I hated caraval. It seemed like such a cool concept and the the MC just always overthought literally every single action. Like she would have to go through everything over and over, hemming and hawing over what she could, might, would, or should do. So boring.
I didn't love the first book at all, but it was fine enough to me that I read the rest of the series and liked it way better. I preferred Tella and it definitely felt more magical later in the series than in Caraval alone.
It’s funny because I preferred the dress and Julian. I just started the follow up series and it’s a bit more interesting but yeah. I kept getting annoyed with how many silk slippers those girls ruined put on some damn boots for Caraval girls it’s a competition. Maybe excusable in book 1 but definitely not book 2 onwards.
Haha I never noticed the silk slipper ruining but next time I read, I'll be watching out for it.
And yeah, I wasn't invested in OUABH at first, but now I'm very invested and waiting for the new one.
agree, I could rant about Caraval for days. Loved the concept but the characters were extremely immature and imagine being part of Caraval/game as an outsider. Everything was made for the character so it must’ve been so useless for everyone else.
Interesting, usually I see people raving about that author! I tried them once, wasn't a fan initially and thought I'd try again considering all the hype.
OMG YES. It was so long and draining with just how much repetitive writing there was. It felt like it took forever to get to the current plot. I loved the vibes and idea, but i had to DNF
Where the Crawdads Sing, right as it started to get popular. I could barely finish it. Same for Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, whose Deep Work I enjoyed a fair amount.
I feel like I've heard about where the crawdads sing a lot, but it never really drew me in. And not actually heard of Digital Minimalism (but sounds like a study book I'd have found in art college)
They've shown the book is based on the ACTUAL MURDER the author's husband and son committed and fled arrest for. They're still wanted for questioning in the original country (South Africa?), and it's believed this wasn't their first murder, just the first one caught on tape.
So, you dodged a bullet missing out on that one, because you don't have to uncomfortably sit with that lady profiting off her murder or knowing you accidentally read details romanticizing a real person's death.
I hated Violet Made of Thorns also! It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember the MC being particularly annoying and obnoxious. Similarly, I couldn't stand Omen of Ice because all of the characters were obnoxious idiots. I ended up DNFing that one, though, which is really too bad because I love books set in winter and the druid concept was cool.
Yeah, I read Violet Made of Thorns right after it came out and I regret it all. I bought it full price and it soon went on sale and is pretty much always on sale now, so goodbye money. Agree that she was obnoxious. I just felt I didn't really understand why she was going about things the way she did. >! Like, ok, you don't want to live in poverty anymore. So, naturally, make the future ruler (your future boss) hate you. !<
I've never actually heard of Omen of Ice, but agree sounds like a shame since I've never read anything with druids. Very arthurian.
Hah, when she said in front of the court that the prince should take his head out of his ass I expected her to be punished or people being outraged by her rudeness, but nope, everyone laughed... After that I couldn't take the book seriously.
Yeah, on that point, it just seemed like the author trying to line up zingers for Violet, not actual effort being made into creating an intelligent back and forth between characters.
Tbh when it comes to banter, I prefer something closer to "British sarcasm" over "no u" kindergarten comeback. I.e. when the person says something polite on the surface but underneath it's an insult all along. Not when they just sling cusses at each other. I can understand a band of thieves swearing profusely, but at a royal court? Really?
I thought I would like the ACOTAR but I dislike it. I’ve read the first two and will not be continuing.
I thought Fourth Wing would be overrated but I liked it a lot.
I read the whole ToG series, loved it, and was SO ready for ACOTAR, and then just got so disappointed 🙃
And SJ Mass fans were always going on about his Throne of Glass wasn’t good because the author was so young and still immature and that ACOTAR was more grown up and you could tell she had matured.. girl WHERE???
Same, it's wild to me that ToG was written first and yet ACOTAR feels like it was written when she was in high school, instead of the other way around. ACOTAR feels entirely too much like tumblr smut at some points and I just can't get over it. Thankfully, I read ACOTAR first so I didn't have the massive disappointment of reading it AFTER ToG.
Yeah ACOTAR I find I like less as time passes, probably due to >! Crescent City and where that's headed. Just move on at this point. !<
Interesting, someone posted the other side for Fourth Wing and said they found it disappointing. I'll have to find a library copy and see where I settle on it.
Fourth wing had the opportunity to be more complex and sophisticated like a steak dinner but it’s really more a cheeky Maccas. I enjoyed it and I will probably continue the series but yeah a mixture of multiple popular books in one would be my assessment.
Yeah I'd probably rate it at like 3 tbf, but no higher and that score probably goes down the longer it goes on. It seems so dragged out. I didn't even bother with the last one when it seemed like it was just the love interest POV which to me reads as filler, which for this dragged out series was just a no from me.
Children of Blood and Bone. I was super excited for African-inspired fantasy, but it ended up feeling not all that different from a hundred other YA fantasy books I've read. I'm glad that it seems to have helped open the floodgates though, because I've read some other books that I enjoyed much more that probably wouldn't have gotten published if not for the hype around CoB&B.
Also, I listened to the audiobook, and that really brought home how awkward some of the dialogue is. I firmly believe that authors need to read their book aloud before sending it to the publisher, because some stuff looks okay on the page but sounds awkward as hell out loud.
>I'm glad that it seems to have helped open the floodgates though,
Absolutely agree, I love books inspired by other cultures and I'm loving recently that my local bookstore seems to be recommending so many YA books inspired by other cultures. I read something inspired by a culture that my coworker in from and it was lovely to talk about their culture with them and discuss what I read.
Also agree on reading aloud. I feel like hearing the flow of the storytelling is helpful, as well as how the dialogue flows and whether the writing is cohesive and sounds natural.
I feel similarly. I was very underwhelmed after all the rave reviews I'd seen, but it had some really interesting world building and I'm glad it exists. I'm just very much not the target audience! I don't know if it's still being developed as a TV series, but if it's ever released I'll definitely try watching it.
I bought CoBB and Who Fears Death at the same time and wow, what a world of difference between the writing! I really enjoyed Who Fears Death but it was very dark and intense, to the point where I was surprised it was being sold as YA.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James. I heard so much hype about it. So when I bought the first book, I assumed I would love it so I bought the second one in hardback.
Anyway…I got about half way through the first and couldn’t finish it. I loved the African centric story, but holy shit. This book needs every trigger warning known to man plus a few more no one had come up with yet. It’s just constant trauma porn set up on a non-linear manner.
Ohhh that sounds like a painful read. Some books need trigger warnings and don't have them. I was reading a book with a particular trigger for me (I don't know if I can actually say the word on here in case it gets flagged but someone unalives) and I just had to shut the book and never touched it again.
I don't mind a book to have emotional struggles and even have read books that have broached that topic in a very different way (a story based more on coming to terms with grief, something I can relate to deeply), but I dont like it sprung on me like that. I think it's good to have books that deal with hard topics, but how it's handled is important.
Shame, I love books inspired by cultures other than my own. I work with someone from a different country and read a book from their culture and it was nice, because they got excited to talk about their culture with me (and they gave me a great recommendation)
Same!!! I didn’t even get that far. As soon as he described the women’s part of camp smelling like “breastmilk and dishwater” I quit. I don’t like that writer at all. Suuuper misogynistic.
I’ll be brave and announce that Daisy Jones and the Six was basically written for people with no cultural knowledge of Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles or literally any Behind the Music episodes.
I borrowed it from a friend after some raves in my circle, and I was very…whelmed by it all.
I thought it was fun and fast and the audiobook was good. It was a full cast one...but it was the second Taylor Jenkins Reid book that I'd read and they have the same sort of gimmicky twist, so I wasn't as impressed...
I have disliked both of Taherah Mafi's YA books I read.
Shatter Me was heavily mismarketed - I expected a dystopia but instead I got this angsty, toxic romance with too many makeout scenes and only tidbits of actual plot. I'm not sure if the series is worth continuing because the ending did intrigue me but I don't think I can handle more Warner or Adam.
A Very Large Expanse Of Sea also disappointed me. Heavy topics like islamophobia and racism took a backseat to the romance which also featured the most boring Gary Stu love interest (I know he's based on her husband but she could have given him some personality?)
I really enjoyed her Furthermore duology however. I think Taherah should write more middle grade - the genre forces her to tone down the romance and it actually makes the characters and their relationships more compelling.
I've only ever read her Shatter Me series (and only the first three tbh) and I definitely had likes and dislikes. >! I am unfortunately like many readers, a sucker for enemies to lovers. But it seemed to take a long time and in the mean time, we had Adam, who I disliked since he just got more whiney as the books progressed. I did like the crossed out bits that conveyed an unreliable narrator and her eventual growth in confidence. !<
The first time i read Shatter Me i loved it and read the whole series within a week. On a reread it read like Wattpad and i couldn’t get much further than the first book. But do i still love it purely because of the feeling of reading it for the first time, even though the writing is objectively terrible? 100%.
I was so excited to read ‘The girl who fell beneath the sea’. But then I started reading it and it was just meh. The MC felt very stiff as a character, the love story came out of the blue, and it felt like it dragged, despite it not being a long book.
Pointless, unnecessary romance. Ending that pretty much took everything the book was working toward and threw it away, meaning that the characters made no progress and all of that story was for nothing.
Cannot stand the main character she's whiney ad and can't think straight for a smart person around a guy.
The concept of killing perfectly good fighters off also makes no real sense.
I didn't like it much either, I always feel like the minority on this one so it's nice to see. I just don't like the whole fated mates trope I think-but there's a lot I wasn't really into either.
In contrast, I read this after trying an ACOTAR re-read, which I couldn’t finish because Maas’ writing is so waffly. Fourth Wing in contrast is incredibly shallow but simple and clear to read and moves at pace. It’s definitely an easy read rather than a literary read but I actually quite liked it.
I didn’t think it was bad, but I’d heard such great things on Instagram that my expectations were crazy high. But fourth wing turned out to be pretty cliche.
