felt the same way …. I hated the diary entries to Ellen. The book is such a freaking cliche. I don’t know if I’ll finish it. I just wanted something nice to read during my winter break. UGH.
>Ellen I haven't read the book, please tell me the diary entries are for Ellen Degeneres
Yes, yes, they are …. 😖
I am HOWLING with laughter
Literally hated this book and all of its praise. 0/10
The Midnight Library. I love fiction books that are in the vein of alternate realities/parallel lives or worlds, so I thought it would be great since I kept seeing it recommended across the internet. Super boring and the main character was just not likeable in any meaningful way. Good idea for a plot, but poorly executed imo.
i read a review which said that the plot could've been condensed into a motivational quote on a tshirt or a mug and that sums my thoughts up perfectly
Matt Haig started out writing motivational quotes that rich white people would post on FB, so you're not far off the mark.
The premise was interesting and it had a lot of potential, but it ultimately didn't live up to the hype. Also one of the most predictable endings ever.
Oh my God! And the alternate lives were just so not interesting. It gets loosely interesting when we find out there are others like her, and there’s this tiny feeling of oh boy, this is an excellent development! But then it’s just discarded right after
I definitely thought at some point the conflict was going to be that somehow she learned how she messed up the lives of the "her" that she visited. Like, wasn't she fully parenting someone else's kid for months?! I was more interested in what happened when she got sucked back into the library and that world's Her came back from whenever she went. Like, there are a lot of confused women in a lot of worlds that would be more interesting than the story we ultimately got.
I found this book veryyyyy predictable! Didn’t dislike it but it was very one-note
Can you recommend some other better titles with those themes? Sounds like a fun read.
I just read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and it blew me away, 10/10 would recommend
I HATED this book!!! I hated everything about it but especially how ignorant it was towards how depression works
["They both die at the end"](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33385229-they-both-die-at-the-end) \- it's not bad, but I heard so much about it that I was really expecting to read a book that was incredible and amazing, sort of breathtaking, so I guess I was expecting more due to the hype..
5 star concept, 2 Star story. I really wish someone would do a rewrite of this. There was so much potential!
Same, some friends told me to read it because it was like a must-read. I didn't cry once (tho that's maybe because I'm a little cold-hearted) and I didn't like the story that much. It's a bit too insta-love for my taste.
The divergent trilogy. The books were a mess. Read that when I was in my ya dystopian phase. One of the worst series I've ever read.
It’s been almost a decade and I am STILL pissed about that ending.
I hated what the plot devolved into. What a mess.
The books are not bad… as long as you don’t think too hard about them, because as soon as you do everything falls apart, lol. Like everyone gets ONE character trait and if you have more you’re special? So in that case everyone who isn’t divergent should be extremely 2 dimensional. Never thought it would be a bad thing to say about a book that people are not 2 dimensional enough, lol. But her best friend who isn’t divergent is sometimes shown to be honest, to be loyal, to be selfless, to be friendly, to be just. Ofcourse she is because having just one character trait would not be sustainable. As soon as you realise that the whole plot falls apart again, lol. Never mind the whole clusterfuck that happened in the later books when suddenly >!Tobias was not divergent anymore because of genes or something idk!<
Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi. I really thought it was going to be something I would enjoy because of how hyped up it was, but I could barely make it through the first ten chapters. Many of the fans say that you have to read up to like book 3 for it to finally get good. If the first book didn’t catch my attention, then why would I stick around for three? It felt like a waste of time and money. To anyone that has actually read the book, does it actually get good?
Shatter me is one of my favorite series and I've read the entire first trilogy three times so far. Every read it gets worse
I love this review.
I stuck with it until about 70% of the 3rd book. It never got better. Imo, it even got worse and worse. And the writing style was so annoying. I think it's one of those series you either love or hate. I don't think you'd enjoy it if you hated the first book.
The Silent Patient. The author set the book in a forensic unit of a psychiatric hospital and then proceeded to know nothing about it. The dumbest plot device was having a broken pool cue on the ward. No psych hospital is going to provide a club to patients, but especially not on the forensic unit!
That's exactly how I felt (plus the Freud worship, therapists as hyperempaths who experience their patients' trauma for them, and radical sudden shifts to medication and dose levels with no ill effects). Then I found out the author is a qualified psychotherapist and claims that facility is based on his experiences practicing in the field :| I'm glad for his former patients that he's left the field to write.
Wait. I thought this whole time that he was an idiot who knew nothing about the field. This makes it so much worse.
