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Worst books of the year
You always see a lot of threads around the best books of the year or of their favourite ever books, but how about the opposite - let’s have a thread of books you hated. There are so many books in the world to read, it can be handy to know which ones to avoid!
I’ll start in the comments! I’m not sure how to do spoiler tags (if that’s possible here?) so I suggest putting the title of the book in the first line so anyone who hasn’t read it can minimise the comment without seeing spoilers :)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam.
From the beginning I didn’t gel with the writing style; I enjoy very descriptive, flowery writing as a rule but this was just… bad. From very hard to follow and frankly baffling similes to too-detailed descriptions of teenagers bodies. The premise was interesting and the praise from other authors on the cover (one comparing this book to Shirley Jackson’s work, which is an outrageous comparison) persuaded me to see it through.
The flat characters and meandering, tension-less scenes culminated in… nothing. No answers. No real conclusion. This can be done well to leave you imagining your own ending but here it was ineffective.
This read like someone desperately hoping their book would be turned into a movie (and apparently it has already been picked up by Netflix, so I guess in that sense it’s a very successful book), but the characters were flat, the hint of an exploration into race and class never surfaced, and the mystery was unexciting.
I would not recommend this book.
I literally despised this book.
Wasn’t it awful?! I think I’m more annoyed because it had so much potential that I kept going with it even though I would normally DNF a book that I disliked so much. I will not be watching the Netflix adaptation.
So, I had to. I was running a "Based on the book..." club- books that have been made into movie/tv adaptations, and that was our book. On top of the blandness, the fact that there never is a resolution, you never find out what's happening, so it seems like you put in that effort for... nothing. I'm sure it was meant to be thought provoking, but the thoughts it provoked in me can't be repeated here... lol
Yes exactly, you were just waiting to find it all out and then… the end. (What were the animals about?!) I feel it was trying to make some very clever observations about race but it all seemed surface level and clumsy and ended up saying nothing at all
Well, now I'm remembering how annoyed it made me! Like, how do you write all that, and never connect anything, never explain anything, and just walk away and call it a good day!
The Punch Escrow by Tal M Klein
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with this one, I saw it suggested everywhere on Good Reads and Reddit as a great debut sci-fi novel and I hated it. I hate read it because I was far enough into it that I figured it'd be a greater waste of my time to not finish it. I actually feel like it was the publisher social media astroturfing great reviews to artificially inflate positive word of mouth but I can't prove it obviously.
I found some of the hard sci-fi elements regarding teleportation, AI, and pollution eating mosquitos interesting and the world building was cool but the main character is such a smarmy, quippy, Marvel-esque douchebag. Super unlikeable, and he doesn't feel like a real normal human thrust into a situation where he's out of his depth, he quips so much during moments of extreme danger that you'd think he was Tony Stark, Indiana Jones or James Bond.
The scene where he sings Karma Chameleon makes my stomach turn even thinking about it because of course he's a quirky protagonist for liking 80's Pop and New Wave in the 2200's.
Its just too try-hardy with all of its pop culture references, it's like it's trying to capture the Disney-Marvel crowd and it just cheapens the setting of what could've otherwise been a cool story.
The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham.
To be fair I didn't hate it, I just really didn't enjoy it, especially compared to his previous work.
He started the story with a history of the area and the families of the main characters, which should have contributed towards the drama and emotion they were going through, but it didn't. In the end when the two main characters were having their final conversation it just felt very formulaic.
It could've made a decent short story, however it was just too long for the story he told. About halfway through I found myself saying 'I know what's going to happen, Just get to the point'.
My picks this year have been really good actually, I haven't read anything yet this year that I was really disappointed by, amazingly.
The last two books I was underwhelmed by (sometime last year) were these:
Uncharted by Alli Temple - I was completely sold on the idea of reading f/f pirate romance, but really underwhelmed by the execution. The very oppressive setting felt a bit shallow, and there was just too many little oddities that irritated me.
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint - a retelling of greek myth, featuring Cretan Princess Ariadne, and the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. I was very into the beginning of it (the fact that I bought and started it while in actual Crete helped), but thought the pacing and characterization fell apart pretty quickly. It didn't really do anything interesting with the myth it retold, and despite the text lamenting the roles and burdens of women in the original mythology, neither did it really manage to flesh out and give agency to the women it focused on.
I definitely didn't hate these books either though. They're the "worst" simply by merit of me reading stuff that I liked a lot more.
I love when you get into a good reading streak like that and all the books have been brilliant. Long may it continue!
Circe by Madeline Miller. Admittedly I didn’t read very far, but it was because I really couldn’t. Maybe this would have been more of a hit with me if I were still a preteen/teenage girl, but at this point in my life I despise the sort of prose used and the way she spun the characters.
I’ve always been a sucker for Greek myth and I’m stoked about this whole feminist retelling trend but I made a mistake starting on this one. It really soured it for me and makes me afraid that everything else I pick up is going to be a very “woe is me, I’m so different and nobody likes me but me being different makes me powerful” story that I feel ought to be aimed at 12-year-olds and not grown women.
Ooh ouch, I really liked this book! I enjoy that kind of writing and know nothing about Greek myths, so maybe that helped. Different strokes for different folks I guess!
Ahaha no intent to offend of course. Not having a couple decades of Greek myth stewing for yourself would help a ton.
Props on your username, by the way! Always here for some Good Omens. Pratchett and Gaiman are two of my top authors of all time.
No offence taken! Life would be incredibly boring if we all liked the same things, wouldn’t it?!
On that one we agree :)
All-World Online - or actually the audiobook. I really liked the story, but every chapter had 1-3 minutes of ads for the author's other books. Listening to it, you kept getting pulled out of the story. I won't listen to any more books from that author on principal.
Wow I’ve never heard ads in an audiobook before! What platform was that on?
Audible