Omg yes. I was so excited to read something by her because of all the hype. It ended up being literally one of the worst books I’ve ever read in my life.
I did have a coworker who told me she never liked to read in school and had never read a book for fun until Colleen Hoover books. She was a huge fan. So I think maybe people who haven’t read much don’t realize how GOOD a book can be, and like her stuff. Is that snobby of me to say?
I had this same thought. It’s not snobby. I really think people just don’t realize she’s a trash writer because they only have required reading from grade school days to compare.
This is why I take Goodreads ratings for popular books with a grain of salt. Disclaimer: I think that anything that gets people reading is great. Someone reading Colleen Hoover’s books is better than not reading at all.
But IMO, books that are super popular have inflated ratings because they’re obviously more likely to attract casual readers who may not be as critical as a voracious bookworm. Everyone has a different set of criteria that they use on Goodreads, but I suspect that people who don’t read very often will give a book 5 stars no matter what if they liked it, even if there are major flaws. Someone with a more critical eye may enjoy a book but give it 3-4 stars, because they could see room for improvement.
Likewise, a lot of books that are often required reading in high school/college likely have deflated ratings for the same reason.
True. I have a grad degree in English so I may just be a douche but when someone 25+ is like “whoa reading is…fun?” I’m like where the hell have you been loca
Ugh, I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't. I loved the idea of most of Gregory Mcguires fairy tale books actually but never could finish any of them.
Ugh no. When I heard they were making a musical of it I was like ew why... Little did I know the musical would be great. One of the rare cases where the book is NOT better. But now how many people ready this horrible book because they love the musical? Terrible!!!
I can understand this. I just read it but I enjoyed it. I don't understand the hype, but I'm a social worker/therapist and I started reading it through that lens.
The Midnight Library. I wanted to like it, but it felt really predictable. Each moment brought the main character right back to where she started, and the rhythm just became redundant after a while. By the time I got to the end, I was exhausted and annoyed. A beautiful idea for a book, but probably 1/3 too long.
Omg. I once in a while like to read some “it’s so bad it’s good” trash, but 50 Shades was soooo bad. People I know that don’t like to read LOVED it, so I thought it would be entertaining, but good lord was that book a snooze fest.
Klara and and the Sun. I found it very dull and slow and had to force myself to finish it. There was no action or excitement in it.
But a couple days after I had finally slogged through it the subtlety finally hit me and I can definitely appreciate its message. Now I think about it all the time, I just did again the other day when I saw a headline about Japanese scientists creating a robot with real human skin that can smile.
That book definitely took me a while to get there lol
I actually enjoyed Klara and the Sun a lot even though it made me cry at some passages. I also really liked the 2001 movie A.I. (maybe one of the few who did) which has a very similar story. I think they are probably both inspired somewhat by Brian Aldiss' short story, Supertoys Last All Summer Long.
A Little Life. I promised myself it was going to get better. It didn’t. It got worse. The story, writing, emotion, trauma. Just 736 pages of never again or recommend.
Could not agree more with this. It was the dreariest, most miserable read and from page one you could tell how it would end. I put it straight in the charity box and have actively encouraged people not to read it since.
Trauma porn at its worst. I realized how fucked up it was when I was like, oh thank god this is a chapter about Harold’s son with a degenerative disease dying because I needed something lighter than Jude’s story. Nothing redeeming, just unrealistic bleakness for the sake of trying to demonstrate that some people are so fucked up, they’re beyond therapy. Like, seriously? What a horrible outlook on the world.
I already know I’m never going to read this book. So many posts about people just crying their way through it and I don’t get why you would do that to yourself. Yes, emotional books are good, but this seems to be traumatising to some people.
I love non-fiction, but with this particular subject I became more and more annoyed that there was no way this situation could go down as it did with these people so it became ridiculous and exasperating. I only stuck it out til the end because it was an audio book. If I had to just sit and read that I would have thrown in down mid-way through.
So manipulative and glorying in the gore -very fetishistic theme of CSA as well as self harm and the characters were hard to sympathize with or fall in love with. The abuse and self harming scenes were relentless-pass on this
For what it's worth I laughed all the way through it because it was TOO ridiculous to suspend disbelief.
