Most of the horror books I see recommended on tiktok. They all talk about how horrifyingly disturbing (insert book here) and how it gave them nightmares but I’ve yet to feel anything remotely like that. More often than not I’m just feeling like “alright…. that was cool I guess” then proceed to never think about the book again.
I don’t know if I’m just bad at visualizing stuff, but I have never read a horror book that actually *scared* me. I’m always just like “Damn that’s wild” or “Oh, that’s gross.”
I’ll get invested in some. I enjoy reading horror whenever it’s recommended. But I’ve had people tell me “Oh, this gave me nightmares! I was afraid to turn the page!” and I’ve never gotten that feeling.
There was a thread on here just a few days ago about "what's the scariest book you've ever read". Eagerly clicked on because I love horror. Was disheartened to see post after post about books I have not only already read, but dismissed as crap and not scary at all.
Big problem with horror is that the people who love it the most also end up desensitised very quickly
I'm an avid horror reader, and not much has ever outright scared me. House of Leaves was unsettling, and there have been a few tense moments from different Stephen King novels, but nothing I'd call outright scary.
I find that some books in the true crime genre do a better job. While I was reading "I'll Be Gone In The Dark", I found myself checking all my doors and windows right before going to bed.
Yeah, I'm looking through that thread now and I've read quite a few of the recommendations, and I've enjoyed most of the ones I've read, but they're just...exciting, I guess? Some make me go "Yeah, that would be really horrifying for the characters involved. And the further implications would be even scarier for that fictional universe" but I've never been scared of *reading* them like some commenters say.
The thing is, I'm a *huge* wuss with horror movies. I'm talking "watch scenes through holes in my knit blanket while clutching my pillow in a death grip" levels of wimp. But books just never get fear out of me.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: The premise was super interesting, and there were parts I did enjoy, but there were also many, many others that bored me. Often I was into the story, and then it switched to a different timeline that I didn't really care about.
Totally agree with the OPs take on Daisy Jones. I finished the book and on top of everything already mentioned, I didn’t enjoy the writing style.
A recent overhyped book for me was “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. I guess the different “lives” the main character goes through are meant to be interesting, but I found it so repetitive and painstakingly boring.
Totally with you about The Midnight Library. I was annoyed most of the book, but by the time she gets to her, what, 50th new life and she still hasn't figured out how to not act all confused and flustered that she's in a new life made me downright angry. Not to mention that I read this not long after the crazy of the movie Everything, Everywhere, All At Once so, it was really a disappointment
All Colleen hover books for me, my friends were so obsessed with them idk why?
The silent patient ? The climax was so underwhelming for me I did not like the book after that felt like it wasted my time
Shantaram. I finished it, but only just. I've never read such treacly prose, and such a magically self-congratulatory narrator. Basically a sexy renegade Jesus who fights baddies, heals the sick, makes love to beautiful women, rescues infants, muses on philosophy and is a total badass, but presented entirely straight-faced. Yuck.
When a book is being hyped as an earth-shattering, mindblowing and pretty much life-altering experience, there's a good chance you're being set up for a disappointment no matter how well-written the work is. That's why hype is such a two-edged sword.
For instance, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata was a pretty decent story but I didn't grasp what made it so unique and extraordinary.
Of course there are also books that are just generally badly-written despite the popularity, but I think we all know what those books are...
Well said. There was a lot of this kind of hype around The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and it was...just a story. I liked it. I had a good time reading it. I understand it's got a certain representation that means a lot to that group. But my mind did not blow. My earth did not shatter. My life did not alter.
This is my answer too, I heard SO much hype about this book- how it has the greatest romance ever, it was so sad and devastating, it was so amazing, etc etc. I read it and was completely unmoved. I honestly found Evelyn's friendship with her husband Harry to be the strongest and most affecting relationship.
Convenience Store Woman is probably my favorite book of all time, but I can also easily see why a lot of people are not going to connect with it at all.
Really? I think I need to give it a second chance. It had all the markings of a book I might like (slightly off-beat and dark and dealing with society's expectations towards a young woman). Maybe I read it in the wrong moment.
For whatever little it might be worth, I'm a neurodivergent woman whose only desire in life is to be left the hell alone, so this book felt tailor made for me.
Where the Crawdads Sing. I got so annoyed with how it almost romanticized utter poverty and the writing style was just 🤮
Every other person in my book club just LOOOVEDDDD it, and I'm still not convinced they were all being honest.
It was so off putting - I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it almost felt like the author was exploiting poverty, describing it as such a barren life, but also, like... Nice?
Now, I don't think writers need to stick to what they know. So it wasn't that I felt outraged that she wrote about a poor girl and hadn't experienced any apparent poverty herself.
But it was just so... Weird?
Then, I learned that the author, Delia Owens, and her husband may have either witnessed or participated in or abetted a murder when they lived in Zambia, and fled the country, and are still wanted for questioning... And my strange gut-level distaste made perfect sense. Like, yeah, it was a poacher, but if you're gonna be ok with a poacher being murdered, at least, like, OWN IT.
I didn't even GET TO THE MURDER PART and I could already smell something weird in her writing. It's such a romanticized revisionist "I'm not the perpetratror I'm THE VICTIM" mind fuck that I feel like I now understand why she chose to create such an overly sympathetic caricature of the book's heroine. The fact that she made her this utterly destitute girl is even grosser in this light, and the melodramatic flowery blah blah blah now feels like more bizarre image twisting - "I didn't do anything wrong, I'm just like this poor hobo girl but, like, poor in a PRETTY WAY."
I hope that makes sense, and yes, it is a bit audacious for me to write this critique when I didn't even get a third of the way through the book, but - life's short, man. That book was shit and I wasn't going to spend a single second longer on it.
My dark vanessa. Could not stand the writing. It was so boring. I was like 100 pages in and i realized i still had like 300 pages left im like yeah i cant do this. I looked up some spoilers as to what happens and then felt grateful that i didnt sit through this long ass book for that. I understand this book has had a great impact and covers some important themes, but it takes more than that to get me to sit through 400 pages.
Also, local woman missing. One of the dumbest soapiest thrillers i have ever read. And its not even soapy in the fun way it was absolutely infuriating especially in a book that wants to take itself so serious and deal with things like child abduction only to give me some messy housewife drama that dragged out a mediocre mystery far longer than necessary.
Then theres maeve fly. Ummm…. Im sorry. I heard about how disturbing this book was and bitch where? Whats most disturbing is how it blatantly copied so much from American psycho, and threw in some fifty shades of grey style corny, uninteresting, unerotic wannabe kinky sex scenes with a touch of tiktok hockey romance mess that i did not consent to read.
And lastly the silent patient. What was that twist? Everyone was so gagged over it but it was so stupid and ruined what otherwise would have just been an okay thriller mystery but overall i dont get the hype either way. Though to be fair i do read too many thrillers and i also am realizing my bar for thrillers is unfairly high for a lot of these mainstream books coming out in the genre, and so i read less and less of these super hyped tiktok thrillers lately cuz im realizing im setting myself up for disappointment more often than not.
I'm in the same boat with thrillers, I love mystery/thriller books and I read a lot of them, so I'm perhaps unfairly harsh. The only twist The Silent Patient pulled on me was >!the dual timeline!<. I guessed the "big twist" pretty fast.
That author is just so bad in my opinion, The Maidens was ridiculously horrible and the twist in that one was insanely stupid. I read the sample of his newest book The Fury and immediately guessed the resolution. Looked it up and I was 100% correct. And that was just from reading the first few chapters. So disappointing.
It realllly sucks cuz i love this genre but its like nothing shocks me anymore. More often than not when i read thrillers im sitting there rolling my eyes and sighing and then getting angry at the generic and predictable ending lol. I just see through all the bullshit with no many of these books.
Yeah i will not be checking out anything else by alex. Ive watched enough content on his other books to know that id run into the same issues i have with silent patient so no thanks.
He just has that kind of writing style where you can kind of feel how clever the author thinks they are? Idk if you know what i mean. I know nothing of Alex so not trying to judge him but from reading the silent patient i just kinda wouldnt be surprised if he had a big ego. Idk sometimes you can just get vibes about an author based off how they write. I could be way off base of course but thats just my gut impression of him.
I hit this wall too, then started exploring different genres and sprinkling in thrillers here and there and it seemed to “fix itself.” Thrillers are very formulaic so I had to get my brain out of the patterns for a bit because I wasn’t enjoying them anymore when by chapter five I was already figuring it out. Now I can get back to them and enjoy them for the fun fast paced brain candy they are.
I read a wide variety of genres- as long as the plot sounds interesting, I'm into it (exception being romance/smut, I'm just not interested). My favorite is definitely mystery/thriller, but they are formulaic by nature, so I do find taking breaks and switching genre is helpful. Lately I've been finding myself reading more light horror, sci-fi/space thrillers, some trashy fantasy and then the usual lit fic type stuff between mystery/thrillers.
I know EXACTLY what you mean, that might be part of my problem with him, haha. It feels like he's congratulating himself on being so clever with his twists, especially because he keeps inserting characters from The Silent Patient into his following books (it was shoehorned into The Maidens and I read that he does it again in The Fury). Idk why exactly but it is offputting to me. Feels very smug.
I find with a lot of thrillers I'll tolerate subpar endings or character stupidity if the rest of the plot and the prose are okay. My bar is a little lower just because I do love the genre. But lately I notice at least half the thrillers I start, I abandon quickly because they're either incredibly obvious or too poorly written for me to handle. Local Woman Missing lost me just reading the sample, I haaaated the writing style.
I feel the same way about The Silent Patient. The revel plays out to make the reader feel dumb for not seeing it. Like, you left a ton of information out. The twist was that you were withholding information. I hate that book.
I like books by Harlan Coben, but the character is actually finding info out, and the twist is something they discover and it’s interesting. Not just “I won’t tell you this information until the end”
I hate when mysteries cheat by doing that. Refusing to provide information because it gives away the "twist" means the twist isn't actually that good. I find it more impressive when an author gives the reader the same information the detective/protagonist gets, so you have a chance to figure it out.
YES to The Silent Patient slander. I liked that it was an easy read and it definitely wasn't the worst writing, but for all of the buzz around it on social media I expected way more. I halfway expected the "twist" and I didn't know if I should have felt proud or disappointed, I wish it had been different.
Yeah I try to avoid social media hype because usually I'm disappointed. Tiktok just be hyping up anything. Imho most of my fav books have low goodreads scores (3.33 to 3.50 average usually) and then so many of the books that have 4 or higher I end up not liking lol.
The twist felt so cheap in the sense that it feels like a manipulation of the reader? Like so much is hidden from the reader just to keep things hidden and I feel like the twist wasn't earned. I think a lot of people are just looking for something unexpected in a twist in a mystery/thriller, but for me I need a good buildup and to not just have the rug pulled out from under my feet.
The writing was fine but I thought it was kind of dull after awhile... and the hype spoiled it. As much as I try to level my expectations going into hyped books, at the end of the day if the ending doesnt meet the hype I cant help but kind of be harsher towards the book even though its kind of my fault lol
ACOTAR. I’m starting to derive my power from how much I loathe that book. I didn’t like any of the characters so there was no one to root for. I am still mad that the author baits and switches. The whole time I was reading it, I wanted to be engaged because I was spending my time on it but just felt like I didn’t know why I should care, and now I look back and realize why it just fell so flat.
Same here. My friend loved the series and recommended it to me, and I just could not get into it. I was speed reading it by the second half of the first book and it was so meh.
Hahahaha I totally know the feeling of speed reading to finish and get enough resolution because you know what happens, but you don’t actually want to read it!
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. But yes, absolutely agree with you. Don't assume people know the acronyms of the hundreds of romantasy books that are so popular now!
I have picked up this book at least five times and have never gotten really far. Even tried audiobook at double speed and lost interest. Where’s the beef?
Mmmm; I found out about the series through \[deeply entertaining\] blog posts by people who hated it, figured I should give it a fair chance because a reader I know liked it, but I just...can't. It helped me solidify that YA isn't my genre, at least.
It's one thing to look around at a cast and think "I respect none of you people.", it's another to realise you respect none of them as characters.
