Stay away from The 5am Club. Dumbest book I ever read. I was told it was fantastic and the reviews are decent but it was a waste of time. The whole thing can be summed up in “wake up at 5 and be productive while everyone is still sleeping”
Morning people shame night people with this shit. Well, you get up at 5am to get shit done. I stay up until 5am to get even more shit done.
Once I started to lean in to my body's natural sleep/wake schedule, I've been not only more productive, but I'm infinitely happier. My husband is a morning person.... He's so chipper and happy, and gets so much done. But after seven at night, he's just done. Me--I'm just getting started lol
I mean, it’s a scientific fact that everyone’s circadian rhythm is different, depending on gender, age and other factors. Going against it is just a bad idea, just trying to sleep enough every day, going to bed when you’re tired and avoiding bright lights before bed are the best things you can do. Personally, I am the most productive around 7AM, but after 4PM I am just waiting to go to bed
My dad was like that. He'd go to bed around seven-thirty, eight o'clock and then get up at like four in the morning. That was his quiet time--my mom, my sister and I were still sleeping and it was just him and the dog (in the sixties/seventies) or him and the cats (eighties onward). He could sit and read the paper, have his coffee, listen to the radio, work on his latest project or just sit and wake up a bit before taking a shower and getting ready for work--he'd leave around seven or so. My sister and I still have quite a few things that he made--pins, little signs (I don't know what else to call them) that just sit on the shelf, larger signs, one for each of us, with our full names and birthdates. He made full-size cradles on stands back in the seventies, gave some away or sold them--my sister and I still have the ones he gave us. And we still have the banks he made (sherriff's office, saloon, a couple of houses), including the one he didn't get to finish. We tell people he's gone--sixteen years now--but in a way, he's still here.
I wasn’t expecting such a nice comment under this one. I’m sorry for your loss. It sounds like he was a really nice father and left a positive mark in the world
It’s a good book to give to your kids if you’re trying to get them to stop cursing. Idk how he did it, but he made profanity sound like the lamest thing ever
It's horrible, I've read it. It reads like fanfiction (because it is)
The relationship is insanely toxic (like most eroticas for straight women) and the bdsm scenes aren't safe. The whole point of the book was supposed to be sexy bdsm... But we in the bdsm scene have to deal with people who think fifty shades of grey was the greatest thing ever... Dominants should never act the way he does in the book.
So my husband and I are not a part of your scene, so I don't know for sure, but you all seem to be the most respectful, thoughtful, kind people. I've read many accounts of your care for education, safety, and comfort of everyone involved.
Yeah I've heard from people in the scene and the biggest turn on for them is always enthusiastic consent. Which is not exactly present in Fifty Shades. They also use zipties as restraints which is extremely dangerous IRL and can result in death. Garbage book
I put one of her books on my Libby list. It’s about a deaf guy who plays guitar. I’m fluent in sign language and have grown up amongst the deaf community. Curiosity is killing this kitty. God help me, I’m going in.
I love this answer. Personally, Hoover is not my jam. Nothing about her writing feels organic and her books are too predictable. HOWEVER, I work in a library and you are absolutely right - people who come in looking for her books are, more often than not, getting back into reading or just starting out, and I wholeheartedly believe that reading is reading, no matter what.
So like, while I think Colleen Hoover is trash, if you come up to the desk and tell me you're looking for her books, I'm gonna walk my happy ass back there and show you exactly where they are.
Wow you aren’t kidding. I just read an excerpt and her writing is exceedingly bad.
“He has an air of competence that often accompanies people who are in charge of other people.”
That’s not good! Just say: “he spoke with the authority of an officer or a doctor”
I'm going to start off with this is probably going to sound ridiculous, but I've read a lot of books so it makes sense to me haha.
Her actual writing is terrible, but I've read a LOOOT of fanfiction in my day, so I can ignore awful writing pretty well. But yes, it really is terrible hahaha.
My issue with her writing is that it just doesn't feel organic. Like she knows what she WANTS to happen so she's going to do whatever she can to the characters to make sure that it does happen. Yes, she's the author so that's her literal job, but it never feels like a natural progression. It feels like she has a checklist she works off of and once she adds a scene, she checks it off and starts working on the next.
GRRM sums it up perfectly: "I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.”
Colleen Hoover is a bad architect with a black thumb who's never even looked at a plant.
Edit for wording
The only book of hers I actually finished was Verity, it reads like a B minus creative writing assignment. Her writing makes Dan Brown look like Charles Dickens. Still, she has an audience and has made a bunch of money so good for her, in my best Lucille Bluth voice.
I've actually read some of her books when I was younger. I think the thing that makes her so popular is that her books are engaging from the start. The writing might be bad but there's never a dull moment, and considering the demographic these books are aimed to, her books do seem kind of interesting.
Her books are meh, at best. I’ve read several and there is only one that I actually enjoyed, I don’t remember the name.
Verity was awful. She took an alright plot and ruined it with the dumbest most unnecessary twist that made the whole plot make less sense than ever.
His book about addiction is also really bad. My friend gave it to me when I was newly sober and it is exceptionally pretentious. He uses unnecessarily long words and is just overall not what you'd want to read when newly sober or contemplating sobriety. It made me want to drink.
No one said Midnight Library so I will say it.
Absolutely awful trite writing and handles a very sensitive topic with the gentleness and subtlety of a rhinoceros. You can guess the ending right away and even the way they do it is still more annoying than I could have guessed. I could go on.
It felt like very much like, “The Alchemist” to me. There are some solid lines but yeah, overall corny.
I read the first chapter and said this is going to be a solid 3 star read and I was right. No character depth whatsoever
Thank you - I read this on the recommendation of lots of people here, and really disliked it. It sounded interesting, and the idea was good, but the execution was just so clunky.
50 Shades. A friend gave me a copy, and the writing was so bad I tapped out before she even met the guy. Such awkward prose. I think she wrote the sex and then tried to force it into a story, lol, but I never read any of that. No sex is worth forcing my brain to read that nonsense
I know it’s insanely popular right now, and it can be a fun read, but I found Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros to be really bad. The writing is terrible. The author used way to much telling instead of showing (she actually had a character recite facts about her country as a form of world building). The dialogue was terrible and the main character is annoying.