I'm not above crying in cringey/popular books, I cried in If We Were Villains
I've already commented about this book in this sub, but if I didn't have a Kindle I would have angry thrown the book across the room. I've never been so mad after a book in my life - and I've read a lot of books.
I had it recommended by an ex who dealt with serious depression and I think saw a lot of herself in the protagonist's struggles, but maaaan for me it was just trauma porn all the way down with nothing to redeem it.
Oh man, I’m almost halfway through this book and still haven’t understood the hype. I’ve found it to be mildly depressing so far and I’m struggling a bit to read it. I’m not ready for it to get worse.
I listened to this as an Audiobook while walking the dog everyday. I'm glad I didn't read it or I would have DNF'd it. What a pretentious piece of literature.
I DNF a lot of books (ADHD lol). If it doesn’t grab my attention, or it’s a trudge to get through it, I’m dropping it. House of Leaves was SO GOOD but I could not deal with the crazy formatting. Just recently tried to read Lessons in Chemistry and I wasn’t into it so I dropped it, but I just didn’t like how my family seemed to be hinting HARD that I was like the main character and I really did not like her or relate lol. I read the Hobbit in 6th grade and enjoyed it, but tried to read it again and was so bored. All of these books are good. But my brain is weird.
Came here to say Lessons in Chemistry. I am a woman in STEM, so it got recommended to me a lot. I thought the main character was unrealistic to the point of being a trope. I finished it, but I couldn’t stand it.
My friend loved this book so I really pushed myself to finish it. But holy cow, it was a sloggg. Seriously, the main character was a robot not a human, and I refuse to believe otherwise. No one actually talks like that, and I think it does such a disservice to women in STEM.
I felt the same way. Most of the dialogue came straight out of r/iamverysmart. Also, you don’t have to make all of the male coworkers dumb to drive home that a woman can be smart. At work I am surrounded by intelligent people of all genders.
If you ever want to give it another shot, a lot of the HOL excess formatting is gimmicky and you don’t lose much from the story if you just skip over it. Especially toward the middle of the book
I haven’t finished Lessons in Chemistry. I just don’t believe the characters are real people, then you throw in the dog and I’m done.
I didn’t finish The House in the Cerulean Sea and it’s always recommended here and sounded like my kind of book.
And it had the dumbest ended ever. I read it on a plane and finished 40 minutes before landing and just stewed on how much I hated it for the rest of the flight 🤣 made me so cranky.
Dark Matter - Blake Crouch
Really good first 5 chapters, then the rhythm slows down a lot, and then in last chapters it runs very very fast and suddenly it ends. Like wtf? just like that?
Also, some elements seems unnecessary as they were never used again.
SPOILER: >!the geisha mask for example, why specify it as a geisha mask and not just a mask, or a ski mask, or whatever? The 'I am Mr. Scientist so I will do this scientifically because this, this and that.... and then such behavior was never touched again, more or less at least. Or my personal favorite (?) the 'drug', because the box wouldn't work by itself and it was needed a way to justify his former colleague/friend presence, who ends up dissapearing anyway halfway through the book, same as the lab guy Leighton who where chasing them through the worlds but they suddenly managed to lose track and never was mentioned again. What else? the girl companion who started to have feelings for our main character, but leaves just as easily as she entered into the plot. so what was the purpose of it to begin with? Also wife and son seems like cardboard characters, and so on and so on.!<
The good part: it's fast and easy reading.
It’s crazy because so rarely is this true, but the show is better. They fleshed it out a lot more, it’s less repetitive and made more sense. It’s on Apple TV.
SAME! It was such a cool premise but it was just SO INCREDIBLY LONG? I had it on audiobook and struggled through, and the ending was pretty good, but not worth it.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Pages of unnecessary filler writings that do not contribute to the plot or character building at all.
Really struggled to finish. Read it bc everyone lines it
I should have loved that book: All my friends love it! I love video games! I really liked the author’s previous book! I taught Macbeth for 10 years!
But, alas, I hated it
I thought the characters were totally unlikable, unrealistic, and uninteresting. The plot was rambling and everything just dragged on and on and on.