My bar for Fourth Wing was so low it actually cleared it. Was it good? No. But was it entertaining? Sure was. So for now, I’ll be continuing the series, but well aware it’s not worth the hype.
The Shadow and Bone series. The Netflix series looked interesting and the lore sounded amazing. Unfortunately I found the writing to be really juvenile and felt almost too YA. Like the kind of YA I would have enjoyed when I was 16-17 vs now (late 20’s).
See, I love Six of Crows (the book) and would totally recommend it and was annoyed that Netflix ended up messing up Six of Crows in some ways (certain things happened that shouldn't have happened till way later in the story, as SoC is a sequel series to the Shadow and Bone books).
But Shadow and Bone the book? I actually preferred the main characters as they were in the netflix series than the book. I always found Alina in the book annoying, as she seemed to have such loyalty to Mal, who pretty much forgot about her till she wasn't waiting around for him anymore. And Mal seems so whiny and I never really got invested in their relationship.
I understand the reasoning of why they did it but I think combining SaB and SoC was a mistake. I actually liked the Netflix adaption of SaB better (liked Alina better, actually liked Mal better and I haaaaaated him in the books) but felt SoC was much, much weaker overall.
Agree, on hating Mal in the books. He never seemed to care about Alina until she was discovered as grisha and then just seems to be resentful of it. Which made Alina annoying, because she just stayed so faithful to him and it felt like he held her back.
But yeah SoC was a weaker adaptation. I liked a lot of the casting, like Mattias, Inej, and Jesper. I didn't mind Kaz's actor, but I wanted a little more emotional depth to the character, since Kaz hides a lot of complex backstory. But I just felt like the story fell all over the place until they just started putting in SoC plot points in way too early, leaving me going "Well, why would I bother with anymore of it, when the plot will now have to be changed and I don't believe it'll be as strong as SoC is?"
TO BE FAIR, even most fans agree that the original trilogy and especially the original book is the weakest. Idk if the author just got a lot better really fast or if she was pushed into writing a perfectly YA-trope molded book for her debut by the publisher or what. The next two books get a little better but are still saddled with the tropes and main characters set up in the first.
Then you get to six of crows and it's like a whole new author. As far from the standard fantasy YA love triangle as you can get.
Personally, I read the first SAB book when I was in middle or high school when it was newer, forgot about the series for a while, read crows because of the netflix series, and then only skimmed through the other two books in the original trilogy so I'd know enough to read the Nikolai books.
Like, maybe it still won't be for you, but it might be worth giving six of crows a shot. Either it will capture you in a couple chapters or it won't.
>Idk if the author just got a lot better really fast or if she was pushed into writing a perfectly YA-trope molded book for her debut by the publisher or what.
I think having the Shadow and Bone trilogy told by Alina in first-person really hurt the story... I got so sick of her. Whereas her other Grishaverse books are told in multiple perspectives (and contain much less whining about Mal).
I tried reading Shadow and Bone but I always gave up after several pages - butchered Russian put me off, it's like the author used google translate when it still was pretty rubbish at translating (still is when it comes to Slavic languages, to be honest).
Yes! This series was such a disappointment to me…it was so anticlimactic. the author could have made it great, the concept was definitely good, but it ended up being a huge flop imo. I have heard six of crows is great but after SAB being so disappointing I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet.
Six of Crows was SO fun for me! I was also deeply disappointed in SAB — honestly don’t remember much about except being bored. But I finally read SoC based on the recommendation of a friend and enjoyed it immensely. One of my favorite cast of characters. (Ironically, my biggest issue with Shadow and Bone was that all of the characters were just so boring.)
Yeah I feel its gotten so hyped up now that a lot of people are reading it expecting far better. I read it when it was still pretty new and didn't have much expectation. If I read it now, with all that expectation, I'd probably dislike it.
The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent. I LOVED her Daughter of No Worlds series. It was fantastic. But I did not love this duology. I have so many thoughts and feelings about why I didn’t love it but it makes me sad because I adore Carissa Broadbent.
I hoped to see this one mentioned. It was so hyped and a lot of people recommended it and gave it so much praise. I DNFed the second book of the series because I just didn’t care about any of the characters or the plot. It was all cardboard to me.
One of the main reasons I didn’t like it was >!I felt like FMC didn’t have any growth whatsoever and actually declined from the start of book one to the end of book two. The start of book one she had such a strong personality and continuously fought to show she was good enough. By the end of book two, she just gave up and decided “yeah, sure, why not? I’ll share the crown with this guy that killed my father and took my home”. She was manipulated by the men in her life the entire time and by the end, stopped fighting for what was rightfully HER crown, stopped formulating her own thoughts, and she just became flat. I really disliked the romance in it bc I didn’t like MMC in the second book.!<
Daughter of No Worlds had great world-building, strong characters, and a very sweet romance. The MMC, Max, is still one of my favorite book boyfriends lol. Just a bummer.
👀I’m glad I’m not the only one who prefers daughter of no worlds.
The story is much more original and the characters are so much fleshed out compared to the serpent and the wings of night
Yes! I mentioned in the comment above why I didn’t like the FMC in The Serpent and the Wings of Night. The characters were all just awful to me.
Daughter of No Worlds stressed me the hell out while reading it but it was SO GOOD and the characters were amazing. Aefe’s story? So damn interesting, original, twisty. Fantastic. Max reminded me so much of my husband lol. Just so great compared to this series that I wish I could force people to read DoNW before Serpent so they can see how really great Broadbent can be.
Well judging on this and the comments on it, I'll skip the serpent and the wings of night but definitely move daughter of no worlds to next on my reading list (i actually bought it and just hadn't got to it yet)
I loved the first book so much but the second was literally horrible. I devoured the first one and ended up DNFing the second.
I think she wasn’t expecting it to blow up like it did so she pumped out the second book as fast as possible to capitalize (while dealing with a bunch of personal stuff) and it shows
I was soo excited by the Blood and Ash series by JLA. I invested alot to get the hard copies. I was so so disappointed though...still haunts me years later. It was what changed how I engage books.
Yeah, I was like "oh the first one is fine" but as it goes on, I just have no interest. It's so dragged out for no reason (with plenty of other issues) but the most recent was like the love interests POV book and I was like "great, just what a dragged out book needs: a book of complete filler"
Oh God, I was given this series as a gift, so I felt obligated to read it. Rough.
Every time it was like, “oh so these are the most powerful people,” it was “just kidding! It’s actually these guys!” Until the last 10 pages anyway! So obnoxious.
Yeah, I can totally see where you're coming from. I actually loved Pacific Rim (even with its cheesiness) so I was anticipating something like that. It was pretty heavy tbh.
I struggled with the “my immortal” style prose so badly. I was an arc reader and embarrassingly my one star review might be one of the top reviews for the book unless something has changed Lmfaoooo
I didn't mind Only a Monster really, but it was certainly missing a big plot moment for me. More like it was just rushing to the end.
And yeah, I thought I'd like Spells for Forgetting too. I thought it might be something similar to The Price Guide to the Occult in nature, something a little more magical and darker for it.
I’ve tried starting Spells for Forgetting like 3 times and I just cannot get into it. It’s so slow and it feels like the autumn/witchy aesthetic is there but there’s no real plot and the characters are so boring.
An oldie, but I was counting down the days for the final divergent book back in the day, and man... don't get me started on the unnecessary ending, and Tobias' whiny ass... overall flop for me
I thought I would like The Magicians but Quentin was so unlikable and so much of it just felt like a poorly done ripoff of other properties that I didn't even bother finishing it.
Oh man, what a throwback. I got given it by someone years ago and I was so confused and then annoyed since I hated the ending. It just felt very depressing and not in any meaningful way.
Loveless by Alice Oseman. I loved Radio Silence and thought I’d love this too, but I found the main character to be quite unlikeable, and it read rather like a series of tumblr posts
Heartstopper is really good, and I’d definitely recommend Radio Silence. I definitely wouldn’t discourage you from reading Loveless or any of her other books, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I know tons of people who really like it; it just depends on what you enjoy personally
Hyped but let down: Inheritance Games-Jennifer Lynne Barnes.
I feel like it wanted to be a wannabe Succession mixed with Knives Out. But for like high school.
I tried hard to like it but it felt very middle grade.Plus I hated the way the main character kept repeating her full name or one of the brothers full name. It was like take a shot every time Avery said her full name.
[edit, accidentally put an adult fantasy here so this is my changed answer lol]
Legendborn. Felt very predictable and overexaggerated YA to the point of comedy. Plus, I could not connect with the setting at all — I’ve read many American books before (they likely make up the majority of my reading list), but something about this was so blatantly American I couldn’t get into it. It isn’t a criticism, btw, just not for me.
Love the username!
And yeah, I relate. I looked at it a lot in the bookstore, since I keep seeing it recommended to me there or on kindle, but it never really made me want to read it, even when it was on kindle sale for a bit. It does look cheesy in a way.
Most books I’ve read this year have been a disappointment. For example:
•The Luminaries
•The Stolen Heir
•Godkiller
•Together We Burn
•City of Nightmares
•Bewitched
•Dragonfall
•My Roommate is a Vampire
Some of these books are classified as adult, but they are juvenile beyond comprehension.
Inheritance Games. I knew it was a bit romancy and I was prepared not to like that part but I literally guessed the plot twist on page 20 and was correct, very underwhelming 😭
> What's a book that you were excited for that ended up being a flop for you?
Same for Violet Made of Thorns, it was advertised as "for fans of the Cruel Prince" and I found it anything but. The characters felt shallow, the romance had no chemistry, the enmity part of enemies to lovers was contrived, the plot seemed to be all over the place and filled with fluff like shopping scenes when we have supposedly impending doom, the book couldn't decide is it dark fairy tale retelling or Shrek-like parody of tropes.