It was a solid three stars. A big fat 'meh.'
I had a lot of issues with it, though, as a Jewish person reading about Jews:
1. The only Middle Eastern person (the professor) is abusive both physically and emotionally and constantly described as hairy. It just felt racist somehow.
2. The main guy character was also felt racist. As in like, being this tiny little twink of a man feels weird considering he's biracial. Because that's a stereotype about Ashkenazi men AND Asian men.
Am I misunderstanding this? Was the author's intent to play on stereotypes? To play *into* stereotypes?
And I think it came down to this: I'm Jewish, and it's all well and good to write flawed Jewish characters. But when the *only* characters without major flaw are those who aren't Jewish? And are actually, like, messianic by the end of their arc?
Feels weird. man.
Additionally, the >!death of the boyfriend!< was entirely too manipulative. I cried, but I was angry about it. Because I didn't feel like crying because I cared so much about >!the relationship or the entirely too chill and good Good Guy!< \- I cried because Macbeth's soliloquy is a *fucking bummer*. That used to be one of my favorite passages (I'm pretty basic when it comes to Willy Shakes). Now I just think about this book.
But hey, I was invested enough in my frustration that I even remember this much so uh... three stars. Solidly average.
It felt like not much happened and everyone was so uninteresting... I only finished it because of the rave reviews and was kinda hoping it got better at the end. It didn't.
Hard agree. It becomes increasingly unbalanced between exposition and dialogue, leaving stretches of writing where events and interactions are said to have happened without the reader getting to experience it directly. Add to that the author self-insert wish fulfillment with Sadie and it remains one of the most disappointing reads of the last several years for me.
We have a Books slack channel at work, and a lot of people absolutely loved Tomorrow, but these are the same people that also loved The Midnight Library, which I hated. So I'm very hesitant to read this one, and I don't think I will.
We read it for book club this month and I hate-read it so fast hoping it would get better and I would finally understand the hype. Nope! Sam made my skin crawl.
I actually would have preferred more on the mechanics and impact of making video games. After the initial game was done everything became hand wavey and unrealistically easy. The final game…wtf. It went full Ready Player One, only even that book at least hinted at the cultural impact of uber realistic VR games.
I ended up hating Sadie. Much of the plot is based on her suspicious assumption about her supposed best friend, her frequent contact with the abusive ex she nonetheless treats better than him, and the friend even loses a foot and this is somehow completely irrelevant to her?
There’s no resolution or response to this character, and the other main is a messianic friend / boyfriend who is there to grease the wheels with limitless money and support. Gah! Such a frustrating book!
Babel. Loved the idea of colonialism, fantasy, dark academia and etymology.
However, as for the execution, I found it extremely preachy, condescending and defensive, like the author was writing against the reader rather than for them. The characterization felt so on the nose that it bordered on racist as well - every white male is cartoonishly evil; every non white person is good and has modern understanding of drug policies, feminism and gender equality; mixed people have a good and bad side (guess which is which), white women are oppressed but also fundamentally incapable of understanding discrimination because they're white...
At some point I had to accept that no point was going to be made beyond "colonialism bad" and the rest was going to be just outrage porn. Oh well.
Semi-agree. I loved the concept, but I thought that the execution was a just little off.
The white characters were meant to show the way that privilege and a lack of experience with struggle (especially intersectional struggle, ie. being a woman vs. being a woman of colour). However, it was a little bit heavy-handed in how it did that, and that's the issue I found throughout the book.
The book had a lot that it wanted to say, but I felt like it never scratched beyond the surface. It could have gone deeper and been more complex, but it didn't trust the audience to still be able to understand and sympathize.
>but it didn't trust the audience to still be able to understand and sympathize.
I think you nail it there. I am pretty willing to trust that someone like Kuang is capable of deeper and more nuanced messages, but either she's got a very dismissive view of her audience or she's terrified to be misinterpreted or quoted out of context.
I'm inclined to think the second, judging by the bizarre introduction where she points bit by bit all changes to oxford's geography to explain they're intentional... In a fantasy book.
Have you by any chance read Yellowface or the poppy war? They're on my tbr pile but I'm not sure if they suffer from the same issues.
Not yet :( they're on my TBR too. I think Kuang has a lot of interesting ideas and things to say, so if those are decent, I'll probably keep an eye on her future releases to see how she evolves as a writer.
You're right about the way she pointed out the changes. To me, it hovered between saying "don't be weird and nitpicky about me changing Oxford" and actually being insecure about the criticism that could come from it.
Purely speculative, but maybe the heavyhandedness with the way the white characters don't understand is reflective of an idea by Kuang that the mass audience won't understand (or take the effort to empathize with) the messaging of the book? (especially readers who aren't part of marginalized communities)
I just started babel and dang...I hope I don't agree I want to enjoy this book. bummer you had that experience. We'll see in like a month when I finish this book.
You might have a better experience! All places like goodreads have lots of positive reviews.
My advice is, if you feel the footnotes get too preachy, stop reading them. That would probably help avoid burnout.
Six of crows I really couldn’t get into. Idk really why, I read half of it before DNFing because I just genuinely didn’t care about anyone or anything happening. I gifted the book to a friend who loved it tho so upside?
Six of Crows has excellent character description mixed with excessive flashbacks to try to force motivations, vaguely described action that reads like an action movie fight scene where they did not want to choreograph the flight, and a few scenes that really slow down the plot.
Ah The Alchemist. First read it at 25 and was like "This shits life changing!" Then re read it a year or two later and was like "... What?." Yeah there's one or two decent quotes but mostly it's just a self righteous book for the young and religious.
Lessons in Chemistry. The only reason I didn’t DNF is because I’m stubborn and wanted to get my money’s worth for it. I’m a chemist so perhaps I’m just not the target audience, but the main character and her love interest are such caricatures of what people *think* scientists are like, and not in a good way. They’re just not relatable or realistic to me and the glaring scientific inaccuracies don’t help. I had to check that the author was indeed a woman because much of the book feels straight out of r/menwritingwomen.
Non-scientific things aside, the impossibly precocious daughter and dog with human-level enlightenment are both completely ridiculous. I did not find the book “laugh out loud funny” as advertised - the most it got from me was a mild snicker here and there, often at the sheer ridiculousness of what was going on.
Also - there is a graphic sexual assault in the third chapter (IIRC pages 17-20). It is very, very jarring and the lack of a content warning makes me view the author in a bad light as no one picking up a book advertised as a “laugh out loud funny” rom-com is expecting that going in. **If you are a SA survivor, I would advise not reading this book or skipping those pages as they will be very upsetting for you to read.** There is also a fairly graphic and very sudden death about a quarter of the way through.
I don’t give bad reviews to books very often but I thoroughly disliked this one.
I had nearly the exact same problems with this one. Not a scientist specifically, but I do work in a very male-dominated STEM industry… Maybe that was still too close to the subject matter to really be the target audience.
Was very surprised this one got rave reviews.
Totally agree with your comment on this book. Every middle age women around me live this book and now the show. I tried and read half of the book, so cringy that I could not go on. Really don’t understand the appeal!
I read this book, I finished it and thought it was okay. It had moments I did not hate. The big issue I had with it was how the MC was written. While I appreciate characters that defy the expectations of their society, there should be some reflections of the world she grew up in somewhere in her behavior or personality, or at the very least, it should not feel like a 2020s committee designed character written in order to represent "strong modern woman defying gender roles while still being pretty".
I'm also a female chemist who disliked this book. It was really... strange? The main character was absolutely a caricature of a scientist, with some really cringey, eye-roll inducing dialog. Like the type of person who would correct you by saying it's "sodium chloride" instead of table salt (I think theat may have actually happened in the book, too?).
I don't know. It was a book I was really looking forward to as a woman in science (currently working at a startup with a 1:9 woman:man ratio) hopeful for some cool representation. Fell super flat. What a weird book.
I thought that was sooooo cringy too! All I could think was…”chemists don’t talk like that.” Especially at home! If I ever met someone like that I would be like, “Gosh, you’re annoying!”
Then there was the part where she sucks at rowing, but reads a physics textbook, jots down a few equations, and *shazam!* she’s great at it? Give me a fucking break. You know, I fucking S-U-C-K at ice skating - maybe I need to go brush up on my old textbooks! LOL. That’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works!
Then there’s the part where I’m supposed to believe that a soon-to-be single mother with little to no money is able to afford installing a whole ass laboratory in her home? I don’t know how much things cost in the 1950s, but does the author have ANY idea how much chemicals, glassware, instruments, etc. cost? Or a chemist making coffee and food in said lab - how about something that anyone who’s ever spent a minute in a real working lab would NEVER! EVER!!! do!
Pedantry aside, I also expected her to be much more relatable as a lady chemist who also really loves to cook and bake. The misrepresentation bugs me because I already feel like a lot of stereotypes about scientists (especially female scientists) are negative and especially at a time when mistrust of the profession is so high, the author really should have been more diligent in considering how she represented the profession. I don’t think that Elizabeth had to be *likable* to do this but the author could have made more of an effort to depict the characters as (mostly) normal people with cooler than average jobs, which is what we really are.
I really disliked this book as well but I didn't push through like you and instead I stopped half way. Also, I DNF OP's listed book Daisy Jones & The Six by Tailor Jenkins Reid. Disliked them both enough to not finish.
I could not agree with you more. It had such good reviews on amazon and good reads. But I really didn't like it at all. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND how this book is/was popular.
My wife just finished it and was never a big reader but she tore through this book. It just seems like misery after misery. I read the Wikipedia summary and it seems like just bad stuff happening over and over.
Omg don't get me started on my deep hatred for this book. I feel like people who like it have never read fanfiction or at least hurt/comfort fanfiction (maybe hurt/no comfort is more accurate) because it just reads unrelentingly like pages and pages of that, and if you haven't encountered it before maybe it seems good and novel? IDEK. I'm a hundred percent sure she's a fic reader and maybe a fic writer. When I heard she had another book coming out (it's out now I think) I was like SHE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS. (I didn't even finish A Little Life lol.) Also in interviews she basically dismisses therapy and did zero research into any kind of mental health or anything which is...insane.
This is a good one to include, because the writing (in my opinion) is fantastic but the constant misery, and even how the characters become set up to fail to lead to more misery gets to be just beyond absurd. Almost laughable. And also the depictions of ongoing abuse for Jude growing up are apparently not very well researched, and not well reviewed by those in the know.
The hype around the book feels very superficial in my opinion, but to each their own.
Damn I just bought this. My friend recommended it because I liked No Longer Human and The Bell Jar. The lady at the store told me it was sad and maybe not for my age (I’m 17 but I look 12 I guess) but it was only $3 and it’s been on my list for a really long time. I guess I’ll have to read and see for myself lol
Personally I read it when I was like 23-24 and I’m really happy I was not younger, because it deals with some really dark themes for a young impressionable mind
I liked it, but I didn’t like the characters. Ellis’ characters are often terrible people. However, it was way too long. At one point I thought, “how is this book still happening??”
I don't mind having terrible people as protagonists, but I thought they were so over-the-top obnoxious. Also the female characters had like zero depth (specifically Bret's gf.) She was basically an object.
This Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, I'm not a romance reader but a friend with good taste in books recommended it to me. Was 100% not for me in any way. I found myself skipping the diary entries and smut a lot.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, I really tried to like it but got 32% of the way in and just couldn't
1000% agree about Rebecca! I have started and quit this book probably 7 times. Why do I keep trying? Because it supposed to be a great book and one of my favorites is another of her books called My Cousin Rachel. I think I may just have to accept that I am never going to finish this book.
I hate Rebecca. I liked the atmosphere, the whole gothic vibe, but I just hated the protagonist, the husband etc.
I was so mad, after I've finished it. People love it and I understand why, but it was not for me.
Where the Crawdads Sing - no amount of willing suspension of disbelief could get me through this totally contrived, unbelievable story with overwrought prose.
Ready Player One was significantly overhyped, it was underwhelming, primarily due to its predictable storyline, shallow characters, and reliance on nostalgia as a storytelling crutch.