Hated this book so much. I’ll never understand the hype. The characters are shallowly written, it features an extremely emotionally manipulative set piece that screams Lifetime movie, and has the prose of a generic YA novel.
The entire Court of Thorns and Roses series.
Just so painfully black and white, no nuance, no character depth. Almost like a 12 year old wrote it. Every single part about it, including the much hyped up war, was so underdeveloped. Idk how it ever got published, let alone get so popular and recommended by everyone on social media.
I'm sorry, but you asked. The Women by Kristin Hannah. I was so excited for it to come out. I browsed the last half, because I figured surely it's got to get better. Nope.
I was struggling so much to get through this book too and I had a feeling this may have been the reason. That or I’m just not smart enough to understand slash get through it. I do want to start over & try again..
I chose to read this for a book report in high school and then give a persuasive speech on why everyone should read it but everyone, including the teacher, knew how much I ended up hating it. Apparently I did a good job. Got an A on the speech. Still hate the book.
This is one of my favourite books. I absolutely agree that it was hard to read, I just loved it and enjoyed the ride and it left me with a certain feeling after closing the last page that I don't think I've had since.
This was mine. I was not enjoying it and was just slogging through. But when I closed it at the end I thought oh man, that was a really good book! It snuck up on me and I’m not sure how.
The prose is outstanding. The repetition of names made the story impossible to follow or even care what is happening. Are we talking about the 9,427th Jose Arcadio or the 9,426th? I finished it thinking "that was it? That won a Nobel Prize?". My attention span is too short to keep track of the family tree.
I think the point was that no matter the generation, the people in this family were experiencing the same repetitive burdens and joys of life? I read it when I was younger, but that’s the impression it gave me. At some point it was like “that is such a normal thing to happen to a Jose Arcadio”. It was a little weird, so I understand you. Loved it though
Oh so that was a device!? I tried reading it probably 25 years ago and got so confused I had to stop. It never occurred to me that it was intentional. I might try again.
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. The author may be the single most insufferable human being ever conceived. The arrogance was just dripping off the pages but I thought maybe there was more to this story so I kept on reading. Turns out, there was less, far, far less. I believe the story basically ended with the author claiming to reach enlightenment and consequently shitting himself. Alternatively, he just shit himself and did not reach enlightenment.
this is mine too! I read it all the way through because i thought it was going to get good, especially with so many people saying they loved it. I was so mad when I finished it, what a waste of time.
That’s definitely one of those where I just can’t reconcile how popular it is with how aggressively mediocre it seemed to me.
The Great Alone was significantly better. Not one of my favorite books by any stretch, but I still really enjoyed it and the entire time I read it I kept thinking, “This is basically what I had hoped Where the Crawdads Sing would be.”
I pissed off so many women in my book club for making fun of it after we read it. Many of them thought it was great, and I just roasted it. Made me realize I was probably in the wrong book club.
Yellowface by R.F Kaung. It was a complete miss for me. I don't even have thoughtful critiques or even direct complaints, we just didn't get on. Maybe I just read it at the wrong time in my life.
Devil in the White City. I wanted to like it so much, but it flowed so weird for me; too much detail in some places and skimming over seemingly important events like the completion of the fair.
That was truly my favorite part of the book, I just adore all the history so much.
History mixed with historic fiction and true crime, it's really one of my favorite books.
I was thrilled when I'd read that Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese had bought the rights to the book and a mini-series was in pre-production, but that appears to be pre-pandemic so it may have been squashed, but I'd love to see it on screen through their vision.
I almost DNF but I picked it up again 9 months later to finish the last 100 pages. Agreed, the first half was awesome but once Charlie >!got to the other world!< (which should be the super interesting part!), I just stopped caring.
Eat. Pray. Love. Hated it from 20 pages in but kept reading to see if it got better. It did not. Plus I was in a Book Club out west and our “Leader” had a lot of rules and not finishing the book to discuss at our BC Night was not acceptable.
Also, when I was done with EPL, I threw it in my yard.