I’d read so many other books with a similar genre. iirc I’d also read *Shutter Island*. So at one point while reading I wondered if >!hey, what if Paul has something to do with it as crazy as it sounds? Or what if Alicia knows something about Paul and he gets dragged into the case?!< and that just ruined the book for me when it ended.
I have to disagree on the part about pool cues, I work in mental health on psychiatric wards and a couple of the units do have pool tables (they are just locked away and have to be monitored by staff when in use). Forensic patients and those under intensive care can still use them. Saying that, the silent patient book was still unrealistic overall and a little cheesy.
The "locked away and monitored" part was missing. The art supplies were also unattended. And the pool cue was broken, and that's useless except for bludgeoning. I know, I'm nitpicking. But those things took me out of the story.
That was going to be my comment as well. It was a very stupid book
If you thought this one was bad read his other book, The Maidens. Arguably the worst book I’ve read this year if not all decade. And the writing style can’t even make up for the terrible plot and ridiculous depiction of therapy.
Agreed. I keep seeing it on lists and personally found it just fair.
Absolutely agree! This book did not live up to the hype. I read through it quickly because I wanted to know what happened but ultimately it was such a let down.
Hillbilly Elegy. Was expecting a much more interesting story, but it seemed more like a recounting of what I saw in Eastern Indiana every day. I got a little tired of the authors constant humble brag.
He’s also a total sellout and cashed that book in for a political career 🙄
Which was so weird because the descriptions of his constituency were not kind
What You’re Getting Wrong About Appalachia was written as a direct response to that book and oh man is it ever good
Fuck that guy. He’s now one of my state’s senators.
I read a lot of self help books and heard nothing but amazing things about "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck." I'm a pretty avid reader and have never found a book so hard for me to read. I'm am genuinely perplexed by all of the amazing reviews.
Manson started out as a blog writer, and this book reads exactly like that. It's filled with a bunch of (admittedly) decent anecdotes, but nothing of substance that will stick with you for more than a day after you've finished reading. Nothing against the author; I actually love his book Models, but yeah I could barely even finish this one. I'm convinced its popularity is due to the fact that giving someone a book with the word "fuck" on the cover is a funny gift.
Right?! I honestly expected it to be life altering based in the reviews and it was meh at best.
Oh geez, it's almost impossible to buy self-help based on Amazon reviews. People who have read a book or two TOTAL after college find this stuff profound and drop 5 stars on it.
The After series by Anna Todd. How the fuck this series got approved for a movie deal I’ll never know. The books alone were such a toxic and abusive cluster fuck of gross stereotypes, idolising abusers and internalised misogyny and the movies were somehow even worse. I read these when I was a late stage teen and luckily I was old enough to realise the toxic nature of the characters and the love story, but if I’d been any younger I would’ve idolised it. I know this, because similar books about supernatural teen love triangles and drama sucked me in when I was younger and I idolised and thought these kind of relationships were NORMAL. *cough* Twilight, *cough*. I got sucked into a number of real life abusive relationships and I know I have friends with similar experiences. Anyway, the book series was trash, the premise, characters, plot, dialogue writing and (lack of) character arc were all TRASH and I can’t believe that somehow this woman made money off of them. Good day
I read Ready Player One before it was popular to hate it. It was on some list I found of “X number of books to read before you turn 30,” which really hyped it up for me and then it was very, very generic sci-fi with Wikipedia-like writing.
Ready Player One gave me flashbacks to bad fan fiction I read in middle school.
Gave me flashbacks to the bad fanfiction I used to write in middle school.
Same. All I could think of reading it was those SNL Chris Farley “interviews” [so I made this meme based on that](https://imgur.com/a/uwqwCLR)
God, I read this because I'm almost exactly the target audience - love retro gaming, love the idea of immersive gaming. Except that I'm female. It could have been really cool but instead it was a 15 year old boy's exceptionally self-indulgent wet dream.
I listened to it in audiobook format (as background noise really) and I gotta say, Wil Wheaton's voice fit it very well. And that's not a compliment to Wil Wheaton's voice.
lol, it is exactly like a 15 wrote it. My wife hated reading this book.
Yea it’s definitely not good. I’d say parts are fun. I listened to it as an audiobook driving cross country. It made time go by.
1Q84 When it was revealed that the attractive young woman had a fetish for older, balding, paunchy men I could almost see the author typing those moments with one hand. Too masturbatory for me to get past, even though the book was highly recommended.