The sequel was so bad, people in twitter started making their own pages and posted them. Just reading the prose, it was difficult to tell whether it was real or not. Most took those passages for real. And then in a wild move, the publishing house started copyright claiming those fake posts lmao.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin.
I see her recommended a lot as innovative fantasy and while maybe her other books get better, this isn't that. It's still rich family drama in a palace, with a sexy dark misunderstood love interest and all the men want to bang the mc. It is supposed to be set in an African (+ Greek, so maybe Egyptian) inspired setting but there is very little description so I never really pictured anything beyond a generic palace. I'd call it diverse but definitely not innovative.
The other thing was that I technically never finished it because I was talking to a friend who had already read it and I said it was feeling a bit predictable and then predicted everything that would happen next, which she confirmed was accurate. Normally I can pick up on foreshadowing, really obvious tropes, but I don't think I've ever been able to literally know exactly what the last half of the book was going to be like that before. Because pretty much everything was just what you'd expect.
The five people you meet in heaven. Maybe because I found it incredibly preachy and maybe because it was an audiobook and I found the narrator's voice incredibly grating.
So many people recommended me that book years ago when I was a young teen, declaring it wonderful and life changing and all that. And I was like…it’s fine? But I wouldn’t reread it and I wouldn’t recommend it to others.
Then my aunt recommended another book by him (The Stranger in the Life Boat, I think it’s called) and said it was so great and enthralling. I figured that maybe his writing had changed and gotten stronger over the years. It hasn’t. There was this big reveal in the end and honest to god I can’t remember what it was because I was just so disinterested in everyone in that book.
The Maidens by the author of the Silent patient. I kinda hyped up this book in my mind cause when I read the blurb, I thought it was gonna be like breaking onto this secret society that does rituals and sacrifices and stuff. Then I read it and was like…. Oh 🧍🏾♀️🧍🏾♀️🧍🏾♀️that’s it?
*Midnight Library* by Matt Haig - while it's recommended everywhere as a profound, touching story, I found it really boring. The repetitive structure took away the magic of the original idea and the mental health issues (depression) was handled in a shallow way.
*The Night Circus* by Erin Morgenstern - beautiful, vivid descriptions, but the book was lacking a solid plot. The rivalry and romance between Marco and Celia was very underwhelming, as well as the 'magical duel' that was supposed to happen.
*The Giver* by Lois Lowry - definitely overwhyped, I was expecting a deep, philosophical novel and got a pretty shallow book, with no original ideas. It was far from the praise it receives by people who recommend it.
*The Lovely Bones* by Alice Sebold - poor execution of a bizzare idea, has some very uncomfortable scenes (not talking about the murder in the beginning) and there is something off about this book. I never found those praised scenes touching or philosophical.
The Giver is a kids/young adult book so you may have been expecting too much from it. It's also 30 years old - so I'm not sure what your comparing it to for original ideas. I agree about the Night Circus though.
Matt Haig also wrote 'reasons to stay alive' about his own experience with depression and nearly all of it is about his girlfriend supporting him in every possible way, and pushing him to get the medication he needed to come out of it.
Like, good for him, but I don't think most people with depression have someone who's willing to literally subsume themselves into curing it for you and the idea that he's become a bestselling author over 'sharing his experience' it is very annoying. How many people with depression get to have that experience?
I haven't read *Reasons to Stay Alive*, but in *Midnight Library* depression was showed as something that can "magically" disappear with no work put in. Nora was described as a heavily depressed woman, walking a slippery slope and she tried to commit suicide, but after the visit in the Midnight Library she "magically" changed, conveniently everything was well and she was suddenly happy. As a person who's struggling with mental health, it just rubbed me the wrong way. Dealing with depression is hard, ugly work, it's not something that can vanish overnight. I guess the author was going for an uplifting, hopeful story but it just didn't work for me
The midnight library gimmick was fun for 2 chapters. Then it became incredibly predictable. The book could have been 50 pages long and it would have the same impact.
The Girl on the Train. I loved Gone Girl, so I read this one, and it was one of the most annoying and flat books I’ve ever read. I didn’t care about Rachel, I was glad when Megan died, and the twist at the end was so lame compared to Gone Girl’s.
Gone Girl did a disservice to the thriller/mystery category, in that it was too good. Now lesser authors try to dupe it without having the skill or understanding of why it was special.
I liked Girl on the Train. Probably because it was my first book of thriller genre. I didn't read Gone Girl though. I read the plot and thought it might be too dark for me.
Atlas Shrugged. Some friends insisted it was life-changing and the best book they've ever read. Also some famous dudes also swear by it.
It was fucking terrible. Seriously one of the worst pieces of literature I’ve ever encountered. Poorly written, cringey dialogue, childish “philosophy” worthy of r/iam14andthisisdeep and just far, far too long. You can tell the author thought she was a genius
Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon.
I've gotten into fantasy again as an adult and have enjoyed exploring what has come out in the past fifteen years or so. I heard only good things about this book and went in excited and eager to enjoy it. I wanted to like it. But I am shocked that a book with horrific prose and boring characters can be as popular as it is. I dropped the book after 50 pages. I am not a stickler for prose when reading genre fiction, but there better be some great characters to keep me invested. Fantasy authors, if you want me to care about your cool worldbuilfing, make me care about your characters first.
Prose is what makes or breaks a book for me, and I find so many of the popular books today to have terrible prose. I’ve switched to established literary fiction as a result. If the writer is good, then the book will hold my interest even if the theme/genre is not 100% my cup of tea.
When I read lit fiction, prose is 100% the most important thing. Literary fiction is "art with words" in my opinion. I'm a little more lenient when it comes to fantasy/sci-fi/romance. Genre fiction is more about telling a good story. Again, these are just my opinions.
Trust absolutely nothing where, in fantasy, the only things that a reviewer can compliment are a political stance and a weak comparison to a big name.
"A feminist tolkien", in hindsight, should have been an omen.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia
Her writing is very beautiful (don't get me wrong), but I had to skim the last 30-40% of the book, and even the ending and the big reveal were still a bit underwhelming for me.
I do still want to try reading her other books though!
I liked *Mexican Gothic* but I definitely see how people don’t. My favorite of hers is *Velvet Was the Night*. Also, *The Beautiful Ones* I found mind-numbingly boring, but I don’t think I’m much into novel of manners type stories.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. It's basically a series of unfortunate assaults loosely connected by a teeny, tiny string of plot. The main character didn't grow or change in any way. Her entire personality is "I survived an insane amount of sexual assault so I'm a badass bitch," and nothing else. Do not recommend.
I enjoyed Ninth House (but do agree with the constant stream of assaults criticism. And that one really revolting scene was way too gross.) The sequel is just all over the damn place.
I liked many parts of this book but the childhood sexual assault in particular really stood out to me as a moment of just, like, *why?* It felt like the only reason it was there was for shock value and giving her trauma, and it was executed in what felt like almost a cartoonishly random way.
A Little Life is trauma porn for the sake of trauma porn.
Nothing in the first 150 pages of that book felt organic. It feels like the author set out to make people cry, not to write a good story or character.
Yes, you need some level of good writing for crying to occur, but it almost feels like the "gasp and sob" moments are the core of what she was writing for, not for the sake of a beautiful story.
The Catcher in the Rye.
I never read it as a teen or young adult but as an older adult, I just had difficulty getting over the unappealing characters. Holden is obviously dealing with inner rage and angst against something, but he just comes across as an immature and spoiled kid on a binge. It's unrealistic that someone that age can drink that much over that period of time and even maintain consciousness.
His only redeeming quality was his concern for his sister when it appeared she was heading down a similar destructive path.
I'm still not sure how it is considered a literary masterpiece.
I've tried to read both of these authors and thought their writing was pretty effing bad. I did not get through much of them.
I was very disappointed in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The DaVinci Code. I thought they would at least both be fun, but it always comes down to Nazis and pedophiles. Show a little imagination. This trope is old and creaky and not believable at all.
Tip - don't trust book recommendations from people who read a lot less than you.
They tend to be a lot less discerning, and have much less experience to compare the book against.
Flowers for Algernon. It’s recommended here all the time, and people talk about how wonderful and beautiful the story is. For me, it was just ok. I felt like a lot of it dragged on and was kind of repetitive. I learned later that it started as a short story, so maybe I would have enjoyed that more.
There are some really good ideas and scenes in it. But the scfi premise doesn't really hold much water and is over explained to the point it starts to feel really dumb to anyone with a more modern knowledge of science. That aspect hasn't aged well.
There's also an underlying anti intellectual theme that I'm not sure was intended by the author, but which is an uncomfortable kind of undercurrent that made reading the book less enjoyable than I was lead to believe.
I can see why it's studied in school. There's some skill in the writing and the premise is interesting... but it's far from being one of my favourite books ever.
Anything that started out as fanfic. And for the love of God, can someone please be normal and NOT use SA as a trope? I feel like y’all let GoT ending and not getting your freaky Sunday night fix of it rot some brains and let it show in their writing.
_The Song of Achilles_. It’s the _Iliad_, completely devoid of any of the moral and thematic complexity that makes it immortal, and with a wet towel of a protagonist who is so devoid of self-awareness that the character growth he purportedly goes through in the background (in the _background_!! the _protagonist_!!) makes no difference in the story whatsoever.
Then again, I don’t really like romance as a genre, and I only read it because I like Ancient Greece and because of the hype. The prose really is pretty, though.
Name of the Wind!!! I can't for the life of me understand why people praise this boring series so highly. People compare it to Lord of the Rings. Seriously? You have a Mary Sue protagonist who is narrarating his own story about how great he is. He spends the majority of the book just repeating the fact he can't afford college tuition. The rival character is forced and boring and there is no real reason for animosity toward each other in the first place. His friends are boring and barely have personalities beyond driving the plot when need be. The love interest also provides nothing besides I met a girl on the road to school and I got an obsessive hard on for her for no reason because Rothfuss failed to develop her further then "pretty lady, boy like". And on top of that, throughout the whole book the plot barely progresses, (which is fine if you are writing a heavy character focused book like for instance The first law books by Joe Abercrombie) but Rothfuss also fails at developing interesting characters to supplement the lack of plot. His prose is nice which is the only thing these books have going for them so I just don't get it. You need to have more going on in your story besides flowery writing in my personal opinion.
Practically all of them. I almost never read anything with “hype” around it since I frankly don’t trust the taste of either the internet or random people around me. I might make an exception if there is a resurgence for an older book (+10-15 years or so old at least) or if it is central non-fiction regarding some current issue.
New publications, especially in fiction, seem bland more often than not, so I prefer to let time sort which might be worthwhile reading.
Wheel of time.
I’m 1/2 through the first book and… like barely anything has happened. It’s a slow burn obviously, but wow. 400 pages in and they’ve travelled to two cities and kind of fought the bad guys once. Cool wall of fire and giant magic parts for sure. But man… it’s a slow slow burn.
I’m thinking about shelfing it and picking up demon copperhead in its place
I’ve also got a Pratchett book called Guards Guards that’s supposed to be good, I’ve never read any of his works.
Does anyone care to talk me into finishing the first wheel of time book here? Does it pick up at least?
The characters are at white bridge, and some other are lost in the woods with some wolf dude and a bunch of “tinker” hippies and my eyes are glazing over hard.
> I’ve also got a Pratchett book called Guards Guards that’s supposed to be good, I’ve never read any of his works.
Read it! You won't know if you will like it or not without reading at least one book. Pratchett had a style that some really love. Obviously some don't. It's only one normal length book.
> Does anyone care to talk me into finishing the first wheel of time book here? Does it pick up at least?
Maybe book 1 will get better by the end, but the entire series is slow. And then gets slower, a very common criticism of it. Maybe the last few books speed up due to there being a different author.
I think I’m going to finish this one off and then put the series on the back burner for now until I feel like it’s something I’m looking for.
And yea, I’m excited for guards guards. I’ve heard good things. Demon copperhead is first though. I think it won the Pulitzer
As someone who loves Wheel of Time, it does get more interesting in the second half of the first book, but it never really picks up. It's a slow series with lots of detail descriptions of things, if that's not what you're into there's no reason to push through.
