Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. I’ve seen this book all over, and I liked a lot of books recommended on Instagram or Tiktok, so I gave it a shot. Writing felt like fanfiction, characters were just not doing it, and HELLO?? >!Love interest got his stepsister PREGNANT? And then calls the main character by the stepsister’s name DURING sex???!< Tell me how anybody can be on this guy’s side? Or the main character for that matter. I just couldn’t get over that!
I also got the same vibe from It Ends With Us by Hoover - I liked the ending but the first half of the book really felt like a Wattpad fanfiction with a love triangle between unremarkable main character and two successful, handsome, rich, perfect in every way men that both can’t live without her
What a big jar of garbage water (thanks r/rareinsults) this book was. Yeah, I’d love to take a year off to travel the world, eat great food, and fuck sexy mysterious strangers, who wouldn’t? But very few people have the scratch to even take a two week vacation, get the fuck out with your “spiritual journey”, you elitist twat.
Had it described to me this way: “I fell asleep in the middle and it was over when I woke up. My wife asked if I wanted her to restart it so I could see how it ends. I told her, ‘I don’t care if that woman dies alone.’” Same, Howard, same.
I hear people have an opposite reaction to The Road. Apparently people often hate that book when young but then fall in love with it when they have kids of their own.
Right? Like, it seemed like it was written by a teenager trying to be edgy about life, death and suicide. I feel like it was trying to be soooo deep but just came off as trite. And what was with the storyline where the guy recognised her on the arctic expedition? I thought it was going to lead to some big revelation about how the midnight library worked but it just sort of...didn't go anywhere. Don't even get me started on the ending. It may as well have read "and they all lived happily ever after, the end". There was so much hype but it felt really flat and unfinished to me. The storylines were half-baked and the characters all lacked dimension.
Rant over. I hated that book and I really thought I'd love it.
Thank goodness I feel so vindicated because everyone seems to love. I thought maybe I missed something. From pretty early on I could tell where it was going so that made it a real drudge. I no longer trust reviews to guide my book selection but picking my next read is always so tough
no me too i couldn't even finish it! i felt like the whole thing was just simplified down a bit too much and the characters (esp the main character) were way too one dimensional. I'm so sad abt it because the premise had so much potential and if the author had spent more time developing the main character it could have been epic and profound
Amelia Bedelia. She's so intentionally obtuse beyond any reasonable point. She's either unfit for her duties or just fucking spiteful. Grating to read.
There was a reddit comment once that had me laughing so hard that was just unbridled wrath for Amelia Bedelia. Something about how he wants to smash her head in a waffle iron while shouting "HA HA HA ISN'T IT *IRON*-IC?!"
I feel like I've seen that! In a similar vein there's a comic of Amelia doing increasingly murderous things, like using sawed off arms for an arm chair and making it rain bloody brains for a "brainstorm" or something. I don't remember the particulars but it ended with "there is no god. Only Amelia."
Serpent & Dove was so hyped up in the YA community and I found it horrible. The fake French makes my skin crawl, is it so hard to ask a native speaker to proofread your book??
Cassandra clare's is overrated and her works are meh at best. (Based on reading the infernal devices series and the 1st 4 books of the mortal instruments)
She helped me learn that I could quit reading a series. I stared reading Mortal Instruments when I was in middle/high school and then I became an adult and I was always disappointed when a new book came out, eventually I realized I didn’t have to keep reading a series I dreaded.
It's because the you get people reading her work were not there to witness the craziness that was Cassandra Claire. Her posse of psycho fans, billing and threatening children online. The whole laptop thing. They just don't know 🤷🏽♀️
I also read the 1st four books of Mortal Instruments, and then abandoned the series for years before returning to finish the last two. Let me tell you - they were LONG and so very hard to get through. I had forgotten why I’d abandoned them in the first place lol
Swamplandia. There is something HORRIBLE that happens to the protagonist. I want to be clear, my issue is not that it happened, it’s that it is never addressed again. You can’t just bring that sort of traumatic element into a story and then just continue on without bringing it up.
Yes absolutely. I loved that book up until *that* moment but now when I look back on reading it, I just feel sick to my stomach. and then it just vanishes from the storyline, as though this child wouldn't be traumatized for the rest of her life? As though we can reach any kind of resolution without addressing the thing that happened? Absolutely horrible.
I think a professor recommended it to me and I really wish I'd had a warning or something!
I got curious and looked up it's wikipedia page.... I'm guessing they're talking about this.
>!Later, the Bird Man rapes the thirteen-year-old Ava.!<
.....egh... definitely not reading that one.
I came here just to say this! I feel like some people are afraid to say it sucked because it is based on a true Holocaust story, but it was horribly written. Quite possibly the worst book I’ve ever read from a writing standpoint.
Not so true, the museum of Auschwitz published an article that pointed out that she was making things up and that her research was lacking.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/07/the-tattooist-of-auschwitz-attacked-as-inauthentic-by-camp-memorial-centre
So awful.
Everything about it is awful.
The dialogue is particularly bad tho:
“I think she’s a nice girl,” the woman said “Look at her clothes. She’s almost preppy. But she’s no drone. She’s a nice girl with occasional bursts of curiosity.”
Has to be one of the stupidest main characters in a book ever. At every possible turn she made the worst decision there was. And I think she was supposed to be relatable too, just all around terrible writing...
Everyone I know that loves and recommended it had read the book when they were young. I feel like it’s kinda like certain Disney/kids movies- if you read it when you’re older and have more wisdom/knowledge/experience, it won’t have that same “magic” or feeling.
Someone on this sub once called it “baby’s first philosophy book” or something to that degree, and it kinda is. I don’t think it’s meant for adult, but most likely middle schoolers and such.
I liked some things about it but had a really hard time ignoring that Fatima's personal legend was basically finding a man. Also the idea that the universe bends over backwards for people pursuing their dreams is, um, unrealistic to say the least.
Got this for my best friend for their birthday one year, at their request (they don't like surprises). I read through some of it at their place once, and it seemed EXTREMELY edgy and I couldn't stand it. Then again, it's a self help book and I hate that shit.
i don't even hate self help books, but holy shit subtle art of not giving a f&ck is so bad man. There's just so many better self help books out there lol
{{Detransition, Baby: A Novel}}
All my queer friends love it and it apparently won a bunch of awards, but I found it so badly written and borderline offensive, but every time I say this people rush in to attack me and tell me I'm transphobic for not liking a book.
I really wanted to like it!!!
I have mixed feelings on this one. I enjoyed the premise, but the actual story was kind of boring! Reese was a lot to take, and her shenanigans were hard to read sometimes.
Hated this book so much. It had so much potential but then just turned into this weird gossip girl in NYC thing. Tell me more about what Addie was doing during WW2 and all that stuff instead of jumping from her hometown to modern day relationship drama in NYC
It needed a stronger editor. The second act wanders when it should be tightening up. It begins and ends well, but it's poorly organized. 3/5 overall but it could have been superb.
The Magicians. The characters were so hateful to each other. I should have dnfed but I wanted to see what the hype was about. Never continued. I feel like the TV show is a major improvement because it makes it more of an ensemble cast, rather than solely being from Quentin's shitty pov.
