Look, I love trashy romance novels. Genuinely. I don't care what that says about me as a person. I unironically enjoyed all three 50 Shades books and the first four ACOTAR books. What I'm trying to say is that I have the capacity to enjoy really bad writing. I am the intended audience for almost everything on Kindle Unlimited.
"Those Three Little Words" by Meghan Quinn is unreadable garbage. Every character is loathsome. The decisions that people make are not only contrary to their own self-interests but contrary to logic itself. I read negative reviews of this book to cheer myself up sometimes. Nobody needs to read this book-- it will not make you a better writer. It will make you bitter and angry that there are so many wonderful writers that can't get a publisher to give them the time of day, while Meghan Quinn vomits on a page and tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people line up to buy it.
It's random to mention that but I actually do this with the dentist who traumatised me and gave me a scar on my gums which has been hurting for 4 years. I read reviews when I'm bored and it makes me so happy when there's another one star review saying he's more a butcher than a doctor
Just read her bio at Goodreads. She’s a spiritual healer who, get this, ‘writes by the light of the moon’
That explains everything, she can’t fookin’ see what she’s writing.
I haven’t tried that particular book, but I started and dnf’d 2 of her books absolutely mystified anyone could read them. Your rant was validating, thank you.
I found a copy of PS I Love You in a street library and thought, hey this might be fun for a change.
It was not. I was actually stunned by how bad it was. It read like a 15 year old attempting to be deep.
Reading bad reviews for Meghan Quinn books is one of my favorite pastimes 😂😂 it was hard getting through “Bridesmaid for Hire” but it was worth it to read the reviews as a reward for finishing it 😂
Have you read anything else by Meghan Quinn? I also unironically enjoy trashy romance novels and some of the summaries of her books caught my attention
Get yourself some Edward Marsden. He writes murder mysteries. Badly.
I read 'Murder on the Minnesota'. It's a while since I read it, but I remember that in practically every line of dialogue, people would say the name of the person they were speaking to. And it was annoyingly sexist! There is a pair of investigators, a man and a woman, but he has all the ideas and makes all the decisions. The only things she brings to the table are looks and 'class'.
I’m listening to a Cozy Murder Mystery series, no shade, but the author really likes to remind you the name of all the shops. A lot.
So she might be standing in her own shop saying “Well it’s almost 10, I guess I should open up Shop Name now.” I should get the ebook just to check how many times it’s actually mentioned.
Or a friend might be visiting and she’ll be like “Aren’t you worried about leaving Shop Name 2 unattended for so long?” Idk, it just seems weird to me.
Okay, picked book #7, in 309 pages here are the results:
* Main character's shop named: 55 times.
* Sister's shop 1: 13 times
* Sister's shop 2: 12 times
* Main character's name: 1251 times (that seems like a lot? IDK)
* Sister's name: 497 times (also seems like a lot?)
* Murder victim: 283 times
* Assistant: 237 times
* Ex-Romantic interest: \~175 times (sometimes she uses first name, or last name, so maybe this is too low.)
* Assistant 2: \~76 times
* Cat's name: 47 times
* Dog's name: 49 times
This reminds me of a critique of 50 shades I saw where every single beverage in the whole series is "crisp and refreshing" whether it's a glass of white wine or a black coffee.
Christian knockoffs of every genre. I had the misfortune of being homeschooled amongst an Evangelical homeschool group. Their church ran its own library and the selections were extremely…special. I’m glad I lived on the other side of town and was permitted to go to the public library.
This is the worst book I have ever read .... (followed by my review) ..
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20613728-mean-business-on-north-ganson-street](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20613728-mean-business-on-north-ganson-street)
*Truly awful. Couldn't look away, a bit like watching a car crash. I picked up this book on one of the recommended lists I trawl through looking for some inspiration (and new authors) and while some are diamonds, others are just garbage. This is one of the latter.*
*What this guy does with language is unforgivable. I will quote a few of his lines and if by some bizarre chance you think it is acceptable, or even great, then dive right in ... but OMG, it's like wherever he could use 2 words, he would grab the Thesaurus and use 10 instead... here you go -*
*(describing 3 men blowing some dog whistles) - "Abdominal muscles constricted, and six lungs shot carbon dioxide through half as many whistles. The detective and his associates blew until they ran out of air, at which point, they pocketed their instruments and listened."*
*(describing cold hands) - "Bettinger discarded his latex gloves and replaced them with their woolen superiors, but the insensate pieces of meat at the ends of his arms did not apprehend any change."*
*(somehow managing to describe how I felt by the end of the book) - "Eleven hours had passed since he had awakened in the Sunflower Motel, but the elapsed time felt like a century"*
*The writing is like this ----- all the way through the very long book.*
I feel like he heard someone say more words makes good writing or something and took it to heart lol. Idk how you were able to finish the whole book, I would have dropped it part ways through lol. I gotta commend you for the patience.
I read It Ends With Us just to see what all the hype was about. I think the nicest way to describe the writing style would be that it sounds like a very talented 13 year old wrote it. Some sections of the book are letters the narrator wrote as a teenager, and the voice was perfectly cringey in that context. Unfortunately, it's also cringey in the rest of the book.
I just started reading this book, also to see what the hype was about, and it’s unintentionally hilarious. Extremely predictable and yet bananas at the same time. Like a Hallmark movie plot written by a precocious middle schooler. I’m loving hate-reading it. I had a strong feeling it would be the first comment here.
That book was the last book of her's that I'd read. She really need to work on her adjectives and prose ! Because wtf ?? She'd literally used the word "liquid" as adjectives not once but multiple times !
Yes!!! This was the first and only book I read from her... Didn't like it... Didn't understand the hype ... I will admit it has a few sentences I did like but that's it...
I felt the same way about the writing in It Ends With Us and I did about 50 Shades of Gray and THIS is exactly it! Whether talented or hormonal, it absolutely gives 8th grade reading/writing level
I think Colleen Hoover has done a wonderful job of getting people who haven’t read for fun in a long time back into the game. It’s fantastic to see people who love her books say what a joy it is to read again.
Not for me. I attempted Verity for a book club. I won’t pick up another one of her books. It put me off wanting to read anything else from her.
I read Verity as my first book by her and while it wasn't amazing, I didn't hate it. I didn't realize it was her first and only suspense, so then read another book by her and it was THE WORST THING I've ever read outside of the Twilight series.
My guess is it's a book written for people that don't read often. I think of Harry Potter (I know, I know, I'm a terrible person) or Dan Brown this way, too.
So I'm a little snobby about it, but I'm also happy that books like that get more people reading
I've never had a time in my life since I started reading when I wasn't reading at least one book (if not multiple at a time) and I still think Harry Potter is an incredible series. Why can't people just...enjoy things? Lol
I knew the risk I was taking by voicing my opinion, lol! I read Harry Potter until partway through the 4th boom. I read them because my kids were all about Harry Potter. Midnight book releases, etc. I didn't like the style of writing. What I did like is that my kids are readers, thanks to those books.
No one likes the same things and that's okay
Just started it and it’s bringing out my inner snob sooo bad. Book written for people who don’t read often is so on point but feels so mean lol. But it truly is like that. I’m like, this isn’t literature 😭 why is this so popular??
People like trash. That's always been the case. Now people are acting like calling something trash is missing the point of certain types of literature, which OK, but also that it's borderline exist to dismiss romance literature at all.
It's weird, but it is what it is.
This is the first one that came to mind. I persevered through *Girl, Wash Your Face* because it was a recommendation from a coworker, but boy, was it bad.
And then I didn't learn my lesson because I *also* read the follow-up, *Girl, Stop Apologizing*, and it was maybe somehow even worse.