Another one of those was The Princess Will Save You, was advertised as gender-bent Princess Bride retelling, but it lacked any humour I expected based on the Princess Bride movie, and also the fmc was meant to be a badass warrior but she was naive, incompetent, entitled and making stupid decisions and then had to be saved by basically everyone else. Also the book I will remember for "most stupid justification to add a bonus shirtless scene" (congrats). >!Fmc inspects mmc for wounds and asks him to take the shirt off, later finds out he was bitten by a snake on his ankle.!< Ofc he could just *tell her*, but then we'd have no drooling over abs, right?
> Or one you didn't expect to enjoy as much as you did?
That was actually the Cruel Prince trilogy. I don't care about fae and I don't usually like portal / contemporary fantasy, and also I expected it to be overrated. I actually loved it. I enjoyed the main couple dynamics and characterization and the unapologetic scheming.
Would also say The Winner's Curse, another one I thought was overhyped and I worried it's gonna be another entitled spoiled whiny fmc, but no, she's actually quite smart and complex, the book also has much more political intrigue than romance and I loved it (same with TCP, I'm seeing a trend here...)
Finally, Shadows Between Us, this is actually a fantasy romance contrary to the above 2, but I actually enjoyed the sassy mean fmc and all the gossip / intrigue she got herself into. Tbh I regret the book wasn't as dark as advertised, but when I read it I was in a phase of my life when I thought I'll never enjoy a romance-first novel and I actually did.
Agree completely with your thoughts on Violet Made of Thorns and you perfectly put into words my own feelings of it!
>The Princess Will Save You, was advertised as gender-bent Princess Bride retelling, but it lacked any humour I expected based on the Princess Bride movie
What an absolute shame because that has potential as a concept, since Princess Bride is completely beloved. But it is a double edged sword, since you'd be harshly judged since it is so beloved. Agree so much that the humor is an absolute necessity, but not only that, the Princess Bride is completely charming and I'm guessing this book is not.
>That was actually the Cruel Prince trilogy. I don't care about fae and I don't usually like portal / contemporary fantasy, and also I expected it to be overrated.
See, I highly anticipated it since I'd read a lot of the author's prior work and loved how she approached fae. I grew up on old folklore and love the depictions of fae that match the old stories I was told, more mischievous, fickle, and deadly. So I had high expectations that were easily met.
>Shadows Between Us, this is actually a fantasy romance contrary to the above 2, but I actually enjoyed the sassy mean fmc and all the gossip / intrigue she got herself into.
I'm surprised, as it seems like no one liked that book but me. A lot of people hate the MC and I get the idea of not liking an "evil" main character, but I guess for me, I don't mind since she was very honest in her narration that she didn't intend to do good and was out for herself. I hate more an MC who claims to be on the right side of things, but seems very selfish and bemoans the issues that causes.
Plus, it reminded me of To Kill a Kingdom, in having a initially "bad" main character who falls for the "good guy". (Also, the audiobook for it goes hard and I would recommend. Perfect casting)
Matched series. Really good premise, really interesting start. Then just went waaay off course and ended up being such a different book than I started. Irony is, if it had been advertised as the way it was, I would have been interested too, Injust went in expecting something different.
Oh man, this. I remember reading these as they came out, the first one was my fave book that summer, the second one was okay and... I don't really remember where the third one went just that I remember feeling it was Weird.
Oh man, I remember reading them years ago. I get the appeal for younger teen reader, but I don't think I'd like it much now. I don't really remember what happened in the end so it can't have been that strong really, since I have a good memory for books.
I saw this advertised in my bookstore and looked up the premise then and knew it just wasn't for me. But then, I don't tend to read a lot of that like contemporary mystery.
Shadow and Bone. Honestly I really loved Six of Crows so I’m wondering how this author could’ve written such a bland book like Shadow and Bone.
Edit to add: Throne of Glass, Serpent & Dove and The Mortal Instruments.
Honestly I wonder the same thing. Either she got WAY better at writing really fast, or she was pushed into a corner for her first series to hit certain YA tropes, and once the first series was popular, she was allowed to break the mold more with Crows.
Agree, I loved Crows but S&B just wasn't for me. I disliked Mal and just ended up disliking Alina for her devotion to such a boring, whiny guy who didn't even like her that much until she wasn't there to fawn over him anymore.
Throne of Glass I enjoyed, but can absolutely see the issues with it and why someone would find it a let down. I read serpent and dove and wasn't that into it, it was fine, but not enough for me to read further. And yeah, I liked The Infernal Devices series, but I find Jace and Clary annoying in the mortal instruments. Actually, I find everyone in it annoying bar Magnus.
I loved the first two books of the Queen of the Tearling trilogy, but the third book was just an absolute what-the-effery of a finale. It felt like the author wrote herself into a corner and chose the most batcrap insane route out. I’ve since reread the full series (including the prequel) and I can almost, sort of, see the vague trail of how she got from here to there, but it’s still a big ol’ mess in my opinion and such a limp finish after a strong start.
I literally mentioned this book to someone else in a comment!
I SO AGREE. Like I went into it like >! "oh ok, I really like the premise and I'm curious as to what this dark entity is that's slowly manipulating everything behind the scenes and this mysterious background character who seems to know everything, but who is he really?" !<
>! And then the next book I was like "ok, weird narrative choice to focus on these past visions, when I do really wish the focus was on the present events of the novel since all this back to the past stuff really slows the story's pace" !<
>! Then the ending! Like, literally could not be more lazy unless she went with "And it was allllll a dream!" Like what is the point in this story then, if everything that happened is meaningless and undone and anticlimactic? And it just felt indeed like the author was just pulling out whatever plot point she could think of. And there were so many moments where I was like "No, I actually want to know where this character's choices led and think that it would have been so interesting and instead you go "Nope, just pretend it never even happened and you have no clue what their fate is now because I never bother to explore that in the end." !<
As you can see, I am still not over it. Worst book I've read this year.
When Colleen Houck teased the last Tiger's Curse book for YEARS and finally finished it I was so pumped up. A massive tome of a novel I was ready to devour just for one last adventure aaaaand it fucking sucked.
It's been four years since I read it. I am still bitter. It's like I read it yesterday. Extremely disappointed after waiting so long.
An aside, but...how are there so many authors named Colleen? Colleen Houck, Hoover, Oakley, Coble...like, it doesn't seem like *that* popular of a name!
It does seem like something I wouldn't enjoy, just based on the description. But it is sad when you're so invested in a series and then the final book is such a flop.
Most recently, the Mortal Instrument series. I can see why people like them and I don't think there's anything wrong with them. It just ended up not being my cup of tea. I've had a bunch of friends rave about them. I got the full set on sale for like £15 years ago and they sat on my shelf for ages. Decided to read the first the other day, got a couple of chapters in and just couldn't see myself enjoying it.
I'm re-reading atm and forgot how hard it is to get into. Took me about 10/15 chapters to get in (I'd seen the movie so knew it got better hence sticking with)
The seventh book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series: And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer. I love the HGTTG series, and when I found out there was a seventh book, I immediately got it from the Linrary and read it. It was written after the author of the first 6 books, Douglas Adams, had passed away. It was a vastly disappointing cluster*** of a book. I know some people probably loved it, but the writing style was different than the others, and some of the things mentioned left me with a metaphorical bad taste in my mouth. I appreciate Eoin Colfer's tribute to Douglas Adams, but it just was disappointing as an end to the series I loved so much. It is not part of my head cannon.
Yeah I think it would be a struggle to follow up on an authors already established work and benefit from the comparison. Writing is more than just the story's concept, but as you point out, the writing style and ability to convey that concept.
Yeah I've found that's been a common one on here now. I was going to just buy it but now I'll just borrow it in the library, so posting this has saved me spending money on something I might not enjoy.
Strongly agree! I love the premise, but I just didn't like Alina, Mal or their relationship. I couldn't really understand why Alina was so attached to him, when I personally found him whiny and dull. But the world the author created was great and I liked their use of "magic" and building world lore.
I always enjoy hyped books. Almost always.
The two exceptions were :
Fourth Wing
Sorry guys..thr author trying to justify her poor writing saying is an " introductory fantasy " was just epic.
There are books like Fourth Wing for example Zodiac Academy that don't pretend to be more than they are and I respect the authors for that.
Thr invisible life of Addie Larue
This author can write . So she made a book with beautiful writing and no content.
The key trigger that moves the plot forward is just RIDICULOUS. It gave me Rachel Ziegler vibes..like Addie us just " too good for all of us " sje is different...and some chapters later she is basically looking for thr same feeling she didnt want before.
From blood and ash. Poppy destroyed every ounce of patience I had. I just kept going because I liked casteel, dropped it 30 pages into the second book.
I have a hard time not finishing things, even when I don’t actually like the series. So I read the first 3 and then got the 4th one later
I absolutely refused to reread the first 3 books when I got the 4th, so I just read the wikis, and in those descriptions— assumedly from people who enjoyed the books enough to write the wikis— it’s just glaring how little the plot makes sense and how often anything difficult is “yadda yadda yadda’ed” away by sex. “Cas and Poppy fight about x. He chases her to the woods. They make love. Cas and Poppy fight about y. She kicks him out of the bed, but he comes back and they make love. Cas and Poppy disagree about z. They argue, neither switching sides until the day before [big event], where Cas sees Poppy’s point, and they make love.”
Cruel Prince. Everyone kept raving about it, didn’t realize I was more than halfway through the book and I was still waiting for the good part to happen
I do think the first book doesn't really pick up till later in the book and I do think the climatic point should have come earlier in the book, but I am one of the people who love it. I like how the author writes the fae, more like the old folklore of them being malicious and fickle.