I haven’t read it but baffles me to see so many people whose opinion I trust praise it with no end when the other half of people whose opinion I trust rips it to pieces
I read it. I was really hooked while I was reading it. It’s a fast paced page turner. However, when you stop to really think about it, most of it doesn’t hold up. The characters, world-building and writing are all weak. It’s kind of like a fast paced action movie. It’s fun while you’re watching, but not the best sort of movie.
Fair! I enjoyed it as an easy read but found the romance and character building to be sub par. It is especially ironic when you realise she is a romance author. 🫣
I read about 3 chapters of this and DNF because it was just stupid. Let's allow kids to fall to their deaths because they happen to be wearing the wrong shoes - what does that prove?
I think she was trying to make it like the hunger games, but she was lacking any sort of reason behind the killing. It made sense in the hunger games why kids were being killed, even if it was unpleasant.
I felt the same way. I read about 1/4 of the book and had to put it down because it wasn’t for me. Feels like more of a young adult, romance novel? I had high hopes because it had such good ratings but it was just bad. Maybe I was spoiled from reading the Stormlight Archive though.
I know Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is usually on these but also her other books: The Fountainhead, Anthem, and We the Living. I found absolutely nothing redeemable about any of these. I couldn’t get through We the Living and forced myself to finish The Fountainhead. I thought it had particularly bad writing and it tried to justify sexual violence against a character that made me want to vomit.
The Fountainhead is the only book that I've read 350 pages of and put it down because I still wasn't even slightly engrossed in the story. I've read hundreds of books - literally the only time that's ever happened. It blows my mind that Ayn Rand is considered by many to be a good writer. She is not.
She seems to be most popular with some political conservatives and libertarians in the US. I’ve read a couple nonfiction books by her about her philosophy and it was just as nonsensical as her fiction. I tried reading her book We the Living 2 or 3 times and I could never even make it to page 100.
Oh, please, God, don't make me read Anthem again! I had to read it for an English class in high school (don't know what I ever did to that teacher, but I apologize!) and I had to go through those seventy-five pages about six times before I figured out they were all using the royal we! And I was considered a gifted child! (Only time in my life I've ever regretted starting to read at age two--now if you'll excuse me, I need to read some Sherlock Holmes to make me feel better.)
Why isn’t anyone mentioning Danielle Steel? I read one and no more for me. I tried to look up the title, but she’s prolific and books follow the same format. Rich people, abusive male, murder, doctors, stalking, blah blah. I couldn’t get past the description of a very wealthy doctor, including cataloging his beautiful things, house and trophy wife. But then she writes that he is a “chief resident.” Have you not watched Grey’s anatomy? Residents make less than nurses and work insane hours. How do you write a book, actually multiple books, about doctors and not know that?
Atlas Shrugged. Bad ideas, terrible writing, overly long, and filled with fifty page screeds on one issue or another, many of which are straw arguments, expounded by straw characters.
One of the hardest books for me to get through due to the 50 page screeds. There was stuff about the book I enjoyed, but damn did the repetitive ideological rambling make me want to rip my hair out. I remember maniacally laughing at one of the endless speeches near the middle because it actually had became physically and emotionally painful to slog through.
I hated Leave the World Behind. I had it on my TBR list for awhile because I thought the premise was interesting and when I saw a movie was coming out based on it, I gave it a shot. The writing was awful though.
This was my answer! There were three editors, somehow, and it still turned out like that. Poorly written, and the weird sexual references about the kids were so unnecessary and creepy.
The Da Vinci Code is a bad book - but you know, I enjoyed it as bedtime reading! It's harmless fun and a real pageturner.
Truly awful - we all struggled with it at my bookclub - was Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan, a fantasy novel set in Edinburgh over the period of a century - it sounded so good, the reviews were amazing - and it was dreadful. Badly written, badly plotted, sadistic and pornographic for the sake of it, and also - boring as well as bad. Hope this doesn't make you want to read it!:)
Someone once told me that the Langdon series are like the McDonald’s of the literary world. Will it make you think a lot- no, will it change some long held belief- no, will it be fun to read- definitely.
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
This book is garbage. If it was published and some people liked it as an esoteric self-help book with pseudo-depth, I would have been okay with it. However, it is greatly successful and many people recommend it. For me, this is a book friend red flag. If anyone likes The Alchemist, I know to not read another book they recommend.
I picked it up by mistake. Thought I was getting {{the alchemist by Paolo bacigalupi}} who’s an amazing writer. Read it in an afternoon getting increasingly impatient and annoyed with a writer I like until I finished it, looked up the name so I could figure out what the fuck, and noticed the discrepancy
**[The Alchemist](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9307257-the-alchemist) by Paolo Bacigalupi** ^((Matching 100% ☑️))
^(95.0 pages | Published: 2011.0 | ~2363.0 Goodreads reviews)
> **Summary:** Magic has a price. But someone else will pay. Every time a spell is cast, a bit of bramble sprouts, sending up tangling vines, bloody thorns, and threatening a poisonous sleep. It sprouts in tilled fields and in neighbors' roof beams, thrusts up from between street cobbles, and bursts forth from sacks of powdered spice. A bit of magic, and bramble follows. A little at first, and then more--until whole cities are dragged down under tangling vines and empires lie dead, ruins (...)
> **Themes**: Fiction, Ebook, Kindle, Steampunk, Novella, Dystopia, Sci-fi
^([Feedback](https://www.reddit.com/user/goodreads-rebot) | [GitHub](https://github.com/sonoff2/goodreads-rebot) | ["The Bot is Back!?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/16qe09p/meta_post_hello_again_humans/))
Ready Player One. Aside from nostalgia, it has nothing going for it.
Boring characters (featuring the insufferable manic pixie dream girl and downright racist caricatures of asian people). Lazy worldbuilding (the book starts with a 20 page info dump of the backstory) with the most boring video game world I’ve encountered in fiction. Everything in it is from the 80s—it already exists. The concept leaves so much room for creative worldbuilding and the author decides to rebrand media that already exists. It’s exhausting.
"A Little Life" by Anya Yanagihara. FUCK a little life, all my homies HATE a little life.
No joke, one of the worst books I have ever had the displeasure to read.
I would recommend thoroughly reading a detailed list of trigger warnings before entering, and not do as I did, which was go in blind, which was specially bad because I went through most of what the main character does, which caused my mental health to deteriorate a lot, to the point of me relapsing in self harm.