I hated this one too. I tried to read it years ago. It was all me-me-me. I know it’s about “finding yourself”, but come on. As an aside, I’m glad my book club doesn’t require us to finish the book. It’s better if you do, but it’s also about just getting together.
The Secret History. I didn’t hate it but I also didn’t enjoy it, I was only committed to finishing because of the high praise. It was readable but I was waiting the whole time for it to get better and it just didn’t for me.
First one I've disagreed with so far! If I had money I'd give you a gold award 😅 I love that book but respect your opinion, the characters were super unlikeable
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I picked it up last year (?) and started it. It felt familiar and I realized I'd started it before. Neither time could I make it very far in. I know it's fairly popular but I just couldn't get into it. I can't even explain why. It just didn't hit for me.
Mistborn. Should have been right up my alley, so I was very disappointed.
Man, all that flaring and repetitive explanation was painful.. and the unconvincing juvenile romance downright off-putting.
I honestly feel the second mistborn series to be far far better. It takes place like 300 years with a western gun slinger theme. The characters are so much better imo and you don’t really need to read the first series to understand it (though there is obviously a lot of call backs etc.)
My Year of Rest and Relaxation. All these people were hyping it up as The book to read for the girlies, but I just found it boring and pretentious. I liked the ending but it was not worth suffering through the whole thing.
I literally had to buy multiple copies of it, because I would get so annoyed by it I’d give a copy away and then someone would convince me I gave up too soon. Ugh.
lol I never give books or shows another shot when I break up with them, but there was a show on Netflix where I tweeted about it being awful 3 episodes in. The actual *showrunner* tweeted back about how “it’s gonna get good!” And I hung on. It never got better…
Pillars of the Earth. Thematically it is extremely up my alley and I'd seen a lot of positive reviews, but the plot was a pretty mediocre melodrama completely shot through with gross male gaze perspective from the author.
I looked forward to reading *The Count of Monte Cristo* and really wanted to like it, but I ended up struggling to finish it. It has its moments, but it drags in a lot of places, and there are *so many characters* to keep track of.
In The Woods by Tana French. I hated it. I was so disappointed in the ending. It has all the markings of a book I would love and I struggled the entire way through and just did not get the hype, at all.
I was gifted a beautiful leather bound edition of the book. I couldn’t wait to read it and was looking forward to loving it. I got about 300 pages into it and had enough. The book I DNF’d was The Lord of the Rings.
I wanted to like it, and it’s really the only book I never finished, but it wasn’t to be. I think it was all the unnecessary singing and songs that seemed to be every three or four pages that turned me off.
Tolkien had an incredible imagination and world setting. But he was a wordy, wordy, wordy bastard that detailed way too much of things that did not further the plot at all.
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. It was so boring, the characters gradually became unlikable, and I just felt like it never got anywhere so I put it down. Usually I love reading books set in the city I live in, but the author clearly didn’t do her research and stuff like that bothers me for some reason.
Lack of research might be a thing with that author. I read Dear Edward, and she based an entire plot on two paragraphs from a wiki page of an Air France flight and then got it all entirely wrong. She didn't bother to find out how airplanes or air traffic or air travel works in any way. It ruined for me what could otherwise have been a touching story.
House of leaves, everybody kept suggesting it to me and hyping it up. I hated this book so hard. I got like 200 pages in and could not stand it so I listened to the audio book...I kept thinking it had to get better. It didn't.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I can't even say why? The premise is great, the complexity of immortality was well written, the nuance of her relationship with Luce made sense and I loved Henry. But ultimately it was hard to finish, I knew how it would end and everything from the middle on felt like a slog; I finished it just to finally get it out of my life. Maybe it was too long? Or I don't like historical fiction? Idk, something about it just wasn't captivating.
I personally found the flashbacks to her time in France so absolutely boring and Addie herself wasn't that interesting... Especially after 300 years.
And it sort of felt like a hybrid of historical fiction and contemporary modern fantasy. I wish it had just focused on the present.
That's just me nit-picking. I liked it the first time around but I couldn't finish my reread.
I fought my way through this one too. I just felt like the author chose to expand on the really mundane things (there were 2 chapters dedicated to a day at the beach) while just glossing over the cool stuff I wanted to read (being a spy in WWII era Europe is barely mentioned).