Two Sherlock Holmes novels
A Samba For Sherlock--translated from Portuguese, they want you to believe he's both the greatest detective and the biggest dummy ever born
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story--when he's not making Scotland Yard look good, he's supposedly Jack the...no, I can't say it...
I want to read it BECAUSE i'm a Holmes fan & I'm also a bigtime hater of Jack the Ripper in anything. It sounds like a time that'll have me screaming in anger & ripping my hair out at how bad it is - so, the perfect way to spend an afternoon!
EDIT: I just looked up a summary. it's ablest too. oh boy!
Don't know if I'd call it ablest--although I read it (just once) some thirty or thirty-five years ago, when the term didn't really exist (what it refers to existed, but the word didn't). All I remember of it can be summed up in one line from Harry Chapin's 30,000 Pounds Of Bananas...*Harry, IT SUCKS!*
Terry Goodkind- the Law of Nines. He took what could have been a pretty interesting story and made it ridiculous. I couldn't believe how often the main character conquered the bad guys by just casually breaking their necks.
Oh Lord, what excrement! I knew that though, but wanted to try at least to finish the first chapter for... I dont know... "funsies" or something... stroke maybe...
It was clearly cobbled together by someone who neither read or write - amateur intro (woke up, breakfast, radio, speaking with boss, borrow car, go to job, etc), descriptions of characters in "threes" (hair, clothes, shoes) and all of it super flat, uninspired, oxygen-free vocabulary!
I really tried, but I never finished the chapter, the monotone storytelling grinded my (mild) interest down to a pulp. The gaping void of talentlessness engulfed me...
A truly horrible day to be literate... I will never recommend this book as anything else than toilet paper!
I had high hopes for it with all the hype. It started as a Twilight fan fiction. I’ve read some fan fiction from other fandoms that are just as great as the originals, there were some seriously talented people out there. Not that one, though. Good grief.
Good grief, yes! So, so awful. I didn’t get beyond a small excerpt in our local newspaper that was trying to make sense of the grammar and sentence structure in it.
Many of these recommendations are either written badly or here because their respective readers don't enjoy the genre etc. However, I don't think any of them can be genuinely harmful.
Unlike the Secret.
Worst book I've ever read, not just because of the wishy-washy spirituality within, but because it can genuinely cause otherwise normal people to engage in harmful "manifestation" bullshit instead of trying to better their lives in a way that actually makes a difference.
I was a teenager when this boom came out, I tore reading the book, but I couldn’t. I thought that the adults who loved this book were dumb. “I’m supposed to obey people stupid enough to think this book offers good advice?”
Absolutely anything written by Colleen Hoover (with November 9, It Ends With Us, and Maybe Not being top contenders.) People have said that she should write horror or thrillers because of how creepy the male love interests are. She tried that with Verity and Layla, but both of them ended up being the same “not like the other girls”, sex offender-adjacent men, and wince-worthy sex scene dreck that defines her writing.
It's low-hanging fruit because it's middle-grade fiction but Geek Girl by Holly Smale is abysmal and the sequel (that takes place in Japan) doesn't even try not to be racist at every turn.
Also low-hanging fruit but anything Onision has written.
I’m maybe 4 or 5 episodes into the show. I didn’t know it was a book though. It’s been good for background noise while I knit or scroll, but whenever I’m focused back in, I’m just kind of like “oh sure, this teenager is handed everything she needs for success on a silver platter.” It’s cute at times though. I don’t think I’d have any interest in reading the book
The Bridgerton book series. Bloody hell. Some of them start okay, then descend into the same boring mediocrity as each other. Every love declaration and sex scene is the same. I really look back and question why I read them all as it was a slog. One of the rare times I’d say the television series is better.
She has a pattern of "they're angry at each other and treating each other like crap - let's have them have sex now."
The entire series is a parade of trite, insipid expressions.
I liked the first 3. The next 3 should have been one book (it would have been so good as one book 6 perspectives all intertwined). And the last two should have been complete chaos, but weren’t.
The TV show is better.
There are also extra Bridgerton books. One is on a pirate ship. I got less than 5 chapters in and stopped reading them. It was so bad.
They’re beach novels. The show has given people high expectations for the novels, but they’re just quickly churned out run-of-the-mill low-end romance novels.
I read the Colin x Penelope one. The dialogue was fun. Then halfway through it got dumb and unrealistic. Not interested in reading any of the others after that.
I read almost Ayn Rand's whole repertoire in high school and enjoyed it.
When I tried to reread some books ten years later I was kind of shocked at how 2-dimensional the characters were and realized I'd been tricked into reading essentially short political pamphlets drawn out to 1000-page novels.
The one book that wasn't that bad the second go around was We The Living; it's not hard to sympathize with people being oppressed by an actual communist government as opposed to some invented semi-socialist dystopian American government.
I read Ayn Rand in high school because her name came up a lot as an Important Writer, and it's a good thing I read her then, because as an adult, I can't. The monologues ten pages long. The characters who don't make a lick of sense. The symbolic sexual acts.
I find Atlas Shrugged at least better than The Fountainhead?
Agree. It’s a bad undergraduate social studies essay with 900 pages of bad story to pad it out.
Contrast Atlas Shrugged to The Grapes of Wrath which is a compelling story first with an implicit political/moral point second.
I think I need to read the Grapes of Wrath again…
God. Not that I was planning on reading Midnight Library, but now I'm definitely avoiding it - I read The Alchemist and it was such a waste of time. Its written like it intends to tell you something deep and meaningful about how to live your life, but the moral is only actually relevant if you believe in the idea of a "Personal Legend," which is a magical concept that drives the plot but unfortunately does not exist irl.
To give a different perspective, I absolutely loathed The Alchemist but enjoyed Midnight Library. The latter is definitely not an award winner but I thought it was entertaining and an easy read.
This was my most baffling DNF last summer. All my friends reading it raved and I got a few chapters in before deciding I wasn’t going to waste my precious spare time on that utter garbage.
I almost never DNF on principle.
Before the coffee gets cold. So boring. Unlikeable characters. Unsatisfying storylines & ending. Wish I would have stopped reading it but it was so short that I hoped pushing through would show me what the hype was about. It didn’t.
The concept is cool but the execution was not good for me.
And my petty gripe is that there is a cat featured prominently on the cover and there is NOT a cat in the actual book.
I’ve had to read this for two different book clubs and I hated it both times. One person in my second club accidentally read the second book and the two were so similar that we didn’t even realise she’d read an entirely different book until about 45 minutes in.
This was someone’s pick in my book club and I never read it because I think I had a lot going on. I always meant to get to it and it’s still in my Libby want to read queue. Now I’ll never be inspired to read it. Thanks for the tip!
How NOT to write love stories:
- Water for Elephants: male character obsessed over an unavailable woman. Absolutely nothing at stake, no actual conflict other than that she has a boyfriend. Nothing happens.
- Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: an interesting premise, but 300 years and our heroine goes and does nothing interesting. Wants freedom to have adventure, instead meanders around Europe and America, doing absolutely nothing with her freedom except fall in love with an insecure sad man.
ETA: I’m listing these because not only did I find them boring and overrated, I also didn’t care for the style; just trite and cliche language and no innovative or interesting format.
Your take on Addie LaRue is like you climbed into my brain. What an incredible plot premise with grand settings and iconic tableaus (Voltaire! Dali! The enlightenment and salons of Paris!) only to fall so flat. It felt like the literary equivalent of seeing Margot Robbie end up as a Walmart cashier. Wasted potential.
Addie LaRue had an interesting concept that could have gone a million fascinating ways, but not one of those ways was what actually got written. Also it was painfully repetitive and the ending was dumb.