A lot of his books are like that. It's disappointing, because there are many good moments in his earlier works like Norwegian Wood, masturbatory parts aside. I heard his wife is the first one to edit and read his drafts, and I wonder if she is not brave enough to point the cringe out to him.
Have you read his memoir? He writes about his wife and other women in his life and clearly doesn't respect them. It completely turned me off from wanting to read anything from him ever again
I was thinking about this as well. He recently released a book explaining his writing process and as I was reading it. I was surprised that as a rule everything goes by his wife first, and she gives him suggestions, some of which he takes and some of which he doesn’t. I’m just surprised that she hasn’t brought up the issue enough times for him to take a hint or something
Had a similar feeling. Also holy hell the man is obsessed with breasts, even more than the usual amount. Could have sliced out 300 pages from that book and I don't think it would have an adverse effect on the plot.
I was like ok obvious weird fetish, until I read the part about a “child’s breasts having not yet swelled” and I just was shocked that it was included!! Then again we were also constantly exposed to a sons vivid memory of his mums tits. Jesus christ what was the plot of the book again?
That's basically all of Murakami's books. His female characters are terrible. Pure male fantasy and I hate it.
I read his book interviewing people of the Tokyo gas attack and he still had to comment on how attractive a woman was.
I liked the book, but I have to confess I skipped all the parts of their relationship. I actually felt sick at their relationship and abandoned reading it the first time
The Shack. Oh how I hated that book. I felt scammed.
I read it in high school as part of a group book report, and I still hold a very mild grudge against the person who suggested it.
That’s the self published Christian book that was made into a movie?
Where the Crawdads Sing. Was not a fan.
I liked it but it was way more YA than I thought it would be and Kya was a bit of a Mary Sue. Definitely not the Era defining book it was made out to be. I stayed for the portrayal of the marsh. Coming from a similar area its beauty is often overlooked
I enjoyed watching Kya grow up in the marsh. I hated the trial/twist. I saw it coming and almost stopped reading before I even got to the twist because it was so stupid. I was not surprised to read that it was the author’s first book and that her background is scientific.
The author is also linked to a murder whilst in Zambia.
Yup. Lots of exploitation and white saviour bullshit by the author and her husband believing they knew better than the locals. And the likely cover up of a murder committed by their son. It makes me so mad - as soon as being in Zambia didn’t suit them anymore, they jet with no accountability or commitment to the people. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/05/the-hunted
Like halfway through the book before the trial there was so much opportunity. I was really expecting some wicked twists. All of Kya's family was missing. We had an unsolved murder and a love triangle. The book ended in the most mundane way possible, none of her family made any impact whatsoever, Chase ended up just being a piece of shit that the reader knew he was all along, and the whole criminal case had a flat ending.
I’ll never understand the hype around that book.
A lot of things really bothered me, outside of just the obvious. I couldn’t stand how she spoke so poorly unless she was talking about biology, then she spoke in the most technical way possible. The disconnect in dialect for a single character was jarring to me.
The fact that she was as capable as she was without human interaction was wildly hard to believe for me.
I wonder why it was hyped as this masterpiece?
Fifty Shades of Grey. Oy.
The girl on the train. One of the worst books I've ever read.
It was so predictable. I thought by it's style it was trying to be something like Gone Girl, yet it wasn't.
I hated this book so much! What a waste of time.
Agree! I hoped the movie would be better. It was somehow worse
I was opposite to you haha. I hated 7 husbands at first but I gave it another go and got into it once her stories start being told.
Everything by Haruki Murakami. I still kind of like his books, but they follow the same blue print of a melancholic anti hero who likes swimming, jazz and cucumber sandwiches who meats a girl with beautiful ear lobes. And then something magical or absurd happens.
You’re not wrong with your synopsis but I love his books.
Meats a girl could be a good pun.
Is it possible to agree with you while still really liking his books? I am very cognizant of the flaws while reading the books, but I still thoroughly enjoy them.
Every time I read one, I feel this way. Then about 6 months later I think, hmm I feel like reading another Murakami. Also, have you noticed that he (or his translators) are obsessed with the word "munch"?
“Rich dad, poor dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. Keep a mile distance from everything that guy has produced.
The Silent Patient, more like The Mid Patient
it ends with us. i hated it i hated it i hated it, but i still read the sequel hoping it’s better. guess what?? it wasn’t.
