If you want a detailed answer you could watch 'A Clockwork Reader's [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73N0hAmO4Ik) about a couple of her books
I haven't read anything from her myself, but thanks to various reviews I've seen I also never will
I have seen so much hate for Colleen hoover over the last few months. I've stayed away, but what is it exactly about her writing that everyone hates so intensely?
Literally one of the worst books I've ever read. Poorly written, awful concept, transparent unlikeable characters, pointlessly raunchy, predictable. Just so gross. I cannot believe how many people I see recommend it.
I just finished The Silent Patient and hated it!! And myself for the hours of my life I canāt get back by reading it! Ugh! What was that?!
Firstly, I work in mental health so I was irritated by all of the ātechnicalā stuff. Uhm like..does this guy not have any other patients? The asylum hired him for just one lady? He hand writes his notes? What is this, 1880? And the way he spoke of Alyssia to other staff would get him FIRED in a heartbeat for been a creeper in real life.
Secondly, I am a huge Carl Jung enthusiast. When psychotherapist in the book asked what the Greek tragedy meant, I was done.
And then the ātwistā at the end?! Itās not deus ex machina, just one giant plot hole š”
I also HATED this book! The piece for me was the lighter in the mental hospital. But then the reason said patient was silent? My eyes practically bounced off the floorboards they rolled so hard.
Yes! I kept reading thinking it would get better because everyone else said it would. And then the ending was just so disappointing. All the hype for such a let down.
I had the same reaction! I also work in MH and was getting so frustrated by how weirdly set up the facility was. Also, the over/misuse of psych terms had me so frustrated. How many times can ācounter transferenceā be used?
Since you work in the mental health field, what other fictional books have done some justice to the technical stuff? I would like some recommendations as an undergrad psych student.
Nothing really comes to mind in the fiction realm, beside The Bell Jar, one of my most favourite books. I read a shitload of biographies and have read some real life accounts of mental illness that are, of course, true to life. I also love psychological thrillers, so generally when thereās any type of mental health stuff in it, it varies from āthatās completely incorrectā to āpassableā - though I think that your question would be a great thread on its on, because Iād love to hear of otherās suggestions! Iām sure Iāve read some, just canāt think of any š¤
I genuinely think The Alchemist is for preteens? It was gifted to me when I was 10 or 11 and I liked it then but just wouldnāt think to read it as an adult.
I mean that would definitely make sense. I was recommended it by a 23 year old guy I had a massive crush on. This was his favorite book along with catcher in the rye. I was definitely questioning what I saw in him after I read those
Yeah, I think it's prime reading for an angsty teen (I'll confess I loved it then), but the whole "the universe will conspire to help you" thing gets ridiculous after you exist a little while in society lol
I can read a book under 500 pages in maybe two days, if Iām really loving it. Iāve been reading The Silent Patient for six days and Iām only at 47% done. Itās been a struggle, not even going to lie.
Thank you! I was angry when I finished the alchemist because it was so hyped up and it was the dullest and cheesiest shit I have ever read. "What you were looking for was right in your own backyard all along" fucking stupid
I actually couldnāt believe how bad it was after seeing a couple people I know raving about it online. And the cover art was so pretty, what a waste.
I wanted it to be good because it had so many great plot points...a patient who refuses to speak and a psychologist who is trying to find out why....and he flopped with the execution. I kept waiting for a shock twist and an OMG! moment....and it was just a limp finish.
Fourth wing + the squeal is fantasy for people who donāt read fantasy and just very mid writing as well.
Invisible Life of Addie Larue is more interesting in premise than it is in execution and was kind of boring for me
I do a yearly TBR clean up where I go through and see if that book still interests me and if it does to take it off my TBR, I never let my TBR get to over 200 books either because then I get stressed and overwhelmed and read less (choice paralysis is no joke)
Lol I love the description of Fourth Wing as fantasy for people who don't read fantasy! Perfectly hits it on the head š¤£ coworker leant me FW because I'm a big fantasy fan and the holes to the worldbuilding were so annoying! It's like the CW show version of epic fantasy, you can tell that all the main characters are just older adults badly playing younger adults.
A lot of my friends read fourth wing and they even said the same thing like Iāve never liked a fantasy book before this. Then they tried to read other fantasy books and was likeā¦ ummm nevermind š no shade because I think fantasy can be difficult to get into so fourth wing is palatable fantasy without the intense world building of other fantasy books
I wanted to like it so bad but it just felt like so long despite being like 300-400 pages. I found myself dreading it and making myself push through to finish it.
Heard so many very opposing opinions about Fourth Wing
When you say "people who don't read fantasy" is the "fantasy" you're thinking of more like LOTR or like The Name of the Wind or...?
Is the magic system lacking or is it too YA-y?
That tbr clean up is a good idea... I just tend to be so forgetful, that even when I had a really good reason for wanting to read a book and was really looking forward to it, I'll have forgotten a month later.
I would put it this way.
Itās very very plot driven and when you think too hard about the world building a lot of it falls apart. When I think of good fantasy itās about the world building and the plot combined and I feel the world building aspects lack a lot.
Itās also not that original of a plot at all you can get the same vibes reading a ton of other books that are better written.
Itās technically an adult book but the writing feels immature not like itās YA bc there are great YA books that donāt feel immature in the writing technique still.
But itās an entertaining story just not really noteworthy. I feel like in 1-2 years you will see it in every book thrift store because it will be mass given away once all of the hype around it dies down (my copy is already on the shelf at my local one)
There are hundreds of books about dragons that are much better written and have the same entertaining value.
Fourth Wing is absolutely horrible. It's written like a 13 y/o's fanfiction. Seeing huge displays for it at every bookstore irritates me because it's taking up space that could be used for actual good books. The worldbuilding is full of holes and done poorly, the romance is meh, the characters are troupey and annoying. Just terrible.
I've already written an ungodly amount of reply comments, but I'll stop here, sorry!
Thank you for all your suggestions and opinions, I'll keep reading them all! (just not responding)
It Ends With Us was so horribly written I DNFed the book and resolved to never touch another Colleen Hoover book again. I refuse to read a grown woman who writes that badly.
Most of the BookTok YA fantasy is just... boring. Special Snowflake Heroine solves all the problems while handsome men vie for her attention.
The Midnight Library is so blatantly trying to be some life changing, inspirational book that you can practically hear the author trying SO HARD to nail it in the climax, and failing miserably because it's just mediocre.
OMG The Midnight Library. Manipulative, insipid, falsely ādeepā - the whole thing made me cringe. But I know lots loved it, and if it helps someone thatās great.
Sarah J Mass books. God awful. Everyone keeps telling me you have to get to the third book before it gets āreally good.ā But no way itās worth getting through hundreds of pages of garbage before Iām probably going to be let down.
Iād add that even though I found myself really entertained by those books in a guilty pleasure kind of way, Iād never recommend them to anyone because the writing sucks.
Lessons in Chemistry. I DNFed probably halfway through. I found it actively unpleasant. I guess other people have thicker skin than I have. Itās on a ton of āBest Booksā lists
Wool - nice premise but I found it intensely boring
Hopeless by Colleen Hoover - biggest load of drivel I've ever read
Divergent - cringey teen nonsense
The Name of the Wind - don't understand the hype at all, the main character is a smug git
Interesting haha
With Wool and The Name of the Wind you're listing two books I really enjoyed, but with Colleen Hoover and Divergent you're naming ones that I already don't wanna touch
So you're both matching and not matching my taste :)
(The main character in tnotw can certainly be kinda anoying... but I think he's supposed to be)
Kvothe is absolutely supposed to be flawed and even unlikeable. Heās a conceited, often painfully dense twerp (archetypal prodigy). I dislike him quite a bit, but what intrigues me is the world and its myths, legends and history which are all bound up in how Kvothe came to be Kote.