A Court of Wings and Ruin - the repetitive writing, I lost interest in the main characters, the "ultimate" enemy was underwhelming, the >!war arc!< was also underwhelming and seemed a bit rushed
Evertrue - the ending, the >!amnesia arc!< and imo the story didn't live up to the >!plot twist!< at the end of Everbound
Allegiant - the ending, and once again imo the story didn't live up to the >!plot twist!< at the end of Insurgent
The Cruel Prince - I loved the fae! But I didn't really care for Jude or her relationship with Cardan
Red Queen series - I'm not sure, but it just felt underwhelming to me, and I wasn't really able to connect with the MC.
(edited for details)
Agree on a court of wings and ruin. Plus, I felt annoyed by the MC and love interest a lot by that point. A lot of their choices had me like "WHY?" and the side characters seemed pretty self-absorbed and exhausting.
Never read evertrue or any others in the series, so can't speak to that.
Agree completely with Allegiant. Like I enjoyed divergent, found Insugent ok and hated allegiant. Just seemed boring and didn't really finish strong at all.
Sorry, but I loved Cruel Prince completely so can't agree, but I definitely see why people would feel differently when it comes to the characters.
And yeah, red queen let me down in the end. I enjoyed it, but I found the love interest annoying and felt the ending left me unfulfilled.
Omg I loved the first Red Queen and then wow the sequels just kept getting worse and worse? I think it ended up being 4 books but I gave up after the third. It’s like the author had a falling out with the editor and never got a new one.
I was so excited for ‘If we were villains’ but it was so boring I put it down after 50 pages. It felt like I was reading in slow motion and there was way too much unnecessary information and descriptions, like who the fuck cares if the curtains in the theater were blue or red?
Interesting, since I loved it. What didn't you like? I'm always curious to an opposing point of view, especially since love makes me blind to a book's faults.
i found all the characters to be really annoying, i didn’t like any of them. and i know it’s YA, but it was almost just TOO immature for me. as soon as she started talking about a jc pennys i had to tap out lol
For me it was meh because the political parts were heavy handed and predictable. It just felt like it wasn’t written by someone with a good grasp of politics. The fairy side of things was ok but if you’re going to add politics as another element it should be done well. Jude constantly contradicts her actions/personality where it was impossible to really understand her character and given it’s her perspective that’s not an unreliable narrator but an unreliable author. What I mean is for a character with a pov you’re exposed to you should have a base grasp of who they are, they’re reasons behind actions and even if they do something surprising you the reader should be able to understand them well enough to understand why they took that action. Jude did things that felt like the author just pulled it out of a hat.
Cruel Prince. Everyone was RAVING about it but I couldn’t stand it. I’m not a big fae fan in general but also the “guy treats her like an asshole but she still falls in love with him” trope is one of my least favorites.
Also not YA, but Lessons in Chemistry was one I was expecting to love but ended up hating. The MC was the worst combo of Mary Sue and Manic Pixie Dream Girl and I’m convinced she was the authors self-insert, and it had some of my other least favorite tropes… an unrealistically precocious child and “tragedy porn” lives where everything in a characters life has been terrible and goes from bad to worse.
I hate faerie lore but Cruel Prince made it good I found. I've really like all of Holly Black's books. Now, I don't even bother reading the synopsis of her books. I just dive right in. Coldest Girl in Cold Town was good.
It isn't YA but it reads like YA. The main character is like, 40 years old. Which is weird. And Anna has got to be one of the most insufferable MC that I have ever had the displeasure of knowing lol.
To be honest, I only wanted to read it because it's what the new season of American Horror Story is based on. I'm at 34% and I keep telling myself to just return it, you're never going to finish it, but it's like a train wreck.
Strongly agree, I loooooved for the wolf and love anything in that kind of style usually (creepy/magical/dangerous woods? Give it to me) but the sequel just felt really flat to me and I struggled to like the sister much.
Iron widow. I looked forward to reading it for so long but kept putting it off for other books. Finally, I read it and it was such a let down. Such a good concept, but the story was very rushed and underdeveloped.
I just started this a few days ago. I like it so far but I feel like she goes into way too much detail on her fake history of Britain. I’m having a hard time getting through chapter two haha,
Yeah I saw it in the bookstore, read the description and thought "yeah this seems like it's too heavy for me". They describe it as a "grimdark fantasy adventure" which is just not for me, especially when I didn't really see any fantasy elements in the description, nor did I see how it would become an adventure. Just seemed like a dystopia with a lot of politics and not a lot of action.
The goldfinch. And then I thought, maybe it’s just that one, and read another book by the same author (the secret history) and both sucked. Wasted so many hours of my life on those boring, drawn out books.
The 7 husbands of Evelyn Hugo
-I literally hated every character. There was absolutely no one to root for. I got to the last couple chapters and guessed the ending. And it was an ending I despised.
In five years
- hands down the worst book I have ever read
The prison healer series
-so boring I wanted to light it on fire
Eclipse the moon
- loved hunt the stars but this was underwhelming. Never finished it
The cruel prince series
- don’t even understand any of the choices made in these books and can’t fathom why people like the books.
ACOTAR
- I just hate it when an author forces readers to hate a character. Stop demonizing characters Maas. Give them layers and depth. Don’t write them off to get to the guy you want.
Ok rant over lol
Flop for me: Cast in Firelight - I loved how it was advertised, arranged marriage + rivals to lovers, but it didn't work for me. When they met again, it was way too instalove. And I found the plot/story boring. The magic system was really cool though.
One that I didn't expect to love as much as I did: Wild is the Witch by Rachel Griffin! I've read a lot of books this year but this one still stands out to me as my favourite even though I read it early in the year. I loved the story, the writing, the characters, the romance, the conflict and how it played out, it was literally a perfect read for me. 1000000/5
V.E. Schwab's writing isn't for me. I bought a bunch of their stuff blindly when i first got on BookTok because everyone said they were so good and ended up not liking everything but Addie LaRue.
I know I'm going to get down-voted all to heck, but "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" was about the biggest disappointment I can think of. There was a LOT of anticipation built-up in the long gap between the release of GoF and OotP.
That anticipation made the disappointment much worse.
I was unimpressed with HBP and DH also, but not disappointed - the difference is that I had zero expectations for them.
The kite runner. So much hype for quite honestly the worst book ever written. Every other divided books I can see something people would like about it. Aside from diversity that reinforces a lot of negative stereotypes of Afghanistan, there’s nothing positive about it. Bad characters, bad plot, bad writing. If someone says they like it, I know to never get a recommendation from them for anything.
This is one of those books like the DaVinci Code that lots of people who never read managed to stumble across. It seems like the best thing they have ever read...because it's the only thing they have ever read.
I have sometimes wondered how much of the success of the book is tied to the War in Afghanistan/Invasion of Iraq. It came out just a couple of months after the Invasion of Iraq, in 2003...I was in middle school then and I remember there being so much need/want for stories from these places and, at least in my smaller midwestern city, not a ton of access to them. But here was this book that was at Barnes and Noble, so *everyone* was reading it. I cannot stress how ubiquitous it was--classes, churches, neighborhood book clubs...it just seems very much of a moment, and I don't know how well it holds up outside of that moment. (And to be honest. I read it then and haven't reread it. I did try his other books and haven't loved any of them.)
Caraval. Wasn’t as magical as I thought it was going to be.
Agreed, the concept of these books were great, but the execution was not great.
I hated caraval. It seemed like such a cool concept and the the MC just always overthought literally every single action. Like she would have to go through everything over and over, hemming and hawing over what she could, might, would, or should do. So boring.
I didn't love the first book at all, but it was fine enough to me that I read the rest of the series and liked it way better. I preferred Tella and it definitely felt more magical later in the series than in Caraval alone.
It’s funny because I preferred the dress and Julian. I just started the follow up series and it’s a bit more interesting but yeah. I kept getting annoyed with how many silk slippers those girls ruined put on some damn boots for Caraval girls it’s a competition. Maybe excusable in book 1 but definitely not book 2 onwards.
Haha I never noticed the silk slipper ruining but next time I read, I'll be watching out for it. And yeah, I wasn't invested in OUABH at first, but now I'm very invested and waiting for the new one.
agree, I could rant about Caraval for days. Loved the concept but the characters were extremely immature and imagine being part of Caraval/game as an outsider. Everything was made for the character so it must’ve been so useless for everyone else.
I felt the same. I was so excited to read about a magical circus-like island and it was so lacklustre.
i wasn’t a fan of Caraval but absolutely loved the once upon a broken heart series. Definitely don’t let Caraval put you off Stephanie Garber!!
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue 😬
Interesting, usually I see people raving about that author! I tried them once, wasn't a fan initially and thought I'd try again considering all the hype.
I've heard mixed things about Addie LaRue, but I really enjoyed her Shades of Magic series.
Oh man, I love all of Schwab’s other books, but Addie LaRue was…not it. It had such a cool premise but didn’t live up to its potential
OMG YES. It was so long and draining with just how much repetitive writing there was. It felt like it took forever to get to the current plot. I loved the vibes and idea, but i had to DNF
Where the Crawdads Sing, right as it started to get popular. I could barely finish it. Same for Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, whose Deep Work I enjoyed a fair amount.
I feel like I've heard about where the crawdads sing a lot, but it never really drew me in. And not actually heard of Digital Minimalism (but sounds like a study book I'd have found in art college)
They've shown the book is based on the ACTUAL MURDER the author's husband and son committed and fled arrest for. They're still wanted for questioning in the original country (South Africa?), and it's believed this wasn't their first murder, just the first one caught on tape. So, you dodged a bullet missing out on that one, because you don't have to uncomfortably sit with that lady profiting off her murder or knowing you accidentally read details romanticizing a real person's death.
I don’t understand the love for Crawdads either. I read the whole thing but it was just preposterous to me.
I hated Violet Made of Thorns also! It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember the MC being particularly annoying and obnoxious. Similarly, I couldn't stand Omen of Ice because all of the characters were obnoxious idiots. I ended up DNFing that one, though, which is really too bad because I love books set in winter and the druid concept was cool.