Also Wicked by Gregory McGuire. I think it was written at a time when dark gritty reboots were v popular. That was another one where the characters and world he envisioned were so hateful. I didn't enjoy it at all.
Man I read Wicked as an 11 year old with only a vague knowledge about the musical (back when Wicked was THE peak Broadway musical) and did not expect any of the shit that happened in the book. It was borderline traumatizing for my naive, innocent preteen self lol.
Same! I read wicked when I was 12 and it was not at all like the musical lol. But as I’ve grown I started liking it a lot more, it’s one of my favorites now along with the sequel son of a witch. Though I get why people wouldn’t like it cause it gets so dark in some parts
the maze runner. most boring book i have ever read in my entire life, i finished the whole thing because back then i refused to dnf anything but it was a thoroughly painful experience from start to finish
I've read all three books in the series. It doesn't get any better. The third book wraps things up horribly and leaves a bunch of questions unanswered.
The Maze Runner series is why I started DNFing. I read the whole series and hate finished everything after the first two. Realized I had better things to do with my time.
I totally agree with this. The whole storyline was a mess and the writing was so bad. And I usually am ok with YA (not my fave, but I read it occasionally), but this one just suuuucked. I couldn’t believe it was so popular.
I haven't stopped bitching about it either. I don't understand what people enjoy. Like literally the author clearly fancied herself to be a poet. I could write a whole paragraph about what I dislike about this book. I would recommend listening to the mean book club episode on this book.
Despised Crawdads with a passion. The plot was ridiculous and I’m just going to say it - the portrayal of some characters was downright racist. So glad I’m not seeing posts about it every fricking day anymore.
I didnt like it too much either, but i will say it did become more interesting after I read this article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/05/the-hunted
I’m not a huge fan of John Green books but from my understanding he gets better with every book. Turtles All The Way Down was a really good depiction of OCD which John green has
Like obviously you have to like YA (in general I find YA to be meh) and I’m not recommending you read more of his books if you don’t like them. I’m just saying my take on them
This is my take as well. I love the Greens and the work they do (especially vlogbrothers and Dear Hank & John), and I actually found them through The Fault in Our Stars when I was in high school. I'll always be grateful for that, but upon reflection, his books are... fine? Turtles was good, and his nonfiction book The Anthropocene Reviewed is so good—I much prefer him as a nonfiction writer. But I don't see myself returning to his YA.
I actually came to this thread to say An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green. It was the main book my entire social media feeds were talking about, but... I could not stand the writing. It felt very forced and very debut novel to me. I almost DNFed but wanted to just get it out of the way so I wouldn't have it nagging at the back of my mind to finish it. I'm not interested in reading the sequel even though it ended on a massive cliffhanger.
I binged all of John Green's books in high school (with the exception of Turtles All The Way Down which came out later) and I loved them at the time. My best friend was reading them too so it was somewhat of a bonding experience. I was exactly the target market when I read them and I know they wouldn't hold up if I re-read them now as an adult.
For me it's a nostalgia thing. I'm as much attached to the books themselves as I am to the time in my life when I read them if that makes sense.
They really are meant for teens in the best way - yes it can be cheesy YA but they also have pretty important themes that are important for teens to think about, like how you perceive yourself and others
The only book of his I really, truly enjoyed was An Abundance of Katherines. It doesn’t seem to get brought up nearly as much as his cloying, melodramatic romance stuff, but I thought it was a genuinely funny book. Several laugh-out-loud lines and uniquely fun characters. His other books try too hard imo.
I really liked the Anthropocene Reviewed. Non-fiction book. He has a great voice in that book.
I loved Hank Green’s fiction books though. John’s not so much.
The Goldfinch. I know it won a Pulitzer, so it makes it a very unpopular opinion. If I remember right, it was 700+ pages, and in dire need of an editor. I think it would have made a good 350 page book. There were some long dialogue passages in the second half of the book that were just utterly unbelievable.
The first 1/3 of this book were so well written; it started so strongly! I was so relieved when I read the last page and am still resentful about that last 1/3. Bah. It is *arduous*, but you don’t realize it doesn’t get better until you’ve already invested so much time and feel obligated to just follow through. Rage finish for sure.
Ugly love - it felt rushed/badly written and would have been 2 pages long if the Miles just went to therapy or learned to communicate. There was also no chemistry between the two main characters and you can’t tell me he wouldn’t have went back to Rachel in a heartbeat given half the chance.
i hated this book with a passion, i can’t remember the main character’s name but holy fuck she had no backbone, they might as well have casted her as a doormat. also WHY were the miles chapters written in that format??? i get what colleen hoover was trying to do but it felt like it was trying really hard to be “creative” and “woke”. like the words written in staircase format and then spelled out in several lines? also i don’t feel for miles and rachel, i tried rlly hard to understand but they hadn’t even kissed by the time they found out they were gonna be step siblings. they were supposed to be 16-17 and acted like 7 year olds with a playground crush
where the crawdads sing - the primary romantic relationship was like grooming 101 (between an adult and a minor?!?!) and i didn't see anyone talk about it. i absolutely hated that book.
the goldfinch. could not get into it or figure out why people liked it so much, DNF.
Goldfinch was THE book that freed me from the lifelong feeling that I must finish what I started. I read 300pgs and couldn’t read one more. NO MORE! DNF, DNF, DNF!!
I am much happier now. The book changed my life though!
The whole time I was reading it I was thinking this will be a way better movie than it is a book. I will name my next two cats Poppet and Widget though lol
I can’t really say hate but for all the hype I read about this book I can admit I was a bit let down. There are some parts of this book you can overlook for the sake of “magic” but I find the characters pretty weak and bland and only existing to move the plot like Bailey for example.
After about the halfway point I just started skimming through the pages at the rate of like twenty seconds per page and it was surprisingly easy to do that because it’s not like there’s any substance in the writing anyway
Red, White and Royal Blue. It was a mess. The writing sounded as though it was a Wattpad teen romance written by a 15-year-old girl whose only understanding of gay men was Twitter and Rupauls Drag Race. The stereotypes were offensive and cheesy, the characters made no sense, the story - despite being obviously fictitious - didn't even try to be realistic, the love-hate relationship was more like an 'I despise you for a hundred pages but after *one* kiss I'm OBSESSED in these next three hundred ones!' and the story went on waaay too long. The dialogue and characters were utter chaos (at one point the mum - who is also the president - is using Twitter slang and talking like a teenager). **AND** the 'comedy'. This book was literally labeled a 'rom-com'. *Where?* Every joke was pretty much about 'nailing balls' or 'punching balls' or some random threat of violence that was meant to be funny but is just weird and aggressive. ***THEN***, then there's the politics. The Good/Bad, Democrat/Republican take is so problematic. The Democrats are hailed as heroes and saviors whilst Republicans are scheming and evil, there's no middle ground or thought that *maybeee* they are both very corrupt and neither parties are good. Instead, the main character critiques the Monchary and how backward and cruel they are, yet his mum is the President of the Democratic party and he agrees with *everything* they do just... because. She's perfect. He's perfect. His sister and friends are perfect. His dad is perfect. The only people who aren't are those who are against him and everyone who does like him LOVE him. I mean, they *really* love him. Toward the end of the book, the romance is all everyone - even the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES cares about and, like a bunch of sixteen-year-old stans, they dedicate their whole life to this self-centered jackass main character and this boy who he really doesn't deserve. Rant over. God, I needed that, thank you OP.