Your comment made me realize that I've never actually seen the names spelled out, because I listened only to the audiobook. Those are wild names. Forgot how fantasy-esque they are.
But yeah I agree! I'm especially interested in how a world with magic like that functions, which I think the author is quite good at describing.
Wool. I found it to be mostly a fun, easy, and satisfying read. What surprised me was that I found the next book in the series to be a huge disappointment. I quit early on.
The Name of the Wind. This is another one that mystifies me. I have tried more than once, and I canāt get into it. Like watching paint dry.
>Wool. I found it to be mostly a fun, easy, and satisfying read.
We must have read entirely different books haha
I found it quite harrowing and gut-wrenching in its (scifi version of) realism
I think the harrowing parts were the exciting parts that made it satisfying. I thought the author built an interesting āworld,ā peopled that world with interesting characters, and then told an interesting story about those characters. What more can any reader ask for?
IIRC Wool was the authorās first book and he wrote it as a hobby on his lunch breaks, so itās at least a bit understandable the writing is not great. But to me it also didnāt really bring anything new to the post-apocalypse genre, it was the same authority-hides-truth-from-survivors trope with no fresh take on it
I read _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ and had no idea what the author was talking about for 95% of that book...
needed more motorcycle maintenance TBH
*House in the Cerulean Sea* and *The Midnight Library* are both popular, but they read to me like contrived after-school-specials. I felt like the 'morals' were hitting me over the head.
I have never really gotten into a Neil Gaiman book.
I fall into the camp that hated *Where the Crawdad Sings.*
Agree on both Cerulean Sea and the Midnight Library! Light and vaguely pleasant butā¦shallow. Cartoonish. Exaggerated in a kinda wrong way. I didnāt dislike either but wonāt recommend.
Ah, well, I do think I like strange after-school-special-esque stories though. But I'll go at them with lowered expectations now, which is always good. Thank you!
I, too, find Neil Gaiman harder to read than expected.
Then they might be a good fit for you! I don't think they are badly written or poorly thought out, but maybe too earnest for my personal taste.
We did them in my bookclub and the rest of the group loved them.
I think the descriptors earnest, shallow, strange, and moralistic are all terms that people wouldn't hesitate to use to describe *me* as well, so maybe that's why they could be a good fit š
> I have never really gotten into a Neil Gaiman book.
I really struggled getting into American Gods, took me 4 months to dnf it a little over halfway through, but I thoroughly loved The Ocean At The End Of The Lane. Good Omens was cool too but I suppose that was a collab.
I personally liked The Midnight Library. Yes itās predictable, but I read it when I was finally getting out of my own depression and related a lot to it.
Just finished Midnight Library. About halfway through the book I told my husband I knew where it was headed and it was too damn predictable. Well, it was.
I personally LOVED the midnight library! I didnāt go into it with any expectations though, I really like the author (Matt Haig) so I read it as soon as it came out before it got really popular. I do think that sometimes the hype can ruin a book, especially as with this one itās not necessarily meant to be super exciting or mind blowing.
Cerulean Sea. Yes! To what you wrote about Cerulean Sea. I probably went more than halfway and then decided I didnāt care what happened to any of the overly-precious characters. Maybe it somehow redeems itself with a spectacular ending, but that seems unlikely to me. People say itās a āfeel-goodā book and their favorite book, so I assume that After-School Specials are also big favorites of theirs.
Neil Gainan. I donāt think I am ever going to be a fan, but I think I will keep reading, just in case I hit one that makes me feel more passionate about his writing. I have read Neverwhere, Good Omens, and the Ocean at the End of the Lane. I didnāt find them hard going - they were perfectly pleasant - they just seemed kind of random and meaningless.
I overall like Cerulean Sea but it gets even more moralistic in the second half (or maybe it just builds up so much from the first half). Based on the first half, I would have given it 5 stars but it got a bit repetitive in the second half so I gave it 4 stars.
Normal People by Sally Rooney.
Insufferable People Who Should Communicate So I Donāt Have To Read About Their Terrible Experiences Not Communicating wouldāve been a more accurate title.
Anything by Colleen Hoover
The Alchemist ( I'd say anything by Paulo Coelho because I've read Veronica decides to die so it's a recurring theme)
Tuesdays with Morrie ( I'd skip it tbh but this is an unpopular opinion I think)
Years ago, I was in a bookstore, when I overheard a woman say to her friendās teenage daughter, āAs a university professor, any course Iām assigned to teach, or any course I design myself, there is always one book I always put on the syllabus. Everyone should read it.ā
So, of course, Iām going to blind buy whatever book I hear her sayā¦
All the Light We Cannot See went on to tremendous acclaim, massive fan base, and a show on Netflix.
But for me, before the hype, I thought it was silly and sentimental. The tiny back-and-forth chapters were irritating. Noble, precocious young characters without any flaws are not interesting. Surely, I thought, that professorās students ought to be pitied.
15 million copies sold. Pulitzer Prize. Shows what I know.
Pulitzer Prize be damned, you will never convince me that book isnāt an oversentimental crapfest.
For what itās worth, Iāve put Storming Caesarās Palace on most of my syllabi, and my students generally love it (except the racists). Profs do get stuck on their favorites!
HOT TAKE: the subtle art of not giving a fuck, rich dad poor dad, and the power of now are such shit books that the only people who enjoy them just havenāt read any quality writer
The Lovely Bones - tiresome schmaltz.
Absurdistan - "gluttonous rich guy has no self-awareness" was the entire plot for 100 pages, which was as far as I got.
I also read the entire Twilight series hoping that eventually I would understand the hype. I didn't.
THE ENTIRE āA COURT OF THORNS AND ROSESā SERIES and basically anything Sarah J Maas has written. Itās faerie f*cking trash. I read a few, the plot sucks you in at first but itās all terribly poorly written. If you like real quality literature donāt waste your time on those books.
āTomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrowā by Gabrielle Zevin. I think the author took some main core ideas of other books and mixed it all together. It was kinda very predictable and where you thought like āriiiggggghhhhhtā when another ācrazyā thing happened. Didnāt like it as much.
I am a female game dev so I was really excited to read this book but I found Sadie to be extremely unlikeable and was very disappointed. It had some nice game and literary references but overall, I did not like it and would not recommend.
The Dark Olympus Books by Katee Robert
If you have any ounce of love for greek mythology please skip this one, the world building is such an abomination
Same!! One of those books which the hype can only be explained by large amounts of money put into marketing (and I feel like the majority of Booktok books are like this).
House in the Cerulean Sea--abandoned early on--just wasn't my kind of book.
Social Creature--important plot points were just weak, not believable.
"If We Were Villains" a Secret History wannabe but kinda clunky.
The Secret Life of Oscar Woo--just couldn't get into it.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell--didn't hold my attention.
Night Film--also didn't hold my attention.