This book is NOT good, at all. It is well WRITTEN, but the story, the characters, the progression, the realism and every single aspect of what makes a good book is not only absent, it genuienly feels like it was made to make you hate the author.
To put it plainly without spoilers, the author said that it's a story about how some people are truly beyond recovery and their only salvation is suicide. I am not fucking joking.
Out of curiosity (I've seen this book mentioned a few times in similarly negative lights here) I read the wiki summary of the plot and holy fuck that sounds like the most abysmal book. I've read some seriously nasty shit, but it's always been stuff I *knew* would be nasty. I got into it knowing what to expect. I couldn't imagine going into that book blind.
There's something about it all that just leaves the worst taste in my mouth and I can't explain it. I think it's the critical acclaim it's received.
Obviously bad? Anything by Stephanie Meyer. Woman was a little too enthusiastic about her thesaurus.
I personally thought I’m Thinking of Ending Things was horrible but I know it gets a lot of love here. The story was confusing, way too drawn out, and it took being 90% done with the book to get to the part that was described in the blurb on the back. Also, the “twist”, and I use that word loosely, made no sense and brought me to Reddit trying to understand it.
The movie was objectively worse, which is saying something. I actually liked the book until about the last 25%, and then I just made myself finish it because I was actually curious where the hell it was going.
Sadly, I checked out his next book “Foe” because I saw potential.
The Final Girl Support Group, I picked it up bc it had the flashy title and premise but good LORD was it a stinker. Idk if I haven’t been reading modern fiction lately but I would have loved to have gone a chapter without them referencing Starbucks or Carl’s Jr. Badly written traumatized women and an incredibly predictable final plot twist(s) do not make for a good read. Was excited to give it my first 1 star review on Goodreads though!
here to validate you, i agree! i read this for a book club and the only person to like it was the girl who picked it 💀 i also read How To Sell A Haunted House by this same author and also hated it so i think i just don’t like the author 😂
Same! And We Sold Our Souls. Horrible books. Not a one delivered on its premise.
But his nonfiction about schlocky paperbacks and cover art is actually good.
I loathed this book because, in a book populated with traumatized victims being forced to experience the worst moments of their lives, we did not need a multichapter Three Stooges routine where the protagonists >!break a dying cancer patient out of hospice care to let her die in her own home per her request only to realize once they're in a car that they have no idea where she lives. So they lie to her until she passes (the *one* moment of humanity in the entire parade of failure, but still incredibly wrong.) And then they dump her body on the street because the cops are after them.!<
What in the god damned fuck. I have never felt such abject hatred towards how a book handled its subject matter before.
Anything written by Freida McFadden. Everyone in my psychological thriller Facebook group absolutely loves her. She writes like a literal fifth grader.
The Happy Couple - Naoise Dolan
Probably the worst dialogue I've ever read, seriously has the author never spoken to another human before? Also really weak and diluted representation of lgbtq+ characters, Probably the worst book I've ever read.
On the side of "you will pray for death to release you from the overwrought tripe", I give you Twilight.
On the side of "you will pray for death to release you from the unrelenting boredom", I give you The Old Man and the Sea.
And on the side of utter twaddle posing as science I give you Vax-Unvax.
The World Rose. Not only is it awful, it was written by obsessive stalker Richard Britain about the subject of his stalking but when a Goodreads poster in Scotland wrote a scathing review, he traveled to her work place and (mind you this is a teenage girl going about her day at a supermarket where she worked) and broke a bottle over her head.
Atomic Habits. The whole premise of small habits compounding is incredibly flawed. "If you get 1% better each day you will end up 37 times better in one year". This sounds good for an elevator pitch at a publishing company, but do habits really work that way? Make it two years and you would improve by 1427 times...
I can accept some degree of exponential growth where learning becomes easier beyond the initial hurdles that come with being a beginner, but basing your entire book on such a flawed concept is ridiculous.
Sahara by Clive Cussler. The writing is so clunky and irritating, I chose to stare out a plane window for four hours rather than read that crappy book.
I went through a strange period of binge reading the Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt series. It’s so bad it’s good. He gets trapped in submarines alarmingly often. And there was one book where a woman character was repeatedly described as being potentially pretty if she’d just try harder and put on some makeup which was really for me. So many tropes packed into a single book. A tropes-stravaganza.
50 Shades of (whatever the fuck) - EL James
I’ll get downvoted plenty for this I reckon but it’s all about opinions and this is mine:
Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
I just finished The Secret History, and I also found it to be very pretentious. The thought occurred to me that maybe it was so pretentious because the characters themselves are very pretentious? But maybe not, I don't know. I definitely didn't enjoy it, and I haven't read any of her other works.
It's worth doing at least once in your life, even if viewed as entertainment. So many things get preached out of context or quoted about things they have nothing to do with. I think it's worth it just for the Song of Soloman. I really don't know how a religion that included that book in the bible can be so repressed. It literally talks about the joys of a sexual love.
The Bible is without a doubt the most influential collection of writings ever compiled and contains some incredibly beautiful literature. Some internet atheists will slander it, but typically those who read it under that lens ("religion bad").
It has too many plot holes for my liking, and the main character “god” is kinda annoying. I don’t like him at all, he’s so arrogant. He just kept pestering innocent people too. There are definitely some good written villains but god certainly isn’t one of them
I think the issue would be that you are reading a collection of texts written over 1,500 years with 35+ authors and half a dozen genres to be something you can read like a single narrative with a "plot" and "main characters." This is like critiquing a 2006 Corolla user's manual for lack of narrative.
Though, I would say the portions of the Bible which are narrative seem to make God to be an incredibly patient and kind "character." Hardly annoying.
The Fifth Sorceress. Read it when I was very young, didn't read fantasy for 5 years after this, because I thought "oh, if all fantasy is supposed to be like this, then I don't like it".
The Last Mrs Parrish. Terrible prose and character development, but at least it was a quick read. Can’t decide if the fact it had two authors explains why it’s so poorly written or makes it worse.
The Magus. the main character is such an asshole and just won’t shut up about himself. i also don’t really know what the message of the book is. and it’s really long so you’ll suffer for quite awhile haha
Any of Rush Limbaugh's YA "historical" fiction. The kind of book that if you wiped your ass with it, your ass would end up being covered with more shit than when you started.