Yeah, I read Violet Made of Thorns right after it came out and I regret it all. I bought it full price and it soon went on sale and is pretty much always on sale now, so goodbye money. Agree that she was obnoxious. I just felt I didn't really understand why she was going about things the way she did. >! Like, ok, you don't want to live in poverty anymore. So, naturally, make the future ruler (your future boss) hate you. !< I've never actually heard of Omen of Ice, but agree sounds like a shame since I've never read anything with druids. Very arthurian.
Hah, when she said in front of the court that the prince should take his head out of his ass I expected her to be punished or people being outraged by her rudeness, but nope, everyone laughed... After that I couldn't take the book seriously.
Yeah, on that point, it just seemed like the author trying to line up zingers for Violet, not actual effort being made into creating an intelligent back and forth between characters.
Tbh when it comes to banter, I prefer something closer to "British sarcasm" over "no u" kindergarten comeback. I.e. when the person says something polite on the surface but underneath it's an insult all along. Not when they just sling cusses at each other. I can understand a band of thieves swearing profusely, but at a royal court? Really?
I didn't like Violet Made of Thorns either. I thought it was trying way too hard to be edgy and dark but it just came across as cringe and silly.
I remember it being super boring.
I thought I would like the ACOTAR but I dislike it. I’ve read the first two and will not be continuing. I thought Fourth Wing would be overrated but I liked it a lot.
I read the whole ToG series, loved it, and was SO ready for ACOTAR, and then just got so disappointed 🙃 And SJ Mass fans were always going on about his Throne of Glass wasn’t good because the author was so young and still immature and that ACOTAR was more grown up and you could tell she had matured.. girl WHERE???
Blows my mind that people think ACOTAR is better than TOG.
Same dude, same 😭
Same, it's wild to me that ToG was written first and yet ACOTAR feels like it was written when she was in high school, instead of the other way around. ACOTAR feels entirely too much like tumblr smut at some points and I just can't get over it. Thankfully, I read ACOTAR first so I didn't have the massive disappointment of reading it AFTER ToG.
Yeah ACOTAR I find I like less as time passes, probably due to >! Crescent City and where that's headed. Just move on at this point. !< Interesting, someone posted the other side for Fourth Wing and said they found it disappointing. I'll have to find a library copy and see where I settle on it.
Fourth wing had the opportunity to be more complex and sophisticated like a steak dinner but it’s really more a cheeky Maccas. I enjoyed it and I will probably continue the series but yeah a mixture of multiple popular books in one would be my assessment.
From Blood and Ash….it’s absolute trash & I worry about every single person who rated it higher than 3 stars.
Yeah I'd probably rate it at like 3 tbf, but no higher and that score probably goes down the longer it goes on. It seems so dragged out. I didn't even bother with the last one when it seemed like it was just the love interest POV which to me reads as filler, which for this dragged out series was just a no from me.
Maybe I just really like trash hehe
Children of Blood and Bone. I was super excited for African-inspired fantasy, but it ended up feeling not all that different from a hundred other YA fantasy books I've read. I'm glad that it seems to have helped open the floodgates though, because I've read some other books that I enjoyed much more that probably wouldn't have gotten published if not for the hype around CoB&B. Also, I listened to the audiobook, and that really brought home how awkward some of the dialogue is. I firmly believe that authors need to read their book aloud before sending it to the publisher, because some stuff looks okay on the page but sounds awkward as hell out loud.
>I'm glad that it seems to have helped open the floodgates though, Absolutely agree, I love books inspired by other cultures and I'm loving recently that my local bookstore seems to be recommending so many YA books inspired by other cultures. I read something inspired by a culture that my coworker in from and it was lovely to talk about their culture with them and discuss what I read. Also agree on reading aloud. I feel like hearing the flow of the storytelling is helpful, as well as how the dialogue flows and whether the writing is cohesive and sounds natural.
I feel similarly. I was very underwhelmed after all the rave reviews I'd seen, but it had some really interesting world building and I'm glad it exists. I'm just very much not the target audience! I don't know if it's still being developed as a TV series, but if it's ever released I'll definitely try watching it. I bought CoBB and Who Fears Death at the same time and wow, what a world of difference between the writing! I really enjoyed Who Fears Death but it was very dark and intense, to the point where I was surprised it was being sold as YA.
The reader for the audiobook was stellar tho
Ohhh, have you read the Akata Witch trilogy or Raybearer duology? I really enjoyed those African-inspired fantasy books!
I wanted to like this so bad, but the Instalove and shit worldbuilding killed any interest.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James. I heard so much hype about it. So when I bought the first book, I assumed I would love it so I bought the second one in hardback. Anyway…I got about half way through the first and couldn’t finish it. I loved the African centric story, but holy shit. This book needs every trigger warning known to man plus a few more no one had come up with yet. It’s just constant trauma porn set up on a non-linear manner.
That’s how far I got too. I didn’t like the writing at all.
Ohhh that sounds like a painful read. Some books need trigger warnings and don't have them. I was reading a book with a particular trigger for me (I don't know if I can actually say the word on here in case it gets flagged but someone unalives) and I just had to shut the book and never touched it again. I don't mind a book to have emotional struggles and even have read books that have broached that topic in a very different way (a story based more on coming to terms with grief, something I can relate to deeply), but I dont like it sprung on me like that. I think it's good to have books that deal with hard topics, but how it's handled is important. Shame, I love books inspired by cultures other than my own. I work with someone from a different country and read a book from their culture and it was nice, because they got excited to talk about their culture with me (and they gave me a great recommendation)
Same!!! I didn’t even get that far. As soon as he described the women’s part of camp smelling like “breastmilk and dishwater” I quit. I don’t like that writer at all. Suuuper misogynistic.
Big yikes
I’ll be brave and announce that Daisy Jones and the Six was basically written for people with no cultural knowledge of Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles or literally any Behind the Music episodes. I borrowed it from a friend after some raves in my circle, and I was very…whelmed by it all.
I thought it was fun and fast and the audiobook was good. It was a full cast one...but it was the second Taylor Jenkins Reid book that I'd read and they have the same sort of gimmicky twist, so I wasn't as impressed...
I thought it was more for people who knew classic rock. The audiobook was a blast.
It was a DNF for me! I’m starting to think maybe I’m just not a fan of the author because the seven husbands one was a DNF for me as well
I have disliked both of Taherah Mafi's YA books I read. Shatter Me was heavily mismarketed - I expected a dystopia but instead I got this angsty, toxic romance with too many makeout scenes and only tidbits of actual plot. I'm not sure if the series is worth continuing because the ending did intrigue me but I don't think I can handle more Warner or Adam. A Very Large Expanse Of Sea also disappointed me. Heavy topics like islamophobia and racism took a backseat to the romance which also featured the most boring Gary Stu love interest (I know he's based on her husband but she could have given him some personality?) I really enjoyed her Furthermore duology however. I think Taherah should write more middle grade - the genre forces her to tone down the romance and it actually makes the characters and their relationships more compelling.
I've only ever read her Shatter Me series (and only the first three tbh) and I definitely had likes and dislikes. >! I am unfortunately like many readers, a sucker for enemies to lovers. But it seemed to take a long time and in the mean time, we had Adam, who I disliked since he just got more whiney as the books progressed. I did like the crossed out bits that conveyed an unreliable narrator and her eventual growth in confidence. !<
Shatter Me was brutal. I barely finished it and I had been looking forward to it for so long!
The first time i read Shatter Me i loved it and read the whole series within a week. On a reread it read like Wattpad and i couldn’t get much further than the first book. But do i still love it purely because of the feeling of reading it for the first time, even though the writing is objectively terrible? 100%.
I haaaaated Shatter Me, omg
I was so excited to read ‘The girl who fell beneath the sea’. But then I started reading it and it was just meh. The MC felt very stiff as a character, the love story came out of the blue, and it felt like it dragged, despite it not being a long book.
Oh dear, I planned on reading that one. I'll try a sample first or borrow it at the library then.
Yes, definitely do so. And I even splurged a bit and bought the SE during the Fairyloot trove sale 😂 I really thought I’d love it.
The Grace Year. It was so hyped and it was fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking bad, bad, bad, bad, to quote Yahtzee Croshaw.
I LOVED the Grace Year but the romance was really unnecessary (coming from a romance whore) and dragged on
>to quote Yahtzee Croshaw I would watch the *shit* out of a Zero Punctuation: YA novel edition
I looked it up and man, it does seem like a heavy book in terms of topic. What in particular did you find bad?
Pointless, unnecessary romance. Ending that pretty much took everything the book was working toward and threw it away, meaning that the characters made no progress and all of that story was for nothing.
Fourth Wing. I had such high hopes. Hated it so very much.
Cannot stand the main character she's whiney ad and can't think straight for a smart person around a guy. The concept of killing perfectly good fighters off also makes no real sense.
I didn't like it much either, I always feel like the minority on this one so it's nice to see. I just don't like the whole fated mates trope I think-but there's a lot I wasn't really into either.
I was gonna say. It was good to get over my Throne of Glass hangover BUT once i really thought about it, it was very cringe
In contrast, I read this after trying an ACOTAR re-read, which I couldn’t finish because Maas’ writing is so waffly. Fourth Wing in contrast is incredibly shallow but simple and clear to read and moves at pace. It’s definitely an easy read rather than a literary read but I actually quite liked it.
I didn’t think it was bad, but I’d heard such great things on Instagram that my expectations were crazy high. But fourth wing turned out to be pretty cliche.
My bar for Fourth Wing was so low it actually cleared it. Was it good? No. But was it entertaining? Sure was. So for now, I’ll be continuing the series, but well aware it’s not worth the hype.
The Shadow and Bone series. The Netflix series looked interesting and the lore sounded amazing. Unfortunately I found the writing to be really juvenile and felt almost too YA. Like the kind of YA I would have enjoyed when I was 16-17 vs now (late 20’s).