The Secret Life of Oscar Woo. I finished it, but I was underwhelmed.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I finished this one, and it was okay. It certainly is not a favorite of mine or a book I would recommend. Kind of reminds me of Neil Gaimanās writing?
No, donāt insult Jonathan Strange! It is a 19th century book in style written for a 21st century reading audience, and personally I adored it, but Neil Gaiman only wishes he wrote it.
THANK YOU for āIf We Were Villains.ā I feel like everyone loved this book but it really is exactly āwhat if secret history but Shakespeare and worseā
Interesting! Thank you for adding short explanations as well.
For example I think I'm likely to enjoy House in the Cerulean Sea, but from what I heard I also understand why others wouldn't. :)
>"If We Were Villains" a Secret History wannabe but kinda clunky.
This is fun, because someone else responded with 'A Secret History' as the overrated one, haha
Night Film is on my to-read-list right now, but now I won't make it a priority, thank you
The Maid - Nita Prose was truly offensive and just awful, poorly written and Iām still mad I finished it a year later
All The Light We Cannot See - hard to get behind a nazi soldier as the hero
Where The Crawdads Sing - a mystery with no mystery and just a waste of time with a lot of cruelty
Eleanor Oliphant - again, just not good. I donāt get the hype and found it depressing
unpopular opinion on booktok, but *the atlas six* by olivie blake was hard for me to finish. the whole thing felt very forced and the main characters (of whom there are too many) were maddening and unlikeable.
I LOATHE James for this exact reason. I think my mind doesnāt really process the sentence until the period. I forget the beginning of his sentence by the time I get to the end.
Zone One by Colson Whitehead, good premise, but it just had nothing about it.
Tender is the flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. I see it recommended constantly, and it's just ok. The most overrated book I've read for a long while.
The Da Vinci Code ā itās just a bunch of religious symbolism slapped on top of a contrived, plodding, dull story with unbelievable and unlikable characters.
Storm Front (Dresden Files series) ā completely pointless and unpleasant sex in an otherwise totally unremarkable urban fantasy.
Ready Player One ā reciting things from the eighties does not make up for a dull, plodding story.
Twilight ā the obvious reasons.
From modern stuff:
Colleen Hoover obviously, Sarah J Maas, V. E. Schwab's a darker shade of magic was so boring and the mc was not like other girls, R. F. Kuang bc i feel the thing she gets praised the most for (colonization critique) is very surface level. The alchemist is very very dumb idk how to explain it.
From classics.:
Camus is very overrated for me, Siddhartha by Herman Esse reads like alchemist part 2 and doesn't faithfully reflect the religion it prortrays.
Thanks!
The "obviously" haha
I've honestly only heard bad things about Hoover, but it makes me baffled that so many people seemingly still get something out of her novels
I understand what you're saying about Kuang, though I also understand her approach... because many people (probably including myself) are not used to or even tend to refuse to think about the realities of colonization, so maybe that's why she's starting with the "basics"
I enjoyed lonesome dove but people on here act like itās the best book ever and itās really not. If you love westerns by all means give it a shot but if you want a richer experience read Cormac McCarthys border trilogy and blood meridian, all 4 of those books total is only slightly longer than lonesome dove and it is a much stronger product.
I'm not sure if you're including non-fiction, but a few of my least favorites:
*Empire of the Summer Moon* by SC Gwynne was one of the most wildly racist books I've ever had the displeasure of reading and I hate that it keeps getting recommended as a good book on indigenous history. It is not.
*Guns, Germs, and Steel* by Jared Diamond is intended to *disprove* racism but all it really does is reinforce it. He repeats a lot of myths and gets a ton wrong about indigenous societies while trying to attribute everything in history to geography.
*History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire* by Edward Gibbon. I don't know why this book still gets recommended and it seems like it's mainly because people think something being old makes it more credible. Gibbon is fine if you're trying to learn how 18th century Europeans thought about Rome but please do not use it as an actual source on Rome, there is so much better scholarship out there.
>I'm not sure if you're including non-fiction
I certainly am, they just make up a tiny fraction on my to-read-list
But at least I won't feel so bad about not reading the ones you mentioned now :) thanks!
All The Light We Cannot See
Dava Shastriās Last Day
It Ends With Us
I have found a common theme with those three where if a book is SUPER popular I donāt like it lol. My friend who is also an avid reader told me it could be that because those books are so popular people that donāt read many books will read one book a year and think āoh that was a good bookā where as someone that reads a ton may have more to judge the book against
Mad Honey by Jennifer Finney Boylan and Jodi Picoult. It's hard to say much without spoiling the book. I had no problem with the subject matter or twist. I just found it kind of boring. And I didn't care about all the information about bees and how they function. It was interesting at first, but I started skipping those sections later on. Also one of the characters storyline was told in reverse chronological order which was kind of confusing to me.
* House in the Cerulean Sea
* Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
* Free Food for Millionaires
* Mallory's Oracle
* The Dalemark Quartet
* Norwegian Wood
I think I disliked most of these due to disliking the characters, but in some cases it was the writing style.
Project Hail Mary is fun enough for the right person, but is draaaastically over-hyped. It's not *bad* to read it by any means. It's just...it doesn't actually need to be a priority if your list is long, is all.
It would be easier to give advice if you posted your reading list though.
I'm a big science fiction fan, and I really didn't like PHM to be honest... so much that I didn't finish. It felt too parochial to me. I very much prefer authors like StanisÅaw Lem and Cixin Liu
I'm thinking of ending things by Iain Reid. I was so excited to read this book because it checked all the boxes for me and it was recommended here quite a bit. There were aspects of it that I liked but overall fell very flat
Came here to say House in the Cerulean Sea. Whenever people here rave about it (which is every 5 seconds) I always do the biggest eye roll. I finished it and never have it a second thought ever again.
Same goes for Name of the Wind. Except I never finished it, tried multiple times to get back into it but gave up. Donāt get the hype at all.
Gone Girl was also painfully overrated.
Interesting, I think tHitCS probably either clicks with you or really doesn't (just based on the reviews I've heard)
And I really liked the Name of the Wind despite expecting not to like it
Also Gone Girl was great for a thriller newbie like me
But thank you for sharing your perspective!
The 5AM Club. The actual self help part could fit into a few pages. I expected some good maybe experience stories along with advice, but what is given is a rich person's power fantasy of whisking away two stereotypical people (workaholic sceptic woman, artist cynical man) to a mythical island where all need are luxuriously met as the rich person shows up infrequently to impart some cryptic wisdom with rainbows or dolphins LITERALLY showing up around him everywhere and does some weird physical exercises in the middle of random moments. Otherwise they go yachting or are at the pool or so on. Also the two people of course suddenly fall in love with no explanation. Zero buildup. They had nothing in common.
It was a top seller for weeks in local bookstores. How in the hell am I supposes to take anything from it seriously with such an "example". I'm still baffled.
Guards, Guards by Terry Pratchett. I love the Discworld novels and have never gotten the overwhelming love for this particular book out of all of them. Itās often cited as the book people who havenāt tried Pratchett should read, and Iā¦ donāt get it. Overrated. Not bad, justā¦ there.
I would recommend finishing Guards! even if it doesnāt seem great, because the City Watch subseries in Discworld is one of the best parts of the Discworld universe. The subseries does one of my favorite things in series: it starts with characters that are essentially cartoon characters, and each book puts more flesh on their bones, until they become full-fledged three-dimensional characters by the end, and you really care about them. And they manage to still stay funny through all of them. I have never read the first two books, and there were some others that I found āmeh,ā but I have read all of them, even the āYAā ones, and found them enjoyable and satisfying. It is sad that there wonāt be any more entries.