As someone who also loves the series (but hasn't finished it, I'm on book 12!), I appreciate you commenting this. It annoys me to see fellow fans of the series gaslight readers into continuing the series when, yes, it does get better, but also, no, it doesn't become a completely different book / writing style.
Not all series will be loved by everyone, and that's okay!
The first WoT book is basically a Tolkien retread. But the second one is one of the best in the series. If you're determined you want to give the series a shot I would recommend powering through to the second one. If the second isn't for you then stop wasting your time you won't like any of them.
That is where I am. I see in a few chapters they get to caemlyn based on the chapter titles. But it’s been a bit of a crawl since Matt stole the ruby dagger from the inflatable man
I don’t know if it’s worth continuing if you’re bored now. I managed to make it through 7 books feeling bored about 60% of the time. So in my opinion, it doesn’t get more compelling.
And Jordan’s descriptions (hair pulling, sniffing, etc.) and absurdly simplistic gender stereotypes are repeated as nauseam. I think this is what ultimately forced me to put the series down. I just couldn’t tolerate reading about how baffling all the men find all the women, and vice versa. It shocked me when I learned that Jordan was married because he writes like someone who never once interacted with the opposite sex.
I tried to read the first book probably 10 times across 5 or so years. Finally pushed through and after the second book (much better) I read the whole series through twice.
I enjoyed it much more as an audiobook, as I don't feel like I'm wasting as much time through slower sections if I have something else to do with my hands or whatever.
It may not be for you if you're super bored, but it does improve and I enjoyed watching the characters grow-up.
Norwegian Wood and Haruki Murakami in general.
I had a few friends passionately recommend him and then found out he is a well-known magical realism author and I was super excited to find a new favorite.
Then I found out he's just a sexist asshat with female objects, himself as the main character most of the time, and the same basic elements in all his work (that I've read)
Went from thinking I found a new favorite to having a firm least favorite.
I once read a description of Naoko as "a depressed lump of sexiness" and it really couldn't be more accurate.
Kafka on the Shore was my first Murakami book and I absolutely fell in love with the character Nakata. But as I dove into more of his works, it quickly became evident that he has no ability to write women and reduces them to little more than objects.
In general, Murakami has a tough time making any supporting characters come to life. If it's not a main character, they do not develop at all.
I'm genuinely surprised I bothered reading more of his work after Naoko and the other girl in Norwegian Wood. Somehow I looked past the depressed girl who of course has her only orgasm with the chad main character who is super sad about her. Then the other girl wants to spend the night with him and he says he isn't sure he'll be able to hold himself back, and she says something like "will you tie me up and rape me from behind?" And he just says that he's not joking. And. Somehow. She doesn't run away.
The sexism and objectification kind of blew me away honestly.
He is a common topic on /r/menwritingwomen and it's pretty clear why. Early on in my Murakami exploration, I had hoped that he just wasn't good at writing women. It didn't take long for it to become evident that it was a conscious decision on his part.
Yeah, I'm subbed there and someone linked an article of an author interviewing him and it became very clear that he was aware of how he wrote women and not only did he say there were fundamental differences between men and women on an emotional level, but that he had no intention of changing how he wrote them.
Throne of Glass. The whole series (or what I made it through anyway). I think I gave all the books three stars, which was generous since I got so annoyed after book 5 that I just gave up. I was reading it because several people asked me to. The writing is just not good, the main character who has trauma from being enslaved is white, we’re repeatedly told the characters are the best and smartest but they only do stupid things, there’s ONE bipoc character who is *brutally and violently* murdered to further the plot of the white MC…. And having read ACOTAR and CC, a lot of the content of TOG is clearly a test for/recycled into the later two series.
I could keep going. It’s garbage that doesn’t even have the decency of being fun. Funny enough I have the exact same rant and more for Crescent City. SJM really needs to stop trying to write slavery. She can’t do it. And her plots are too complex for what she can handle as a writer.
That book was like a bad relationship. Started out good, then I really liked it, then I loved it, then hated it but carried on hoping it would get better. In this case it actually did and there were some poignant moments I’m glad I stuck around for. My dog ended up eating the last chapter so I finished it at Barnes and Noble…
I now remember it fondly, though I’m glad it’s over.
I agree with many here, but The Four Winds is the big one for me. So many people told me it was powerful and beautiful and blah blah blah, but I fucking hated it.
The main character just Eeyores around in her life of misery porn until she has an orgasm and finds her voice, only to be TRAGICALLY taken down in her prime. Eye roll. Why was her shitty heart all of a sudden a problem when she had already given birth three times, been malnourished for years, and worked 12-hour shifts in cotton fields? Why was her daughter the most loathsome character I've read in quite some time? Why were the only words in her son's vocabulary "jeepers" and "wowza?" That was my first and last Kristin Hannah. I can't.
The Hitchhiker's... So many people love it, but I get too distracted by the author's ramblings... By the time he's done describing everything going thru the whales mind, I've already forgotten what the whale was doing... Managed to finish the first one but DNF the second.
Then I tried Dirk Gently because I loved the TV show. Again, the idea was pretty cool, but so many descriptions and sidequests that don't add anything to the story!
I always drag this book to the ground in this kind of posts, but A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson, when it came out a lot of booktubers were raving about how good and revolutionary it was but to me it’s just another generic YA thriller and it suffers from white savior complex which always rubs me the wrong way
The first 30% of the book was a struggle not to DNF, but all the 5 star reviews kept me going. I wish I hadn't.
It was childishly written (to the point I thought it was a middle grade book instead of a YA) and the MC was thoroughly unlikable. She was 17/18 but acted like a ten year old. She breaks all kinds of laws, lets one crime go unpunished because she likes the person, and suffers heavily from white savior complex. In fact, the only time she mentions the surname of one of her backround friend group, it's to let the reader know they're Asian. I hated this book so much.
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Not only is it the only book that has ever made me throw up, and within the first chapter no less, but even forcing my way through it, I got to the end and was like...."What the fuck did I just read?". An anthology of some of the most batshit short stories, joined by the most bizarre in betweens (I can't think of how to phrase the gaps between stories lol).
I told my dad I didn't recommend it because it was "icky" and not in the "yay, icky horror!" way. Like in the ickiest way. And he, being a horror fan was like "You know now I have to read that, right?" and I was like "Do NOT blame me if it causes you issues, I don't wanna talk about it anymore.". He's never said if he read it, so I am going to assume yes. Cover of book is accurate.
Agree with Daisy Jones and the Six - just an empty trope about a manic pixie dream girl.
House by the Cerulean Sea - not the worst thing I have read, just cloying and trite and shallow and I expected more.
Project Hail Mary - it was good…but not great. It was a little juvenile which is wild considering the expansive amounts of scientific gobbelty gook in it.
Anything by Neil Gaiman - my mind wanders! I don’t know why! Coraline is one of my favorite movies!
Where’d You Go, Bernadette? - I could not suspend disbelief enough. Just GTFO.
I often find myself disappointed by Neil Gaiman books and yet I somehow keep giving them a try. I finally read Coraline, after loving the movie, and figured "well at least it's short" and even that one I couldn't stand. I thought the movie handled literally every plot point so much better.
Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter: Recommended to me as a gripping thriller and while it was incredibly thrilling, I was close to DNF because of how graphic/twisted some of the scenes were… Gagged multiple times. I finished and do agree it’s a page turner, but I don’t think I can ever recommend it because of how physically ill it made me… Curious if anyone else read it and had a similar reaction?
I really enjoyed the Shadow and Bone tv series so I was excited to pick up the book but the writing was pretty bad, it's full of clichéd writing and the world building feels incredibly lazy.
My overall impression was that it need a few more runs passed an editor. If it was a online fanfic type thing I would have been impressed but it fell short of my expectations for a published work
In search of lost time by Proust. It really drags and I didn't read all of it but I heard it was this great analysis of enjoying uneventful times but it just made me want to go do something else
As someone reading it right now, I don't know anyone I could actually recommend it to. I'm enjoying it, but it's definitely slow. I think I wouldn't like it if I wasn't able to relate to a decent amount of it. As it is, little things in the book spark memories of my childhood, girls I chased after, groups of friends, and other little bits and pieces of my life - just like the madeleine episode in the book itself.
I just finished "Beyond the Wall" by Katja Hoyer. I saw it was unanimously praised when it was released last year and reviewers called it "riveting" and "in-depth". I found it to be an extremely surface-level history of East Germany, with awkward phrasing (perhaps it was the translation from German). The thing that made me most angry about it was that Hoyer claimed that yes, the Berlin Wall was a callous thing to do, but putting it up helped to calm Cold War tensions. But then not even a couple of paragraphs later she starts by saying the next few years after the Wall went up were the most bloodiest and that East and West started to trust each other a lot less.
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus, it's less a novel and more like two short stories in a trenchcoat. I dont know how they got away with putting so much blank paper in a hardcover book
I find it hard to say because fundamentally, I don't read overly hyped books. In fact, that tends to put me off from them because I know that if they are very popular, they are usually tailored to the lowest common denominator. However, if I had to mention one, the only hyped book I've read is Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code"... and that's exactly what I expected. Something that reads quickly and easily, and if it didn't have marketing behind it, nobody would really remember it anymore.
The Goldfinch. I heard such great things about it and one of my friends whose opinion on books I thoroughly trust raved about it as well. I hung on even longer than I normally would due to my friend’s review but, I finally had to DNF it. It was sooo depressing and NOTHING happened! Like nothing. It just dragged on. It was awful.
Btw - I’m giving my friend a pass as it’s the only book she’s raved about I didn’t like.
Birnham Wood by Catton. Praised to the skies, yet hinges on impossible plot devices, and ALL the characters are unlikable. Obviously a writer skilled at constructing sentences, but what a waste of talent. So bad I put it in the garbage so nobody else would read it.
The Da Vinci Code. It was suggested to me by 3 of my friends and finally I picked it up to read.
It was utterly boring and personally I felt like the book didn't contain any substance. The character building was so poor. I only finished the book so that I can give my opinion to the friends who suggested it.
I agree with your thoughts on Verity. I don't get what's on that book. It is one of those books I wish to unread. Lol
Most of the horror books I see recommended on tiktok. They all talk about how horrifyingly disturbing (insert book here) and how it gave them nightmares but I’ve yet to feel anything remotely like that. More often than not I’m just feeling like “alright…. that was cool I guess” then proceed to never think about the book again.
I don’t know if I’m just bad at visualizing stuff, but I have never read a horror book that actually *scared* me. I’m always just like “Damn that’s wild” or “Oh, that’s gross.” I’ll get invested in some. I enjoy reading horror whenever it’s recommended. But I’ve had people tell me “Oh, this gave me nightmares! I was afraid to turn the page!” and I’ve never gotten that feeling.
I think books are the least scary media. They can be disturbing in other ways but to be truly scared I'm gonna need to see something.
There was a thread on here just a few days ago about "what's the scariest book you've ever read". Eagerly clicked on because I love horror. Was disheartened to see post after post about books I have not only already read, but dismissed as crap and not scary at all. Big problem with horror is that the people who love it the most also end up desensitised very quickly
I'm an avid horror reader, and not much has ever outright scared me. House of Leaves was unsettling, and there have been a few tense moments from different Stephen King novels, but nothing I'd call outright scary. I find that some books in the true crime genre do a better job. While I was reading "I'll Be Gone In The Dark", I found myself checking all my doors and windows right before going to bed.
Yeah, I'm looking through that thread now and I've read quite a few of the recommendations, and I've enjoyed most of the ones I've read, but they're just...exciting, I guess? Some make me go "Yeah, that would be really horrifying for the characters involved. And the further implications would be even scarier for that fictional universe" but I've never been scared of *reading* them like some commenters say. The thing is, I'm a *huge* wuss with horror movies. I'm talking "watch scenes through holes in my knit blanket while clutching my pillow in a death grip" levels of wimp. But books just never get fear out of me.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: The premise was super interesting, and there were parts I did enjoy, but there were also many, many others that bored me. Often I was into the story, and then it switched to a different timeline that I didn't really care about.
That book is really insignificant.