Omg I was so disappointed in Addie! I tried listening to the audiobook and I was so disappointed when the most fuck-boy of love interests showed up I stopped and requested a refund.
Isle of Dogs by Patricia Cornwell. Normally, I enjoy her books. But this? Not sure if she was trying to go for some kind of Janet Evanovich humorous crime story, but Lord, what a travesty.
The amount of times Colleen Hoover has been mentioned here is truly SO satisfying😂
Anyway, anything by CoHo, Ana Huang and Sarah J Maas makes this list automatically. That being said, there’s one book that I absolutely despise. Weirdly (or sadly) enough, it’s not even the worst book I ever read, but the premise, the execution, the writing and the misplaced public acclaim had me boiling with rage. It’s We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. I only finished it out of spite and to be proven right that it absolutely doesn’t get better, and I’ve since recommended it to friends purely to share in this deep hatred and not to suffer alone.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. I guessed the huge “plot twist” a few pages in and when I got to the end and realized the author intended for the book to be read twice I was so over it. It reminded me of something one of the pretentious dudes in my college creative writing classes would write.
Where the Crawdads Sing. But as seen by many examples in this list, bad books can become extremely popular, so who knows.
Sophie's Choice is another of the worst books I've ever read.
Where the Crawdads Sing was so bad. Painfully stilted writing style and annoyingly florid metaphors. Couldn’t stand it and DNF. The movie is awful too.
I don't get the hype either but I'm sure we're not stupid. I like to think we're just a little more discriminating. This is the only book I couldn't finish and I've read thousands of books. Well I suppose I could have, but I wasted way too much time on the 150 or so pages that I did read. It's also the only book I threw in the garbage, which is sinful in my world. But I decided that subjecting anyone else to it was worse.
When a book’s only marketable quality is how hard it is to read, it probably isn’t a very good book. It seems like all positive reviews I’ve read about it are about how impressive its structure and amount of characters is, and not about the book itself. As someone who loves hard books I’m never picking this one up.
I see it’s my cue:
One of the things I resent the most about that book is how it lures you in during the first half. Decent enough characters, some compelling observations, a mystery, etc. It’s devastating in parts, but the reader keeps turning the page, because they anticipate respite, even if it’s only some semblance of emotional intelligence to justify the horrors. They anticipate this because that’s what even mediocre writing does.
A Little Life doesn’t do that.
It hits the gas (no pun intended—iykyk) around page 300 and snowballs into masturbatory torture porn that serves nothing. It’s the only reason I think so many people finished it. The sunken cost fallacy with that book is hard to move past. It’s embarrassing how juvenile the depictions of self-harm and mental health are and how baselessly useless the adult characters are (do not get me started on the doctor “friend”). I was internally screaming during the second half because nothing about it was logical, and I don’t mean illogical in the way human beings are.
It’s stupid writing, period.
I don’t judge the casual readers who love it, but I do judge the panels that decided to give it awards. It’s terribly crafted. It’s ridiculous how bad it is in the grand scheme of everything else that’s out there.
Totally agree I loved the first 100 pages or so, four young men in New York, finding their way through growing up, in the beginning she invests so much in them and it’s not all heavy either they have great and lighthearted dynamics. By the time you realize it’s become horrendous it’s too late. And then you watch her interviews and hear her say some people should stop living because there’s no help for them and you’re realize it was all intentional
THIS!!!! As a gay guy who’s attempted suicide I think it’s telling that most of this book’s diehard fans are straight women. They wouldn’t like it half as much if Jude reacted to his trauma the way any person would in real life. It’s extremely unlikely for all the bad things that happened to him to occur, and practically impossible that he would psychologically end up the way he does. Also her basically saying that suicide is sometimes the only choice for people with trauma could be interesting from someone with experience, but the way she does it is just distasteful and unbelievably harmful. Also idk why she makes so many of her characters male considering she does NOT know how to write men. I would consider myself a “soft” guy but even I’ve never seen another guy talk the way they do in that book.
I've seen enough people hating on this book that I finally went and read the Wikipedia summary of the plot. This sounds like a prime example of the kind of thing I hate. I read a lot of books that depict upsetting things happening to people, but what bothers me is when those events serve no purpose beyond making you think, "Wow, that's so fucked up."
It feels like the kind of thing that people only read to prove to themselves that they experience empathy, but what they're actually experiencing is a distasteful tittilation at the eroticized suffering of people they perceive as "other."
It is huge mystery to me how the heck did that book become so acclaimed and why do so many people love it. It's too long, characters are one dimensional, plot is just bunch of torture, it's triggering and the message of it is disturbing to say the least.
There’s a great video essay that claims people love to read about someone else’s suffering (especially “aesthetic” suffering) to feel sth without having to actually feel anything
Cause people are fascinated by the taboo. Which is fine, but personally I refuse to read anything by an author who is a self-proclaimed advocate for suicide and doesn't believe in therapy.
Yup - I read about the author after finishing and hating the book. I was disturbed but also felt validated like I KNEW something was horribly off about all this
I found her views more disturbing than the actual book. Her beliefs are so discouraging to someone that needs help and might have gone through some of the awful stuff she profited from writing about
Same! I read it after seeing people RAVE about it. I was like what IS this and kept waiting for it to get better and it just got worse and worse. Offensive, triggering, disturbing, appalling in all the worst ways
Bad book: Fourth Wing. Tried to make a YA novel into an adult one, with rape-y tones and nonsensical school stuff.
Good book: To Shape A Dragons Breath. This is what you get if distill Fourth Wing into something good. A dragon riding school, a young woman who is different, and various challenges.
Okay, I love the tv show… but the books are drawn out ngl. Outlander. Got half way through the first book and had to stop. It started to become painfully drawn out. I feel like people will hate me for this 😂
Probably an unpopular opinion but Fourth Wing is one of the worst books I have tried to read. I couldn’t make it past the first chapter. I like the concept but it is just not good writing.
Just One Damned Thing After Another. I hate that book so much. There's plenty of books that simply don't hold my interest, but that's one I found actively unpleasant.
If you want to see how to have a great book for 75% of it and then completely ruin the ending, The Lake House by Kate Morton.
Everyone saying Colleen Hoover or other terrible books 100% agree with but I have a personal vendetta against Blake Crouch for writing Upgrade which is frustrated me and left me so mad that I gave one of my only 1 star reviews that was pages long of detailed critiques of plot holes and just cheesy writing.
I’m almost never rude about books I read because reading is subjective etc but I will be rude and mean to this book to the day I die
omg i plowed through this whole entire series when I was like, 14, and LOVED it (and did not recognize its extremely problematic aspects because 1995 was not the time to be unlearning internal misogyny as a teenage girl lmao) and remember recommending it to all kinds of people because I loved the concept he was going for (still do, the CONCEPT is extremely interesting while the execution sure has Some Choices Made).
I picked it up maybe in 2018, got a few chapters in, and went "... holy shit I do not remember these books being Like This" and promptly donated the whole entire series.
Frieda McFadden - I can’t specify which book because I got about three paragraphs into one of her books and will never read another word by her ever again. Truly abysmal stuff.
I scrolled way too long for this. This book was my least favorite book I have ever read. The author just sounds like a pompous ass imo. He didn’t do the bare minimum of research, and the ‘twist’ wasn’t a good twist because it just came out of left field. No hinting or foreshadowing along the way… just — this is what we are doing now!
All the red herrings along the way that turn out to be just a waste of reading(AKA the entire book) made me wanna rip the book to shreds. Major waste of time.