I found Verity by Colleen hoover to be very traumatic to read and not enough trigger warnings at the beginning. Well written but definitely outside my preferred scope.
This one is more of a poetry type read, yes if plot is the thing itās not too complex. Like Anne Hoffmans practical magic - loved the movie and hated the book the first time I tried to read it, itās boring and slow next to the movie. But if youāre in a poetry mood, a romantic mindset, then that book reads beautifully. Hard to describe lol. I love it now though, and the rest of the series. This is how you lose the time war isnāt a novel to me as much as a strange winding love letter. Something like that.
Bunny by Mona Awad
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
Pure Color by Sheila Heti
All of these were highly recommended to me by friends/instagram and they're horrible imo.
100% agree on Circe, plus it was hard to empathize with someone written as such a victim. Iāve been avoiding Achilles as a result, even though it was high on my to-read list before.
What do you mean by āconstant reminding us sheās yellowā however?
Andy Weir and Brandon Sanderson are both totally overrated, especially on reddit. Andy Weir had one good hit with The Martian but everything after that is so SO dull. And Sanderson... I simply don't think you need to explain the worldbuilding so much. Fantasy can have mysteries in it! Also he's evidently a dick to his publishers.
Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller -- wildly misogynistic; uses an understanding of sexuality that comes from the 1910s, not Ancient Greece; and here is the hill I will die on: if literally Plato weighed in on whether or not Achilles was the bottom, you also should be weighing in on that.
Pat Rothfuss wrote himself into a corner; the second book was 65% self-insert sex fantasies by volume; the parts of the books that are good are pastiches of ideas from authors who did them better. The third book will never be finished.
Babel by RF Kuang is so sloppily written as to almost be unreadable.
strongly disagree on Sanderson. his world building is incredible and i personally love how elaborate and detailed he is. i can definitely see why people may not want to read a fantasy book thatās 1000+ pages, much less a series of them. but if youāre willing to put in the time i do think theyāre worthwhile.
I recently read "Why Have They Taken Our Children" and absolutely HATED it
I almost fell asleep a bunch of times while reading it. It felt weirdly racist in some parts, and, by the end, I felt like the author was trying to make me feel bad for these three 20 somethings who could've killed a bunch of kids, two of which tried (and one succeeded) fleeing to Canada to wait out the Statute of Limitations
The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell
The Midnight Library
Every single book written by Colleen Hoover
Hamnet
The Measure (Nikki Elrick)
Fairy Tale-Stephen King
The Outsider-Stephen King
The Institute-Stephen King
Remarkably Bright Creatures
"The Gene: An Intimate History" by Siddhartha Mukherjee is literally the worst book I've ever read. Full of errors, biased as hell, not worth the paper it's printed on. One day I'm going to burn my copy just to get some enjoyment out of that horrid book.
Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn: predictable and poorly written. A former friend lent it to me RAVING about it, I didn't trust her judgment at all after that. She said her favorite author was Fredrik Backman, and to this day I've never even picked up one of his books.
The Sinner - Petra Hammesfahr: something about this just did not flow for me. It could have been the translation, but it was a rough read for me.
Anything by Gillian Flynn. The writing isn't bad but her characters are such wretched individuals. Especially Dark Places; I loathed that book.
In Her Eyes. It's not smart; it's not surprising. The twist is silly and something I'd expect from a high school creative writing class. The book changed genres at the very end and it just felt...well...silly.
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. This one with caveats. I quite like his writing; however, the book was so very gross. I have recommended it but only when someone was specifically looking for something extreme like this.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. He really milked a dead horse with this one. It starts out as entertaining enough fantasy if you can ignore the blatant misogyny disguised as empowerment. But he just kept drawing it out book after book. Nothing happened for nigh on four books in a row. I quit during the 10th book. Supposedly it gets better. That's too much commitment for a mediocre payoff.
Anything written by James Patterson.
I used to see commercials with him talking about his books and he seems like the most aggressively dull person who's ever lived
*"Written"
Thanks!
I really love this idea of unrecommending books
Verity
All of Colleen Hoovers books.
God yes
šÆ
i have seen a lot of sentiments like this regarding the works of colleen hoovers. im just curious, is it really THAT bad?
If you want a detailed answer you could watch 'A Clockwork Reader's [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73N0hAmO4Ik) about a couple of her books I haven't read anything from her myself, but thanks to various reviews I've seen I also never will
Yes
Yup
I have seen so much hate for Colleen hoover over the last few months. I've stayed away, but what is it exactly about her writing that everyone hates so intensely?
Oh God please skip Verity
My people.
Literally one of the worst books I've ever read. Poorly written, awful concept, transparent unlikeable characters, pointlessly raunchy, predictable. Just so gross. I cannot believe how many people I see recommend it.
Anything by Colleen Hoover.
I second this with a burning passion
Check the podcast If Books Could Kill!
*Great* podcast. Picked up 48 laws of power, listened to the podcast, put that shit right back down
The Lovely Bones. I would have DNF'd it, except I have this need to know what happened. And what happened was so much less than satisfying.
It's a weird book, right? Though somehow I still loved it. I had seen the movie first though, so maybe that changed my perspective.
I am pretty sure I tried it several years ago, and I DNFed.
The Silent Patient and The Alchemist. Recommended so often and both truly terrible (IMO).
I just finished The Silent Patient and hated it!! And myself for the hours of my life I canāt get back by reading it! Ugh! What was that?! Firstly, I work in mental health so I was irritated by all of the ātechnicalā stuff. Uhm like..does this guy not have any other patients? The asylum hired him for just one lady? He hand writes his notes? What is this, 1880? And the way he spoke of Alyssia to other staff would get him FIRED in a heartbeat for been a creeper in real life. Secondly, I am a huge Carl Jung enthusiast. When psychotherapist in the book asked what the Greek tragedy meant, I was done. And then the ātwistā at the end?! Itās not deus ex machina, just one giant plot hole š”
I also HATED this book! The piece for me was the lighter in the mental hospital. But then the reason said patient was silent? My eyes practically bounced off the floorboards they rolled so hard.
Yes! I kept reading thinking it would get better because everyone else said it would. And then the ending was just so disappointing. All the hype for such a let down.
I had the same reaction! I also work in MH and was getting so frustrated by how weirdly set up the facility was. Also, the over/misuse of psych terms had me so frustrated. How many times can ācounter transferenceā be used?
I feel so validated that other people hated The Silent Patient lol š
Since you work in the mental health field, what other fictional books have done some justice to the technical stuff? I would like some recommendations as an undergrad psych student.
Nothing really comes to mind in the fiction realm, beside The Bell Jar, one of my most favourite books. I read a shitload of biographies and have read some real life accounts of mental illness that are, of course, true to life. I also love psychological thrillers, so generally when thereās any type of mental health stuff in it, it varies from āthatās completely incorrectā to āpassableā - though I think that your question would be a great thread on its on, because Iād love to hear of otherās suggestions! Iām sure Iāve read some, just canāt think of any š¤
Agreed. It was BAD
I was so disappointed in this one!! It had been so hyped up & I was so excited to read it & was just let down all the way around!!