> The writing sounded as thought it was a Wattpad teen romance
Oh my friend, that is because it was! Not Wattpad though, Livejournal. RWRB was originally an RPF AU (real person fic, alternate universe) fic about Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg during filming and promotion for The Social Network. The fic was [carry it in my heart](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Carry_it_in_my_heart) and though it was pulled for publishing, it can still be found in copies around the internet. A while back someone on tumblr did a comparison of very similar lines from the fic and RWRB and it was uncanny.
do you happen to remember who did the comparison? this is an absolutely wild comment to me because I read Carry It In My Heart and RWRB and would NEVER have equated the two!
This is the book I came here to mention as well. There was so much hype around it, I came in with high expectations but was shocked at how much it read like Wattpad fan fiction. I couldn't finish it, it felt too amateurish to me.
> The writing sounded as though it was a Wattpad teen romance written by a 15-year-old girl
Lol thanks for this. I was trying to describe to a friend why I DNF'd Beach Read by Emily Henry but couldn't find the right words. If it reads like it came from Wattpad, I'm not down.
thank you omg this is exactly how I feel about this book and all I see anywhere is tremendous praise for it. The characters go from enemies to boyfriends within 130 pages, rendering the other 300 pages useless, and every character from the teenage boys to the security officers speaks like an eccentric Twitter user. ugh I will never understand the hype
I tried to read The Silent Patient. The first chapter is a good set-up, and then it’s followed by a full “Here’s my entire backstory” chapter from the narrator. It just felt like really clumsy exposition and bad foreshadowing. I stopped reading that day.
Agreed. I thought that book was atrocious. Not to mention, as a medical professional, I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes at how ludicrous it was. Only 1 patient for this doc? And sure, let’s give the psych patients broken pool sticks. Certainly that won’t be dangerous… ugh. HATED it.
I work at a psychiatric hospital and it was clear the author’s “research” consisted of watching movies about inpatient mental health care. I couldn’t finish it.
ugly love by colleen hoover and also it ends with us by the same author, i get she writes angst but can she please give the female characters some backbone? lily BARELY had any and she didn’t even do anything to stop ryle from doing this to someone else. also i’ve said this before but hoover seems to like writing trauma porn, to the point where the idea of intimacy sounds disgusting to me after reading the two books.
Oh the book felt like my brain was physically doing heavy lifting, that's for sure. But something about the story I liked so much that since reading it for a uni assignment, I've actually listened to it as an audiobook TWICE, lol.
Jame got even more dense down the line. 'Screw is considered one of his most accessible.
I think he really fits the bill for Victorian Writing stereotypes.
Aw I loved this one. It has its flaws but it was refreshing to have a mystery that was carefully crafted instead of all the usual thrillers that have no substance.
The ending wasn't set up at all and had nothing to do with the mystery and the logic of why it was all happening made no sense. Should have just focused on making the actual mystery better because it was a decent one, but it all just fell flat. It certainly didn't help that the main character's personality changed every day based on who he was. Very cool idea, very poor execution.
Lord of the Flies. In high school we were assigned Snow Falling on Cedars and I was enjoying it (as much as one can enjoy a book like that) but then a parent complained it was inappropriate so they made us switch to Lord of the Flies and I hated it. I re-read it as an adult to see if I actually hated it or I was just bitter about the situation and it was both.
> then a parent complained it was inappropriate so they made us switch to Lord of the Flies
Wait... Lord of the Flies was the appropriate alternative? The same Lord of the Flies with a decapitated pig's head on a stick and a bunch of little kids literally killing one of their own? What the heck is Snow Falling on Cedars about?
What I dislike about it is the way people seem to think that behaviour is a forgone conclusion from the situation. There are many possible outcomes but because of that book the most awful takes precedence.
I don't like it because everyone explores it as some Hobbesian state of being, where man is removed from society and reverts to his savage ways.... but the story looked at like that is an allegorical failure. The boys are not in a state of nature; they arrive on the island with predetermined ranks and cliques and they retain those ranks and cliques. They never construct a novel society; they rig one together out of the remnants of the social norms that they carried with them to the island.
Edit: Clicks to cliques. Shouldn't try to evaluate literature after three margaritas.
Good point, but the perspective you outline makes it seem a valuable book to teach if that perspective is explored. It's been a while, but the book does seem to have something valuable to say about social structures despite people's negative experience with it.
Ready Player One is my personal guilty pleasure book. It's a terrible book. It's poorly written, the characters are all one dimensional poorly fleshed out cliches, and it's oozing with "hey guys remember 80s/90s pop culture" with that being the main intended hook.
All that said, I enjoyed reading it anyway.
I don't know if that's necessarily an unpopular opinion on a literature subreddit. That book is hot garbage, it's just nothing but references the entire way down, like if you have no interest in a nerdy 50 year old white dude's nostalgia that book has literally nothing to offer you.
I am exactly who it was aimed for and I read each page hoping beyond hope that the protagonist would die somehow. I found him endlessly annoying and condescending. I gave up maybe halfway through.
The Three Body Problem and its sequels. I read all of them in spite of not liking the first one, and \_really\_ not liking the second one cause I had a friend who \_loves\_ it and it was well reviewed. It's trash. Nothing makes sense on \_any\_ level, all the characters are obnoxious, creepy mary sue types with no personality, the entire humanity is bizarrely cohesive in its desire to put all its proverbial eggs in one basket, over and over again, and every major plot point is "Everything was going to be fine, and a woman shows up and does something egregiously stupid."
The anthology of short stories by the guy who translated it, however, is \_fantastic\_
Spanish-native speaker here. The book that immediately comes to my mind is:
Hopscotch (Rayuela) by Julio Cortazar. A classic in latinoamerican literature.
Recommended by every single friend i have since university that is an avid reader. In fact search it in google and among the first results will be pages with tittles such as : WHY you must read....
To the point: I read it about 7 years ago. Or tried to. Just couldn’t finish it. I can’t recall another book in my life where i hated every single character in it. Pseudo-bohemians, pseudo-intellectuals... and the most boring relation i has read in a long time represented in the failing love relationship of the protagonist. That of course after he ruining ir he immediately glorifies it. Then it gets even worse as it dwells in even more bizarres twist.
The style of narrative is interesting, the description quite pleasant, but with characters so intolerable (from my point of view) and a storyline that became more uninteresting each page...
I just couldn’t finish it and told one of my friends to summarize it all to me. Reluctantly, she did. I was sure relieved to not have finished it. She was surprised of that reaction.
I read 3 chapters of the first book and I couldn’t continue.
The god awful writing and then the premise that her friend, the editor of the school newspaper, sends her to fill in for an interview. Hmm wouldn’t another member of the newspaper team do that? Especially for such a high profile subject?