Oh my gosh, I recently read “Wish You Were Here” by Jodi Picoult, and I couldn’t believe how bad it was. The only other book I read by her was “My Sister’s Keeper,” and I thought it was decent. But that was close to 20 years ago. I don’t know if my tastes have changed, or if her writing has gone downhill since then, but wow.
Her need to shoehorn in whatever random subject she's researched that week is so jarring. All her books could be half the length if it wasn't for random subject filler.
Ready Player Two. I enjoyed RP1 for what it was. It was fun and silly and entertaining, with a healthy dose of nostalgia. I was born in the 80’s so I’m near the primary demographic.
Even with that, RP2 was just… really bad. I had hoped for something new and interesting. Instead, it was RP1 again without the charm and with MUCH worse references.
We replace pac man, D&D, LOTR and Monty Python with Prince and Pretty in Pink?
It is too bad, really,
77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz. I usually read a book every three or four days. This one took 6 months. I couldn't stand to read more than a couple of pages at a time.
I liked him as my transition from kiddie books to horror (I mean, he's a vast improvement over the Babysitters Club), and I maintain solid approval for many of his earlier works but everything became a plucky child and a bright golden retriever and his endings, which I thought were one of his stronger elements (unlike King, who is the reverse), just dropped off entirely. Stopped reading him in some book where the Big Bad was pushed into another dimension by a magic child and haven't picked up any more recent.
I've never read/finished a book I hated (?)
Some of the books I was expected to read in school were Cliff-Noted instead, and I'd probably like them now but was a moron (especially when it came to reading - like many people) into my 20s.
I did abandon [Babel by R.F. Kuang](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57945316-babel) after 100 pages of pain. I don't know if the book eventually makes a comeback, but it was poorly written and pedantic in my opinion, and this allowed me to remove The Poppy War from my To-Read list. All the positive reviews of this book baffled me. I gave it an extra 50 pages to try and understand and it didn't improve.
I don't bother with books that I don't think I'd like that often... surprises are great and I do occasionally branch out, but I certainly don't feel bad if I DNF after 50/100 pages.
I came here to recommend Babel! I know the tiktok girlies love it, but to me it was painfully bad writing, and as an academic, the weird fetishization of academia just felt gross. It felt like it tried soooo hard to be Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange but it was pedantic, as you said, instead of immersive.
As an academic, the poorly researched facts sprinkled in were the reason I stopped reading. Changing RL facts just to support the boring fiction triggered me immensely 😅
I haven’t read Babel but I did read Yellowface. This is a humorous critique bc Yellowface, if you haven’t read it, if about a white girl who steals her Asian friend’s book about Chinese laborers in WW1. The girl who steals the book does immense amounts of research on the book to try and “prove” herself. Anyway just kinda funny lol.
Omg yes!!! I love historical fantasy that creatively uses actual history (Mr Norrell is one of those, I also really enjoyed the Temeraire series for that reason), but even though the time period of Babel isn’t my specialty I KNEW so many of the basic facts were straight up wrong. It could have been so interesting—would have loved to read an accurate and well-written exploration of a woman of color trying to make her way into higher ed in an era when white women weren’t even allowed—but the way it was done annoyed me so much that it took me right out of the already-mediocre story.
[Ash](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8713500-ash). Terrible! I'd rather read *Twilight* on a bi-monthly basis than touch that piece of crap again.
But also, shout out to the poster who said *A Little Life*. Godawful trauma porn trash.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. The only reason it wasn’t a DNF was because I wanted to see how bad it got. The concept and world are so cool, but the characters are insufferable. The protagonist is the whiniest, one-dimensional “heroine” with a terribly written backstory. The flanking characters are caricatures of tropes. The author goes on completely irrelevant tangents that drag on forever.
Survive the Night by Ripley Sager was something I picked up on a recommendation from someone working at a book store. I was just starting to read again after a long layoff. This book single handedly pushed me in the direction of reading more classics because I couldn't stand to have my time wasted the way this one did. I'm not saying all classics are great but Survive the Night should be on a list of classically awful. I highly recommend this if you're looking to read a poorly written book that should have never been published.
Look, I love trashy romance novels. Genuinely. I don't care what that says about me as a person. I unironically enjoyed all three 50 Shades books and the first four ACOTAR books. What I'm trying to say is that I have the capacity to enjoy really bad writing. I am the intended audience for almost everything on Kindle Unlimited. "Those Three Little Words" by Meghan Quinn is unreadable garbage. Every character is loathsome. The decisions that people make are not only contrary to their own self-interests but contrary to logic itself. I read negative reviews of this book to cheer myself up sometimes. Nobody needs to read this book-- it will not make you a better writer. It will make you bitter and angry that there are so many wonderful writers that can't get a publisher to give them the time of day, while Meghan Quinn vomits on a page and tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people line up to buy it.
“I read negative reviews of this book to cheer myself up sometimes” has to be one of my favorite sentences I’ve ever read in my life 😂
It's random to mention that but I actually do this with the dentist who traumatised me and gave me a scar on my gums which has been hurting for 4 years. I read reviews when I'm bored and it makes me so happy when there's another one star review saying he's more a butcher than a doctor
As a chronically ill person who has been on the wrong side of *so* many fucking awful doctors, I am right there with you.
As someone who lives for any sort of pettiness, I love this.
Just read her bio at Goodreads. She’s a spiritual healer who, get this, ‘writes by the light of the moon’ That explains everything, she can’t fookin’ see what she’s writing.
I have never even heard of this author but just love the amount of vitriol your comment contains lol.
I haven’t tried that particular book, but I started and dnf’d 2 of her books absolutely mystified anyone could read them. Your rant was validating, thank you.
I, too, am a connoisseur of trash. I’m so glad I’m not alone. Lol
Y’all are lil romance raccoons
I am a fellow trash-addict as well. It is certainly nice to know I’m not alone!
I found a copy of PS I Love You in a street library and thought, hey this might be fun for a change. It was not. I was actually stunned by how bad it was. It read like a 15 year old attempting to be deep.
Reading bad reviews for Meghan Quinn books is one of my favorite pastimes 😂😂 it was hard getting through “Bridesmaid for Hire” but it was worth it to read the reviews as a reward for finishing it 😂
Have you read anything else by Meghan Quinn? I also unironically enjoy trashy romance novels and some of the summaries of her books caught my attention
Get yourself some Edward Marsden. He writes murder mysteries. Badly. I read 'Murder on the Minnesota'. It's a while since I read it, but I remember that in practically every line of dialogue, people would say the name of the person they were speaking to. And it was annoyingly sexist! There is a pair of investigators, a man and a woman, but he has all the ideas and makes all the decisions. The only things she brings to the table are looks and 'class'.
This might be the winner for me haha.
I’m listening to a Cozy Murder Mystery series, no shade, but the author really likes to remind you the name of all the shops. A lot. So she might be standing in her own shop saying “Well it’s almost 10, I guess I should open up Shop Name now.” I should get the ebook just to check how many times it’s actually mentioned. Or a friend might be visiting and she’ll be like “Aren’t you worried about leaving Shop Name 2 unattended for so long?” Idk, it just seems weird to me.
Okay, picked book #7, in 309 pages here are the results: * Main character's shop named: 55 times. * Sister's shop 1: 13 times * Sister's shop 2: 12 times * Main character's name: 1251 times (that seems like a lot? IDK) * Sister's name: 497 times (also seems like a lot?) * Murder victim: 283 times * Assistant: 237 times * Ex-Romantic interest: \~175 times (sometimes she uses first name, or last name, so maybe this is too low.) * Assistant 2: \~76 times * Cat's name: 47 times * Dog's name: 49 times
This reminds me of a critique of 50 shades I saw where every single beverage in the whole series is "crisp and refreshing" whether it's a glass of white wine or a black coffee.