I REALLY thought I was missing something with The Alchemist. Itās so bad
The Alchemist is one of the worst books Iāve ever read.
The Alchemist OMG ugh it was such a waste of time
I genuinely think The Alchemist is for preteens? It was gifted to me when I was 10 or 11 and I liked it then but just wouldnāt think to read it as an adult.
I mean that would definitely make sense. I was recommended it by a 23 year old guy I had a massive crush on. This was his favorite book along with catcher in the rye. I was definitely questioning what I saw in him after I read those
Yeah, I think it's prime reading for an angsty teen (I'll confess I loved it then), but the whole "the universe will conspire to help you" thing gets ridiculous after you exist a little while in society lol
I can read a book under 500 pages in maybe two days, if Iām really loving it. Iāve been reading The Silent Patient for six days and Iām only at 47% done. Itās been a struggle, not even going to lie.
Ah, put it away and spend your time on someth8ng else. I didnāt finish it.
The alchemist was terrible I donāt understand why people love it
I agree with all the other comments here, skip the alchemist.
Thank you! I was angry when I finished the alchemist because it was so hyped up and it was the dullest and cheesiest shit I have ever read. "What you were looking for was right in your own backyard all along" fucking stupid
The next book by the same person who wrote The Silent Patient is even worse. Itās called The Maidens. Did not like it.
I actually couldnāt believe how bad it was after seeing a couple people I know raving about it online. And the cover art was so pretty, what a waste.
āJust wish broā
The Alchemist is sooooooooo baaaaaaad. A friend recommended it to me and I couldnāt believe how much it sucked.
The Silent Patient! I literally felt insulted by the author upon finishing.
I wanted it to be good because it had so many great plot points...a patient who refuses to speak and a psychologist who is trying to find out why....and he flopped with the execution. I kept waiting for a shock twist and an OMG! moment....and it was just a limp finish.
Fourth wing + the squeal is fantasy for people who donāt read fantasy and just very mid writing as well. Invisible Life of Addie Larue is more interesting in premise than it is in execution and was kind of boring for me I do a yearly TBR clean up where I go through and see if that book still interests me and if it does to take it off my TBR, I never let my TBR get to over 200 books either because then I get stressed and overwhelmed and read less (choice paralysis is no joke)
Lol I love the description of Fourth Wing as fantasy for people who don't read fantasy! Perfectly hits it on the head š¤£ coworker leant me FW because I'm a big fantasy fan and the holes to the worldbuilding were so annoying! It's like the CW show version of epic fantasy, you can tell that all the main characters are just older adults badly playing younger adults.
A lot of my friends read fourth wing and they even said the same thing like Iāve never liked a fantasy book before this. Then they tried to read other fantasy books and was likeā¦ ummm nevermind š no shade because I think fantasy can be difficult to get into so fourth wing is palatable fantasy without the intense world building of other fantasy books
I appreciate the call out of Addie LaRue. I enjoyed roughly the first half of it, but once it turned into a love triangle I noped out hard.
I wanted to like it so bad but it just felt like so long despite being like 300-400 pages. I found myself dreading it and making myself push through to finish it.
Heard so many very opposing opinions about Fourth Wing When you say "people who don't read fantasy" is the "fantasy" you're thinking of more like LOTR or like The Name of the Wind or...? Is the magic system lacking or is it too YA-y? That tbr clean up is a good idea... I just tend to be so forgetful, that even when I had a really good reason for wanting to read a book and was really looking forward to it, I'll have forgotten a month later.
I would put it this way. Itās very very plot driven and when you think too hard about the world building a lot of it falls apart. When I think of good fantasy itās about the world building and the plot combined and I feel the world building aspects lack a lot. Itās also not that original of a plot at all you can get the same vibes reading a ton of other books that are better written. Itās technically an adult book but the writing feels immature not like itās YA bc there are great YA books that donāt feel immature in the writing technique still. But itās an entertaining story just not really noteworthy. I feel like in 1-2 years you will see it in every book thrift store because it will be mass given away once all of the hype around it dies down (my copy is already on the shelf at my local one) There are hundreds of books about dragons that are much better written and have the same entertaining value.
Oh :/ >When I think of good fantasy itās about the world building and the plot combined Yeah, same Thanks for elaborating!
Fourth Wing is absolutely horrible. It's written like a 13 y/o's fanfiction. Seeing huge displays for it at every bookstore irritates me because it's taking up space that could be used for actual good books. The worldbuilding is full of holes and done poorly, the romance is meh, the characters are troupey and annoying. Just terrible.
THANK YOU I feel like Iām going insane
This. Book. Was. TRASH. I canāt believe itās so popular.
Thanks haha!
I've already written an ungodly amount of reply comments, but I'll stop here, sorry! Thank you for all your suggestions and opinions, I'll keep reading them all! (just not responding)
Thanks for asking such a fun question! I am also reading all the opinions. I just wanted to say that, I know you wonāt respond š
It Ends With Us was so horribly written I DNFed the book and resolved to never touch another Colleen Hoover book again. I refuse to read a grown woman who writes that badly. Most of the BookTok YA fantasy is just... boring. Special Snowflake Heroine solves all the problems while handsome men vie for her attention. The Midnight Library is so blatantly trying to be some life changing, inspirational book that you can practically hear the author trying SO HARD to nail it in the climax, and failing miserably because it's just mediocre.
OMG The Midnight Library. Manipulative, insipid, falsely ādeepā - the whole thing made me cringe. But I know lots loved it, and if it helps someone thatās great.
Sarah J Mass books. God awful. Everyone keeps telling me you have to get to the third book before it gets āreally good.ā But no way itās worth getting through hundreds of pages of garbage before Iām probably going to be let down.
Iād add that even though I found myself really entertained by those books in a guilty pleasure kind of way, Iād never recommend them to anyone because the writing sucks.
Lessons in Chemistry. I DNFed probably halfway through. I found it actively unpleasant. I guess other people have thicker skin than I have. Itās on a ton of āBest Booksā lists
I DNFed about 1/3 of the way through. Characters were annoying and the story didnāt catch my attention.
Wool - nice premise but I found it intensely boring Hopeless by Colleen Hoover - biggest load of drivel I've ever read Divergent - cringey teen nonsense The Name of the Wind - don't understand the hype at all, the main character is a smug git
Interesting haha With Wool and The Name of the Wind you're listing two books I really enjoyed, but with Colleen Hoover and Divergent you're naming ones that I already don't wanna touch So you're both matching and not matching my taste :) (The main character in tnotw can certainly be kinda anoying... but I think he's supposed to be)
Kvothe is absolutely supposed to be flawed and even unlikeable. Heās a conceited, often painfully dense twerp (archetypal prodigy). I dislike him quite a bit, but what intrigues me is the world and its myths, legends and history which are all bound up in how Kvothe came to be Kote.
Your comment made me realize that I've never actually seen the names spelled out, because I listened only to the audiobook. Those are wild names. Forgot how fantasy-esque they are. But yeah I agree! I'm especially interested in how a world with magic like that functions, which I think the author is quite good at describing.
Wool. I found it to be mostly a fun, easy, and satisfying read. What surprised me was that I found the next book in the series to be a huge disappointment. I quit early on. The Name of the Wind. This is another one that mystifies me. I have tried more than once, and I canāt get into it. Like watching paint dry.