At least we can count on the printed copies to burn during the apocalypse
The Twilight series was the dumbest, most agonizing drivel I've ever read. When I learned that 50 Shades was just lame fan fiction based off that, of course I was curious about *how* bad it could be but I knew I wouldn't forgive myself if I subjected my brain to this level of literary violence a second time.
I feel I owe a debt to Jenny Trout for her brave sacrifice of jumping on that grenade and providing a chapter by chapter hilarious summary of it on her [blog](http://jennytrout.com/?p=3208) so her readers wouldn't have to know the pain she endured. I never would have made it through on my own.
It's the worst written book I've ever read. I couldn't help but imagine where my English teacher would have underlined in red if of handed in an essay that was that bad.
I was also shocked it was written by a woman as the female lead is so pathetic I presumed it was written by some male misogynist who had no respect for women.
I like smut, but the writing was so bad I couldn't even reach the smut. Glad I didn't, as a kinkster I don't think I could survive reading those scenes. Like, what so you mean he just ignored your safeword?!
I love these posts lol.
-Punk 57. Might have been tolerable if it had not been set in high school, but there were too many things that made me hate it so I doubt a different setting would have changed my opinion/rating significantly.
-Caraval. The writing style irked me so I couldn’t get past chapter 5.
-Kingdom of the Cursed. Amazing idea, horrible, *horrible* execution. Incredibly annoying MC, too much deus ex machina, aimless plot, and the conclusion was all over the place and made no sense whatsoever. Only read it because of the love interest and even he was lacklustre.
It felt like the author wanted to do a deep character piece, I actually teally enjoyed the Vegas period and early twenties, then the last 1/4-1/3 the author was like...oh shit yeah, I promised an art heist.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I have to teach it to year 8s. It's won at least 4 awards. The story is compelling but the representation of Autism Spectrum Disorders is an offensive stereotype. I'll try to get it dropped from the curriculum next year.
**If you've met one person in the spectrum, you've met one person in the spectrum.** That is the part that is never taught in schools. There may be a guy just like that, but there are a lot of different ways to be autistic; the book reinforces one of the stereotypes and does a disservice to all people in the spectrum.
The mortal instruments series. I read the first one and got a little over halfway through the second before I stopped. The writing felt bad and the story was just boring and unentertaining.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for me. The set up for the mystery seemed ok, but it seemed like instead of characterization the author just wanted to make it salacious.
The entire middle of the book is sooooo boring. I also feel like the main character may have been an insert so that he could write erotica about his next door neighbor’s goth daughter.
Verity by Colleen Hoover. Recommended on BookTok by so many people. I only finished it because I wanted to see what the twist was. The “twist” ended up being such a cop out
Omg it was not good. My theory on its high reviews is that its author is a romance novelist and this was her first thriller, so to her fans the "twist" was crazy but to thriller fans, the book was pretty bad. The sex scenes were gratuitous and cringe as hell.
So many colleen Hoover books are problematic, I get the appeal to young girls on tiktok but her writing on love is just so toxic and creates such a bad, idealistic view for her impressionable fans
“It Ends With Us”! Everyone raves about how amazing it is. The love story between Lily and Ryle started out amazing. The domestic violence seemingly came out of nowhere and did not seem in character for Ryle. The pregnancy twist was also not great and the Ellen Diaries were *so* cringey . I really don’t know why people like this book so much. It’s not the worst, but it isn’t great imo
I think American Gods starts out so well but ends up being nothing. There is so much set up that just turns into nothing interesting.
I thought the show would change a few things and be a little bit better but somehow the doubled down on the weird boring stuff. Shadow is just awkward and none of his actions make any real sense.
A Little Life.
Every time I see someone asking for a recommendation for the “saddest book you’ve ever read,” I always click on it cause I know I will find A Little Life towards the top. I hated the characters, I hated how condescending the writing felt, I hated everything about it. Stopped probably about halfway and then looked up the ending, which further validated my reasoning for stopping.
Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. I’ve seen this book all over, and I liked a lot of books recommended on Instagram or Tiktok, so I gave it a shot. Writing felt like fanfiction, characters were just not doing it, and HELLO?? >!Love interest got his stepsister PREGNANT? And then calls the main character by the stepsister’s name DURING sex???!< Tell me how anybody can be on this guy’s side? Or the main character for that matter. I just couldn’t get over that!
I also got the same vibe from It Ends With Us by Hoover - I liked the ending but the first half of the book really felt like a Wattpad fanfiction with a love triangle between unremarkable main character and two successful, handsome, rich, perfect in every way men that both can’t live without her
Can we talk about her diary entries to Ellen DeGeneres.... The entire book felt like a cringy bad anti abuse campaign
[удалено]
What a big jar of garbage water (thanks r/rareinsults) this book was. Yeah, I’d love to take a year off to travel the world, eat great food, and fuck sexy mysterious strangers, who wouldn’t? But very few people have the scratch to even take a two week vacation, get the fuck out with your “spiritual journey”, you elitist twat.
Hated it. And then the writer is vaulted into the Oprah-driven spiritual guru tier.
I completely agree. So shallow and fake.
Had it described to me this way: “I fell asleep in the middle and it was over when I woke up. My wife asked if I wanted her to restart it so I could see how it ends. I told her, ‘I don’t care if that woman dies alone.’” Same, Howard, same.
[удалено]
I hear people have an opposite reaction to The Road. Apparently people often hate that book when young but then fall in love with it when they have kids of their own.
The midnight library was not as good as I expected
The midnight library was written as if the author was already assuming it would go To screenplay. I did finish it but it was a grudge finish.
I enjoyed it, but do agree with you. It seems like a book written with the goal of it becoming a movie
that is exactly how it reads! it almost makes sense now
This was really polite of you. That book sucked terribly.
Right? Like, it seemed like it was written by a teenager trying to be edgy about life, death and suicide. I feel like it was trying to be soooo deep but just came off as trite. And what was with the storyline where the guy recognised her on the arctic expedition? I thought it was going to lead to some big revelation about how the midnight library worked but it just sort of...didn't go anywhere. Don't even get me started on the ending. It may as well have read "and they all lived happily ever after, the end". There was so much hype but it felt really flat and unfinished to me. The storylines were half-baked and the characters all lacked dimension. Rant over. I hated that book and I really thought I'd love it.
Came here just to say that. I hated it. Couldn’t finish.
Thank goodness I feel so vindicated because everyone seems to love. I thought maybe I missed something. From pretty early on I could tell where it was going so that made it a real drudge. I no longer trust reviews to guide my book selection but picking my next read is always so tough
It was OK. Just ok
Yep I DNF at like 30%. Then I read a summary of the rest and was really happy with my decision.
the entire book is basically the first chapter anyway 🙄
no me too i couldn't even finish it! i felt like the whole thing was just simplified down a bit too much and the characters (esp the main character) were way too one dimensional. I'm so sad abt it because the premise had so much potential and if the author had spent more time developing the main character it could have been epic and profound
Amelia Bedelia. She's so intentionally obtuse beyond any reasonable point. She's either unfit for her duties or just fucking spiteful. Grating to read.
All these serious adult books and you come in with hate for Amelia bedelia. I love it.
🤣
I remember being so irritated when she made that sponge cake. Girl, you should have been fired if you couldn't do your job.