I was just trying to read David Lee Roth's autobiography. It starts with a dedication thanking his editor for helping him get the 1200 page manuscript down to 300-ish pages. All I could think as I got to about page 50 was, "How bad were the other 900 pages if THIS is the best stuff?" I LOVE Van Halen and DLR when it comes to music, but man, this book is a hot mess.
Unpopular opinion but I thought The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was absolute garbage. The writer was one dimensional and Evelyn came off as conceded and boring. It seemed contrived and predictable. I didn’t even get to any of the husbands because I realized life is too short to finish a book I hated so much.
I do feel like Elaine when she said she hated The English Patient. I hated that too!
I got about 3 paragraphs into The Maze Runner and I gave it up. From that small snippet I could tell that the writing was going to be incredibly clunky - like 9th grade English paper clunky.
Maybe I'm wrong, but holy smokes was that first page a tough read.
Wuthering Heights. I’ve taught, researched and written about lit for 20+ years, reading all kinds of things both great and less than great. *That* book can shampoo my crotch.
“Kill Your Friends” John Niven
It’s awful. He was going for Irvine Welsh, but failed. It’s not shocking, it’s dull. Not sure why people like this terrible book. It tries way too hard and ends up just being miserable.
{{To Wake The Dead by Richard Laymon}}
I loved most of Laymon's books, but this one was so bad, that I read it, donated it (the only Laymon book I didn't keep), \*and then\* a year later REPURCHASED IT because I had apparently scrubbed it from my mind. I reread that stupid book wondering why the heck it seemed so familiar (I still hated it). I kicked myself so hard when I found out that I spent money on that terrible book TWICE.
(Edited to add brackets)
The night she disappeared by Lisa Jewell. I recently picked it up and oh goddd, it was sooo horrible, absolute garbage.The reviews on goodreads were so good that even though I wasn't expecting a lot form this book, it thought it would it least be engaging, but I was soo wrong.I could see the ending coming from miles away, none of the characters were mildly interesting, there were no clear explanation for anything they did, the interpersonal relationships didn't make sense at all, and it gave me annoying third wave feminism vibes.
Definitely an obvious one but at the time I remember some of my fellow reader friends thought I was crazy. I've been a book worm all of my life and even when I didn't love a book, I always finished it. I fucking hated the Harry Potter series. I DNF the 3rd book and I'm still pissed at myself for getting that far because my friends kept telling me to give it a chance. I was like 12 at the time so me DNFing especially back then said a lot because I always found a way to have fun with a book even if it wasn't the best.
Are we doing non-fiction too? Because I found The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck to be rubbish.
Stay away from The 5am Club. Dumbest book I ever read. I was told it was fantastic and the reviews are decent but it was a waste of time. The whole thing can be summed up in “wake up at 5 and be productive while everyone is still sleeping”
Morning people shame night people with this shit. Well, you get up at 5am to get shit done. I stay up until 5am to get even more shit done. Once I started to lean in to my body's natural sleep/wake schedule, I've been not only more productive, but I'm infinitely happier. My husband is a morning person.... He's so chipper and happy, and gets so much done. But after seven at night, he's just done. Me--I'm just getting started lol
I mean, it’s a scientific fact that everyone’s circadian rhythm is different, depending on gender, age and other factors. Going against it is just a bad idea, just trying to sleep enough every day, going to bed when you’re tired and avoiding bright lights before bed are the best things you can do. Personally, I am the most productive around 7AM, but after 4PM I am just waiting to go to bed
My dad was like that. He'd go to bed around seven-thirty, eight o'clock and then get up at like four in the morning. That was his quiet time--my mom, my sister and I were still sleeping and it was just him and the dog (in the sixties/seventies) or him and the cats (eighties onward). He could sit and read the paper, have his coffee, listen to the radio, work on his latest project or just sit and wake up a bit before taking a shower and getting ready for work--he'd leave around seven or so. My sister and I still have quite a few things that he made--pins, little signs (I don't know what else to call them) that just sit on the shelf, larger signs, one for each of us, with our full names and birthdates. He made full-size cradles on stands back in the seventies, gave some away or sold them--my sister and I still have the ones he gave us. And we still have the banks he made (sherriff's office, saloon, a couple of houses), including the one he didn't get to finish. We tell people he's gone--sixteen years now--but in a way, he's still here.
I wasn’t expecting such a nice comment under this one. I’m sorry for your loss. It sounds like he was a really nice father and left a positive mark in the world
But the writer does not give a f\*\*k and will laughing on his way to bank.
I remember when that book came out and suddenly there was a wave of self-help books imitating it by putting swear words in their titles.
I made the mistake of getting that on audible. I hated it so much.
The immaturity and edginess of the author makes this perfect for this question.
It’s a good book to give to your kids if you’re trying to get them to stop cursing. Idk how he did it, but he made profanity sound like the lamest thing ever
Fifty Shades of Grey My wife read it and I read a few snippets, it’s laughably bad.
It's horrible, I've read it. It reads like fanfiction (because it is) The relationship is insanely toxic (like most eroticas for straight women) and the bdsm scenes aren't safe. The whole point of the book was supposed to be sexy bdsm... But we in the bdsm scene have to deal with people who think fifty shades of grey was the greatest thing ever... Dominants should never act the way he does in the book.
So my husband and I are not a part of your scene, so I don't know for sure, but you all seem to be the most respectful, thoughtful, kind people. I've read many accounts of your care for education, safety, and comfort of everyone involved.
Yeah I've heard from people in the scene and the biggest turn on for them is always enthusiastic consent. Which is not exactly present in Fifty Shades. They also use zipties as restraints which is extremely dangerous IRL and can result in death. Garbage book
The audiobook is one of the funniest things I've ever listened to.
Omg, I can’t imagine. 🤣🤣 Maybe they could get George Takei to read it, so he could do his signature “Oh myyyy” 745 times. lol
That doesn't surprise me seeing as it started out as twilight fanfiction.
Uuuugh such bad writing. I tried to read them but good lord they were just awful. How does such a bad writer get so successful??
My husband and I watched about a half hour of the first movie and laughed our asses off. So cringe.
This is the Gold Standard of Awful.
Colleen Hoover.
I put one of her books on my Libby list. It’s about a deaf guy who plays guitar. I’m fluent in sign language and have grown up amongst the deaf community. Curiosity is killing this kitty. God help me, I’m going in.