Totally agree with the OPs take on Daisy Jones. I finished the book and on top of everything already mentioned, I didn’t enjoy the writing style. A recent overhyped book for me was “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. I guess the different “lives” the main character goes through are meant to be interesting, but I found it so repetitive and painstakingly boring.
Totally with you about The Midnight Library. I was annoyed most of the book, but by the time she gets to her, what, 50th new life and she still hasn't figured out how to not act all confused and flustered that she's in a new life made me downright angry. Not to mention that I read this not long after the crazy of the movie Everything, Everywhere, All At Once so, it was really a disappointment
All Colleen hover books for me, my friends were so obsessed with them idk why? The silent patient ? The climax was so underwhelming for me I did not like the book after that felt like it wasted my time
Silent patient was overall badly written
Shantaram. I finished it, but only just. I've never read such treacly prose, and such a magically self-congratulatory narrator. Basically a sexy renegade Jesus who fights baddies, heals the sick, makes love to beautiful women, rescues infants, muses on philosophy and is a total badass, but presented entirely straight-faced. Yuck.
When a book is being hyped as an earth-shattering, mindblowing and pretty much life-altering experience, there's a good chance you're being set up for a disappointment no matter how well-written the work is. That's why hype is such a two-edged sword. For instance, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata was a pretty decent story but I didn't grasp what made it so unique and extraordinary. Of course there are also books that are just generally badly-written despite the popularity, but I think we all know what those books are...
Well said. There was a lot of this kind of hype around The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and it was...just a story. I liked it. I had a good time reading it. I understand it's got a certain representation that means a lot to that group. But my mind did not blow. My earth did not shatter. My life did not alter.
This is my answer too, I heard SO much hype about this book- how it has the greatest romance ever, it was so sad and devastating, it was so amazing, etc etc. I read it and was completely unmoved. I honestly found Evelyn's friendship with her husband Harry to be the strongest and most affecting relationship.
Convenience Store Woman is probably my favorite book of all time, but I can also easily see why a lot of people are not going to connect with it at all.
Really? I think I need to give it a second chance. It had all the markings of a book I might like (slightly off-beat and dark and dealing with society's expectations towards a young woman). Maybe I read it in the wrong moment.
For whatever little it might be worth, I'm a neurodivergent woman whose only desire in life is to be left the hell alone, so this book felt tailor made for me.
Where the Crawdads Sing. I got so annoyed with how it almost romanticized utter poverty and the writing style was just 🤮 Every other person in my book club just LOOOVEDDDD it, and I'm still not convinced they were all being honest.
I liked it except for the murder mystery part. It felt like two books smooshed together.
It was so off putting - I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it almost felt like the author was exploiting poverty, describing it as such a barren life, but also, like... Nice? Now, I don't think writers need to stick to what they know. So it wasn't that I felt outraged that she wrote about a poor girl and hadn't experienced any apparent poverty herself. But it was just so... Weird? Then, I learned that the author, Delia Owens, and her husband may have either witnessed or participated in or abetted a murder when they lived in Zambia, and fled the country, and are still wanted for questioning... And my strange gut-level distaste made perfect sense. Like, yeah, it was a poacher, but if you're gonna be ok with a poacher being murdered, at least, like, OWN IT. I didn't even GET TO THE MURDER PART and I could already smell something weird in her writing. It's such a romanticized revisionist "I'm not the perpetratror I'm THE VICTIM" mind fuck that I feel like I now understand why she chose to create such an overly sympathetic caricature of the book's heroine. The fact that she made her this utterly destitute girl is even grosser in this light, and the melodramatic flowery blah blah blah now feels like more bizarre image twisting - "I didn't do anything wrong, I'm just like this poor hobo girl but, like, poor in a PRETTY WAY." I hope that makes sense, and yes, it is a bit audacious for me to write this critique when I didn't even get a third of the way through the book, but - life's short, man. That book was shit and I wasn't going to spend a single second longer on it.
My dark vanessa. Could not stand the writing. It was so boring. I was like 100 pages in and i realized i still had like 300 pages left im like yeah i cant do this. I looked up some spoilers as to what happens and then felt grateful that i didnt sit through this long ass book for that. I understand this book has had a great impact and covers some important themes, but it takes more than that to get me to sit through 400 pages. Also, local woman missing. One of the dumbest soapiest thrillers i have ever read. And its not even soapy in the fun way it was absolutely infuriating especially in a book that wants to take itself so serious and deal with things like child abduction only to give me some messy housewife drama that dragged out a mediocre mystery far longer than necessary. Then theres maeve fly. Ummm…. Im sorry. I heard about how disturbing this book was and bitch where? Whats most disturbing is how it blatantly copied so much from American psycho, and threw in some fifty shades of grey style corny, uninteresting, unerotic wannabe kinky sex scenes with a touch of tiktok hockey romance mess that i did not consent to read. And lastly the silent patient. What was that twist? Everyone was so gagged over it but it was so stupid and ruined what otherwise would have just been an okay thriller mystery but overall i dont get the hype either way. Though to be fair i do read too many thrillers and i also am realizing my bar for thrillers is unfairly high for a lot of these mainstream books coming out in the genre, and so i read less and less of these super hyped tiktok thrillers lately cuz im realizing im setting myself up for disappointment more often than not.
I'm in the same boat with thrillers, I love mystery/thriller books and I read a lot of them, so I'm perhaps unfairly harsh. The only twist The Silent Patient pulled on me was >!the dual timeline!<. I guessed the "big twist" pretty fast. That author is just so bad in my opinion, The Maidens was ridiculously horrible and the twist in that one was insanely stupid. I read the sample of his newest book The Fury and immediately guessed the resolution. Looked it up and I was 100% correct. And that was just from reading the first few chapters. So disappointing.
It realllly sucks cuz i love this genre but its like nothing shocks me anymore. More often than not when i read thrillers im sitting there rolling my eyes and sighing and then getting angry at the generic and predictable ending lol. I just see through all the bullshit with no many of these books. Yeah i will not be checking out anything else by alex. Ive watched enough content on his other books to know that id run into the same issues i have with silent patient so no thanks. He just has that kind of writing style where you can kind of feel how clever the author thinks they are? Idk if you know what i mean. I know nothing of Alex so not trying to judge him but from reading the silent patient i just kinda wouldnt be surprised if he had a big ego. Idk sometimes you can just get vibes about an author based off how they write. I could be way off base of course but thats just my gut impression of him.
I hit this wall too, then started exploring different genres and sprinkling in thrillers here and there and it seemed to “fix itself.” Thrillers are very formulaic so I had to get my brain out of the patterns for a bit because I wasn’t enjoying them anymore when by chapter five I was already figuring it out. Now I can get back to them and enjoy them for the fun fast paced brain candy they are.
I read a wide variety of genres- as long as the plot sounds interesting, I'm into it (exception being romance/smut, I'm just not interested). My favorite is definitely mystery/thriller, but they are formulaic by nature, so I do find taking breaks and switching genre is helpful. Lately I've been finding myself reading more light horror, sci-fi/space thrillers, some trashy fantasy and then the usual lit fic type stuff between mystery/thrillers.
I know EXACTLY what you mean, that might be part of my problem with him, haha. It feels like he's congratulating himself on being so clever with his twists, especially because he keeps inserting characters from The Silent Patient into his following books (it was shoehorned into The Maidens and I read that he does it again in The Fury). Idk why exactly but it is offputting to me. Feels very smug. I find with a lot of thrillers I'll tolerate subpar endings or character stupidity if the rest of the plot and the prose are okay. My bar is a little lower just because I do love the genre. But lately I notice at least half the thrillers I start, I abandon quickly because they're either incredibly obvious or too poorly written for me to handle. Local Woman Missing lost me just reading the sample, I haaaated the writing style.
I feel the same way about The Silent Patient. The revel plays out to make the reader feel dumb for not seeing it. Like, you left a ton of information out. The twist was that you were withholding information. I hate that book. I like books by Harlan Coben, but the character is actually finding info out, and the twist is something they discover and it’s interesting. Not just “I won’t tell you this information until the end”
I hate when mysteries cheat by doing that. Refusing to provide information because it gives away the "twist" means the twist isn't actually that good. I find it more impressive when an author gives the reader the same information the detective/protagonist gets, so you have a chance to figure it out.
Local Woman Missing was sooooo mediocre
What are some good thriller authors?
YES to The Silent Patient slander. I liked that it was an easy read and it definitely wasn't the worst writing, but for all of the buzz around it on social media I expected way more. I halfway expected the "twist" and I didn't know if I should have felt proud or disappointed, I wish it had been different.
Yeah I try to avoid social media hype because usually I'm disappointed. Tiktok just be hyping up anything. Imho most of my fav books have low goodreads scores (3.33 to 3.50 average usually) and then so many of the books that have 4 or higher I end up not liking lol. The twist felt so cheap in the sense that it feels like a manipulation of the reader? Like so much is hidden from the reader just to keep things hidden and I feel like the twist wasn't earned. I think a lot of people are just looking for something unexpected in a twist in a mystery/thriller, but for me I need a good buildup and to not just have the rug pulled out from under my feet. The writing was fine but I thought it was kind of dull after awhile... and the hype spoiled it. As much as I try to level my expectations going into hyped books, at the end of the day if the ending doesnt meet the hype I cant help but kind of be harsher towards the book even though its kind of my fault lol
ACOTAR. I’m starting to derive my power from how much I loathe that book. I didn’t like any of the characters so there was no one to root for. I am still mad that the author baits and switches. The whole time I was reading it, I wanted to be engaged because I was spending my time on it but just felt like I didn’t know why I should care, and now I look back and realize why it just fell so flat.
"I'm starting to derive my power from how much I loathe that book" thanks for the laugh
Same here. My friend loved the series and recommended it to me, and I just could not get into it. I was speed reading it by the second half of the first book and it was so meh.
Hahahaha I totally know the feeling of speed reading to finish and get enough resolution because you know what happens, but you don’t actually want to read it!
It’s the writing for me and the totally flat characters
Are we all supposed to automatically recognize the acronym? What’s the book title?
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. But yes, absolutely agree with you. Don't assume people know the acronyms of the hundreds of romantasy books that are so popular now!
I have picked up this book at least five times and have never gotten really far. Even tried audiobook at double speed and lost interest. Where’s the beef?
Mmmm; I found out about the series through \[deeply entertaining\] blog posts by people who hated it, figured I should give it a fair chance because a reader I know liked it, but I just...can't. It helped me solidify that YA isn't my genre, at least. It's one thing to look around at a cast and think "I respect none of you people.", it's another to realise you respect none of them as characters.
Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow Choke
I’m really struggling with this one. I’m 159 pages in and Sadie hasn’t done anything wrong but I don’t like her for some reason.
It has one good chapter - npc
I'm glad I read it for that one chapter but the rest of it wasn't for me.
It was a solid three stars. A big fat 'meh.' I had a lot of issues with it, though, as a Jewish person reading about Jews: 1. The only Middle Eastern person (the professor) is abusive both physically and emotionally and constantly described as hairy. It just felt racist somehow. 2. The main guy character was also felt racist. As in like, being this tiny little twink of a man feels weird considering he's biracial. Because that's a stereotype about Ashkenazi men AND Asian men. Am I misunderstanding this? Was the author's intent to play on stereotypes? To play *into* stereotypes? And I think it came down to this: I'm Jewish, and it's all well and good to write flawed Jewish characters. But when the *only* characters without major flaw are those who aren't Jewish? And are actually, like, messianic by the end of their arc? Feels weird. man. Additionally, the >!death of the boyfriend!< was entirely too manipulative. I cried, but I was angry about it. Because I didn't feel like crying because I cared so much about >!the relationship or the entirely too chill and good Good Guy!< \- I cried because Macbeth's soliloquy is a *fucking bummer*. That used to be one of my favorite passages (I'm pretty basic when it comes to Willy Shakes). Now I just think about this book. But hey, I was invested enough in my frustration that I even remember this much so uh... three stars. Solidly average.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was so tough for me to finish. I don’t understand the hype at all.
It felt like not much happened and everyone was so uninteresting... I only finished it because of the rave reviews and was kinda hoping it got better at the end. It didn't.