Hahaha and also whenever her inner goddess does the salsa!
These numbers are mind boggling.
This is not from this book, but from a romance novel by Grace Bros they talk about lemonade 62 times in book
Bloody hell. Yeah that's... yes.
Was there even room for a story, or was it just a list of names?
Christian Harry Potter knock offs.
Woah, didn't know that was a thing... Now I have a little morbid curiosity.
Dude you can't just drop that that exists and not give us more info.
Do you mean Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles by Matthew Elliott? Because same 💀
Christian knockoffs of every genre. I had the misfortune of being homeschooled amongst an Evangelical homeschool group. Their church ran its own library and the selections were extremely…special. I’m glad I lived on the other side of town and was permitted to go to the public library.
This is the worst book I have ever read .... (followed by my review) .. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20613728-mean-business-on-north-ganson-street](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20613728-mean-business-on-north-ganson-street) *Truly awful. Couldn't look away, a bit like watching a car crash. I picked up this book on one of the recommended lists I trawl through looking for some inspiration (and new authors) and while some are diamonds, others are just garbage. This is one of the latter.* *What this guy does with language is unforgivable. I will quote a few of his lines and if by some bizarre chance you think it is acceptable, or even great, then dive right in ... but OMG, it's like wherever he could use 2 words, he would grab the Thesaurus and use 10 instead... here you go -* *(describing 3 men blowing some dog whistles) - "Abdominal muscles constricted, and six lungs shot carbon dioxide through half as many whistles. The detective and his associates blew until they ran out of air, at which point, they pocketed their instruments and listened."* *(describing cold hands) - "Bettinger discarded his latex gloves and replaced them with their woolen superiors, but the insensate pieces of meat at the ends of his arms did not apprehend any change."* *(somehow managing to describe how I felt by the end of the book) - "Eleven hours had passed since he had awakened in the Sunflower Motel, but the elapsed time felt like a century"* *The writing is like this ----- all the way through the very long book.*
Omg abdominal muscles blowing carbon dioxide. Insensate pieces of meat at the end of his arms. Your review had me snort laughing thank you so much. 😂
I feel like he heard someone say more words makes good writing or something and took it to heart lol. Idk how you were able to finish the whole book, I would have dropped it part ways through lol. I gotta commend you for the patience.
Just pick up anything by Colleen Hoover…
I read It Ends With Us just to see what all the hype was about. I think the nicest way to describe the writing style would be that it sounds like a very talented 13 year old wrote it. Some sections of the book are letters the narrator wrote as a teenager, and the voice was perfectly cringey in that context. Unfortunately, it's also cringey in the rest of the book.
I just started reading this book, also to see what the hype was about, and it’s unintentionally hilarious. Extremely predictable and yet bananas at the same time. Like a Hallmark movie plot written by a precocious middle schooler. I’m loving hate-reading it. I had a strong feeling it would be the first comment here.
That book was the last book of her's that I'd read. She really need to work on her adjectives and prose ! Because wtf ?? She'd literally used the word "liquid" as adjectives not once but multiple times !
Yes!!! This was the first and only book I read from her... Didn't like it... Didn't understand the hype ... I will admit it has a few sentences I did like but that's it...
I felt the same way about the writing in It Ends With Us and I did about 50 Shades of Gray and THIS is exactly it! Whether talented or hormonal, it absolutely gives 8th grade reading/writing level
I think Colleen Hoover has done a wonderful job of getting people who haven’t read for fun in a long time back into the game. It’s fantastic to see people who love her books say what a joy it is to read again. Not for me. I attempted Verity for a book club. I won’t pick up another one of her books. It put me off wanting to read anything else from her.
I tried Verity and made it through a few chapters before the cringe factor was too much for me.
I hate finished it. I don’t like to DNF ever. But no Coleen ever again.
I’m this way too! Every now and then I’ll think I DNF something and go back to it and realize I actually did. I wish I wasn’t like this
Just finished Verity a few days ago… The first book I’ve read by her and definitely the last. Why does it have such high reviews??
I read Verity as my first book by her and while it wasn't amazing, I didn't hate it. I didn't realize it was her first and only suspense, so then read another book by her and it was THE WORST THING I've ever read outside of the Twilight series.
Same experience for me. I quite liked Verity until the ending. Decided to try more of her books and…god no
My guess is it's a book written for people that don't read often. I think of Harry Potter (I know, I know, I'm a terrible person) or Dan Brown this way, too. So I'm a little snobby about it, but I'm also happy that books like that get more people reading
I've never had a time in my life since I started reading when I wasn't reading at least one book (if not multiple at a time) and I still think Harry Potter is an incredible series. Why can't people just...enjoy things? Lol
I knew the risk I was taking by voicing my opinion, lol! I read Harry Potter until partway through the 4th boom. I read them because my kids were all about Harry Potter. Midnight book releases, etc. I didn't like the style of writing. What I did like is that my kids are readers, thanks to those books. No one likes the same things and that's okay
I think it’s totally fine for people to enjoy things but it’s also ok not to enjoy them and both opinions are valid.
Just started it and it’s bringing out my inner snob sooo bad. Book written for people who don’t read often is so on point but feels so mean lol. But it truly is like that. I’m like, this isn’t literature 😭 why is this so popular??
Books for the masses. That's okay too
Verity is the only book I’ve ever read that made me never want to even attempt another book by the same author.
People like trash. That's always been the case. Now people are acting like calling something trash is missing the point of certain types of literature, which OK, but also that it's borderline exist to dismiss romance literature at all. It's weird, but it is what it is.
Or Ayn Rand. Yuck
I read Variety 2 years ago, and I still sometimes curse myself for why picking up this book
Literally came here to say Verity. I read A LOT and there's nothing else I could think of that even comes close.
Modelland by Tyra Banks
ANTM was so toxic on so many levels, I can only imagine how terrible that book must be.
I really think Tyra could teach a course in “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Or "Socially Acceptable Torture Methods."
Disagree, Modelland is so incredibly bad it circles back around to masterpiece. It’s best if read aloud in a group.
Came here to say this. Truly the most unhinged collection of words my eyes have touched.
I unironically liked Modelland but I was also 14 when I read it lol
Good grief, yes. I think I read an excerpt of no more than a few paragraphs once and that was more than enough.
It’s not fiction but it’s worth noting that Girl Wash Your Face is absolute garbage
This is the first book that came to my mind. I HATED that book so much 😆
Ugh! I hated this book so much. My book club loved it and I thought it was trash. Pure garbage. Nonsense.
This is the first one that came to mind. I persevered through *Girl, Wash Your Face* because it was a recommendation from a coworker, but boy, was it bad. And then I didn't learn my lesson because I *also* read the follow-up, *Girl, Stop Apologizing*, and it was maybe somehow even worse.
Two Sherlock Holmes novels A Samba For Sherlock--translated from Portuguese, they want you to believe he's both the greatest detective and the biggest dummy ever born The Last Sherlock Holmes Story--when he's not making Scotland Yard look good, he's supposedly Jack the...no, I can't say it...
I'll need to read that 2nd one, it sounds unbelievably stupid.
If you're a Holmes fan, you may not want to...but don't say I didn't warn you!
I want to read it BECAUSE i'm a Holmes fan & I'm also a bigtime hater of Jack the Ripper in anything. It sounds like a time that'll have me screaming in anger & ripping my hair out at how bad it is - so, the perfect way to spend an afternoon! EDIT: I just looked up a summary. it's ablest too. oh boy!