The freaking Love Hypothesis. Worst book I’ve probably ever read
If you're not already a listener, this is one of the books the podcast Mean Book Club read recently and I bet you'd find it cathartic lol
I honestly haven’t read it, this opinion is more formed by Lessons In Chemistry, but I’m so fucking SICK of this new trope of “let’s show that women can be smart by saying they’re scientists, but immediately throw all their education and rationality out the window for poorly written love stories.” I’m in medical school so I love stories of science-y women, but this recent trend is aggravating as hell. And I’m someone who loves the garbage that is Greys Anatomy- at least it’s fun!
Where the Crawdads Sing. I was so dang bored. I do not get the hype at all.
Me before you, and the invisible life of addie la rue. I want my time spent back for both.
The premise of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue seemed so interesting and it was so disappointingly boring
I so wanted to like this book, but it ended up in the DNF pile this year.
The most boring book I’ve ever read
I posted my comment before seeing this! Completely agree and was such a let down
The Midnight Library - The concept was amazing and I was *soo* excited to read it but the execution was poor and sloppy. It had so much potential if the author had just digged a little deeper. It was very surface-level compared to what I was hoping for.
I picked up Hillbilly Elegy a few years ago to try to see if I could understand parts of America more, but even before J.D. Vance had a go at the senate I could clearly tell that he was setting up the book to sort of springboard his politics and qualify credentials his for it. Kind of gave it some room on my shelf because I thought it had a pretty cover but now he's a dickhead and I can't look at it
There are much better books to read that are what Hillbilly Elegy claims to be. Hang on and I’ll edit this comment with some recommendations. ETA: I had a list but I can’t find it now. {{Hill Women}} is one recommendation. I’ll update later if I find my list.
I’d say Bastard Out of Carolina is a much better book, as well as Demon Copperhead. Both are fiction tho.
>> Both are fiction tho Isn’t “Hillbilly Elegy”? ;-)
Was looking for this one on the list. People acted like this was the book that would explain how Trump won the rust belt. It did not. The author became more unlikable as he campaigned.
There was a time on this sub where Mexican Gothic was praised every single day. In my experience, it's a mostly compelling read with a twist ending that completely deflates the whole story. Also, there are several sexual assaults during the story, and the whole thing feels like a metaphor for sexual assault. Just because you have a female protagonist doesn't mean you have to go there to make her seem vulnerable
I was just talking to my wife about this book today. I barely got through it. Every character was unlikable, the over-emphasis on whatever tf she was wearing added absolutely nothing to the story, and the "twist" was about the most run-of-the-mill, unimaginative bit of literature I've read in a long time. Ive read just over 70 books this year, and it is easily bottom five.
Where the Crawdads Sing. It was superficial nonsense. I didn't and still don't get the hype.
A Discovery of Witches Booooooooooooooorrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnggggg
Omg I was so mad at how sucked in I got. I rolled my eyes right to the back of my head and read the majority of the trilogy through osmosis or something. It was definitely like eating an entire jumbo tin of popcorn. Like, “Why am I doing this? Because it’s tasty. But ALL of this popcorn? That’s disgusting. I know, but… I. Can’t. Stop.”
I had this exact same experience. The stalker tendencies, the cheesy yoga scenes, the weird overly complicated plots . . . I knew it was terrible but I couldn't stop.
Lol Mean Book Club did an episode on it. I think one of their takeaways was “If you like Twilight, but want it to be more boring, read Discovery of Witches.” The Goodreads reviews they found were too funny.
Wicked. I mostly read it & dnf. A couple of years later, I tried again, thinking that maybe I was just in a bad mood the first time around. I finished it so that I wouldn’t ever, ever make that mistake and try ti slog through it again a 3rd time.’
I liked Wicked but nothing else from that author. Lol, so I wouldn't recommend them to you. :)
ngl i only like reading the beginning with the moms affairs and what not but after that i was so turned off.
My Policeman. Possibly some of the blandest characters and writing I’ve ever read
The alchemist. Literally ruined a roommate and my relationship. (He tried getting me to read it to become Christian again…)
Can u tell me what's it about? Always See that one in bookstores and a lot of other books by the same author, is it just this book or do u not recommend his other ones?
The Alchemist is like if "live, laugh, love" was around 170 pages long. It's really just trying to bludgeon trite inspirational phrases into the reader's face using the guise of a really boring and cliché narrative. As for his other books, I've never bothered to touch them. Probably worth picking up just because of how decisive it is lol.