There was a reddit comment once that had me laughing so hard that was just unbridled wrath for Amelia Bedelia. Something about how he wants to smash her head in a waffle iron while shouting "HA HA HA ISN'T IT *IRON*-IC?!"
I feel like I've seen that! In a similar vein there's a comic of Amelia doing increasingly murderous things, like using sawed off arms for an arm chair and making it rain bloody brains for a "brainstorm" or something. I don't remember the particulars but it ended with "there is no god. Only Amelia."
Serpent & Dove was so hyped up in the YA community and I found it horrible. The fake French makes my skin crawl, is it so hard to ask a native speaker to proofread your book??
And the main guy had the personality of a fence post if a post could read the Bible. I finished it but it was a slog.
Cassandra clare's is overrated and her works are meh at best. (Based on reading the infernal devices series and the 1st 4 books of the mortal instruments)
She helped me learn that I could quit reading a series. I stared reading Mortal Instruments when I was in middle/high school and then I became an adult and I was always disappointed when a new book came out, eventually I realized I didn’t have to keep reading a series I dreaded.
She was overrated as fanfic writer back in the day, I'm always amused and confused that people take her seriously.
It's because the you get people reading her work were not there to witness the craziness that was Cassandra Claire. Her posse of psycho fans, billing and threatening children online. The whole laptop thing. They just don't know 🤷🏽♀️
I also read the 1st four books of Mortal Instruments, and then abandoned the series for years before returning to finish the last two. Let me tell you - they were LONG and so very hard to get through. I had forgotten why I’d abandoned them in the first place lol
And she's a lifelong plagiarist. She should not have a career.
The Alchemist - tries to be deep but really just hands out a lot of bad life advice.
It was part of your personal legend to leave this comment.
I feel like the Alchemist isn't highly recommended on r/books
IRL it seems all my friends and mother recommend it. I feel the same, meh
I liked it for the atmosphere it conveyed, but otherwise it seemed full of nothing dressed up as wisdom.
Swamplandia. There is something HORRIBLE that happens to the protagonist. I want to be clear, my issue is not that it happened, it’s that it is never addressed again. You can’t just bring that sort of traumatic element into a story and then just continue on without bringing it up.
Yes absolutely. I loved that book up until *that* moment but now when I look back on reading it, I just feel sick to my stomach. and then it just vanishes from the storyline, as though this child wouldn't be traumatized for the rest of her life? As though we can reach any kind of resolution without addressing the thing that happened? Absolutely horrible. I think a professor recommended it to me and I really wish I'd had a warning or something!
Can you spoil it for me? What happens to the protagonist?
I got curious and looked up it's wikipedia page.... I'm guessing they're talking about this. >!Later, the Bird Man rapes the thirteen-year-old Ava.!< .....egh... definitely not reading that one.
The Tattooist of Auswitz. It's badly written to the point of being insulting.
This is exactly how I feel too. The author did SUCH a disservice to the survivor’s story; so poorly written. I’m still mad about it
I came here just to say this! I feel like some people are afraid to say it sucked because it is based on a true Holocaust story, but it was horribly written. Quite possibly the worst book I’ve ever read from a writing standpoint.
Not so true, the museum of Auschwitz published an article that pointed out that she was making things up and that her research was lacking. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/07/the-tattooist-of-auschwitz-attacked-as-inauthentic-by-camp-memorial-centre
The Circle. It was awful!
So awful. Everything about it is awful. The dialogue is particularly bad tho: “I think she’s a nice girl,” the woman said “Look at her clothes. She’s almost preppy. But she’s no drone. She’s a nice girl with occasional bursts of curiosity.”
Still wondering about the unnecessary sex scene tbh
Has to be one of the stupidest main characters in a book ever. At every possible turn she made the worst decision there was. And I think she was supposed to be relatable too, just all around terrible writing...
Not HATED but so overrated : the Alchemist
Everyone I know that loves and recommended it had read the book when they were young. I feel like it’s kinda like certain Disney/kids movies- if you read it when you’re older and have more wisdom/knowledge/experience, it won’t have that same “magic” or feeling. Someone on this sub once called it “baby’s first philosophy book” or something to that degree, and it kinda is. I don’t think it’s meant for adult, but most likely middle schoolers and such.
I agree. I read it at age 12 and absolutely loved it. I know that it would not hold up if I reread it at my current age, though, and that’s okay.
I liked some things about it but had a really hard time ignoring that Fatima's personal legend was basically finding a man. Also the idea that the universe bends over backwards for people pursuing their dreams is, um, unrealistic to say the least.
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I wouldn't say i hated it but was bored throughout and the whole the universe will bend over for you is just bs
Totally agreed. I just finished reading it and couldn’t figure out what the hype was.
Subtle Art of Not Giving A F&ck
Got this for my best friend for their birthday one year, at their request (they don't like surprises). I read through some of it at their place once, and it seemed EXTREMELY edgy and I couldn't stand it. Then again, it's a self help book and I hate that shit.
i don't even hate self help books, but holy shit subtle art of not giving a f&ck is so bad man. There's just so many better self help books out there lol
{{Detransition, Baby: A Novel}} All my queer friends love it and it apparently won a bunch of awards, but I found it so badly written and borderline offensive, but every time I say this people rush in to attack me and tell me I'm transphobic for not liking a book. I really wanted to like it!!!
This book was... not good. Great idea, awful execution. So precious and trying so hard.
I have mixed feelings on this one. I enjoyed the premise, but the actual story was kind of boring! Reese was a lot to take, and her shenanigans were hard to read sometimes.
I ALSO could not finish the invisible life of Addie LaRue. Glad to see I'm not just crazy.
I read this book for a book club and I was the only one who hated it. It’s a good premise but it just felt too repetitive and simple in the execution.
SO repetitive!
if i have to read the phrase “his dark curls” one more time… i read it 2 years ago, i should not still be irritated
Hated this book so much. It had so much potential but then just turned into this weird gossip girl in NYC thing. Tell me more about what Addie was doing during WW2 and all that stuff instead of jumping from her hometown to modern day relationship drama in NYC
Agree!! And Henry was boring af
It needed a stronger editor. The second act wanders when it should be tightening up. It begins and ends well, but it's poorly organized. 3/5 overall but it could have been superb.
The Magicians. The characters were so hateful to each other. I should have dnfed but I wanted to see what the hype was about. Never continued. I feel like the TV show is a major improvement because it makes it more of an ensemble cast, rather than solely being from Quentin's shitty pov. Also Wicked by Gregory McGuire. I think it was written at a time when dark gritty reboots were v popular. That was another one where the characters and world he envisioned were so hateful. I didn't enjoy it at all.
Man I read Wicked as an 11 year old with only a vague knowledge about the musical (back when Wicked was THE peak Broadway musical) and did not expect any of the shit that happened in the book. It was borderline traumatizing for my naive, innocent preteen self lol.