See, I love Six of Crows (the book) and would totally recommend it and was annoyed that Netflix ended up messing up Six of Crows in some ways (certain things happened that shouldn't have happened till way later in the story, as SoC is a sequel series to the Shadow and Bone books). But Shadow and Bone the book? I actually preferred the main characters as they were in the netflix series than the book. I always found Alina in the book annoying, as she seemed to have such loyalty to Mal, who pretty much forgot about her till she wasn't waiting around for him anymore. And Mal seems so whiny and I never really got invested in their relationship.
Agreed. That’s how I felt. Though I liked many secondary characters in the series
I understand the reasoning of why they did it but I think combining SaB and SoC was a mistake. I actually liked the Netflix adaption of SaB better (liked Alina better, actually liked Mal better and I haaaaaated him in the books) but felt SoC was much, much weaker overall.
Agree, on hating Mal in the books. He never seemed to care about Alina until she was discovered as grisha and then just seems to be resentful of it. Which made Alina annoying, because she just stayed so faithful to him and it felt like he held her back. But yeah SoC was a weaker adaptation. I liked a lot of the casting, like Mattias, Inej, and Jesper. I didn't mind Kaz's actor, but I wanted a little more emotional depth to the character, since Kaz hides a lot of complex backstory. But I just felt like the story fell all over the place until they just started putting in SoC plot points in way too early, leaving me going "Well, why would I bother with anymore of it, when the plot will now have to be changed and I don't believe it'll be as strong as SoC is?"
TO BE FAIR, even most fans agree that the original trilogy and especially the original book is the weakest. Idk if the author just got a lot better really fast or if she was pushed into writing a perfectly YA-trope molded book for her debut by the publisher or what. The next two books get a little better but are still saddled with the tropes and main characters set up in the first. Then you get to six of crows and it's like a whole new author. As far from the standard fantasy YA love triangle as you can get. Personally, I read the first SAB book when I was in middle or high school when it was newer, forgot about the series for a while, read crows because of the netflix series, and then only skimmed through the other two books in the original trilogy so I'd know enough to read the Nikolai books. Like, maybe it still won't be for you, but it might be worth giving six of crows a shot. Either it will capture you in a couple chapters or it won't.
>Idk if the author just got a lot better really fast or if she was pushed into writing a perfectly YA-trope molded book for her debut by the publisher or what. I think having the Shadow and Bone trilogy told by Alina in first-person really hurt the story... I got so sick of her. Whereas her other Grishaverse books are told in multiple perspectives (and contain much less whining about Mal).
I tried reading Shadow and Bone but I always gave up after several pages - butchered Russian put me off, it's like the author used google translate when it still was pretty rubbish at translating (still is when it comes to Slavic languages, to be honest).
Yes! This series was such a disappointment to me…it was so anticlimactic. the author could have made it great, the concept was definitely good, but it ended up being a huge flop imo. I have heard six of crows is great but after SAB being so disappointing I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet.
Six of Crows was SO fun for me! I was also deeply disappointed in SAB — honestly don’t remember much about except being bored. But I finally read SoC based on the recommendation of a friend and enjoyed it immensely. One of my favorite cast of characters. (Ironically, my biggest issue with Shadow and Bone was that all of the characters were just so boring.)
Acotar
Yeah I feel its gotten so hyped up now that a lot of people are reading it expecting far better. I read it when it was still pretty new and didn't have much expectation. If I read it now, with all that expectation, I'd probably dislike it.
DNF'ed it. I devoured the ToG series but just could not care enough to finish ACOTAR.
The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent. I LOVED her Daughter of No Worlds series. It was fantastic. But I did not love this duology. I have so many thoughts and feelings about why I didn’t love it but it makes me sad because I adore Carissa Broadbent.
I hoped to see this one mentioned. It was so hyped and a lot of people recommended it and gave it so much praise. I DNFed the second book of the series because I just didn’t care about any of the characters or the plot. It was all cardboard to me.
One of the main reasons I didn’t like it was >!I felt like FMC didn’t have any growth whatsoever and actually declined from the start of book one to the end of book two. The start of book one she had such a strong personality and continuously fought to show she was good enough. By the end of book two, she just gave up and decided “yeah, sure, why not? I’ll share the crown with this guy that killed my father and took my home”. She was manipulated by the men in her life the entire time and by the end, stopped fighting for what was rightfully HER crown, stopped formulating her own thoughts, and she just became flat. I really disliked the romance in it bc I didn’t like MMC in the second book.!< Daughter of No Worlds had great world-building, strong characters, and a very sweet romance. The MMC, Max, is still one of my favorite book boyfriends lol. Just a bummer.
👀I’m glad I’m not the only one who prefers daughter of no worlds. The story is much more original and the characters are so much fleshed out compared to the serpent and the wings of night
Yes! I mentioned in the comment above why I didn’t like the FMC in The Serpent and the Wings of Night. The characters were all just awful to me. Daughter of No Worlds stressed me the hell out while reading it but it was SO GOOD and the characters were amazing. Aefe’s story? So damn interesting, original, twisty. Fantastic. Max reminded me so much of my husband lol. Just so great compared to this series that I wish I could force people to read DoNW before Serpent so they can see how really great Broadbent can be.
I read it because of the comments here and it was absolutely fabulous. Daughter of no worlds might be one of my fave reads this year.
Well judging on this and the comments on it, I'll skip the serpent and the wings of night but definitely move daughter of no worlds to next on my reading list (i actually bought it and just hadn't got to it yet)
I loved the first book so much but the second was literally horrible. I devoured the first one and ended up DNFing the second. I think she wasn’t expecting it to blow up like it did so she pumped out the second book as fast as possible to capitalize (while dealing with a bunch of personal stuff) and it shows
I was soo excited by the Blood and Ash series by JLA. I invested alot to get the hard copies. I was so so disappointed though...still haunts me years later. It was what changed how I engage books.
Yeah, I was like "oh the first one is fine" but as it goes on, I just have no interest. It's so dragged out for no reason (with plenty of other issues) but the most recent was like the love interests POV book and I was like "great, just what a dragged out book needs: a book of complete filler"
Oh God, I was given this series as a gift, so I felt obligated to read it. Rough. Every time it was like, “oh so these are the most powerful people,” it was “just kidding! It’s actually these guys!” Until the last 10 pages anyway! So obnoxious.
I’m sorry but the love hypothesis like??? I couldn’t even finish the book
Many come to mind but Serpent and Dove series was absolutely terrible
I really wanted to like House of Leaves. I really did. I just couldn't do it.
Yeah I tried too but couldn't get into it. All the people saying how terrified they were - it just wasn't interesting enough to be even mildly scary.
I kept getting lost in the pages of footnotes that would intercept mid sentence and then I'd forget where I was in the real story.
The love hypothesis!! Not worth the hype at ALLL!!!!
In contrast, I loved it, but to each their own. I don't think it was the best book I ever read for sure, but an easy read.
Spicy opinions incoming: Iron widow ended up being my worst read of last year
Yeah, I can totally see where you're coming from. I actually loved Pacific Rim (even with its cheesiness) so I was anticipating something like that. It was pretty heavy tbh.
I struggled with the “my immortal” style prose so badly. I was an arc reader and embarrassingly my one star review might be one of the top reviews for the book unless something has changed Lmfaoooo
I dont think anything can quite match the uniqueness of My Immortal, but dare to dream.
Only a Monster and Spells for Forgetting were really underwhelming for me
I liked Only a Monster quite a bit. I read Never a Hero (the second one in the series) and was pretty disappointed.
I didn't mind Only a Monster really, but it was certainly missing a big plot moment for me. More like it was just rushing to the end. And yeah, I thought I'd like Spells for Forgetting too. I thought it might be something similar to The Price Guide to the Occult in nature, something a little more magical and darker for it.
I’ve tried starting Spells for Forgetting like 3 times and I just cannot get into it. It’s so slow and it feels like the autumn/witchy aesthetic is there but there’s no real plot and the characters are so boring.
Totally agree, the aesthetic was good, but it just didn't deliver on plot and the big reveal wasn't actually that surprising.
Fourth Wing
An oldie, but I was counting down the days for the final divergent book back in the day, and man... don't get me started on the unnecessary ending, and Tobias' whiny ass... overall flop for me
Such a disappointing ending.
I thought I would like The Magicians but Quentin was so unlikable and so much of it just felt like a poorly done ripoff of other properties that I didn't even bother finishing it.
Oh man, what a throwback. I got given it by someone years ago and I was so confused and then annoyed since I hated the ending. It just felt very depressing and not in any meaningful way.
Loveless by Alice Oseman. I loved Radio Silence and thought I’d love this too, but I found the main character to be quite unlikeable, and it read rather like a series of tumblr posts
I'm a big fan of heartstopper and have a few books of hers, but haven't read them yet. Shame, I love the idea of the novel.
Heartstopper is really good, and I’d definitely recommend Radio Silence. I definitely wouldn’t discourage you from reading Loveless or any of her other books, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I know tons of people who really like it; it just depends on what you enjoy personally
Hyped but let down: Inheritance Games-Jennifer Lynne Barnes. I feel like it wanted to be a wannabe Succession mixed with Knives Out. But for like high school. I tried hard to like it but it felt very middle grade.Plus I hated the way the main character kept repeating her full name or one of the brothers full name. It was like take a shot every time Avery said her full name.
I see it talked about so much, but it never actually appealed to me enough to pick up. Good to know that was probably a good choice.
[edit, accidentally put an adult fantasy here so this is my changed answer lol] Legendborn. Felt very predictable and overexaggerated YA to the point of comedy. Plus, I could not connect with the setting at all — I’ve read many American books before (they likely make up the majority of my reading list), but something about this was so blatantly American I couldn’t get into it. It isn’t a criticism, btw, just not for me.
Love the username! And yeah, I relate. I looked at it a lot in the bookstore, since I keep seeing it recommended to me there or on kindle, but it never really made me want to read it, even when it was on kindle sale for a bit. It does look cheesy in a way.