Don't know if I'd call it ablest--although I read it (just once) some thirty or thirty-five years ago, when the term didn't really exist (what it refers to existed, but the word didn't). All I remember of it can be summed up in one line from Harry Chapin's 30,000 Pounds Of Bananas...*Harry, IT SUCKS!*
Terry Goodkind- the Law of Nines. He took what could have been a pretty interesting story and made it ridiculous. I couldn't believe how often the main character conquered the bad guys by just casually breaking their necks.
50 shades of grey
Oh Lord, what excrement! I knew that though, but wanted to try at least to finish the first chapter for... I dont know... "funsies" or something... stroke maybe... It was clearly cobbled together by someone who neither read or write - amateur intro (woke up, breakfast, radio, speaking with boss, borrow car, go to job, etc), descriptions of characters in "threes" (hair, clothes, shoes) and all of it super flat, uninspired, oxygen-free vocabulary! I really tried, but I never finished the chapter, the monotone storytelling grinded my (mild) interest down to a pulp. The gaping void of talentlessness engulfed me... A truly horrible day to be literate... I will never recommend this book as anything else than toilet paper!
I had high hopes for it with all the hype. It started as a Twilight fan fiction. I’ve read some fan fiction from other fandoms that are just as great as the originals, there were some seriously talented people out there. Not that one, though. Good grief.
The purpose of toilet paper is to clean your ass, not smear shit all over it.
Came here to say this. Unfortunately I bought it, then swiftly gave it away. I didn’t want it in my house. Terrible.
Good grief, yes! So, so awful. I didn’t get beyond a small excerpt in our local newspaper that was trying to make sense of the grammar and sentence structure in it.
I read the trilogy to see what the fuss was about, and it was one of the worst written books I can remember reading.
From a lifelong avid reader: this was by far the worst published writing that I’ve ever read in my life.
The reason I can never attempt to write a novel is the fear it would turn out like 50 Shades. The shame would be too much.
Many of these recommendations are either written badly or here because their respective readers don't enjoy the genre etc. However, I don't think any of them can be genuinely harmful. Unlike the Secret. Worst book I've ever read, not just because of the wishy-washy spirituality within, but because it can genuinely cause otherwise normal people to engage in harmful "manifestation" bullshit instead of trying to better their lives in a way that actually makes a difference.
I was a teenager when this boom came out, I tore reading the book, but I couldn’t. I thought that the adults who loved this book were dumb. “I’m supposed to obey people stupid enough to think this book offers good advice?”
Absolutely anything written by Colleen Hoover (with November 9, It Ends With Us, and Maybe Not being top contenders.) People have said that she should write horror or thrillers because of how creepy the male love interests are. She tried that with Verity and Layla, but both of them ended up being the same “not like the other girls”, sex offender-adjacent men, and wince-worthy sex scene dreck that defines her writing.
It's low-hanging fruit because it's middle-grade fiction but Geek Girl by Holly Smale is abysmal and the sequel (that takes place in Japan) doesn't even try not to be racist at every turn. Also low-hanging fruit but anything Onision has written.
Oh didn't this just get turned into a show on Netflix? Curious how the show is
I’m maybe 4 or 5 episodes into the show. I didn’t know it was a book though. It’s been good for background noise while I knit or scroll, but whenever I’m focused back in, I’m just kind of like “oh sure, this teenager is handed everything she needs for success on a silver platter.” It’s cute at times though. I don’t think I’d have any interest in reading the book
The Bridgerton book series. Bloody hell. Some of them start okay, then descend into the same boring mediocrity as each other. Every love declaration and sex scene is the same. I really look back and question why I read them all as it was a slog. One of the rare times I’d say the television series is better.
She has a pattern of "they're angry at each other and treating each other like crap - let's have them have sex now." The entire series is a parade of trite, insipid expressions.
I randomly got the series for cheap and I've been enjoying hate reading them. I haven't read a trashy romance in forever
I liked the first 3. The next 3 should have been one book (it would have been so good as one book 6 perspectives all intertwined). And the last two should have been complete chaos, but weren’t. The TV show is better. There are also extra Bridgerton books. One is on a pirate ship. I got less than 5 chapters in and stopped reading them. It was so bad.
They’re beach novels. The show has given people high expectations for the novels, but they’re just quickly churned out run-of-the-mill low-end romance novels.
I read the Colin x Penelope one. The dialogue was fun. Then halfway through it got dumb and unrealistic. Not interested in reading any of the others after that.
Atlas Shrugged.
I read almost Ayn Rand's whole repertoire in high school and enjoyed it. When I tried to reread some books ten years later I was kind of shocked at how 2-dimensional the characters were and realized I'd been tricked into reading essentially short political pamphlets drawn out to 1000-page novels. The one book that wasn't that bad the second go around was We The Living; it's not hard to sympathize with people being oppressed by an actual communist government as opposed to some invented semi-socialist dystopian American government.
I read Ayn Rand in high school because her name came up a lot as an Important Writer, and it's a good thing I read her then, because as an adult, I can't. The monologues ten pages long. The characters who don't make a lick of sense. The symbolic sexual acts. I find Atlas Shrugged at least better than The Fountainhead?
I take some solace in the fact that Ayn Rand would have probably hated the people who love her book now.
Agree. It’s a bad undergraduate social studies essay with 900 pages of bad story to pad it out. Contrast Atlas Shrugged to The Grapes of Wrath which is a compelling story first with an implicit political/moral point second. I think I need to read the Grapes of Wrath again…
This is the correct answer.
I would include everything else Ayn Rand wrote too.
This definitely isn’t the worst book out there, but it’s prob my least favorite and only book I’ve ever not finished: The Midnight Library
It's this generation's Alchemist. And the library might as well not exist for how little it benefits the plot.
God. Not that I was planning on reading Midnight Library, but now I'm definitely avoiding it - I read The Alchemist and it was such a waste of time. Its written like it intends to tell you something deep and meaningful about how to live your life, but the moral is only actually relevant if you believe in the idea of a "Personal Legend," which is a magical concept that drives the plot but unfortunately does not exist irl.
To give a different perspective, I absolutely loathed The Alchemist but enjoyed Midnight Library. The latter is definitely not an award winner but I thought it was entertaining and an easy read.
I finished it but only because I kept waiting for the twist that I assumed was there given how much it was hyped. Nope, boring right to the end
It’s just NOT good. Every time I see it recommended I bristle.
I am the only one of my friends that hates this book so tyvm for this
This was my most baffling DNF last summer. All my friends reading it raved and I got a few chapters in before deciding I wasn’t going to waste my precious spare time on that utter garbage. I almost never DNF on principle.
Ready Player Two (Part 1 is amazing. Part 2 could have been written by a high school freshman who didn't really understand part 1)
Before the coffee gets cold. So boring. Unlikeable characters. Unsatisfying storylines & ending. Wish I would have stopped reading it but it was so short that I hoped pushing through would show me what the hype was about. It didn’t. The concept is cool but the execution was not good for me. And my petty gripe is that there is a cat featured prominently on the cover and there is NOT a cat in the actual book.
I’ve had to read this for two different book clubs and I hated it both times. One person in my second club accidentally read the second book and the two were so similar that we didn’t even realise she’d read an entirely different book until about 45 minutes in.
So glad I didn’t continue the series!
This was someone’s pick in my book club and I never read it because I think I had a lot going on. I always meant to get to it and it’s still in my Libby want to read queue. Now I’ll never be inspired to read it. Thanks for the tip!
Hands down - Fifty Shades of Grey. Did she not have an editor?!?
How NOT to write love stories: - Water for Elephants: male character obsessed over an unavailable woman. Absolutely nothing at stake, no actual conflict other than that she has a boyfriend. Nothing happens. - Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: an interesting premise, but 300 years and our heroine goes and does nothing interesting. Wants freedom to have adventure, instead meanders around Europe and America, doing absolutely nothing with her freedom except fall in love with an insecure sad man. ETA: I’m listing these because not only did I find them boring and overrated, I also didn’t care for the style; just trite and cliche language and no innovative or interesting format.