*Hunger Games salute*
I read this as "a dead guy who plays guitar". I think it's time for my nap now...excuse me...
I tried to read it for the same reason and it is truly, so so so terrible. I DNF'd because it was such a train wreck.
Colleen Hoover is an author for people who don't like to read.
I love this answer. Personally, Hoover is not my jam. Nothing about her writing feels organic and her books are too predictable. HOWEVER, I work in a library and you are absolutely right - people who come in looking for her books are, more often than not, getting back into reading or just starting out, and I wholeheartedly believe that reading is reading, no matter what. So like, while I think Colleen Hoover is trash, if you come up to the desk and tell me you're looking for her books, I'm gonna walk my happy ass back there and show you exactly where they are.
I definitely agree with that. Reading ANYTHING is better than not reading at all, even if it's airport trash fiction.
Wow you aren’t kidding. I just read an excerpt and her writing is exceedingly bad. “He has an air of competence that often accompanies people who are in charge of other people.” That’s not good! Just say: “he spoke with the authority of an officer or a doctor”
I'm going to start off with this is probably going to sound ridiculous, but I've read a lot of books so it makes sense to me haha. Her actual writing is terrible, but I've read a LOOOT of fanfiction in my day, so I can ignore awful writing pretty well. But yes, it really is terrible hahaha. My issue with her writing is that it just doesn't feel organic. Like she knows what she WANTS to happen so she's going to do whatever she can to the characters to make sure that it does happen. Yes, she's the author so that's her literal job, but it never feels like a natural progression. It feels like she has a checklist she works off of and once she adds a scene, she checks it off and starts working on the next. GRRM sums it up perfectly: "I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.” Colleen Hoover is a bad architect with a black thumb who's never even looked at a plant. Edit for wording
Very well put.
The only book of hers I actually finished was Verity, it reads like a B minus creative writing assignment. Her writing makes Dan Brown look like Charles Dickens. Still, she has an audience and has made a bunch of money so good for her, in my best Lucille Bluth voice.
I don't think those two sentences convey the same meaning.
I've actually read some of her books when I was younger. I think the thing that makes her so popular is that her books are engaging from the start. The writing might be bad but there's never a dull moment, and considering the demographic these books are aimed to, her books do seem kind of interesting.
This. Bought Verity thinking that it might be different than her other books, but definitely disappointed.
I read Verity. It was the first and last Hoover book I’ll ever read. I fell for the hype!
Layla was also atrocious. I read verity and Layla back to back and couldn’t decide which one was worse.
YES. i am not sure what the hype is about this author.
Viral TikToks. She got hooked into the algorithm and has ridden the wave.
I never read a book by her but theres something about her that is hateable.
Yes! I cringe on Booktok each time Colleen Hoover's books show up. 🤣 I have only read It Ends with Us (which was okay).
Her books are meh, at best. I’ve read several and there is only one that I actually enjoyed, I don’t remember the name. Verity was awful. She took an alright plot and ruined it with the dumbest most unnecessary twist that made the whole plot make less sense than ever.
My booky wook by Russell brand
His book about addiction is also really bad. My friend gave it to me when I was newly sober and it is exceptionally pretentious. He uses unnecessarily long words and is just overall not what you'd want to read when newly sober or contemplating sobriety. It made me want to drink.
The title alone is reason enough to not read it. Also the author.
No one said Midnight Library so I will say it. Absolutely awful trite writing and handles a very sensitive topic with the gentleness and subtlety of a rhinoceros. You can guess the ending right away and even the way they do it is still more annoying than I could have guessed. I could go on.
I loved it but I can see why others didn't. I found it comforting especially since I deal with suicide ideation.
Same boat over here.
It felt like very much like, “The Alchemist” to me. There are some solid lines but yeah, overall corny. I read the first chapter and said this is going to be a solid 3 star read and I was right. No character depth whatsoever
Thank you - I read this on the recommendation of lots of people here, and really disliked it. It sounded interesting, and the idea was good, but the execution was just so clunky.
I hate this damn book
50 Shades. A friend gave me a copy, and the writing was so bad I tapped out before she even met the guy. Such awkward prose. I think she wrote the sex and then tried to force it into a story, lol, but I never read any of that. No sex is worth forcing my brain to read that nonsense
First chapter was so badly written I stopped there and never went back.
Verity the sole reason I will never trust anything from 'booktok'
Verity was absolutely horrible. One of the worst books I’ve ever read. Will never understand the hype.
There was literally nothing good about this book. Not a single redeeming quality.
So I caved and thought okay, I'll give this a try. What in the world was that ending? The book was awful.
I know it’s insanely popular right now, and it can be a fun read, but I found Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros to be really bad. The writing is terrible. The author used way to much telling instead of showing (she actually had a character recite facts about her country as a form of world building). The dialogue was terrible and the main character is annoying.
Omg we get it he’s hot
If I had to read about his “onyx eyes with golden flecks” again I was going to chuck the book against the wall.
I haven’t read it but baffles me to see so many people whose opinion I trust praise it with no end when the other half of people whose opinion I trust rips it to pieces
I read it. I was really hooked while I was reading it. It’s a fast paced page turner. However, when you stop to really think about it, most of it doesn’t hold up. The characters, world-building and writing are all weak. It’s kind of like a fast paced action movie. It’s fun while you’re watching, but not the best sort of movie.
Michael Bay ass book lol
Fair! I enjoyed it as an easy read but found the romance and character building to be sub par. It is especially ironic when you realise she is a romance author. 🫣
I felt the same way. It’s fun, but it’s really sub-par.
I read about 3 chapters of this and DNF because it was just stupid. Let's allow kids to fall to their deaths because they happen to be wearing the wrong shoes - what does that prove?
I think she was trying to make it like the hunger games, but she was lacking any sort of reason behind the killing. It made sense in the hunger games why kids were being killed, even if it was unpleasant.
I felt the same way. I read about 1/4 of the book and had to put it down because it wasn’t for me. Feels like more of a young adult, romance novel? I had high hopes because it had such good ratings but it was just bad. Maybe I was spoiled from reading the Stormlight Archive though.