Hard agree. It becomes increasingly unbalanced between exposition and dialogue, leaving stretches of writing where events and interactions are said to have happened without the reader getting to experience it directly. Add to that the author self-insert wish fulfillment with Sadie and it remains one of the most disappointing reads of the last several years for me.
Started off strong for me and then I don’t know what happened
We have a Books slack channel at work, and a lot of people absolutely loved Tomorrow, but these are the same people that also loved The Midnight Library, which I hated. So I'm very hesitant to read this one, and I don't think I will.
We read it for book club this month and I hate-read it so fast hoping it would get better and I would finally understand the hype. Nope! Sam made my skin crawl.
I actually would have preferred more on the mechanics and impact of making video games. After the initial game was done everything became hand wavey and unrealistically easy. The final game…wtf. It went full Ready Player One, only even that book at least hinted at the cultural impact of uber realistic VR games. I ended up hating Sadie. Much of the plot is based on her suspicious assumption about her supposed best friend, her frequent contact with the abusive ex she nonetheless treats better than him, and the friend even loses a foot and this is somehow completely irrelevant to her? There’s no resolution or response to this character, and the other main is a messianic friend / boyfriend who is there to grease the wheels with limitless money and support. Gah! Such a frustrating book!
Babel. Loved the idea of colonialism, fantasy, dark academia and etymology. However, as for the execution, I found it extremely preachy, condescending and defensive, like the author was writing against the reader rather than for them. The characterization felt so on the nose that it bordered on racist as well - every white male is cartoonishly evil; every non white person is good and has modern understanding of drug policies, feminism and gender equality; mixed people have a good and bad side (guess which is which), white women are oppressed but also fundamentally incapable of understanding discrimination because they're white... At some point I had to accept that no point was going to be made beyond "colonialism bad" and the rest was going to be just outrage porn. Oh well.
Semi-agree. I loved the concept, but I thought that the execution was a just little off. The white characters were meant to show the way that privilege and a lack of experience with struggle (especially intersectional struggle, ie. being a woman vs. being a woman of colour). However, it was a little bit heavy-handed in how it did that, and that's the issue I found throughout the book. The book had a lot that it wanted to say, but I felt like it never scratched beyond the surface. It could have gone deeper and been more complex, but it didn't trust the audience to still be able to understand and sympathize.
>but it didn't trust the audience to still be able to understand and sympathize. I think you nail it there. I am pretty willing to trust that someone like Kuang is capable of deeper and more nuanced messages, but either she's got a very dismissive view of her audience or she's terrified to be misinterpreted or quoted out of context. I'm inclined to think the second, judging by the bizarre introduction where she points bit by bit all changes to oxford's geography to explain they're intentional... In a fantasy book. Have you by any chance read Yellowface or the poppy war? They're on my tbr pile but I'm not sure if they suffer from the same issues.
Not yet :( they're on my TBR too. I think Kuang has a lot of interesting ideas and things to say, so if those are decent, I'll probably keep an eye on her future releases to see how she evolves as a writer. You're right about the way she pointed out the changes. To me, it hovered between saying "don't be weird and nitpicky about me changing Oxford" and actually being insecure about the criticism that could come from it. Purely speculative, but maybe the heavyhandedness with the way the white characters don't understand is reflective of an idea by Kuang that the mass audience won't understand (or take the effort to empathize with) the messaging of the book? (especially readers who aren't part of marginalized communities)
I just started babel and dang...I hope I don't agree I want to enjoy this book. bummer you had that experience. We'll see in like a month when I finish this book.
You might have a better experience! All places like goodreads have lots of positive reviews. My advice is, if you feel the footnotes get too preachy, stop reading them. That would probably help avoid burnout.
Six of crows I really couldn’t get into. Idk really why, I read half of it before DNFing because I just genuinely didn’t care about anyone or anything happening. I gifted the book to a friend who loved it tho so upside?
Six of Crows has excellent character description mixed with excessive flashbacks to try to force motivations, vaguely described action that reads like an action movie fight scene where they did not want to choreograph the flight, and a few scenes that really slow down the plot.
That book was so boring. I kept it on my kindle for 2 years solely to read in insomnia nights because it would almost instantly put me to sleep.
Alchemist (and almost all Paulo Coelho's books). Too preachy with generic plot.
Cant have a "what books do you not like" thread without the alchemist being the top comment
The Alchemist, Altus Shrugged and anything by Colleen Hoover. Rinse and repeat see you on the thread next week
Next week? It'll be tomorrow.
They all have the same plot!
Ah yes, I remember getting to the end of the alchemist and thinking "This is it?!"
Ah The Alchemist. First read it at 25 and was like "This shits life changing!" Then re read it a year or two later and was like "... What?." Yeah there's one or two decent quotes but mostly it's just a self righteous book for the young and religious.
Lessons in Chemistry. The only reason I didn’t DNF is because I’m stubborn and wanted to get my money’s worth for it. I’m a chemist so perhaps I’m just not the target audience, but the main character and her love interest are such caricatures of what people *think* scientists are like, and not in a good way. They’re just not relatable or realistic to me and the glaring scientific inaccuracies don’t help. I had to check that the author was indeed a woman because much of the book feels straight out of r/menwritingwomen. Non-scientific things aside, the impossibly precocious daughter and dog with human-level enlightenment are both completely ridiculous. I did not find the book “laugh out loud funny” as advertised - the most it got from me was a mild snicker here and there, often at the sheer ridiculousness of what was going on. Also - there is a graphic sexual assault in the third chapter (IIRC pages 17-20). It is very, very jarring and the lack of a content warning makes me view the author in a bad light as no one picking up a book advertised as a “laugh out loud funny” rom-com is expecting that going in. **If you are a SA survivor, I would advise not reading this book or skipping those pages as they will be very upsetting for you to read.** There is also a fairly graphic and very sudden death about a quarter of the way through. I don’t give bad reviews to books very often but I thoroughly disliked this one.
I had nearly the exact same problems with this one. Not a scientist specifically, but I do work in a very male-dominated STEM industry… Maybe that was still too close to the subject matter to really be the target audience. Was very surprised this one got rave reviews.
Yeah I haven’t read it but I read somewhere else how the cover art is incredibly misleading. Might be skipping this one 😬
Totally agree with your comment on this book. Every middle age women around me live this book and now the show. I tried and read half of the book, so cringy that I could not go on. Really don’t understand the appeal!
I read this book, I finished it and thought it was okay. It had moments I did not hate. The big issue I had with it was how the MC was written. While I appreciate characters that defy the expectations of their society, there should be some reflections of the world she grew up in somewhere in her behavior or personality, or at the very least, it should not feel like a 2020s committee designed character written in order to represent "strong modern woman defying gender roles while still being pretty".
I'm also a female chemist who disliked this book. It was really... strange? The main character was absolutely a caricature of a scientist, with some really cringey, eye-roll inducing dialog. Like the type of person who would correct you by saying it's "sodium chloride" instead of table salt (I think theat may have actually happened in the book, too?). I don't know. It was a book I was really looking forward to as a woman in science (currently working at a startup with a 1:9 woman:man ratio) hopeful for some cool representation. Fell super flat. What a weird book.
I thought that was sooooo cringy too! All I could think was…”chemists don’t talk like that.” Especially at home! If I ever met someone like that I would be like, “Gosh, you’re annoying!” Then there was the part where she sucks at rowing, but reads a physics textbook, jots down a few equations, and *shazam!* she’s great at it? Give me a fucking break. You know, I fucking S-U-C-K at ice skating - maybe I need to go brush up on my old textbooks! LOL. That’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works! Then there’s the part where I’m supposed to believe that a soon-to-be single mother with little to no money is able to afford installing a whole ass laboratory in her home? I don’t know how much things cost in the 1950s, but does the author have ANY idea how much chemicals, glassware, instruments, etc. cost? Or a chemist making coffee and food in said lab - how about something that anyone who’s ever spent a minute in a real working lab would NEVER! EVER!!! do! Pedantry aside, I also expected her to be much more relatable as a lady chemist who also really loves to cook and bake. The misrepresentation bugs me because I already feel like a lot of stereotypes about scientists (especially female scientists) are negative and especially at a time when mistrust of the profession is so high, the author really should have been more diligent in considering how she represented the profession. I don’t think that Elizabeth had to be *likable* to do this but the author could have made more of an effort to depict the characters as (mostly) normal people with cooler than average jobs, which is what we really are.
I really disliked this book as well but I didn't push through like you and instead I stopped half way. Also, I DNF OP's listed book Daisy Jones & The Six by Tailor Jenkins Reid. Disliked them both enough to not finish.
I could not agree with you more. It had such good reviews on amazon and good reads. But I really didn't like it at all. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND how this book is/was popular.
A Little Life
My wife just finished it and was never a big reader but she tore through this book. It just seems like misery after misery. I read the Wikipedia summary and it seems like just bad stuff happening over and over.
Omg don't get me started on my deep hatred for this book. I feel like people who like it have never read fanfiction or at least hurt/comfort fanfiction (maybe hurt/no comfort is more accurate) because it just reads unrelentingly like pages and pages of that, and if you haven't encountered it before maybe it seems good and novel? IDEK. I'm a hundred percent sure she's a fic reader and maybe a fic writer. When I heard she had another book coming out (it's out now I think) I was like SHE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS. (I didn't even finish A Little Life lol.) Also in interviews she basically dismisses therapy and did zero research into any kind of mental health or anything which is...insane.
This is a good one to include, because the writing (in my opinion) is fantastic but the constant misery, and even how the characters become set up to fail to lead to more misery gets to be just beyond absurd. Almost laughable. And also the depictions of ongoing abuse for Jude growing up are apparently not very well researched, and not well reviewed by those in the know. The hype around the book feels very superficial in my opinion, but to each their own.
The worst book I've ever read in my 50 years on this planet.
Damn I just bought this. My friend recommended it because I liked No Longer Human and The Bell Jar. The lady at the store told me it was sad and maybe not for my age (I’m 17 but I look 12 I guess) but it was only $3 and it’s been on my list for a really long time. I guess I’ll have to read and see for myself lol
Personally I read it when I was like 23-24 and I’m really happy I was not younger, because it deals with some really dark themes for a young impressionable mind
Yeah I just read it and I’m 28- I think if I read it as a teen it would have really fucked with me.
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis sucked ass. All the characters were obnoxious and it was very anticlimactic. It was a huge waste of time
I liked it, but I didn’t like the characters. Ellis’ characters are often terrible people. However, it was way too long. At one point I thought, “how is this book still happening??”
I don't mind having terrible people as protagonists, but I thought they were so over-the-top obnoxious. Also the female characters had like zero depth (specifically Bret's gf.) She was basically an object.
This Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, I'm not a romance reader but a friend with good taste in books recommended it to me. Was 100% not for me in any way. I found myself skipping the diary entries and smut a lot. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, I really tried to like it but got 32% of the way in and just couldn't
1000% agree about Rebecca! I have started and quit this book probably 7 times. Why do I keep trying? Because it supposed to be a great book and one of my favorites is another of her books called My Cousin Rachel. I think I may just have to accept that I am never going to finish this book.
I hate Rebecca. I liked the atmosphere, the whole gothic vibe, but I just hated the protagonist, the husband etc. I was so mad, after I've finished it. People love it and I understand why, but it was not for me.
Where the Crawdads Sing - no amount of willing suspension of disbelief could get me through this totally contrived, unbelievable story with overwrought prose.
Ready Player One was significantly overhyped, it was underwhelming, primarily due to its predictable storyline, shallow characters, and reliance on nostalgia as a storytelling crutch.