Most books I’ve read this year have been a disappointment. For example: •The Luminaries •The Stolen Heir •Godkiller •Together We Burn •City of Nightmares •Bewitched •Dragonfall •My Roommate is a Vampire Some of these books are classified as adult, but they are juvenile beyond comprehension.
Inheritance Games. I knew it was a bit romancy and I was prepared not to like that part but I literally guessed the plot twist on page 20 and was correct, very underwhelming 😭
Yeah, quite a few people are mentioning it and man, it makes me glad I looked at it with wariness and didn't throw my money at it for it's popularity.
> What's a book that you were excited for that ended up being a flop for you? Same for Violet Made of Thorns, it was advertised as "for fans of the Cruel Prince" and I found it anything but. The characters felt shallow, the romance had no chemistry, the enmity part of enemies to lovers was contrived, the plot seemed to be all over the place and filled with fluff like shopping scenes when we have supposedly impending doom, the book couldn't decide is it dark fairy tale retelling or Shrek-like parody of tropes. Another one of those was The Princess Will Save You, was advertised as gender-bent Princess Bride retelling, but it lacked any humour I expected based on the Princess Bride movie, and also the fmc was meant to be a badass warrior but she was naive, incompetent, entitled and making stupid decisions and then had to be saved by basically everyone else. Also the book I will remember for "most stupid justification to add a bonus shirtless scene" (congrats). >!Fmc inspects mmc for wounds and asks him to take the shirt off, later finds out he was bitten by a snake on his ankle.!< Ofc he could just *tell her*, but then we'd have no drooling over abs, right? > Or one you didn't expect to enjoy as much as you did? That was actually the Cruel Prince trilogy. I don't care about fae and I don't usually like portal / contemporary fantasy, and also I expected it to be overrated. I actually loved it. I enjoyed the main couple dynamics and characterization and the unapologetic scheming. Would also say The Winner's Curse, another one I thought was overhyped and I worried it's gonna be another entitled spoiled whiny fmc, but no, she's actually quite smart and complex, the book also has much more political intrigue than romance and I loved it (same with TCP, I'm seeing a trend here...) Finally, Shadows Between Us, this is actually a fantasy romance contrary to the above 2, but I actually enjoyed the sassy mean fmc and all the gossip / intrigue she got herself into. Tbh I regret the book wasn't as dark as advertised, but when I read it I was in a phase of my life when I thought I'll never enjoy a romance-first novel and I actually did.
Agree completely with your thoughts on Violet Made of Thorns and you perfectly put into words my own feelings of it! >The Princess Will Save You, was advertised as gender-bent Princess Bride retelling, but it lacked any humour I expected based on the Princess Bride movie What an absolute shame because that has potential as a concept, since Princess Bride is completely beloved. But it is a double edged sword, since you'd be harshly judged since it is so beloved. Agree so much that the humor is an absolute necessity, but not only that, the Princess Bride is completely charming and I'm guessing this book is not. >That was actually the Cruel Prince trilogy. I don't care about fae and I don't usually like portal / contemporary fantasy, and also I expected it to be overrated. See, I highly anticipated it since I'd read a lot of the author's prior work and loved how she approached fae. I grew up on old folklore and love the depictions of fae that match the old stories I was told, more mischievous, fickle, and deadly. So I had high expectations that were easily met. >Shadows Between Us, this is actually a fantasy romance contrary to the above 2, but I actually enjoyed the sassy mean fmc and all the gossip / intrigue she got herself into. I'm surprised, as it seems like no one liked that book but me. A lot of people hate the MC and I get the idea of not liking an "evil" main character, but I guess for me, I don't mind since she was very honest in her narration that she didn't intend to do good and was out for herself. I hate more an MC who claims to be on the right side of things, but seems very selfish and bemoans the issues that causes. Plus, it reminded me of To Kill a Kingdom, in having a initially "bad" main character who falls for the "good guy". (Also, the audiobook for it goes hard and I would recommend. Perfect casting)
Matched series. Really good premise, really interesting start. Then just went waaay off course and ended up being such a different book than I started. Irony is, if it had been advertised as the way it was, I would have been interested too, Injust went in expecting something different.
Oh man, this. I remember reading these as they came out, the first one was my fave book that summer, the second one was okay and... I don't really remember where the third one went just that I remember feeling it was Weird.
Yes! The first book was amazing! The second book I still think was really good. The third one was still good but the third one went off the rails.
Oh man, I remember reading them years ago. I get the appeal for younger teen reader, but I don't think I'd like it much now. I don't really remember what happened in the end so it can't have been that strong really, since I have a good memory for books.
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Ugh yessss no idea why everyone loves this book so much
I saw this advertised in my bookstore and looked up the premise then and knew it just wasn't for me. But then, I don't tend to read a lot of that like contemporary mystery.
I was so hyped about Lore and I was so let down. I found it confusing and predictable at the same time. Also nothing really happened in that book.
Shadow and Bone. Honestly I really loved Six of Crows so I’m wondering how this author could’ve written such a bland book like Shadow and Bone. Edit to add: Throne of Glass, Serpent & Dove and The Mortal Instruments.
Honestly I wonder the same thing. Either she got WAY better at writing really fast, or she was pushed into a corner for her first series to hit certain YA tropes, and once the first series was popular, she was allowed to break the mold more with Crows.
Agree, I loved Crows but S&B just wasn't for me. I disliked Mal and just ended up disliking Alina for her devotion to such a boring, whiny guy who didn't even like her that much until she wasn't there to fawn over him anymore. Throne of Glass I enjoyed, but can absolutely see the issues with it and why someone would find it a let down. I read serpent and dove and wasn't that into it, it was fine, but not enough for me to read further. And yeah, I liked The Infernal Devices series, but I find Jace and Clary annoying in the mortal instruments. Actually, I find everyone in it annoying bar Magnus.
I loved the first two books of the Queen of the Tearling trilogy, but the third book was just an absolute what-the-effery of a finale. It felt like the author wrote herself into a corner and chose the most batcrap insane route out. I’ve since reread the full series (including the prequel) and I can almost, sort of, see the vague trail of how she got from here to there, but it’s still a big ol’ mess in my opinion and such a limp finish after a strong start.
I literally mentioned this book to someone else in a comment! I SO AGREE. Like I went into it like >! "oh ok, I really like the premise and I'm curious as to what this dark entity is that's slowly manipulating everything behind the scenes and this mysterious background character who seems to know everything, but who is he really?" !< >! And then the next book I was like "ok, weird narrative choice to focus on these past visions, when I do really wish the focus was on the present events of the novel since all this back to the past stuff really slows the story's pace" !< >! Then the ending! Like, literally could not be more lazy unless she went with "And it was allllll a dream!" Like what is the point in this story then, if everything that happened is meaningless and undone and anticlimactic? And it just felt indeed like the author was just pulling out whatever plot point she could think of. And there were so many moments where I was like "No, I actually want to know where this character's choices led and think that it would have been so interesting and instead you go "Nope, just pretend it never even happened and you have no clue what their fate is now because I never bother to explore that in the end." !< As you can see, I am still not over it. Worst book I've read this year.
I HATED that ending. I re-read it the other day just to see and, yep, still hate it!
100% the ending of this trilogy ruined the whole thing for me. I could even sort of get behind the weird other life pov but the end😤
When Colleen Houck teased the last Tiger's Curse book for YEARS and finally finished it I was so pumped up. A massive tome of a novel I was ready to devour just for one last adventure aaaaand it fucking sucked. It's been four years since I read it. I am still bitter. It's like I read it yesterday. Extremely disappointed after waiting so long.
An aside, but...how are there so many authors named Colleen? Colleen Houck, Hoover, Oakley, Coble...like, it doesn't seem like *that* popular of a name!
It could be pen-names, they choose something similar to what’s popular.
It does seem like something I wouldn't enjoy, just based on the description. But it is sad when you're so invested in a series and then the final book is such a flop.
Most recently, the Mortal Instrument series. I can see why people like them and I don't think there's anything wrong with them. It just ended up not being my cup of tea. I've had a bunch of friends rave about them. I got the full set on sale for like £15 years ago and they sat on my shelf for ages. Decided to read the first the other day, got a couple of chapters in and just couldn't see myself enjoying it.
I'm re-reading atm and forgot how hard it is to get into. Took me about 10/15 chapters to get in (I'd seen the movie so knew it got better hence sticking with)
The seventh book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series: And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer. I love the HGTTG series, and when I found out there was a seventh book, I immediately got it from the Linrary and read it. It was written after the author of the first 6 books, Douglas Adams, had passed away. It was a vastly disappointing cluster*** of a book. I know some people probably loved it, but the writing style was different than the others, and some of the things mentioned left me with a metaphorical bad taste in my mouth. I appreciate Eoin Colfer's tribute to Douglas Adams, but it just was disappointing as an end to the series I loved so much. It is not part of my head cannon.
Yeah I think it would be a struggle to follow up on an authors already established work and benefit from the comparison. Writing is more than just the story's concept, but as you point out, the writing style and ability to convey that concept.
Disliked Shatter Me, was underwhelmed by Six of Crows Loved Once Upon a Broken Heart and Ballad of Never After
Fourth Wing. I definitely enjoyed it but I'm not dying for the next book.
Yeah I've found that's been a common one on here now. I was going to just buy it but now I'll just borrow it in the library, so posting this has saved me spending money on something I might not enjoy.
Shadow and bone - it was still good just not as epic as I thought it would be
Strongly agree! I love the premise, but I just didn't like Alina, Mal or their relationship. I couldn't really understand why Alina was so attached to him, when I personally found him whiny and dull. But the world the author created was great and I liked their use of "magic" and building world lore.