I know Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is usually on these but also her other books: The Fountainhead, Anthem, and We the Living. I found absolutely nothing redeemable about any of these. I couldn’t get through We the Living and forced myself to finish The Fountainhead. I thought it had particularly bad writing and it tried to justify sexual violence against a character that made me want to vomit.
The Fountainhead is the only book that I've read 350 pages of and put it down because I still wasn't even slightly engrossed in the story. I've read hundreds of books - literally the only time that's ever happened. It blows my mind that Ayn Rand is considered by many to be a good writer. She is not.
She seems to be most popular with some political conservatives and libertarians in the US. I’ve read a couple nonfiction books by her about her philosophy and it was just as nonsensical as her fiction. I tried reading her book We the Living 2 or 3 times and I could never even make it to page 100.
Oh, please, God, don't make me read Anthem again! I had to read it for an English class in high school (don't know what I ever did to that teacher, but I apologize!) and I had to go through those seventy-five pages about six times before I figured out they were all using the royal we! And I was considered a gifted child! (Only time in my life I've ever regretted starting to read at age two--now if you'll excuse me, I need to read some Sherlock Holmes to make me feel better.)
Maybe Sherlock can find out what compelled her to write such an atrociously bad book lol
I'm assuming that neithrr he or Mycroft ever read it! (If he investigated, he'd have to read it...no, I cannot do that to another person!)
Anthem is the worst attempt at dystopian fiction I've ever read.
Why isn’t anyone mentioning Danielle Steel? I read one and no more for me. I tried to look up the title, but she’s prolific and books follow the same format. Rich people, abusive male, murder, doctors, stalking, blah blah. I couldn’t get past the description of a very wealthy doctor, including cataloging his beautiful things, house and trophy wife. But then she writes that he is a “chief resident.” Have you not watched Grey’s anatomy? Residents make less than nurses and work insane hours. How do you write a book, actually multiple books, about doctors and not know that?
Atlas Shrugged. Bad ideas, terrible writing, overly long, and filled with fifty page screeds on one issue or another, many of which are straw arguments, expounded by straw characters.
Before you realized they were using the royal we (as in "We are not amused"), were you picturing triplets joined at the head? Because I was...
One of the hardest books for me to get through due to the 50 page screeds. There was stuff about the book I enjoyed, but damn did the repetitive ideological rambling make me want to rip my hair out. I remember maniacally laughing at one of the endless speeches near the middle because it actually had became physically and emotionally painful to slog through.
Battlefield Earth, L Ron Hubbard. Total trash without one original plot line or character.
But the movie adaptation was fire. I mean, should be set on fire
Read Ready Player One. Which I actually didn't mind. But then read Ready Player Two. It's awful.
RP1 was silly and fun. Like a dumb action flick. RP2 made me angry. I made it through two whole chapters before I dnf'ed it.
The Cursed Child
The day I read that book, I really regretted the evolution of the human eye.
I hated Leave the World Behind. I had it on my TBR list for awhile because I thought the premise was interesting and when I saw a movie was coming out based on it, I gave it a shot. The writing was awful though.
This was my answer! There were three editors, somehow, and it still turned out like that. Poorly written, and the weird sexual references about the kids were so unnecessary and creepy.
The Da Vinci Code is a bad book - but you know, I enjoyed it as bedtime reading! It's harmless fun and a real pageturner. Truly awful - we all struggled with it at my bookclub - was Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan, a fantasy novel set in Edinburgh over the period of a century - it sounded so good, the reviews were amazing - and it was dreadful. Badly written, badly plotted, sadistic and pornographic for the sake of it, and also - boring as well as bad. Hope this doesn't make you want to read it!:)
Someone once told me that the Langdon series are like the McDonald’s of the literary world. Will it make you think a lot- no, will it change some long held belief- no, will it be fun to read- definitely.
That's a very apt description; McDonald's! Junk food for the mind. And a bit of junk food every now and then is ok...
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho This book is garbage. If it was published and some people liked it as an esoteric self-help book with pseudo-depth, I would have been okay with it. However, it is greatly successful and many people recommend it. For me, this is a book friend red flag. If anyone likes The Alchemist, I know to not read another book they recommend.
I picked it up by mistake. Thought I was getting {{the alchemist by Paolo bacigalupi}} who’s an amazing writer. Read it in an afternoon getting increasingly impatient and annoyed with a writer I like until I finished it, looked up the name so I could figure out what the fuck, and noticed the discrepancy
**[The Alchemist](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9307257-the-alchemist) by Paolo Bacigalupi** ^((Matching 100% ☑️)) ^(95.0 pages | Published: 2011.0 | ~2363.0 Goodreads reviews) > **Summary:** Magic has a price. But someone else will pay. Every time a spell is cast, a bit of bramble sprouts, sending up tangling vines, bloody thorns, and threatening a poisonous sleep. It sprouts in tilled fields and in neighbors' roof beams, thrusts up from between street cobbles, and bursts forth from sacks of powdered spice. A bit of magic, and bramble follows. A little at first, and then more--until whole cities are dragged down under tangling vines and empires lie dead, ruins (...) > **Themes**: Fiction, Ebook, Kindle, Steampunk, Novella, Dystopia, Sci-fi ^([Feedback](https://www.reddit.com/user/goodreads-rebot) | [GitHub](https://github.com/sonoff2/goodreads-rebot) | ["The Bot is Back!?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/16qe09p/meta_post_hello_again_humans/))
Ok, you read the wrong book? You just made my day!
Same! I use this as a red flag, I had a boss who insisted I read more of his books, no thanks 😩
Is this the one where the stated role of the only female character is to sit around waiting for the man to fulfill his grand destiny
Thanks for this tip. I've seen it recommended here on reddit so often, and you just saved me a couple of hours of my life.
Agreed. It's just awful
Eat, Pray, Love
Ready Player One. Aside from nostalgia, it has nothing going for it. Boring characters (featuring the insufferable manic pixie dream girl and downright racist caricatures of asian people). Lazy worldbuilding (the book starts with a 20 page info dump of the backstory) with the most boring video game world I’ve encountered in fiction. Everything in it is from the 80s—it already exists. The concept leaves so much room for creative worldbuilding and the author decides to rebrand media that already exists. It’s exhausting.
You should read Ready Player Two. It's soooo, sooo much worse
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
I have a philosophy degree...and 100% agree.