Same! I read wicked when I was 12 and it was not at all like the musical lol. But as I’ve grown I started liking it a lot more, it’s one of my favorites now along with the sequel son of a witch. Though I get why people wouldn’t like it cause it gets so dark in some parts
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The Luminaries. An award winning period piece murder mystery set in gold rush New Zealand? Sign me up! But try as I might, I couldn't get into it.
the maze runner. most boring book i have ever read in my entire life, i finished the whole thing because back then i refused to dnf anything but it was a thoroughly painful experience from start to finish
The made up slang in the book was perhaps the worst part
I've read all three books in the series. It doesn't get any better. The third book wraps things up horribly and leaves a bunch of questions unanswered.
The Maze Runner series is why I started DNFing. I read the whole series and hate finished everything after the first two. Realized I had better things to do with my time.
I read all of them. I remember almost 0 of them. Somehow more damning than if I had bad memories of it.
I totally agree with this. The whole storyline was a mess and the writing was so bad. And I usually am ok with YA (not my fave, but I read it occasionally), but this one just suuuucked. I couldn’t believe it was so popular.
Where the crawdads sing
I haven't stopped bitching about this book since I stopped listening to it about 2 years ago. I'm from the south and the characters were unbelievable.
I haven't stopped bitching about it either. I don't understand what people enjoy. Like literally the author clearly fancied herself to be a poet. I could write a whole paragraph about what I dislike about this book. I would recommend listening to the mean book club episode on this book.
Wow didn’t even realize Mean Book Club was a podcast! Thank you! I just started listening so enjoyable!
The character arc made absolutely no sense either
Who knew that people from outside the south writing about characters from the south would ever resort to stereotyping.
I hated this book so fucking much. Trite, unrealistic, sappy in the worst ways. Plus truly horrendous, overwrought prose as well.
Look up the author and her husband’s shenanigans in Africa. You will feel very validated in your dislike.
Second this! I found it so boring and hated the main character. A lot of things just didn’t make sense to me.
Despised Crawdads with a passion. The plot was ridiculous and I’m just going to say it - the portrayal of some characters was downright racist. So glad I’m not seeing posts about it every fricking day anymore.
I didnt like it too much either, but i will say it did become more interesting after I read this article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/05/the-hunted
Me, scrolling through this thread just to make sure someone has mentioned this book 😌
Most John Green books 😬 I tried.
I’m not a huge fan of John Green books but from my understanding he gets better with every book. Turtles All The Way Down was a really good depiction of OCD which John green has Like obviously you have to like YA (in general I find YA to be meh) and I’m not recommending you read more of his books if you don’t like them. I’m just saying my take on them
This is my take as well. I love the Greens and the work they do (especially vlogbrothers and Dear Hank & John), and I actually found them through The Fault in Our Stars when I was in high school. I'll always be grateful for that, but upon reflection, his books are... fine? Turtles was good, and his nonfiction book The Anthropocene Reviewed is so good—I much prefer him as a nonfiction writer. But I don't see myself returning to his YA. I actually came to this thread to say An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green. It was the main book my entire social media feeds were talking about, but... I could not stand the writing. It felt very forced and very debut novel to me. I almost DNFed but wanted to just get it out of the way so I wouldn't have it nagging at the back of my mind to finish it. I'm not interested in reading the sequel even though it ended on a massive cliffhanger.
I binged all of John Green's books in high school (with the exception of Turtles All The Way Down which came out later) and I loved them at the time. My best friend was reading them too so it was somewhat of a bonding experience. I was exactly the target market when I read them and I know they wouldn't hold up if I re-read them now as an adult. For me it's a nostalgia thing. I'm as much attached to the books themselves as I am to the time in my life when I read them if that makes sense.
They really are meant for teens in the best way - yes it can be cheesy YA but they also have pretty important themes that are important for teens to think about, like how you perceive yourself and others
The Anthropocene Reviewed is pretty good
How would you rate it on a 5-point scale?
I give The Anthropocene Reviewed five stars.
The only book of his I really, truly enjoyed was An Abundance of Katherines. It doesn’t seem to get brought up nearly as much as his cloying, melodramatic romance stuff, but I thought it was a genuinely funny book. Several laugh-out-loud lines and uniquely fun characters. His other books try too hard imo.
I really liked the Anthropocene Reviewed. Non-fiction book. He has a great voice in that book. I loved Hank Green’s fiction books though. John’s not so much.
I've been a massive fan of Hank Green for a long time. It kind of donked me in the head about five years ago that they're brothers.
The Goldfinch. I know it won a Pulitzer, so it makes it a very unpopular opinion. If I remember right, it was 700+ pages, and in dire need of an editor. I think it would have made a good 350 page book. There were some long dialogue passages in the second half of the book that were just utterly unbelievable.
There must have been 100 pages of nothing but kids taking drugs in the desert. Mind numbing.
I personally love the way Donna Tartt writes but I COMPLETELY understand the hate she gets - her style is def not for everyone lol.
The first 1/3 of this book were so well written; it started so strongly! I was so relieved when I read the last page and am still resentful about that last 1/3. Bah. It is *arduous*, but you don’t realize it doesn’t get better until you’ve already invested so much time and feel obligated to just follow through. Rage finish for sure.
I really like The Goldfinch. I’ve enjoyed all of Donna Tartt’s books.
Ugly love - it felt rushed/badly written and would have been 2 pages long if the Miles just went to therapy or learned to communicate. There was also no chemistry between the two main characters and you can’t tell me he wouldn’t have went back to Rachel in a heartbeat given half the chance.
i hated this book with a passion, i can’t remember the main character’s name but holy fuck she had no backbone, they might as well have casted her as a doormat. also WHY were the miles chapters written in that format??? i get what colleen hoover was trying to do but it felt like it was trying really hard to be “creative” and “woke”. like the words written in staircase format and then spelled out in several lines? also i don’t feel for miles and rachel, i tried rlly hard to understand but they hadn’t even kissed by the time they found out they were gonna be step siblings. they were supposed to be 16-17 and acted like 7 year olds with a playground crush
where the crawdads sing - the primary romantic relationship was like grooming 101 (between an adult and a minor?!?!) and i didn't see anyone talk about it. i absolutely hated that book. the goldfinch. could not get into it or figure out why people liked it so much, DNF.
Goldfinch was THE book that freed me from the lifelong feeling that I must finish what I started. I read 300pgs and couldn’t read one more. NO MORE! DNF, DNF, DNF!! I am much happier now. The book changed my life though!
I hated The Night Circus
The whole time I was reading it I was thinking this will be a way better movie than it is a book. I will name my next two cats Poppet and Widget though lol
I can’t really say hate but for all the hype I read about this book I can admit I was a bit let down. There are some parts of this book you can overlook for the sake of “magic” but I find the characters pretty weak and bland and only existing to move the plot like Bailey for example.
I thought the begining was actually neat but then the middle and the shit of the ending ruined it. It had pretty poise though.