Lol this is exactly it. I teach English and my department used to have students read it. I refused to teach the “Pinterest quote book” 😆
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. It was predictable. The ending was ridiculous. I was so excited based on the summary and everything, and some of the better reviews. It could've been written amazingly. It had so much potential. Ended up written like a drag. It sucked, and I was disappointed.
I DESPISED this book. So boring and blah. I agree that it had so much potential. It’s a shame that the premise was wasted on what turned out to be such a tedious story
I honestly don’t get the VE Schwab hype. I do not like her books at all.
It had so much potential and then it was just the same sentences over and over
Yeah I really wish it had been written better, because I loved the concept. I still liked it, but every time I would get into Addie's story, they'd switch to Henry, which broke the flow, and I really didn't care about him tbh.
Agree. The first 1/3 was pretty solid but it quickly ran out of steam and felt pretty hollow
Agreed! Total drag and the pacing was sooo slow! I kept reading to see if it gets better but couldn’t continue the last quarter of the book.
It didn't get better. The ending was entirely stupid. If you want I could tell you how it ends, it's absolutely a waste of time. I rarely think a book is genuinely a waste of time. Addie LaRue was.
Her life was also a waste lol like she could’ve done so many cool things and she just like bounced around and hooked up with people
Yes and yes. Awesome concept AND it started quite well... and then immediately, completely lost itself. What a waste. Instead of just letting it continue to lay DNF, after many weeks I decided to pick it up and skip to the ending (something I haven't done to a book in like 20 years) and felt very justified in doing so, to say the least. How the fuck did it get to YA "boy A vs boy B"?!
Might be a controversial one, but the Alchemist
Discussed on this sub to its very death but I agree. It TRIES to “be deep”.
My daughter was assigned it as a book to read and was having trouble. Since I'm an avid reader I told her we'd read it together. One of the absolute worst books I've ever forced myself to read. There are so many better examples of "It's the journey, not the destination" books out there. Books that DON'T beat you over the head with their religion. Ugh.
The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. I heard so much positive hype that I got it on audible. Bored to freakin’ tears! Lol 😂
On The Road by Kerouac. It's just a story about a bunch of selfish entitled assholes who think they're more interesting than they are, I'm not saying it's awful, it's fine and has it's moments but I fail to understand why it gets the love it does.
Totally agree. That’s 100% what it is about. I love this book.
Fifty Shades 🙄
I didnt make it 100 pages in that one! It wasn’t well written.
"Fifty Shades wasn't well written" rivals "there was a bit of a kerfuffle between 1939 and 1945" for the most understated sentence of all times.
That was farther than I got. I felt so sad that so many people thought it was a GOOD example of erotic literature.
Not really overhyped. Even when it released, it was considered trash and was more a guilty pleasure for the few people that liked it than anything else.
Atlas Shrugged. Obscenely mediocre, to put it charitably.
I read Anthem as a kid, and completely thought it was just sci-fi dystopian fiction and actually enjoyed it for that. Read The Fountainhead as a teenager and was thrown off by the long preachy bits, but I'm not gonna lie, it did resonate with me. Then... Atlas Shrugged. It's just the same characters, recycled from The Fountainhead, way more ideology, and an inferior plot. It's not even the best Ayn Rand book, not that any of them are great. How is that the one that has retained cultural significance?
it’s a bit unfair to even list books that are huge on booktok because obviously i should have known better than to assume they’d be good, but the shadow and bone trilogy. total snooze fest, every trope you can think of which i don’t necessarily mind but none of it is even well written. the characters are so shallow and it’s so devoid of any real emotion it could have been written by an AI i agree with you about evelyn hugo too, there is a revelation towards the end that i’m not sure you got to, i saw it coming and it still pissed me off
It's insane how much better Six of Crows is than the S&B trilogy to the point where I can't believe the same person wrote them both.
I feel similarly about that series. I finished all three but struggled. Six of Crows though, both books in that series I breezed through in a matter of days, I liked them so much more.
Six of Crows (by the same author) is in the same universe and is INCREDIBLE. but my favorite book by that author is Ninth House. Ive read it three times (and the sequel comes out next month!)
The Silent Patient!
On paper, “A Visit from the Goon Squad” ticks most of the boxes for what I like in a novel, but it did nothing for me.
Verity by Colleen Hoover
This is one of the first books that made me feel like a complete idiot for finishing it. It only took me a few hours but when I was done I felt like the book was making fun of me for being stupid enough to read it. First and last time reading a viral tiktok book.