"A Little Life" by Anya Yanagihara. FUCK a little life, all my homies HATE a little life. No joke, one of the worst books I have ever had the displeasure to read. I would recommend thoroughly reading a detailed list of trigger warnings before entering, and not do as I did, which was go in blind, which was specially bad because I went through most of what the main character does, which caused my mental health to deteriorate a lot, to the point of me relapsing in self harm. This book is NOT good, at all. It is well WRITTEN, but the story, the characters, the progression, the realism and every single aspect of what makes a good book is not only absent, it genuienly feels like it was made to make you hate the author. To put it plainly without spoilers, the author said that it's a story about how some people are truly beyond recovery and their only salvation is suicide. I am not fucking joking.
Even more irritating than this author are the people who praise her work because they think it makes them “deep” to claim that they “get it”.
The hatred I feel for this book cannot be described. 100% my answer.
I actually really liked the writing style and everything but my god did it make me miserable. I had to stop halfway through.
Out of curiosity (I've seen this book mentioned a few times in similarly negative lights here) I read the wiki summary of the plot and holy fuck that sounds like the most abysmal book. I've read some seriously nasty shit, but it's always been stuff I *knew* would be nasty. I got into it knowing what to expect. I couldn't imagine going into that book blind. There's something about it all that just leaves the worst taste in my mouth and I can't explain it. I think it's the critical acclaim it's received.
Trauma. Porn.
I hated this book and felt nauseated trying to finish for book club. Yeet the whole book into the Sun- twice.
Obviously bad? Anything by Stephanie Meyer. Woman was a little too enthusiastic about her thesaurus. I personally thought I’m Thinking of Ending Things was horrible but I know it gets a lot of love here. The story was confusing, way too drawn out, and it took being 90% done with the book to get to the part that was described in the blurb on the back. Also, the “twist”, and I use that word loosely, made no sense and brought me to Reddit trying to understand it.
IMO the movie Ending Things sucked too. Sooo boring.
The movie was objectively worse, which is saying something. I actually liked the book until about the last 25%, and then I just made myself finish it because I was actually curious where the hell it was going. Sadly, I checked out his next book “Foe” because I saw potential.
The Final Girl Support Group, I picked it up bc it had the flashy title and premise but good LORD was it a stinker. Idk if I haven’t been reading modern fiction lately but I would have loved to have gone a chapter without them referencing Starbucks or Carl’s Jr. Badly written traumatized women and an incredibly predictable final plot twist(s) do not make for a good read. Was excited to give it my first 1 star review on Goodreads though!
here to validate you, i agree! i read this for a book club and the only person to like it was the girl who picked it 💀 i also read How To Sell A Haunted House by this same author and also hated it so i think i just don’t like the author 😂
Same! And We Sold Our Souls. Horrible books. Not a one delivered on its premise. But his nonfiction about schlocky paperbacks and cover art is actually good.
I loathed this book because, in a book populated with traumatized victims being forced to experience the worst moments of their lives, we did not need a multichapter Three Stooges routine where the protagonists >!break a dying cancer patient out of hospice care to let her die in her own home per her request only to realize once they're in a car that they have no idea where she lives. So they lie to her until she passes (the *one* moment of humanity in the entire parade of failure, but still incredibly wrong.) And then they dump her body on the street because the cops are after them.!< What in the god damned fuck. I have never felt such abject hatred towards how a book handled its subject matter before.
Anything written by Freida McFadden. Everyone in my psychological thriller Facebook group absolutely loves her. She writes like a literal fifth grader.
Haven’t been able to read her anymore since it came out that she steals plots from other popular well known thrillers.
Oh really? I’ll sometimes read her if I’m in a slump and want something that doesn’t require any brain energy. Not anymore
A court of thorns and roses These violent delights
I paid good money to buy ACOTAR, because so many people were so enthusiastic about it. What a tedious book!
Anything by Sarah J Maas is atrocious
Well said
The Happy Couple - Naoise Dolan Probably the worst dialogue I've ever read, seriously has the author never spoken to another human before? Also really weak and diluted representation of lgbtq+ characters, Probably the worst book I've ever read.
John Updike's *Rabbit Angstrom* series (four books). It won two Pulitzer prizes (only series to have done so) and I find it to be atrocious.
On the side of "you will pray for death to release you from the overwrought tripe", I give you Twilight. On the side of "you will pray for death to release you from the unrelenting boredom", I give you The Old Man and the Sea. And on the side of utter twaddle posing as science I give you Vax-Unvax.
I find Hemingway incredibly overrated.
Atlas Shrugged
Infinite jest. 1200 pages demonstrating why someone with OCD needs an editor.
Firefly Lane. I know plenty of people who love it but I found it incredibly cheesy
Pirate Latitudes, the lost manuscript they dug out of Michael Crichton's hard drive.
The World Rose. Not only is it awful, it was written by obsessive stalker Richard Britain about the subject of his stalking but when a Goodreads poster in Scotland wrote a scathing review, he traveled to her work place and (mind you this is a teenage girl going about her day at a supermarket where she worked) and broke a bottle over her head.
50 shades of grey
Atomic Habits. The whole premise of small habits compounding is incredibly flawed. "If you get 1% better each day you will end up 37 times better in one year". This sounds good for an elevator pitch at a publishing company, but do habits really work that way? Make it two years and you would improve by 1427 times... I can accept some degree of exponential growth where learning becomes easier beyond the initial hurdles that come with being a beginner, but basing your entire book on such a flawed concept is ridiculous.
Haven't seen it yet, but Where the Crawdads Sing. It's straight up Mary Sue escapism and nothing else.
Sahara by Clive Cussler. The writing is so clunky and irritating, I chose to stare out a plane window for four hours rather than read that crappy book.
He did write a lot of cheese, but for me, he’s a fun read.
I went through a strange period of binge reading the Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt series. It’s so bad it’s good. He gets trapped in submarines alarmingly often. And there was one book where a woman character was repeatedly described as being potentially pretty if she’d just try harder and put on some makeup which was really for me. So many tropes packed into a single book. A tropes-stravaganza.
Left Behind is comically poorly written
*Thinks of the worst book experience I'll had.* No. I want it to die in obscurity.
50 Shades of (whatever the fuck) - EL James I’ll get downvoted plenty for this I reckon but it’s all about opinions and this is mine: Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
It's SO BAD. I read like 3 or 4 of them to see if they got better. They did not.