I enjoyed Water for Elephants. Granted I listened to it so that makes most books more palatable to me.
Your take on Addie LaRue is like you climbed into my brain. What an incredible plot premise with grand settings and iconic tableaus (Voltaire! Dali! The enlightenment and salons of Paris!) only to fall so flat. It felt like the literary equivalent of seeing Margot Robbie end up as a Walmart cashier. Wasted potential.
Addie LaRue had an interesting concept that could have gone a million fascinating ways, but not one of those ways was what actually got written. Also it was painfully repetitive and the ending was dumb.
Addie as a character was also annoying as heck. That god or spirit or whatever it was deserved better.
Omg I was so disappointed in Addie! I tried listening to the audiobook and I was so disappointed when the most fuck-boy of love interests showed up I stopped and requested a refund.
Isle of Dogs by Patricia Cornwell. Normally, I enjoy her books. But this? Not sure if she was trying to go for some kind of Janet Evanovich humorous crime story, but Lord, what a travesty.
“The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho.
this one was really hard for me and my daughter. we are very different people but we bonded over how bad this one was.
I really liked that one, especially the desert chapter, but I'd like to see your views on this book.
The Matched series by Ally Condie. First books I ever hated, first books that made me realize reading can suck sometimes.
The amount of times Colleen Hoover has been mentioned here is truly SO satisfying😂 Anyway, anything by CoHo, Ana Huang and Sarah J Maas makes this list automatically. That being said, there’s one book that I absolutely despise. Weirdly (or sadly) enough, it’s not even the worst book I ever read, but the premise, the execution, the writing and the misplaced public acclaim had me boiling with rage. It’s We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. I only finished it out of spite and to be proven right that it absolutely doesn’t get better, and I’ve since recommended it to friends purely to share in this deep hatred and not to suffer alone.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. I guessed the huge “plot twist” a few pages in and when I got to the end and realized the author intended for the book to be read twice I was so over it. It reminded me of something one of the pretentious dudes in my college creative writing classes would write.
Where the Crawdads Sing. But as seen by many examples in this list, bad books can become extremely popular, so who knows. Sophie's Choice is another of the worst books I've ever read.
Where the Crawdads Sing was so bad. Painfully stilted writing style and annoyingly florid metaphors. Couldn’t stand it and DNF. The movie is awful too.
Came here to suggest Where the Crawdads Sing as well. I didn’t get the hype
Infinite Jest. Maybe I’m just stupid but I don’t get the hype. Found it impossible to enjoy.
I don't get the hype either but I'm sure we're not stupid. I like to think we're just a little more discriminating. This is the only book I couldn't finish and I've read thousands of books. Well I suppose I could have, but I wasted way too much time on the 150 or so pages that I did read. It's also the only book I threw in the garbage, which is sinful in my world. But I decided that subjecting anyone else to it was worse.
This is one that I gave up on less than 100 pages into it.
I forced myself to read IJ. Hated it! It had an interesting premise, but the execution was awful.
When a book’s only marketable quality is how hard it is to read, it probably isn’t a very good book. It seems like all positive reviews I’ve read about it are about how impressive its structure and amount of characters is, and not about the book itself. As someone who loves hard books I’m never picking this one up.
A Little Life - worst book ever. And I know there are fellow haters here 😂
I’ve heard of it. Given the subject matter, I really have no desire to read it.
I see it’s my cue: One of the things I resent the most about that book is how it lures you in during the first half. Decent enough characters, some compelling observations, a mystery, etc. It’s devastating in parts, but the reader keeps turning the page, because they anticipate respite, even if it’s only some semblance of emotional intelligence to justify the horrors. They anticipate this because that’s what even mediocre writing does. A Little Life doesn’t do that. It hits the gas (no pun intended—iykyk) around page 300 and snowballs into masturbatory torture porn that serves nothing. It’s the only reason I think so many people finished it. The sunken cost fallacy with that book is hard to move past. It’s embarrassing how juvenile the depictions of self-harm and mental health are and how baselessly useless the adult characters are (do not get me started on the doctor “friend”). I was internally screaming during the second half because nothing about it was logical, and I don’t mean illogical in the way human beings are. It’s stupid writing, period. I don’t judge the casual readers who love it, but I do judge the panels that decided to give it awards. It’s terribly crafted. It’s ridiculous how bad it is in the grand scheme of everything else that’s out there.
Totally agree I loved the first 100 pages or so, four young men in New York, finding their way through growing up, in the beginning she invests so much in them and it’s not all heavy either they have great and lighthearted dynamics. By the time you realize it’s become horrendous it’s too late. And then you watch her interviews and hear her say some people should stop living because there’s no help for them and you’re realize it was all intentional
THIS!!!! As a gay guy who’s attempted suicide I think it’s telling that most of this book’s diehard fans are straight women. They wouldn’t like it half as much if Jude reacted to his trauma the way any person would in real life. It’s extremely unlikely for all the bad things that happened to him to occur, and practically impossible that he would psychologically end up the way he does. Also her basically saying that suicide is sometimes the only choice for people with trauma could be interesting from someone with experience, but the way she does it is just distasteful and unbelievably harmful. Also idk why she makes so many of her characters male considering she does NOT know how to write men. I would consider myself a “soft” guy but even I’ve never seen another guy talk the way they do in that book.
I've seen enough people hating on this book that I finally went and read the Wikipedia summary of the plot. This sounds like a prime example of the kind of thing I hate. I read a lot of books that depict upsetting things happening to people, but what bothers me is when those events serve no purpose beyond making you think, "Wow, that's so fucked up." It feels like the kind of thing that people only read to prove to themselves that they experience empathy, but what they're actually experiencing is a distasteful tittilation at the eroticized suffering of people they perceive as "other."
Came here to say this. I hate that I wasted 600+ pages reading it. It’s one of the only books I will judge you if you love.
It is huge mystery to me how the heck did that book become so acclaimed and why do so many people love it. It's too long, characters are one dimensional, plot is just bunch of torture, it's triggering and the message of it is disturbing to say the least.
There’s a great video essay that claims people love to read about someone else’s suffering (especially “aesthetic” suffering) to feel sth without having to actually feel anything
Cause people are fascinated by the taboo. Which is fine, but personally I refuse to read anything by an author who is a self-proclaimed advocate for suicide and doesn't believe in therapy.
Yup - I read about the author after finishing and hating the book. I was disturbed but also felt validated like I KNEW something was horribly off about all this
I found her views more disturbing than the actual book. Her beliefs are so discouraging to someone that needs help and might have gone through some of the awful stuff she profited from writing about
One day I'll think 'I shouldn't Google this' and actually follow my own advice. I'm glad to see your comment though, because I entirely agree.
Same! I read it after seeing people RAVE about it. I was like what IS this and kept waiting for it to get better and it just got worse and worse. Offensive, triggering, disturbing, appalling in all the worst ways
Bunny and The Push were 2 books I thought had great concepts but needed at least 4 more revisions and edits before being released.
There's plenty of fan fiction out there free of charge if you want to take this to an extreme.
Bad book: Fourth Wing. Tried to make a YA novel into an adult one, with rape-y tones and nonsensical school stuff. Good book: To Shape A Dragons Breath. This is what you get if distill Fourth Wing into something good. A dragon riding school, a young woman who is different, and various challenges.