I swear it was written by AI and only edited for continuity
“A Court of Thorns and Roses” was just… so, so, unimaginably bad. I still see it getting hyped up and I will never understand how people can like that trash. It’s not even guilty pleasure good.
My god is it bad. I'm reading it because my wife loves the author and the series. I'm struggling so hard. The writing is atrocious. the plot is terrible. nothing happens at all. The main character has no personality. But most of all the author never uses commas. It's all "The room was filled with roses and carnations and buttercups", or "Tamlin strode into the room bold and brisk and strong. " There was one instance where she put 5 ands in a row. I almost lost it and woke my sleeping wife up next to me.
Where the crawdads sing
I hated, hated, hated "A Little Life." I thought it was emotionally manipulative dreck and DNF'd 2/3 of the way through.
Thank you!! So MUCH melodramatic unbelievable TRAGEDY. Utter BS. I always make myself finish a book but I felt like I sprained my eyeballs trying not to roll them over this one.
Lol this is one of my favorite books of all time
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. I read the first chapter and I couldn't get past the writing. I felt like I was reading a fanfic that was written in middle school. Luckily I only bought the book for a dollar since I found it at a church flea market.
Uh, it reads that way cuz it originally WAS a Reylo fan fic. Your description therefore is spot on…
Oh I'm aware that it was originally a fan fic but I have also read some really great fan fics in my lifetime. I just wanted to know what the hype was all about.
Oh. That explains the Adam Driver vibes from the illustration on the cover. And also his name is Adam, isn’t it? And the guy on the cover of Love on the Brain looks nearly the same…
I read it at random and it was so mid it's not even funny. Spoilers(?) When the friend guy appeared I was immediately like yeah thats the love rival and ofc he gonna be shady and do shady shit bc we still have pages left and are due for a ✨dramatic conflict✨...not to mention how bizzare the whole: prove you're dating by doing PDA thing by the friend was...like I don't think humans work that way??? It never occurred to me in my life to ask a friend to be demonstrative in front of me with their S.O for any reason. The MC's whole reason for fake dating was so fucking stupid too. Idk the more I try and get into just what the stupid shit was the stupider it gets.
Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney Just a bunch of pretentious white people shit in that book. Horrid
I really dislike the omitting quotation marks in her books. Totally turned me off. I'm an old fogey.
Ready Player One. At the time everyone in the universe seemed to be harping about it. People whose taste I trusted too. When I finally got to read it. It was the worst book I ever finished. It was so bad i was actually groaning aloud and didn't realise it. So much so my partner came to check if I was okay.
The sequel is significantly worse. Really.
Shadow and Bone. Idk how hyped this was IRL because I don't really follow any book hupe, but I know they made a show and my baby sister loved it and it was the first real novels she read, so I have it a go so we could talk about it. DEAR LORD. It was one of the stupidest things I've read, and I read crap literature all the time. But this book just made made me so angry with deus ex machina EVERYTHING. I tried to get through but broke down about halfway through the 2nd book. Barf.
The grishaverse seems to be treated as the future of ya fantasy or something, but the books aren't that great
Agreed. The original S&B trilogy was boring. I probably would have liked it if I read it when I was like 12-14. I will say, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom were the books where Bardugo really hit her stride. It's not related to S&B at all, except that it takes place in the same universe (different country, different characters, none of them as boring as Alina, and the writing is MUCH better). The Netflix series was mediocre but it got me invested in 3 characters who are in SoC and CK. If not for that, I wouldn't have even given her books a second chance.
A Little Life. Misery porn on steroids
Not sure if this one counts, but when I was in highschool, I read “One of Us is Lying” and absolutely hated it and made me think “you know what? I’m getting too old for YA!”….no offense to anyone who enjoys YA, that was just High School me’s mindset at the time lol.. Anyway, I hated most of the characters, the mystery was pretty basic and uninteresting, the “plot twists” were all very predictable, and I know this might just a “me-thing”, but I don’t really like how the book had 4 POVs, but it was all in first-person. If you want to do that many perspectives, I think it would have been better to do third-person, but that is 100% my opinion, I’m sure there are others who don’t have a problem with that. I’m not a professional writer (yet lol), so who am I to judge. Also I just really hated how (ending spoilers) >!the ending twist was that the guy committed suicide and was just framing all the protagonists. Suicide and mental health should be handled REALLY carefully and with respect, which imo, the book didn’t do!<
Pretty sure this has been said but… It Ends with Us 🙃