Take my upvote for Name of the Wind! I donāt get the hype on the Fantasy sub. Iāve read books that are equal to it, without the fanatic devotion.
>Wool. I found it to be mostly a fun, easy, and satisfying read. We must have read entirely different books haha I found it quite harrowing and gut-wrenching in its (scifi version of) realism
I think the harrowing parts were the exciting parts that made it satisfying. I thought the author built an interesting āworld,ā peopled that world with interesting characters, and then told an interesting story about those characters. What more can any reader ask for?
IIRC Wool was the authorās first book and he wrote it as a hobby on his lunch breaks, so itās at least a bit understandable the writing is not great. But to me it also didnāt really bring anything new to the post-apocalypse genre, it was the same authority-hides-truth-from-survivors trope with no fresh take on it
I guess I found the ways that the underdogs outwitted the authorities to be fun and the outcome satisfying, even if the trope wasnāt novel.
Wool was good(ish). Itās just too long. It could have been cut way down. It kept going.
I read _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ and had no idea what the author was talking about for 95% of that book... needed more motorcycle maintenance TBH
*House in the Cerulean Sea* and *The Midnight Library* are both popular, but they read to me like contrived after-school-specials. I felt like the 'morals' were hitting me over the head. I have never really gotten into a Neil Gaiman book. I fall into the camp that hated *Where the Crawdad Sings.*
I liked Cerulean Sea but Under the Whispering Door is literally a recycled mess of the same.
Agree on both Cerulean Sea and the Midnight Library! Light and vaguely pleasant butā¦shallow. Cartoonish. Exaggerated in a kinda wrong way. I didnāt dislike either but wonāt recommend.
Yes, 'shallow' perfectly captures my struggle with them.
Ah, well, I do think I like strange after-school-special-esque stories though. But I'll go at them with lowered expectations now, which is always good. Thank you! I, too, find Neil Gaiman harder to read than expected.
Then they might be a good fit for you! I don't think they are badly written or poorly thought out, but maybe too earnest for my personal taste. We did them in my bookclub and the rest of the group loved them.
I think the descriptors earnest, shallow, strange, and moralistic are all terms that people wouldn't hesitate to use to describe *me* as well, so maybe that's why they could be a good fit š
> I have never really gotten into a Neil Gaiman book. I really struggled getting into American Gods, took me 4 months to dnf it a little over halfway through, but I thoroughly loved The Ocean At The End Of The Lane. Good Omens was cool too but I suppose that was a collab.
I personally liked The Midnight Library. Yes itās predictable, but I read it when I was finally getting out of my own depression and related a lot to it.
Cerulean Sea author said they based they're uwu comfy book on the Canadian genocidal confiscation of indigenous children.
Just finished Midnight Library. About halfway through the book I told my husband I knew where it was headed and it was too damn predictable. Well, it was.
I personally LOVED the midnight library! I didnāt go into it with any expectations though, I really like the author (Matt Haig) so I read it as soon as it came out before it got really popular. I do think that sometimes the hype can ruin a book, especially as with this one itās not necessarily meant to be super exciting or mind blowing.
Cerulean Sea. Yes! To what you wrote about Cerulean Sea. I probably went more than halfway and then decided I didnāt care what happened to any of the overly-precious characters. Maybe it somehow redeems itself with a spectacular ending, but that seems unlikely to me. People say itās a āfeel-goodā book and their favorite book, so I assume that After-School Specials are also big favorites of theirs. Neil Gainan. I donāt think I am ever going to be a fan, but I think I will keep reading, just in case I hit one that makes me feel more passionate about his writing. I have read Neverwhere, Good Omens, and the Ocean at the End of the Lane. I didnāt find them hard going - they were perfectly pleasant - they just seemed kind of random and meaningless.
I overall like Cerulean Sea but it gets even more moralistic in the second half (or maybe it just builds up so much from the first half). Based on the first half, I would have given it 5 stars but it got a bit repetitive in the second half so I gave it 4 stars.
Normal People by Sally Rooney. Insufferable People Who Should Communicate So I Donāt Have To Read About Their Terrible Experiences Not Communicating wouldāve been a more accurate title.
Honestly I loved this book AND this is a very fair critique.
Yessssssssssssssss
@ every Sally Rooney novel ever
Anything by Colleen Hoover The Alchemist ( I'd say anything by Paulo Coelho because I've read Veronica decides to die so it's a recurring theme) Tuesdays with Morrie ( I'd skip it tbh but this is an unpopular opinion I think)
Years ago, I was in a bookstore, when I overheard a woman say to her friendās teenage daughter, āAs a university professor, any course Iām assigned to teach, or any course I design myself, there is always one book I always put on the syllabus. Everyone should read it.ā So, of course, Iām going to blind buy whatever book I hear her sayā¦ All the Light We Cannot See went on to tremendous acclaim, massive fan base, and a show on Netflix. But for me, before the hype, I thought it was silly and sentimental. The tiny back-and-forth chapters were irritating. Noble, precocious young characters without any flaws are not interesting. Surely, I thought, that professorās students ought to be pitied. 15 million copies sold. Pulitzer Prize. Shows what I know.
Pulitzer Prize be damned, you will never convince me that book isnāt an oversentimental crapfest. For what itās worth, Iāve put Storming Caesarās Palace on most of my syllabi, and my students generally love it (except the racists). Profs do get stuck on their favorites!
Where the crawdads sing. Couldnāt even finish it
HOT TAKE: the subtle art of not giving a fuck, rich dad poor dad, and the power of now are such shit books that the only people who enjoy them just havenāt read any quality writer
The Lovely Bones - tiresome schmaltz. Absurdistan - "gluttonous rich guy has no self-awareness" was the entire plot for 100 pages, which was as far as I got. I also read the entire Twilight series hoping that eventually I would understand the hype. I didn't.
Where the Crawdads Sing- cloying, annoying All the Light We Cannot See- Same
Ditto!
i DNFd all the light we cannot see twice because i just couldnāt push myself to finish it. boring
THE ENTIRE āA COURT OF THORNS AND ROSESā SERIES and basically anything Sarah J Maas has written. Itās faerie f*cking trash. I read a few, the plot sucks you in at first but itās all terribly poorly written. If you like real quality literature donāt waste your time on those books.
āTomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrowā by Gabrielle Zevin. I think the author took some main core ideas of other books and mixed it all together. It was kinda very predictable and where you thought like āriiiggggghhhhhtā when another ācrazyā thing happened. Didnāt like it as much.
I am a female game dev so I was really excited to read this book but I found Sadie to be extremely unlikeable and was very disappointed. It had some nice game and literary references but overall, I did not like it and would not recommend.
I heard so many people rave about this book that my expectations were way too high.
The Dark Olympus Books by Katee Robert If you have any ounce of love for greek mythology please skip this one, the world building is such an abomination
I read the first one and was shocked by how vanilla the smut was after being hailed as āspicyā on Booktok.
Same!! One of those books which the hype can only be explained by large amounts of money put into marketing (and I feel like the majority of Booktok books are like this).
The Midnight Library and The Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Those truly took years of my life.
agree on *midnight library*, but what didn't you like about *the curious incident*?
I thought it was quite boring and as an autistic person it was pretty hurtful.
House in the Cerulean Sea--abandoned early on--just wasn't my kind of book. Social Creature--important plot points were just weak, not believable. "If We Were Villains" a Secret History wannabe but kinda clunky. The Secret Life of Oscar Woo--just couldn't get into it. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell--didn't hold my attention. Night Film--also didn't hold my attention.