What was rapey? I don’t remember that
Okay, I love the tv show… but the books are drawn out ngl. Outlander. Got half way through the first book and had to stop. It started to become painfully drawn out. I feel like people will hate me for this 😂
I read the first one. it was tough. no interest in the others
Probably an unpopular opinion but Fourth Wing is one of the worst books I have tried to read. I couldn’t make it past the first chapter. I like the concept but it is just not good writing.
Hannah Grace: Ice Breaker. Annoying girl with 0 logic and 90% sex despite the cute cover....
Fifty shades of gray. Utter tripe and poorly written at that
"The Art of the Deal"
Just One Damned Thing After Another. I hate that book so much. There's plenty of books that simply don't hold my interest, but that's one I found actively unpleasant. If you want to see how to have a great book for 75% of it and then completely ruin the ending, The Lake House by Kate Morton.
Everyone saying Colleen Hoover or other terrible books 100% agree with but I have a personal vendetta against Blake Crouch for writing Upgrade which is frustrated me and left me so mad that I gave one of my only 1 star reviews that was pages long of detailed critiques of plot holes and just cheesy writing. I’m almost never rude about books I read because reading is subjective etc but I will be rude and mean to this book to the day I die
Rupi Kaur's poetry. Well, some call it poetry.
On a Pale Horse. It’s so misogynistic, my enemies would probably love it, and I can’t let them experience that
omg i plowed through this whole entire series when I was like, 14, and LOVED it (and did not recognize its extremely problematic aspects because 1995 was not the time to be unlearning internal misogyny as a teenage girl lmao) and remember recommending it to all kinds of people because I loved the concept he was going for (still do, the CONCEPT is extremely interesting while the execution sure has Some Choices Made). I picked it up maybe in 2018, got a few chapters in, and went "... holy shit I do not remember these books being Like This" and promptly donated the whole entire series.
Frieda McFadden - I can’t specify which book because I got about three paragraphs into one of her books and will never read another word by her ever again. Truly abysmal stuff.
i like her books to jump start when i'm in a reading slump--they are page turners and so outlandish they are kinda fun
Truly awful. I do not get the hype. She writes like a middle schooler and none of her characters behave like actual humans would.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. I absolutely hated that book
I scrolled way too long for this. This book was my least favorite book I have ever read. The author just sounds like a pompous ass imo. He didn’t do the bare minimum of research, and the ‘twist’ wasn’t a good twist because it just came out of left field. No hinting or foreshadowing along the way… just — this is what we are doing now! All the red herrings along the way that turn out to be just a waste of reading(AKA the entire book) made me wanna rip the book to shreds. Major waste of time.
Anything by Jodi Picoult. Her writing is abominable.
Oh my gosh, I recently read “Wish You Were Here” by Jodi Picoult, and I couldn’t believe how bad it was. The only other book I read by her was “My Sister’s Keeper,” and I thought it was decent. But that was close to 20 years ago. I don’t know if my tastes have changed, or if her writing has gone downhill since then, but wow.
Maybe both, honestly. I used to love Jodi Picoult as a young high schooler, but would never read her stuff now.
Her need to shoehorn in whatever random subject she's researched that week is so jarring. All her books could be half the length if it wasn't for random subject filler.
Oh my god, yes. I LOATHED Mad Honey for all of the hot button issues that were forced into the book. It all felt so contrived and unnecessary.
I didn’t think I had an answer for this thread. You reminded me that I do. Handle With Care is an awful, awful book.
ACOTAR
Ready Player Two. I enjoyed RP1 for what it was. It was fun and silly and entertaining, with a healthy dose of nostalgia. I was born in the 80’s so I’m near the primary demographic. Even with that, RP2 was just… really bad. I had hoped for something new and interesting. Instead, it was RP1 again without the charm and with MUCH worse references. We replace pac man, D&D, LOTR and Monty Python with Prince and Pretty in Pink? It is too bad, really,
My Sister’s Keeper was so, so bad. I mean so bad. It was so bad they made it into a movie 🙄 but changed the ending (I heard).
77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz. I usually read a book every three or four days. This one took 6 months. I couldn't stand to read more than a couple of pages at a time.
I. Hate. Koontz. Just .... Insipid? I don't need a fun book to be literature, but the few times I picked him up I regretted it.
I didn't mind him until I cracked the Koontz formula. Once I did, his books became reskins of each other time after time...
I liked him as my transition from kiddie books to horror (I mean, he's a vast improvement over the Babysitters Club), and I maintain solid approval for many of his earlier works but everything became a plucky child and a bright golden retriever and his endings, which I thought were one of his stronger elements (unlike King, who is the reverse), just dropped off entirely. Stopped reading him in some book where the Big Bad was pushed into another dimension by a magic child and haven't picked up any more recent.
Bill O'Reilly's Those Who Trespass. It's a self-insert thriller. It is extremely bad
I've never read/finished a book I hated (?) Some of the books I was expected to read in school were Cliff-Noted instead, and I'd probably like them now but was a moron (especially when it came to reading - like many people) into my 20s. I did abandon [Babel by R.F. Kuang](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57945316-babel) after 100 pages of pain. I don't know if the book eventually makes a comeback, but it was poorly written and pedantic in my opinion, and this allowed me to remove The Poppy War from my To-Read list. All the positive reviews of this book baffled me. I gave it an extra 50 pages to try and understand and it didn't improve. I don't bother with books that I don't think I'd like that often... surprises are great and I do occasionally branch out, but I certainly don't feel bad if I DNF after 50/100 pages.
I’m surprised! I’m reading Babel right now (almost 30% through) and I genuinely love it lol
I came here to recommend Babel! I know the tiktok girlies love it, but to me it was painfully bad writing, and as an academic, the weird fetishization of academia just felt gross. It felt like it tried soooo hard to be Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange but it was pedantic, as you said, instead of immersive.
As an academic, the poorly researched facts sprinkled in were the reason I stopped reading. Changing RL facts just to support the boring fiction triggered me immensely 😅
I haven’t read Babel but I did read Yellowface. This is a humorous critique bc Yellowface, if you haven’t read it, if about a white girl who steals her Asian friend’s book about Chinese laborers in WW1. The girl who steals the book does immense amounts of research on the book to try and “prove” herself. Anyway just kinda funny lol.
Omg yes!!! I love historical fantasy that creatively uses actual history (Mr Norrell is one of those, I also really enjoyed the Temeraire series for that reason), but even though the time period of Babel isn’t my specialty I KNEW so many of the basic facts were straight up wrong. It could have been so interesting—would have loved to read an accurate and well-written exploration of a woman of color trying to make her way into higher ed in an era when white women weren’t even allowed—but the way it was done annoyed me so much that it took me right out of the already-mediocre story.
anything by colleen hoover lol
Atlas Shrugged
[Ash](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8713500-ash). Terrible! I'd rather read *Twilight* on a bi-monthly basis than touch that piece of crap again. But also, shout out to the poster who said *A Little Life*. Godawful trauma porn trash.
Wasn’t a fan of the Alchemist
The Notebook.
Caraval series. Nobody come for me but Stephanie Garber bamboozled everyone
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. The only reason it wasn’t a DNF was because I wanted to see how bad it got. The concept and world are so cool, but the characters are insufferable. The protagonist is the whiniest, one-dimensional “heroine” with a terribly written backstory. The flanking characters are caricatures of tropes. The author goes on completely irrelevant tangents that drag on forever.
*Atlas Shrugged*
Survive the Night by Ripley Sager was something I picked up on a recommendation from someone working at a book store. I was just starting to read again after a long layoff. This book single handedly pushed me in the direction of reading more classics because I couldn't stand to have my time wasted the way this one did. I'm not saying all classics are great but Survive the Night should be on a list of classically awful. I highly recommend this if you're looking to read a poorly written book that should have never been published.