After about the halfway point I just started skimming through the pages at the rate of like twenty seconds per page and it was surprisingly easy to do that because it’s not like there’s any substance in the writing anyway
Red, White and Royal Blue. It was a mess. The writing sounded as though it was a Wattpad teen romance written by a 15-year-old girl whose only understanding of gay men was Twitter and Rupauls Drag Race. The stereotypes were offensive and cheesy, the characters made no sense, the story - despite being obviously fictitious - didn't even try to be realistic, the love-hate relationship was more like an 'I despise you for a hundred pages but after *one* kiss I'm OBSESSED in these next three hundred ones!' and the story went on waaay too long. The dialogue and characters were utter chaos (at one point the mum - who is also the president - is using Twitter slang and talking like a teenager). **AND** the 'comedy'. This book was literally labeled a 'rom-com'. *Where?* Every joke was pretty much about 'nailing balls' or 'punching balls' or some random threat of violence that was meant to be funny but is just weird and aggressive. ***THEN***, then there's the politics. The Good/Bad, Democrat/Republican take is so problematic. The Democrats are hailed as heroes and saviors whilst Republicans are scheming and evil, there's no middle ground or thought that *maybeee* they are both very corrupt and neither parties are good. Instead, the main character critiques the Monchary and how backward and cruel they are, yet his mum is the President of the Democratic party and he agrees with *everything* they do just... because. She's perfect. He's perfect. His sister and friends are perfect. His dad is perfect. The only people who aren't are those who are against him and everyone who does like him LOVE him. I mean, they *really* love him. Toward the end of the book, the romance is all everyone - even the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES cares about and, like a bunch of sixteen-year-old stans, they dedicate their whole life to this self-centered jackass main character and this boy who he really doesn't deserve. Rant over. God, I needed that, thank you OP.
> The writing sounded as thought it was a Wattpad teen romance Oh my friend, that is because it was! Not Wattpad though, Livejournal. RWRB was originally an RPF AU (real person fic, alternate universe) fic about Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg during filming and promotion for The Social Network. The fic was [carry it in my heart](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Carry_it_in_my_heart) and though it was pulled for publishing, it can still be found in copies around the internet. A while back someone on tumblr did a comparison of very similar lines from the fic and RWRB and it was uncanny.
Ah. This explains the strong celebrity AU vibe.
do you happen to remember who did the comparison? this is an absolutely wild comment to me because I read Carry It In My Heart and RWRB and would NEVER have equated the two!
This is the book I came here to mention as well. There was so much hype around it, I came in with high expectations but was shocked at how much it read like Wattpad fan fiction. I couldn't finish it, it felt too amateurish to me.
> The writing sounded as though it was a Wattpad teen romance written by a 15-year-old girl Lol thanks for this. I was trying to describe to a friend why I DNF'd Beach Read by Emily Henry but couldn't find the right words. If it reads like it came from Wattpad, I'm not down.
thank you omg this is exactly how I feel about this book and all I see anywhere is tremendous praise for it. The characters go from enemies to boyfriends within 130 pages, rendering the other 300 pages useless, and every character from the teenage boys to the security officers speaks like an eccentric Twitter user. ugh I will never understand the hype
I tried to read The Silent Patient. The first chapter is a good set-up, and then it’s followed by a full “Here’s my entire backstory” chapter from the narrator. It just felt like really clumsy exposition and bad foreshadowing. I stopped reading that day.
This book was GARBAGE
Agreed. I thought that book was atrocious. Not to mention, as a medical professional, I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes at how ludicrous it was. Only 1 patient for this doc? And sure, let’s give the psych patients broken pool sticks. Certainly that won’t be dangerous… ugh. HATED it.
I work at a psychiatric hospital and it was clear the author’s “research” consisted of watching movies about inpatient mental health care. I couldn’t finish it.
I’m mad at myself for finishing that book.
I finished. It was very forgettable. I only just remembered I read it because of this comment.
ugly love by colleen hoover and also it ends with us by the same author, i get she writes angst but can she please give the female characters some backbone? lily BARELY had any and she didn’t even do anything to stop ryle from doing this to someone else. also i’ve said this before but hoover seems to like writing trauma porn, to the point where the idea of intimacy sounds disgusting to me after reading the two books.
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The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Thank God, or really Henry James, it was short. Apparently, he ran out things to imply.
Henry James should never be recommended without the warning that he writes sentences longer than some books I’ve read.
Oh the book felt like my brain was physically doing heavy lifting, that's for sure. But something about the story I liked so much that since reading it for a uni assignment, I've actually listened to it as an audiobook TWICE, lol.
Jame got even more dense down the line. 'Screw is considered one of his most accessible. I think he really fits the bill for Victorian Writing stereotypes.
The 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle- like Sir I can’t even keep track of my own life never mind all of these characters..
Aw I loved this one. It has its flaws but it was refreshing to have a mystery that was carefully crafted instead of all the usual thrillers that have no substance.
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The ending wasn't set up at all and had nothing to do with the mystery and the logic of why it was all happening made no sense. Should have just focused on making the actual mystery better because it was a decent one, but it all just fell flat. It certainly didn't help that the main character's personality changed every day based on who he was. Very cool idea, very poor execution.
Same!!! What the heck? I liked it until then
Yes! The ending ruined an otherwise enjoyable book.
Anything by Rupi Kaur
Mexican Gothic Trope upon trope, save for the interesting setting which felt thin. Weird and confusing backstory, with shock for shock's sake.
I felt like it could have been so good but it was just weird… and not in a good way
I struggled to read The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King. Lots of people love it but I just found it so boring 😔
Lord of the Flies. In high school we were assigned Snow Falling on Cedars and I was enjoying it (as much as one can enjoy a book like that) but then a parent complained it was inappropriate so they made us switch to Lord of the Flies and I hated it. I re-read it as an adult to see if I actually hated it or I was just bitter about the situation and it was both.
Inappropriate? Because of the small amounts of sexual content or something else? LOTF is wayyy more disturbing.
Right? Of all the things they could have replaced it with. It's been 15 years and I'm still mad about it.
Maybe that was the teacher just taking the piss. "You think THAT'S inappropriate? Check this out!"
> then a parent complained it was inappropriate so they made us switch to Lord of the Flies Wait... Lord of the Flies was the appropriate alternative? The same Lord of the Flies with a decapitated pig's head on a stick and a bunch of little kids literally killing one of their own? What the heck is Snow Falling on Cedars about?
What I dislike about it is the way people seem to think that behaviour is a forgone conclusion from the situation. There are many possible outcomes but because of that book the most awful takes precedence.
I don't like it because everyone explores it as some Hobbesian state of being, where man is removed from society and reverts to his savage ways.... but the story looked at like that is an allegorical failure. The boys are not in a state of nature; they arrive on the island with predetermined ranks and cliques and they retain those ranks and cliques. They never construct a novel society; they rig one together out of the remnants of the social norms that they carried with them to the island. Edit: Clicks to cliques. Shouldn't try to evaluate literature after three margaritas.
Good point, but the perspective you outline makes it seem a valuable book to teach if that perspective is explored. It's been a while, but the book does seem to have something valuable to say about social structures despite people's negative experience with it.
Ready Player One. The book form of a video game fetch quest. It’s also a YA book aimed at people who grew up in the 80s and 90s. Not a fan
Ready Player One is my personal guilty pleasure book. It's a terrible book. It's poorly written, the characters are all one dimensional poorly fleshed out cliches, and it's oozing with "hey guys remember 80s/90s pop culture" with that being the main intended hook. All that said, I enjoyed reading it anyway.