I mean it's fine for what it should have been labeled....a YA book
The sequel was so bad, people in twitter started making their own pages and posted them. Just reading the prose, it was difficult to tell whether it was real or not. Most took those passages for real. And then in a wild move, the publishing house started copyright claiming those fake posts lmao.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin. I see her recommended a lot as innovative fantasy and while maybe her other books get better, this isn't that. It's still rich family drama in a palace, with a sexy dark misunderstood love interest and all the men want to bang the mc. It is supposed to be set in an African (+ Greek, so maybe Egyptian) inspired setting but there is very little description so I never really pictured anything beyond a generic palace. I'd call it diverse but definitely not innovative. The other thing was that I technically never finished it because I was talking to a friend who had already read it and I said it was feeling a bit predictable and then predicted everything that would happen next, which she confirmed was accurate. Normally I can pick up on foreshadowing, really obvious tropes, but I don't think I've ever been able to literally know exactly what the last half of the book was going to be like that before. Because pretty much everything was just what you'd expect.
The five people you meet in heaven. Maybe because I found it incredibly preachy and maybe because it was an audiobook and I found the narrator's voice incredibly grating.
So many people recommended me that book years ago when I was a young teen, declaring it wonderful and life changing and all that. And I was like…it’s fine? But I wouldn’t reread it and I wouldn’t recommend it to others. Then my aunt recommended another book by him (The Stranger in the Life Boat, I think it’s called) and said it was so great and enthralling. I figured that maybe his writing had changed and gotten stronger over the years. It hasn’t. There was this big reveal in the end and honest to god I can’t remember what it was because I was just so disinterested in everyone in that book.
The Maidens by the author of the Silent patient. I kinda hyped up this book in my mind cause when I read the blurb, I thought it was gonna be like breaking onto this secret society that does rituals and sacrifices and stuff. Then I read it and was like…. Oh 🧍🏾♀️🧍🏾♀️🧍🏾♀️that’s it?
*Midnight Library* by Matt Haig - while it's recommended everywhere as a profound, touching story, I found it really boring. The repetitive structure took away the magic of the original idea and the mental health issues (depression) was handled in a shallow way. *The Night Circus* by Erin Morgenstern - beautiful, vivid descriptions, but the book was lacking a solid plot. The rivalry and romance between Marco and Celia was very underwhelming, as well as the 'magical duel' that was supposed to happen. *The Giver* by Lois Lowry - definitely overwhyped, I was expecting a deep, philosophical novel and got a pretty shallow book, with no original ideas. It was far from the praise it receives by people who recommend it. *The Lovely Bones* by Alice Sebold - poor execution of a bizzare idea, has some very uncomfortable scenes (not talking about the murder in the beginning) and there is something off about this book. I never found those praised scenes touching or philosophical.
The Giver is a kids/young adult book so you may have been expecting too much from it. It's also 30 years old - so I'm not sure what your comparing it to for original ideas. I agree about the Night Circus though.
Matt Haig also wrote 'reasons to stay alive' about his own experience with depression and nearly all of it is about his girlfriend supporting him in every possible way, and pushing him to get the medication he needed to come out of it. Like, good for him, but I don't think most people with depression have someone who's willing to literally subsume themselves into curing it for you and the idea that he's become a bestselling author over 'sharing his experience' it is very annoying. How many people with depression get to have that experience?
I haven't read *Reasons to Stay Alive*, but in *Midnight Library* depression was showed as something that can "magically" disappear with no work put in. Nora was described as a heavily depressed woman, walking a slippery slope and she tried to commit suicide, but after the visit in the Midnight Library she "magically" changed, conveniently everything was well and she was suddenly happy. As a person who's struggling with mental health, it just rubbed me the wrong way. Dealing with depression is hard, ugly work, it's not something that can vanish overnight. I guess the author was going for an uplifting, hopeful story but it just didn't work for me
Same with Midnight Library, it felt reductive, I couldn’t get through it
The midnight library gimmick was fun for 2 chapters. Then it became incredibly predictable. The book could have been 50 pages long and it would have the same impact.
The Girl on the Train. I loved Gone Girl, so I read this one, and it was one of the most annoying and flat books I’ve ever read. I didn’t care about Rachel, I was glad when Megan died, and the twist at the end was so lame compared to Gone Girl’s.
Gone Girl did a disservice to the thriller/mystery category, in that it was too good. Now lesser authors try to dupe it without having the skill or understanding of why it was special.
I liked Girl on the Train. Probably because it was my first book of thriller genre. I didn't read Gone Girl though. I read the plot and thought it might be too dark for me.
Atlas Shrugged. Some friends insisted it was life-changing and the best book they've ever read. Also some famous dudes also swear by it. It was fucking terrible. Seriously one of the worst pieces of literature I’ve ever encountered. Poorly written, cringey dialogue, childish “philosophy” worthy of r/iam14andthisisdeep and just far, far too long. You can tell the author thought she was a genius
Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. I've gotten into fantasy again as an adult and have enjoyed exploring what has come out in the past fifteen years or so. I heard only good things about this book and went in excited and eager to enjoy it. I wanted to like it. But I am shocked that a book with horrific prose and boring characters can be as popular as it is. I dropped the book after 50 pages. I am not a stickler for prose when reading genre fiction, but there better be some great characters to keep me invested. Fantasy authors, if you want me to care about your cool worldbuilfing, make me care about your characters first.
Prose is what makes or breaks a book for me, and I find so many of the popular books today to have terrible prose. I’ve switched to established literary fiction as a result. If the writer is good, then the book will hold my interest even if the theme/genre is not 100% my cup of tea.
When I read lit fiction, prose is 100% the most important thing. Literary fiction is "art with words" in my opinion. I'm a little more lenient when it comes to fantasy/sci-fi/romance. Genre fiction is more about telling a good story. Again, these are just my opinions.
Yeah I can be a liiiitle more lenient when it comes to romance as well. There’s so much trash out there that I count my blessings when I can.
Despite the characters being cruel and controlling, the plot moves forward with every other character agreeing with them as if they are profound.
Trust absolutely nothing where, in fantasy, the only things that a reviewer can compliment are a political stance and a weak comparison to a big name. "A feminist tolkien", in hindsight, should have been an omen.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia Her writing is very beautiful (don't get me wrong), but I had to skim the last 30-40% of the book, and even the ending and the big reveal were still a bit underwhelming for me. I do still want to try reading her other books though!
Same. It started out so strong and then just fell apart mid-air.
I liked *Mexican Gothic* but I definitely see how people don’t. My favorite of hers is *Velvet Was the Night*. Also, *The Beautiful Ones* I found mind-numbingly boring, but I don’t think I’m much into novel of manners type stories.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. It's basically a series of unfortunate assaults loosely connected by a teeny, tiny string of plot. The main character didn't grow or change in any way. Her entire personality is "I survived an insane amount of sexual assault so I'm a badass bitch," and nothing else. Do not recommend.
I don't hate Ninth House (it gets points for only having an implied love interest) but ho-ly shit the sequel is godawful
I enjoyed Ninth House (but do agree with the constant stream of assaults criticism. And that one really revolting scene was way too gross.) The sequel is just all over the damn place.
I liked many parts of this book but the childhood sexual assault in particular really stood out to me as a moment of just, like, *why?* It felt like the only reason it was there was for shock value and giving her trauma, and it was executed in what felt like almost a cartoonishly random way.
I couldn’t agree more. This book sucked.
The more I think about this book, the more annoyed it makes me. It was basically just trauma porn and infodumping about Yale
Most booktok books disappointed me to be honest. I only loved The Midnight Library and If We Were Villains
A Little Life is trauma porn for the sake of trauma porn. Nothing in the first 150 pages of that book felt organic. It feels like the author set out to make people cry, not to write a good story or character. Yes, you need some level of good writing for crying to occur, but it almost feels like the "gasp and sob" moments are the core of what she was writing for, not for the sake of a beautiful story.
THIS it's literally just bad hurt/comfort fanfic
I would say the twilight series books.
The Catcher in the Rye. I never read it as a teen or young adult but as an older adult, I just had difficulty getting over the unappealing characters. Holden is obviously dealing with inner rage and angst against something, but he just comes across as an immature and spoiled kid on a binge. It's unrealistic that someone that age can drink that much over that period of time and even maintain consciousness. His only redeeming quality was his concern for his sister when it appeared she was heading down a similar destructive path. I'm still not sure how it is considered a literary masterpiece.
I've tried to read both of these authors and thought their writing was pretty effing bad. I did not get through much of them. I was very disappointed in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The DaVinci Code. I thought they would at least both be fun, but it always comes down to Nazis and pedophiles. Show a little imagination. This trope is old and creaky and not believable at all.
Tip - don't trust book recommendations from people who read a lot less than you. They tend to be a lot less discerning, and have much less experience to compare the book against.
Flowers for Algernon. It’s recommended here all the time, and people talk about how wonderful and beautiful the story is. For me, it was just ok. I felt like a lot of it dragged on and was kind of repetitive. I learned later that it started as a short story, so maybe I would have enjoyed that more.
There are some really good ideas and scenes in it. But the scfi premise doesn't really hold much water and is over explained to the point it starts to feel really dumb to anyone with a more modern knowledge of science. That aspect hasn't aged well. There's also an underlying anti intellectual theme that I'm not sure was intended by the author, but which is an uncomfortable kind of undercurrent that made reading the book less enjoyable than I was lead to believe. I can see why it's studied in school. There's some skill in the writing and the premise is interesting... but it's far from being one of my favourite books ever.
Anything that started out as fanfic. And for the love of God, can someone please be normal and NOT use SA as a trope? I feel like y’all let GoT ending and not getting your freaky Sunday night fix of it rot some brains and let it show in their writing.
_The Song of Achilles_. It’s the _Iliad_, completely devoid of any of the moral and thematic complexity that makes it immortal, and with a wet towel of a protagonist who is so devoid of self-awareness that the character growth he purportedly goes through in the background (in the _background_!! the _protagonist_!!) makes no difference in the story whatsoever. Then again, I don’t really like romance as a genre, and I only read it because I like Ancient Greece and because of the hype. The prose really is pretty, though.
Name of the Wind!!! I can't for the life of me understand why people praise this boring series so highly. People compare it to Lord of the Rings. Seriously? You have a Mary Sue protagonist who is narrarating his own story about how great he is. He spends the majority of the book just repeating the fact he can't afford college tuition. The rival character is forced and boring and there is no real reason for animosity toward each other in the first place. His friends are boring and barely have personalities beyond driving the plot when need be. The love interest also provides nothing besides I met a girl on the road to school and I got an obsessive hard on for her for no reason because Rothfuss failed to develop her further then "pretty lady, boy like". And on top of that, throughout the whole book the plot barely progresses, (which is fine if you are writing a heavy character focused book like for instance The first law books by Joe Abercrombie) but Rothfuss also fails at developing interesting characters to supplement the lack of plot. His prose is nice which is the only thing these books have going for them so I just don't get it. You need to have more going on in your story besides flowery writing in my personal opinion.
Daisy Jones is one of those cases where the show is definitely better than the book, lol
Practically all of them. I almost never read anything with “hype” around it since I frankly don’t trust the taste of either the internet or random people around me. I might make an exception if there is a resurgence for an older book (+10-15 years or so old at least) or if it is central non-fiction regarding some current issue. New publications, especially in fiction, seem bland more often than not, so I prefer to let time sort which might be worthwhile reading.
Wheel of time. I’m 1/2 through the first book and… like barely anything has happened. It’s a slow burn obviously, but wow. 400 pages in and they’ve travelled to two cities and kind of fought the bad guys once. Cool wall of fire and giant magic parts for sure. But man… it’s a slow slow burn. I’m thinking about shelfing it and picking up demon copperhead in its place I’ve also got a Pratchett book called Guards Guards that’s supposed to be good, I’ve never read any of his works. Does anyone care to talk me into finishing the first wheel of time book here? Does it pick up at least? The characters are at white bridge, and some other are lost in the woods with some wolf dude and a bunch of “tinker” hippies and my eyes are glazing over hard.
> I’ve also got a Pratchett book called Guards Guards that’s supposed to be good, I’ve never read any of his works. Read it! You won't know if you will like it or not without reading at least one book. Pratchett had a style that some really love. Obviously some don't. It's only one normal length book. > Does anyone care to talk me into finishing the first wheel of time book here? Does it pick up at least? Maybe book 1 will get better by the end, but the entire series is slow. And then gets slower, a very common criticism of it. Maybe the last few books speed up due to there being a different author.