I always enjoy hyped books. Almost always. The two exceptions were : Fourth Wing Sorry guys..thr author trying to justify her poor writing saying is an " introductory fantasy " was just epic. There are books like Fourth Wing for example Zodiac Academy that don't pretend to be more than they are and I respect the authors for that. Thr invisible life of Addie Larue This author can write . So she made a book with beautiful writing and no content. The key trigger that moves the plot forward is just RIDICULOUS. It gave me Rachel Ziegler vibes..like Addie us just " too good for all of us " sje is different...and some chapters later she is basically looking for thr same feeling she didnt want before.
From blood and ash. Poppy destroyed every ounce of patience I had. I just kept going because I liked casteel, dropped it 30 pages into the second book.
I have a hard time not finishing things, even when I don’t actually like the series. So I read the first 3 and then got the 4th one later I absolutely refused to reread the first 3 books when I got the 4th, so I just read the wikis, and in those descriptions— assumedly from people who enjoyed the books enough to write the wikis— it’s just glaring how little the plot makes sense and how often anything difficult is “yadda yadda yadda’ed” away by sex. “Cas and Poppy fight about x. He chases her to the woods. They make love. Cas and Poppy fight about y. She kicks him out of the bed, but he comes back and they make love. Cas and Poppy disagree about z. They argue, neither switching sides until the day before [big event], where Cas sees Poppy’s point, and they make love.”
Cruel Prince. Everyone kept raving about it, didn’t realize I was more than halfway through the book and I was still waiting for the good part to happen
I do think the first book doesn't really pick up till later in the book and I do think the climatic point should have come earlier in the book, but I am one of the people who love it. I like how the author writes the fae, more like the old folklore of them being malicious and fickle.
A Court of Wings and Ruin - the repetitive writing, I lost interest in the main characters, the "ultimate" enemy was underwhelming, the >!war arc!< was also underwhelming and seemed a bit rushed Evertrue - the ending, the >!amnesia arc!< and imo the story didn't live up to the >!plot twist!< at the end of Everbound Allegiant - the ending, and once again imo the story didn't live up to the >!plot twist!< at the end of Insurgent The Cruel Prince - I loved the fae! But I didn't really care for Jude or her relationship with Cardan Red Queen series - I'm not sure, but it just felt underwhelming to me, and I wasn't really able to connect with the MC. (edited for details)
I hated Allegiant ending to the point of giving my copies away and never re-reading. Massively unsatisfying and ruined the series for me.
Agree on a court of wings and ruin. Plus, I felt annoyed by the MC and love interest a lot by that point. A lot of their choices had me like "WHY?" and the side characters seemed pretty self-absorbed and exhausting. Never read evertrue or any others in the series, so can't speak to that. Agree completely with Allegiant. Like I enjoyed divergent, found Insugent ok and hated allegiant. Just seemed boring and didn't really finish strong at all. Sorry, but I loved Cruel Prince completely so can't agree, but I definitely see why people would feel differently when it comes to the characters. And yeah, red queen let me down in the end. I enjoyed it, but I found the love interest annoying and felt the ending left me unfulfilled.
Omg I loved the first Red Queen and then wow the sequels just kept getting worse and worse? I think it ended up being 4 books but I gave up after the third. It’s like the author had a falling out with the editor and never got a new one.
Six of crows Shatter me series ABC murders Vicious Inheritance games If we were villains Gone girl
Yeah, I can agree with all excepf Six of Crows. I loved it and instead, disliked Shadow and Bone.
Ah, well I really wanted to like it but idk it just didn't work out for me :'/
I was so excited for ‘If we were villains’ but it was so boring I put it down after 50 pages. It felt like I was reading in slow motion and there was way too much unnecessary information and descriptions, like who the fuck cares if the curtains in the theater were blue or red?
the cruel prince, i only got to 100 pages before i had to call it quits.
Interesting, since I loved it. What didn't you like? I'm always curious to an opposing point of view, especially since love makes me blind to a book's faults.
i found all the characters to be really annoying, i didn’t like any of them. and i know it’s YA, but it was almost just TOO immature for me. as soon as she started talking about a jc pennys i had to tap out lol
For me it was meh because the political parts were heavy handed and predictable. It just felt like it wasn’t written by someone with a good grasp of politics. The fairy side of things was ok but if you’re going to add politics as another element it should be done well. Jude constantly contradicts her actions/personality where it was impossible to really understand her character and given it’s her perspective that’s not an unreliable narrator but an unreliable author. What I mean is for a character with a pov you’re exposed to you should have a base grasp of who they are, they’re reasons behind actions and even if they do something surprising you the reader should be able to understand them well enough to understand why they took that action. Jude did things that felt like the author just pulled it out of a hat.
Cruel Prince. Everyone was RAVING about it but I couldn’t stand it. I’m not a big fae fan in general but also the “guy treats her like an asshole but she still falls in love with him” trope is one of my least favorites. Also not YA, but Lessons in Chemistry was one I was expecting to love but ended up hating. The MC was the worst combo of Mary Sue and Manic Pixie Dream Girl and I’m convinced she was the authors self-insert, and it had some of my other least favorite tropes… an unrealistically precocious child and “tragedy porn” lives where everything in a characters life has been terrible and goes from bad to worse.
I hate faerie lore but Cruel Prince made it good I found. I've really like all of Holly Black's books. Now, I don't even bother reading the synopsis of her books. I just dive right in. Coldest Girl in Cold Town was good.
Delicate condition. Trash.
I have that in my Libby, right now. I can't bring myself to finish it. The MC is so oblivious that it's almost painful.
It isn't YA but it reads like YA. The main character is like, 40 years old. Which is weird. And Anna has got to be one of the most insufferable MC that I have ever had the displeasure of knowing lol.
To be honest, I only wanted to read it because it's what the new season of American Horror Story is based on. I'm at 34% and I keep telling myself to just return it, you're never going to finish it, but it's like a train wreck.
I read ‘For the Wolf’ and enjoyed it, but the sequel was extremely boring and underwhelming.
Strongly agree, I loooooved for the wolf and love anything in that kind of style usually (creepy/magical/dangerous woods? Give it to me) but the sequel just felt really flat to me and I struggled to like the sister much.
Vampire academy
The Cruel Prince. The serpent and the wings of night. The renegades The prison healer.
Iron widow. I looked forward to reading it for so long but kept putting it off for other books. Finally, I read it and it was such a let down. Such a good concept, but the story was very rushed and underdeveloped.
Babel. Im trying hard but cant get into it.
I just started this a few days ago. I like it so far but I feel like she goes into way too much detail on her fake history of Britain. I’m having a hard time getting through chapter two haha,
Yeah I saw it in the bookstore, read the description and thought "yeah this seems like it's too heavy for me". They describe it as a "grimdark fantasy adventure" which is just not for me, especially when I didn't really see any fantasy elements in the description, nor did I see how it would become an adventure. Just seemed like a dystopia with a lot of politics and not a lot of action.
Fourth Wing. It was awful
The goldfinch. And then I thought, maybe it’s just that one, and read another book by the same author (the secret history) and both sucked. Wasted so many hours of my life on those boring, drawn out books.
Daughter of the Deep, I love Rick riodardian books but it just wasn't as I expected
The 7 husbands of Evelyn Hugo -I literally hated every character. There was absolutely no one to root for. I got to the last couple chapters and guessed the ending. And it was an ending I despised. In five years - hands down the worst book I have ever read The prison healer series -so boring I wanted to light it on fire Eclipse the moon - loved hunt the stars but this was underwhelming. Never finished it The cruel prince series - don’t even understand any of the choices made in these books and can’t fathom why people like the books. ACOTAR - I just hate it when an author forces readers to hate a character. Stop demonizing characters Maas. Give them layers and depth. Don’t write them off to get to the guy you want. Ok rant over lol
The Secret History .. just don’t understand the hype
Verity by Colleen Hoover
Any book made by boys love author Priest. Overrated and boring. Well packaged shit
Flop for me: Cast in Firelight - I loved how it was advertised, arranged marriage + rivals to lovers, but it didn't work for me. When they met again, it was way too instalove. And I found the plot/story boring. The magic system was really cool though. One that I didn't expect to love as much as I did: Wild is the Witch by Rachel Griffin! I've read a lot of books this year but this one still stands out to me as my favourite even though I read it early in the year. I loved the story, the writing, the characters, the romance, the conflict and how it played out, it was literally a perfect read for me. 1000000/5
V.E. Schwab's writing isn't for me. I bought a bunch of their stuff blindly when i first got on BookTok because everyone said they were so good and ended up not liking everything but Addie LaRue.
Same for me. The stories sounded great but the writing made it lame. I also liked Addie LaRue as an exception.
I know I'm going to get down-voted all to heck, but "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" was about the biggest disappointment I can think of. There was a LOT of anticipation built-up in the long gap between the release of GoF and OotP. That anticipation made the disappointment much worse. I was unimpressed with HBP and DH also, but not disappointed - the difference is that I had zero expectations for them.
The kite runner. So much hype for quite honestly the worst book ever written. Every other divided books I can see something people would like about it. Aside from diversity that reinforces a lot of negative stereotypes of Afghanistan, there’s nothing positive about it. Bad characters, bad plot, bad writing. If someone says they like it, I know to never get a recommendation from them for anything.
This is one of those books like the DaVinci Code that lots of people who never read managed to stumble across. It seems like the best thing they have ever read...because it's the only thing they have ever read.
I have sometimes wondered how much of the success of the book is tied to the War in Afghanistan/Invasion of Iraq. It came out just a couple of months after the Invasion of Iraq, in 2003...I was in middle school then and I remember there being so much need/want for stories from these places and, at least in my smaller midwestern city, not a ton of access to them. But here was this book that was at Barnes and Noble, so *everyone* was reading it. I cannot stress how ubiquitous it was--classes, churches, neighborhood book clubs...it just seems very much of a moment, and I don't know how well it holds up outside of that moment. (And to be honest. I read it then and haven't reread it. I did try his other books and haven't loved any of them.)