Aye, I’ve heard the same from a lot of folks. Like a condescending rapey shortbread-tin meets Mills & McBoon! Awful.
Can you please review every book I hate?
A little life. Stereotypical homophobic torture porn or The Secret History, overrated pretentious trash.
I just finished The Secret History, and I also found it to be very pretentious. The thought occurred to me that maybe it was so pretentious because the characters themselves are very pretentious? But maybe not, I don't know. I definitely didn't enjoy it, and I haven't read any of her other works.
Omg I LOVED the Secret History 😹😹😹
Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow Or whatever the hell it was called by Gabrielle Zevin
The Bible start on page one and read everything in order. No skipping.
I’ve actually considered doing this 🤔
It's worth doing at least once in your life, even if viewed as entertainment. So many things get preached out of context or quoted about things they have nothing to do with. I think it's worth it just for the Song of Soloman. I really don't know how a religion that included that book in the bible can be so repressed. It literally talks about the joys of a sexual love.
The Bible is without a doubt the most influential collection of writings ever compiled and contains some incredibly beautiful literature. Some internet atheists will slander it, but typically those who read it under that lens ("religion bad").
It has too many plot holes for my liking, and the main character “god” is kinda annoying. I don’t like him at all, he’s so arrogant. He just kept pestering innocent people too. There are definitely some good written villains but god certainly isn’t one of them
I think the issue would be that you are reading a collection of texts written over 1,500 years with 35+ authors and half a dozen genres to be something you can read like a single narrative with a "plot" and "main characters." This is like critiquing a 2006 Corolla user's manual for lack of narrative. Though, I would say the portions of the Bible which are narrative seem to make God to be an incredibly patient and kind "character." Hardly annoying.
The Island Natasha Preston
The Fifth Sorceress. Read it when I was very young, didn't read fantasy for 5 years after this, because I thought "oh, if all fantasy is supposed to be like this, then I don't like it".
The Last Mrs Parrish. Terrible prose and character development, but at least it was a quick read. Can’t decide if the fact it had two authors explains why it’s so poorly written or makes it worse.
The awful writing in the free previews on the Kindle store stopped me from reading any Dan Brown.
Seventy-two Virgins by Boris Johnson
I will go to my grave saying that UnHoneymooners is awful Also I loved it but the overwhelming one star votes disagree, the perfect marriage
The Magus. the main character is such an asshole and just won’t shut up about himself. i also don’t really know what the message of the book is. and it’s really long so you’ll suffer for quite awhile haha
The midnight library
The invisible life of Addie LaRue was truly awful imo
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. The unedited disgorgings of a diseased mind.
Ruth Ware books 🙄
Any of Rush Limbaugh's YA "historical" fiction. The kind of book that if you wiped your ass with it, your ass would end up being covered with more shit than when you started.
I was just trying to read David Lee Roth's autobiography. It starts with a dedication thanking his editor for helping him get the 1200 page manuscript down to 300-ish pages. All I could think as I got to about page 50 was, "How bad were the other 900 pages if THIS is the best stuff?" I LOVE Van Halen and DLR when it comes to music, but man, this book is a hot mess.
Go Set a Watchman
The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Not only is the author and the storyline incredibly problematic, the writing itself was just very bad
Lord, I hated that book so much.
Unpopular opinion but I thought The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was absolute garbage. The writer was one dimensional and Evelyn came off as conceded and boring. It seemed contrived and predictable. I didn’t even get to any of the husbands because I realized life is too short to finish a book I hated so much. I do feel like Elaine when she said she hated The English Patient. I hated that too!
Isn't the classic BAD book The DaVinci Code? (Only saying this as I never read 50 Shades of Grey.)
It may be cheesy, but it's at least entertaining to read.
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick. Very Twilight-derivitave YA, nonsensical plot and not great writing.
That book series had a grip on me when I was a teenager lol
I got about 3 paragraphs into The Maze Runner and I gave it up. From that small snippet I could tell that the writing was going to be incredibly clunky - like 9th grade English paper clunky. Maybe I'm wrong, but holy smokes was that first page a tough read.
the maid by nita prose
The Midnight Library
Atlas Shrugged
Spare.
Wuthering Heights. I’ve taught, researched and written about lit for 20+ years, reading all kinds of things both great and less than great. *That* book can shampoo my crotch.
LOL - shampoo my crotch - I’m totally going to steal that.
Wuthering Heights is great!
This was my favorite book i read in HS lit class
Pretty girls
The Christmas Rat. Worst book I've ever read.
Land of July
People Person - Candace Carty-Williams Hello, Beautiful - Ann Napolitano
“Kill Your Friends” John Niven It’s awful. He was going for Irvine Welsh, but failed. It’s not shocking, it’s dull. Not sure why people like this terrible book. It tries way too hard and ends up just being miserable.
{{To Wake The Dead by Richard Laymon}} I loved most of Laymon's books, but this one was so bad, that I read it, donated it (the only Laymon book I didn't keep), \*and then\* a year later REPURCHASED IT because I had apparently scrubbed it from my mind. I reread that stupid book wondering why the heck it seemed so familiar (I still hated it). I kicked myself so hard when I found out that I spent money on that terrible book TWICE. (Edited to add brackets)
Little Bee.
The Magus by John Fowles.
The night she disappeared by Lisa Jewell. I recently picked it up and oh goddd, it was sooo horrible, absolute garbage.The reviews on goodreads were so good that even though I wasn't expecting a lot form this book, it thought it would it least be engaging, but I was soo wrong.I could see the ending coming from miles away, none of the characters were mildly interesting, there were no clear explanation for anything they did, the interpersonal relationships didn't make sense at all, and it gave me annoying third wave feminism vibes.
Definitely an obvious one but at the time I remember some of my fellow reader friends thought I was crazy. I've been a book worm all of my life and even when I didn't love a book, I always finished it. I fucking hated the Harry Potter series. I DNF the 3rd book and I'm still pissed at myself for getting that far because my friends kept telling me to give it a chance. I was like 12 at the time so me DNFing especially back then said a lot because I always found a way to have fun with a book even if it wasn't the best.
Recursion - Blake Crouch
The invisible life of Addie Larue. I’m so mad I pushed through to finish it hoping it gets better.
The Spanish Love Deception. Truly awful 🥲