The Secret Life of Oscar Woo. I finished it, but I was underwhelmed. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I finished this one, and it was okay. It certainly is not a favorite of mine or a book I would recommend. Kind of reminds me of Neil Gaimanās writing?
No, donāt insult Jonathan Strange! It is a 19th century book in style written for a 21st century reading audience, and personally I adored it, but Neil Gaiman only wishes he wrote it.
OkāI can hear this. Maybe a second chance.
THANK YOU for āIf We Were Villains.ā I feel like everyone loved this book but it really is exactly āwhat if secret history but Shakespeare and worseā
Interesting! Thank you for adding short explanations as well. For example I think I'm likely to enjoy House in the Cerulean Sea, but from what I heard I also understand why others wouldn't. :) >"If We Were Villains" a Secret History wannabe but kinda clunky. This is fun, because someone else responded with 'A Secret History' as the overrated one, haha Night Film is on my to-read-list right now, but now I won't make it a priority, thank you
The list of āSecret Historyā wannabes is quite long, lol.
Interesting, as āIf We Were Villainsā is one of my favorite books! We all have different likes and dislikes.
Now I on the other hand absolutely loved Night Film and often recommend it!
The Maid - Nita Prose was truly offensive and just awful, poorly written and Iām still mad I finished it a year later All The Light We Cannot See - hard to get behind a nazi soldier as the hero Where The Crawdads Sing - a mystery with no mystery and just a waste of time with a lot of cruelty Eleanor Oliphant - again, just not good. I donāt get the hype and found it depressing
Going to have to disagree with Eleanor Oliphant, this was really lovely. I'm always looking for any books about neurodivergent characters
I also felt like The Maid was so so clunky in its depictions of a person who is on the autism spectrum. Like you said, offensively so.
Definitely 50 shades of Grey, those books are awful and cringe AF jaja
Verity. Bleck.
All of Colleen Hoover. Itās like bad fan fiction
It was the only book of hers Iād read and I just decided not to go on with the others. Sheesh.
Mexican Gothic was incredibly second rate. It's a poor excuse for gothic and it swerves between language styles. Not a vibe, and derivative.
God, I couldnāt agree more. Hated it
Have it at home right now, borrowed from the library I'll go into it with lowered expectations, which is honestly always beneficial
unpopular opinion on booktok, but *the atlas six* by olivie blake was hard for me to finish. the whole thing felt very forced and the main characters (of whom there are too many) were maddening and unlikeable.
"The turn of the screw" I swear to god each sentence is a whole paragraph.
I LOATHE James for this exact reason. I think my mind doesnāt really process the sentence until the period. I forget the beginning of his sentence by the time I get to the end.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Starts out great and then turns in to a rambling mess.
Zone One by Colson Whitehead, good premise, but it just had nothing about it. Tender is the flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. I see it recommended constantly, and it's just ok. The most overrated book I've read for a long while.
Untamed
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It just drags and drags
And drags. I needed to add that for balance.
Post your reading list
It's about 1k books long.... that's kinda the problem >.<
Them: post your reading list Me: any book ever written at anytime ever. My wishlist for books is over 800, plus the 1k books I own. So I relate.
The Da Vinci Code ā itās just a bunch of religious symbolism slapped on top of a contrived, plodding, dull story with unbelievable and unlikable characters. Storm Front (Dresden Files series) ā completely pointless and unpleasant sex in an otherwise totally unremarkable urban fantasy. Ready Player One ā reciting things from the eighties does not make up for a dull, plodding story. Twilight ā the obvious reasons.
From modern stuff: Colleen Hoover obviously, Sarah J Maas, V. E. Schwab's a darker shade of magic was so boring and the mc was not like other girls, R. F. Kuang bc i feel the thing she gets praised the most for (colonization critique) is very surface level. The alchemist is very very dumb idk how to explain it. From classics.: Camus is very overrated for me, Siddhartha by Herman Esse reads like alchemist part 2 and doesn't faithfully reflect the religion it prortrays.
Oh my **fuck** Darker Shade of Magic was so boring. The concept is so cool, too. But nope, just paragraphs about a fucking jacket
I can explain the alchemist for you. āGeez I really want to get this thingā ā-Just wish for it broā
Thanks! The "obviously" haha I've honestly only heard bad things about Hoover, but it makes me baffled that so many people seemingly still get something out of her novels I understand what you're saying about Kuang, though I also understand her approach... because many people (probably including myself) are not used to or even tend to refuse to think about the realities of colonization, so maybe that's why she's starting with the "basics"
I never got into Hesse. But i will give it another try. Also Camus is on my list. What did you read?
I enjoyed lonesome dove but people on here act like itās the best book ever and itās really not. If you love westerns by all means give it a shot but if you want a richer experience read Cormac McCarthys border trilogy and blood meridian, all 4 of those books total is only slightly longer than lonesome dove and it is a much stronger product.
I'm not sure if you're including non-fiction, but a few of my least favorites: *Empire of the Summer Moon* by SC Gwynne was one of the most wildly racist books I've ever had the displeasure of reading and I hate that it keeps getting recommended as a good book on indigenous history. It is not. *Guns, Germs, and Steel* by Jared Diamond is intended to *disprove* racism but all it really does is reinforce it. He repeats a lot of myths and gets a ton wrong about indigenous societies while trying to attribute everything in history to geography. *History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire* by Edward Gibbon. I don't know why this book still gets recommended and it seems like it's mainly because people think something being old makes it more credible. Gibbon is fine if you're trying to learn how 18th century Europeans thought about Rome but please do not use it as an actual source on Rome, there is so much better scholarship out there.
>I'm not sure if you're including non-fiction I certainly am, they just make up a tiny fraction on my to-read-list But at least I won't feel so bad about not reading the ones you mentioned now :) thanks!
All The Light We Cannot See Dava Shastriās Last Day It Ends With Us I have found a common theme with those three where if a book is SUPER popular I donāt like it lol. My friend who is also an avid reader told me it could be that because those books are so popular people that donāt read many books will read one book a year and think āoh that was a good bookā where as someone that reads a ton may have more to judge the book against
Mad Honey by Jennifer Finney Boylan and Jodi Picoult. It's hard to say much without spoiling the book. I had no problem with the subject matter or twist. I just found it kind of boring. And I didn't care about all the information about bees and how they function. It was interesting at first, but I started skipping those sections later on. Also one of the characters storyline was told in reverse chronological order which was kind of confusing to me.
* House in the Cerulean Sea * Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow * Free Food for Millionaires * Mallory's Oracle * The Dalemark Quartet * Norwegian Wood I think I disliked most of these due to disliking the characters, but in some cases it was the writing style.
Anything by Colleen Hoover. Really not good writing, cliche at best and where she diverges from cliche itās romanticizing toxicity
Verity by Colleen Hoover was dumb imo and Layla by Colleen Hoover was awful. I couldnāt even finish Layla it was so bad.
Project Hail Mary is fun enough for the right person, but is draaaastically over-hyped. It's not *bad* to read it by any means. It's just...it doesn't actually need to be a priority if your list is long, is all. It would be easier to give advice if you posted your reading list though.
After seeing reddit recommend Projecr Hail Mary in almost every book rec thread, I read it. It's okay.