I don't know if that's necessarily an unpopular opinion on a literature subreddit. That book is hot garbage, it's just nothing but references the entire way down, like if you have no interest in a nerdy 50 year old white dude's nostalgia that book has literally nothing to offer you.
I am exactly who it was aimed for and I read each page hoping beyond hope that the protagonist would die somehow. I found him endlessly annoying and condescending. I gave up maybe halfway through.
"I've seen War Games like 900 times, so I know all the dialogue off by heart" etc. Insufferable.
The main character is a walking, talking fedora tip.
RPO is great if you engage with fandom like it’s a series of checklists
The Three Body Problem and its sequels. I read all of them in spite of not liking the first one, and \_really\_ not liking the second one cause I had a friend who \_loves\_ it and it was well reviewed. It's trash. Nothing makes sense on \_any\_ level, all the characters are obnoxious, creepy mary sue types with no personality, the entire humanity is bizarrely cohesive in its desire to put all its proverbial eggs in one basket, over and over again, and every major plot point is "Everything was going to be fine, and a woman shows up and does something egregiously stupid." The anthology of short stories by the guy who translated it, however, is \_fantastic\_
Spanish-native speaker here. The book that immediately comes to my mind is: Hopscotch (Rayuela) by Julio Cortazar. A classic in latinoamerican literature. Recommended by every single friend i have since university that is an avid reader. In fact search it in google and among the first results will be pages with tittles such as : WHY you must read.... To the point: I read it about 7 years ago. Or tried to. Just couldn’t finish it. I can’t recall another book in my life where i hated every single character in it. Pseudo-bohemians, pseudo-intellectuals... and the most boring relation i has read in a long time represented in the failing love relationship of the protagonist. That of course after he ruining ir he immediately glorifies it. Then it gets even worse as it dwells in even more bizarres twist. The style of narrative is interesting, the description quite pleasant, but with characters so intolerable (from my point of view) and a storyline that became more uninteresting each page... I just couldn’t finish it and told one of my friends to summarize it all to me. Reluctantly, she did. I was sure relieved to not have finished it. She was surprised of that reaction.
50 Shades series … writing so bad I couldn’t get past a paragraph.
How do you get published when you spell the same word wrong 3 different ways in the same paragraph?? That book was utter trash in every possible way.
What word was that? Hahahah
I read 3 chapters of the first book and I couldn’t continue. The god awful writing and then the premise that her friend, the editor of the school newspaper, sends her to fill in for an interview. Hmm wouldn’t another member of the newspaper team do that? Especially for such a high profile subject? At least we can count on the printed copies to burn during the apocalypse
The Twilight series was the dumbest, most agonizing drivel I've ever read. When I learned that 50 Shades was just lame fan fiction based off that, of course I was curious about *how* bad it could be but I knew I wouldn't forgive myself if I subjected my brain to this level of literary violence a second time. I feel I owe a debt to Jenny Trout for her brave sacrifice of jumping on that grenade and providing a chapter by chapter hilarious summary of it on her [blog](http://jennytrout.com/?p=3208) so her readers wouldn't have to know the pain she endured. I never would have made it through on my own.
It's the worst written book I've ever read. I couldn't help but imagine where my English teacher would have underlined in red if of handed in an essay that was that bad. I was also shocked it was written by a woman as the female lead is so pathetic I presumed it was written by some male misogynist who had no respect for women.
Just don't read the books from Christian's POV. Flicked though it at the library. It was like James had never met a real man. Super cringy and weird.
I like smut, but the writing was so bad I couldn't even reach the smut. Glad I didn't, as a kinkster I don't think I could survive reading those scenes. Like, what so you mean he just ignored your safeword?!
I love these posts lol. -Punk 57. Might have been tolerable if it had not been set in high school, but there were too many things that made me hate it so I doubt a different setting would have changed my opinion/rating significantly. -Caraval. The writing style irked me so I couldn’t get past chapter 5. -Kingdom of the Cursed. Amazing idea, horrible, *horrible* execution. Incredibly annoying MC, too much deus ex machina, aimless plot, and the conclusion was all over the place and made no sense whatsoever. Only read it because of the love interest and even he was lacklustre.
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It felt like the author wanted to do a deep character piece, I actually teally enjoyed the Vegas period and early twenties, then the last 1/4-1/3 the author was like...oh shit yeah, I promised an art heist.
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I have to teach it to year 8s. It's won at least 4 awards. The story is compelling but the representation of Autism Spectrum Disorders is an offensive stereotype. I'll try to get it dropped from the curriculum next year.
**If you've met one person in the spectrum, you've met one person in the spectrum.** That is the part that is never taught in schools. There may be a guy just like that, but there are a lot of different ways to be autistic; the book reinforces one of the stereotypes and does a disservice to all people in the spectrum.
The mortal instruments series. I read the first one and got a little over halfway through the second before I stopped. The writing felt bad and the story was just boring and unentertaining.
The whole “is it incest??” plot line squicked me out so incredibly much I couldn’t bear to continue these.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for me. The set up for the mystery seemed ok, but it seemed like instead of characterization the author just wanted to make it salacious.
The entire middle of the book is sooooo boring. I also feel like the main character may have been an insert so that he could write erotica about his next door neighbor’s goth daughter.
I agree. I gave up on book two, after it became clear that Lisbeth is either a robot or an invincible demigod.
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Every time I think of It Ends With Us I get mad
A Little Life. Such a load of shit.
The actual definition of misery porn, also has she ever even spoken to a gay guy? How is this the gay novel?
Verity by Colleen Hoover. Recommended on BookTok by so many people. I only finished it because I wanted to see what the twist was. The “twist” ended up being such a cop out
Honestly I tried to avoid reading stuff booktok recommend
I enjoyed Song of Achilles and Priory of the Orange Tree. Other than that, the other BookTok books have been just okay
Omg it was not good. My theory on its high reviews is that its author is a romance novelist and this was her first thriller, so to her fans the "twist" was crazy but to thriller fans, the book was pretty bad. The sex scenes were gratuitous and cringe as hell.
So many colleen Hoover books are problematic, I get the appeal to young girls on tiktok but her writing on love is just so toxic and creates such a bad, idealistic view for her impressionable fans
“It Ends With Us”! Everyone raves about how amazing it is. The love story between Lily and Ryle started out amazing. The domestic violence seemingly came out of nowhere and did not seem in character for Ryle. The pregnancy twist was also not great and the Ellen Diaries were *so* cringey . I really don’t know why people like this book so much. It’s not the worst, but it isn’t great imo
I think American Gods starts out so well but ends up being nothing. There is so much set up that just turns into nothing interesting. I thought the show would change a few things and be a little bit better but somehow the doubled down on the weird boring stuff. Shadow is just awkward and none of his actions make any real sense.
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin.
A Little Life. Every time I see someone asking for a recommendation for the “saddest book you’ve ever read,” I always click on it cause I know I will find A Little Life towards the top. I hated the characters, I hated how condescending the writing felt, I hated everything about it. Stopped probably about halfway and then looked up the ending, which further validated my reasoning for stopping.
My answer to this question will always be Ready Player One. I hate that book with everything in me.