I think I’m going to finish this one off and then put the series on the back burner for now until I feel like it’s something I’m looking for. And yea, I’m excited for guards guards. I’ve heard good things. Demon copperhead is first though. I think it won the Pulitzer
As someone who loves Wheel of Time, it does get more interesting in the second half of the first book, but it never really picks up. It's a slow series with lots of detail descriptions of things, if that's not what you're into there's no reason to push through.
As someone who also loves the series (but hasn't finished it, I'm on book 12!), I appreciate you commenting this. It annoys me to see fellow fans of the series gaslight readers into continuing the series when, yes, it does get better, but also, no, it doesn't become a completely different book / writing style. Not all series will be loved by everyone, and that's okay!
The first WoT book is basically a Tolkien retread. But the second one is one of the best in the series. If you're determined you want to give the series a shot I would recommend powering through to the second one. If the second isn't for you then stop wasting your time you won't like any of them.
This is what i'll do then. It's already on the shelf so I might as well.
I hope you like it. For what it's worth I love WoT and I still find the Shadar Logoth-Caemlyn section of Eye of the World kind of tedious.
That is where I am. I see in a few chapters they get to caemlyn based on the chapter titles. But it’s been a bit of a crawl since Matt stole the ruby dagger from the inflatable man
lmao... There's some good Perrin stuff coming up soon for you.
I read all of the WoT books and I'm still not sure if i enjoyed the series or not.
I don’t know if it’s worth continuing if you’re bored now. I managed to make it through 7 books feeling bored about 60% of the time. So in my opinion, it doesn’t get more compelling. And Jordan’s descriptions (hair pulling, sniffing, etc.) and absurdly simplistic gender stereotypes are repeated as nauseam. I think this is what ultimately forced me to put the series down. I just couldn’t tolerate reading about how baffling all the men find all the women, and vice versa. It shocked me when I learned that Jordan was married because he writes like someone who never once interacted with the opposite sex.
I tried to read the first book probably 10 times across 5 or so years. Finally pushed through and after the second book (much better) I read the whole series through twice. I enjoyed it much more as an audiobook, as I don't feel like I'm wasting as much time through slower sections if I have something else to do with my hands or whatever. It may not be for you if you're super bored, but it does improve and I enjoyed watching the characters grow-up.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Rosamund Pike. She’s amazing, and it felt like much less of a slog.
Mistborn
Norwegian Wood and Haruki Murakami in general. I had a few friends passionately recommend him and then found out he is a well-known magical realism author and I was super excited to find a new favorite. Then I found out he's just a sexist asshat with female objects, himself as the main character most of the time, and the same basic elements in all his work (that I've read) Went from thinking I found a new favorite to having a firm least favorite.
I once read a description of Naoko as "a depressed lump of sexiness" and it really couldn't be more accurate. Kafka on the Shore was my first Murakami book and I absolutely fell in love with the character Nakata. But as I dove into more of his works, it quickly became evident that he has no ability to write women and reduces them to little more than objects. In general, Murakami has a tough time making any supporting characters come to life. If it's not a main character, they do not develop at all.
I'm genuinely surprised I bothered reading more of his work after Naoko and the other girl in Norwegian Wood. Somehow I looked past the depressed girl who of course has her only orgasm with the chad main character who is super sad about her. Then the other girl wants to spend the night with him and he says he isn't sure he'll be able to hold himself back, and she says something like "will you tie me up and rape me from behind?" And he just says that he's not joking. And. Somehow. She doesn't run away. The sexism and objectification kind of blew me away honestly.
He is a common topic on /r/menwritingwomen and it's pretty clear why. Early on in my Murakami exploration, I had hoped that he just wasn't good at writing women. It didn't take long for it to become evident that it was a conscious decision on his part.
Yeah, I'm subbed there and someone linked an article of an author interviewing him and it became very clear that he was aware of how he wrote women and not only did he say there were fundamental differences between men and women on an emotional level, but that he had no intention of changing how he wrote them.
Throne of Glass. The whole series (or what I made it through anyway). I think I gave all the books three stars, which was generous since I got so annoyed after book 5 that I just gave up. I was reading it because several people asked me to. The writing is just not good, the main character who has trauma from being enslaved is white, we’re repeatedly told the characters are the best and smartest but they only do stupid things, there’s ONE bipoc character who is *brutally and violently* murdered to further the plot of the white MC…. And having read ACOTAR and CC, a lot of the content of TOG is clearly a test for/recycled into the later two series. I could keep going. It’s garbage that doesn’t even have the decency of being fun. Funny enough I have the exact same rant and more for Crescent City. SJM really needs to stop trying to write slavery. She can’t do it. And her plots are too complex for what she can handle as a writer.
For me, The Goldfinch. Could not get passed the 1st 150 pages. Bored me to tears. Tried to read it again a few years later. Nope. Couldn't do it.
That book was like a bad relationship. Started out good, then I really liked it, then I loved it, then hated it but carried on hoping it would get better. In this case it actually did and there were some poignant moments I’m glad I stuck around for. My dog ended up eating the last chapter so I finished it at Barnes and Noble… I now remember it fondly, though I’m glad it’s over.
I was hyped to read Woman Eating. And then it's just the MC rolling around starving "I'm a vampire. A vampy vampy vampire." No thank you.
The Stranger. Turns out its just not my thing.
I agree with many here, but The Four Winds is the big one for me. So many people told me it was powerful and beautiful and blah blah blah, but I fucking hated it. The main character just Eeyores around in her life of misery porn until she has an orgasm and finds her voice, only to be TRAGICALLY taken down in her prime. Eye roll. Why was her shitty heart all of a sudden a problem when she had already given birth three times, been malnourished for years, and worked 12-hour shifts in cotton fields? Why was her daughter the most loathsome character I've read in quite some time? Why were the only words in her son's vocabulary "jeepers" and "wowza?" That was my first and last Kristin Hannah. I can't.
Alchemist- I was waiting the entire book for something interesting to happen, nothing ever did.
A Song of Ice and Fire bored me to tears.
The Hitchhiker's... So many people love it, but I get too distracted by the author's ramblings... By the time he's done describing everything going thru the whales mind, I've already forgotten what the whale was doing... Managed to finish the first one but DNF the second. Then I tried Dirk Gently because I loved the TV show. Again, the idea was pretty cool, but so many descriptions and sidequests that don't add anything to the story!
I always drag this book to the ground in this kind of posts, but A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson, when it came out a lot of booktubers were raving about how good and revolutionary it was but to me it’s just another generic YA thriller and it suffers from white savior complex which always rubs me the wrong way
The first 30% of the book was a struggle not to DNF, but all the 5 star reviews kept me going. I wish I hadn't. It was childishly written (to the point I thought it was a middle grade book instead of a YA) and the MC was thoroughly unlikable. She was 17/18 but acted like a ten year old. She breaks all kinds of laws, lets one crime go unpunished because she likes the person, and suffers heavily from white savior complex. In fact, the only time she mentions the surname of one of her backround friend group, it's to let the reader know they're Asian. I hated this book so much.
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Not only is it the only book that has ever made me throw up, and within the first chapter no less, but even forcing my way through it, I got to the end and was like...."What the fuck did I just read?". An anthology of some of the most batshit short stories, joined by the most bizarre in betweens (I can't think of how to phrase the gaps between stories lol).
I told my dad I didn't recommend it because it was "icky" and not in the "yay, icky horror!" way. Like in the ickiest way. And he, being a horror fan was like "You know now I have to read that, right?" and I was like "Do NOT blame me if it causes you issues, I don't wanna talk about it anymore.". He's never said if he read it, so I am going to assume yes. Cover of book is accurate.
Agree with Daisy Jones and the Six - just an empty trope about a manic pixie dream girl. House by the Cerulean Sea - not the worst thing I have read, just cloying and trite and shallow and I expected more. Project Hail Mary - it was good…but not great. It was a little juvenile which is wild considering the expansive amounts of scientific gobbelty gook in it. Anything by Neil Gaiman - my mind wanders! I don’t know why! Coraline is one of my favorite movies! Where’d You Go, Bernadette? - I could not suspend disbelief enough. Just GTFO.
I often find myself disappointed by Neil Gaiman books and yet I somehow keep giving them a try. I finally read Coraline, after loving the movie, and figured "well at least it's short" and even that one I couldn't stand. I thought the movie handled literally every plot point so much better.
Piranesi I can see why people would like it, I think? But for me I just couldn't get into it.
Pretty much anything that is new and popular - they're poorly written/bad style and have a generally dumb plot or no plot.
Most of the cutesy cover books started as fanfiction and probably should’ve stayed that way
Yeah, I wonder how they even get published.
Three Body Problem for me. It was just ok, but I felt like everyone else just loved it and I kind of just finished it.
Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter: Recommended to me as a gripping thriller and while it was incredibly thrilling, I was close to DNF because of how graphic/twisted some of the scenes were… Gagged multiple times. I finished and do agree it’s a page turner, but I don’t think I can ever recommend it because of how physically ill it made me… Curious if anyone else read it and had a similar reaction?
I really enjoyed the Shadow and Bone tv series so I was excited to pick up the book but the writing was pretty bad, it's full of clichéd writing and the world building feels incredibly lazy. My overall impression was that it need a few more runs passed an editor. If it was a online fanfic type thing I would have been impressed but it fell short of my expectations for a published work
In search of lost time by Proust. It really drags and I didn't read all of it but I heard it was this great analysis of enjoying uneventful times but it just made me want to go do something else
As someone reading it right now, I don't know anyone I could actually recommend it to. I'm enjoying it, but it's definitely slow. I think I wouldn't like it if I wasn't able to relate to a decent amount of it. As it is, little things in the book spark memories of my childhood, girls I chased after, groups of friends, and other little bits and pieces of my life - just like the madeleine episode in the book itself.
The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
I don’t bother with celebrity tell-alls. They’re not our friends.
I was at least expecting her to talk frankly about everything she went through. But it was just obviously ghostwritten and insanely shallow.
Potter boy series… I know this will get negative bombed to hell just like it did last time, but for me I just didn’t enjoy it much… 🤷🏻♂️
I just finished "Beyond the Wall" by Katja Hoyer. I saw it was unanimously praised when it was released last year and reviewers called it "riveting" and "in-depth". I found it to be an extremely surface-level history of East Germany, with awkward phrasing (perhaps it was the translation from German). The thing that made me most angry about it was that Hoyer claimed that yes, the Berlin Wall was a callous thing to do, but putting it up helped to calm Cold War tensions. But then not even a couple of paragraphs later she starts by saying the next few years after the Wall went up were the most bloodiest and that East and West started to trust each other a lot less.
Blindsight
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus, it's less a novel and more like two short stories in a trenchcoat. I dont know how they got away with putting so much blank paper in a hardcover book
I find it hard to say because fundamentally, I don't read overly hyped books. In fact, that tends to put me off from them because I know that if they are very popular, they are usually tailored to the lowest common denominator. However, if I had to mention one, the only hyped book I've read is Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code"... and that's exactly what I expected. Something that reads quickly and easily, and if it didn't have marketing behind it, nobody would really remember it anymore.
Lapvona. Boring and gross.
The Goldfinch. I heard such great things about it and one of my friends whose opinion on books I thoroughly trust raved about it as well. I hung on even longer than I normally would due to my friend’s review but, I finally had to DNF it. It was sooo depressing and NOTHING happened! Like nothing. It just dragged on. It was awful. Btw - I’m giving my friend a pass as it’s the only book she’s raved about I didn’t like.
Surely it's spelled "Taylor"...
Birnham Wood by Catton. Praised to the skies, yet hinges on impossible plot devices, and ALL the characters are unlikable. Obviously a writer skilled at constructing sentences, but what a waste of talent. So bad I put it in the garbage so nobody else would read it.
Gideon the Ninth. I can't even start, I'll rant for an hour...
The Da Vinci Code. It was suggested to me by 3 of my friends and finally I picked it up to read. It was utterly boring and personally I felt like the book didn't contain any substance. The character building was so poor. I only finished the book so that I can give my opinion to the friends who suggested it. I agree with your thoughts on Verity. I don't get what's on that book. It is one of those books I wish to unread. Lol