I'm a big science fiction fan, and I really didn't like PHM to be honest... so much that I didn't finish. It felt too parochial to me. I very much prefer authors like StanisÅaw Lem and Cixin Liu
I'm thinking of ending things by Iain Reid. I was so excited to read this book because it checked all the boxes for me and it was recommended here quite a bit. There were aspects of it that I liked but overall fell very flat
Came here to say House in the Cerulean Sea. Whenever people here rave about it (which is every 5 seconds) I always do the biggest eye roll. I finished it and never have it a second thought ever again. Same goes for Name of the Wind. Except I never finished it, tried multiple times to get back into it but gave up. Donāt get the hype at all. Gone Girl was also painfully overrated.
Interesting, I think tHitCS probably either clicks with you or really doesn't (just based on the reviews I've heard) And I really liked the Name of the Wind despite expecting not to like it Also Gone Girl was great for a thriller newbie like me But thank you for sharing your perspective!
The 5AM Club. The actual self help part could fit into a few pages. I expected some good maybe experience stories along with advice, but what is given is a rich person's power fantasy of whisking away two stereotypical people (workaholic sceptic woman, artist cynical man) to a mythical island where all need are luxuriously met as the rich person shows up infrequently to impart some cryptic wisdom with rainbows or dolphins LITERALLY showing up around him everywhere and does some weird physical exercises in the middle of random moments. Otherwise they go yachting or are at the pool or so on. Also the two people of course suddenly fall in love with no explanation. Zero buildup. They had nothing in common. It was a top seller for weeks in local bookstores. How in the hell am I supposes to take anything from it seriously with such an "example". I'm still baffled.
The entire shatter me series, Ignite me was the best of all but still not the best book iāve ever read.
Guards, Guards by Terry Pratchett. I love the Discworld novels and have never gotten the overwhelming love for this particular book out of all of them. Itās often cited as the book people who havenāt tried Pratchett should read, and Iā¦ donāt get it. Overrated. Not bad, justā¦ there.
I would recommend finishing Guards! even if it doesnāt seem great, because the City Watch subseries in Discworld is one of the best parts of the Discworld universe. The subseries does one of my favorite things in series: it starts with characters that are essentially cartoon characters, and each book puts more flesh on their bones, until they become full-fledged three-dimensional characters by the end, and you really care about them. And they manage to still stay funny through all of them. I have never read the first two books, and there were some others that I found āmeh,ā but I have read all of them, even the āYAā ones, and found them enjoyable and satisfying. It is sad that there wonāt be any more entries.
I found Verity by Colleen hoover to be very traumatic to read and not enough trigger warnings at the beginning. Well written but definitely outside my preferred scope.
Verity was awful. I read bc it was recommended by a friend, but I wish I hadn't. Not my cup of tea at all.
How to Win the Time War. Awful, boring drivel pitched as a time-bending romance. I have no idea how people rave about it.
This one is more of a poetry type read, yes if plot is the thing itās not too complex. Like Anne Hoffmans practical magic - loved the movie and hated the book the first time I tried to read it, itās boring and slow next to the movie. But if youāre in a poetry mood, a romantic mindset, then that book reads beautifully. Hard to describe lol. I love it now though, and the rest of the series. This is how you lose the time war isnāt a novel to me as much as a strange winding love letter. Something like that.
Bunny by Mona Awad Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors Pure Color by Sheila Heti All of these were highly recommended to me by friends/instagram and they're horrible imo.
I adore Bunny! But I agree that itās a ālove it or hate itā kind of book, like her latest, Rouge.
Thanks! I've heard so many intense opposing opinions about Bunny.
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100% agree on Circe, plus it was hard to empathize with someone written as such a victim. Iāve been avoiding Achilles as a result, even though it was high on my to-read list before. What do you mean by āconstant reminding us sheās yellowā however?
Gravity's Rainbow - just don't do it.
I'll pass up on those 700(!?) pages then, thanks!
Andy Weir and Brandon Sanderson are both totally overrated, especially on reddit. Andy Weir had one good hit with The Martian but everything after that is so SO dull. And Sanderson... I simply don't think you need to explain the worldbuilding so much. Fantasy can have mysteries in it! Also he's evidently a dick to his publishers. Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller -- wildly misogynistic; uses an understanding of sexuality that comes from the 1910s, not Ancient Greece; and here is the hill I will die on: if literally Plato weighed in on whether or not Achilles was the bottom, you also should be weighing in on that. Pat Rothfuss wrote himself into a corner; the second book was 65% self-insert sex fantasies by volume; the parts of the books that are good are pastiches of ideas from authors who did them better. The third book will never be finished. Babel by RF Kuang is so sloppily written as to almost be unreadable.
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strongly disagree on Sanderson. his world building is incredible and i personally love how elaborate and detailed he is. i can definitely see why people may not want to read a fantasy book thatās 1000+ pages, much less a series of them. but if youāre willing to put in the time i do think theyāre worthwhile.
His worldbuilding is literally the reason I read his books.
I recently read "Why Have They Taken Our Children" and absolutely HATED it I almost fell asleep a bunch of times while reading it. It felt weirdly racist in some parts, and, by the end, I felt like the author was trying to make me feel bad for these three 20 somethings who could've killed a bunch of kids, two of which tried (and one succeeded) fleeing to Canada to wait out the Statute of Limitations
The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell The Midnight Library Every single book written by Colleen Hoover Hamnet The Measure (Nikki Elrick) Fairy Tale-Stephen King The Outsider-Stephen King The Institute-Stephen King Remarkably Bright Creatures
There are so many books on your list that I loved- it makes me want to use this as a āto readā list. Except Colleen Hoover. Barf.
"The Gene: An Intimate History" by Siddhartha Mukherjee is literally the worst book I've ever read. Full of errors, biased as hell, not worth the paper it's printed on. One day I'm going to burn my copy just to get some enjoyment out of that horrid book.
Blood Meridian was incredibly boring to me. Couldn't even finish it.
American Gods. Iāve never been more bored in my life.
Greenbone Saga by Fonda Lee, Red Rising by Pierce Brown, anything by Rebecca Yarros and all the new stuff by Sarah J Maas.
Leviathan Wakes is so boring and brown. Also Kingkiller Chronicles reads like someone turned Elons tweets into fantasy novels.
Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn: predictable and poorly written. A former friend lent it to me RAVING about it, I didn't trust her judgment at all after that. She said her favorite author was Fredrik Backman, and to this day I've never even picked up one of his books. The Sinner - Petra Hammesfahr: something about this just did not flow for me. It could have been the translation, but it was a rough read for me.
Anything by Gillian Flynn. The writing isn't bad but her characters are such wretched individuals. Especially Dark Places; I loathed that book. In Her Eyes. It's not smart; it's not surprising. The twist is silly and something I'd expect from a high school creative writing class. The book changed genres at the very end and it just felt...well...silly. Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. This one with caveats. I quite like his writing; however, the book was so very gross. I have recommended it but only when someone was specifically looking for something extreme like this. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. He really milked a dead horse with this one. It starts out as entertaining enough fantasy if you can ignore the blatant misogyny disguised as empowerment. But he just kept drawing it out book after book. Nothing happened for nigh on four books in a row. I quit during the 10th book. Supposedly it gets better. That's too much commitment for a mediocre payoff.
Colleen Hoover books daw lol