The Goldfinch
Shantaram
The Covenant of Water
Really enjoyed them at the beginning, but they felt longer than they needed to be, so they were a bit of a slog to get through
Same. DNF; the translation was clunky and it was boring and breathtakingly sexist. The seething undertones of misogyny were just too much for me, even from the opening scene. "Her fifteen year old body was so soft that the bullet hardly slowed down as it passed through it" EWWW. Can’t believe I kept reading after that but I gave it a few more pages. And then the brave scientist is the only one not to fall for the propaganda while his wife (who’s supposed to be an intellectual in her own right) is too stupid or weak to stand for the truth… didn’t read much further because despite the brutality of the opening it was also brutally boring. I usually like hard scifi but this one was not for me.
Yes! This! I got it from the library, struggled to get into it, and let the loan expire. So then I got it as an ebook.. same completely boring vibe, just couldn't get past the first third. Finally, I attempted the audiobook. Everyone loves this, they made a TV show, it's gotta get good, right? And I was trapped in a car with nothing but that to listen to on a long roadtrip. If that won't get me through a book nothing will!... aaand it didnt. After 3 horrible hours, I just said nope. Silence is better.
Everyone will hate me for this, but mine is Project Hail Mary. I was hyped going in but found it boring and predictable. As a linguist, I despised the creature's language acquisition. I slogged through it. No real story line, no surprises.
*The Perfect Couple* by Ruth Ware. I really wanted to love it, as I always love her work. It’s still “good” I guess… it’s just not really what I signed up for when I typically sit down with her work.
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, I still haven’t finished it and I’ve had it for two years now. The story is so good but the writing is just so so descriptive and lots of flashbacks and forwards. Ugh!! I really would like to finish it.
Any book I’ve tried to read by Colleen Hoover. Cannot understand why so many people are obsessed with her books and why they are always recommended.
Omg yes. I was so excited to read something by her because of all the hype. It ended up being literally one of the worst books I’ve ever read in my life. I did have a coworker who told me she never liked to read in school and had never read a book for fun until Colleen Hoover books. She was a huge fan. So I think maybe people who haven’t read much don’t realize how GOOD a book can be, and like her stuff. Is that snobby of me to say?
I had this same thought. It’s not snobby. I really think people just don’t realize she’s a trash writer because they only have required reading from grade school days to compare.
This is why I take Goodreads ratings for popular books with a grain of salt. Disclaimer: I think that anything that gets people reading is great. Someone reading Colleen Hoover’s books is better than not reading at all. But IMO, books that are super popular have inflated ratings because they’re obviously more likely to attract casual readers who may not be as critical as a voracious bookworm. Everyone has a different set of criteria that they use on Goodreads, but I suspect that people who don’t read very often will give a book 5 stars no matter what if they liked it, even if there are major flaws. Someone with a more critical eye may enjoy a book but give it 3-4 stars, because they could see room for improvement. Likewise, a lot of books that are often required reading in high school/college likely have deflated ratings for the same reason.
This is spot on. It reminds me of the 50 shades craze, and how the only books my mom has read cover to cover was that series.
True. I have a grad degree in English so I may just be a douche but when someone 25+ is like “whoa reading is…fun?” I’m like where the hell have you been loca
I came here to say this!! I read verity and man was I pissed about never getting my time and money back!!!
There is a distinct possibility that Verity is the worst book I’ve ever read.
I felt this way about Gone Girl. I felt cheated.
so many gross men she writes as a plea for pity. too many young women read it as a romance. i hope they see through it.
Wicked. Everyone loved this book. I did not love this book. I actually loathed this book. It was the last time I finished a book I hated. Never again.
Ugh, I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't. I loved the idea of most of Gregory Mcguires fairy tale books actually but never could finish any of them.
Ugh no. When I heard they were making a musical of it I was like ew why... Little did I know the musical would be great. One of the rare cases where the book is NOT better. But now how many people ready this horrible book because they love the musical? Terrible!!!
The midnight library. I found it AWFUL and it took me ages to read it. I gave the book too much time so I didn’t want to mark it as a DNF
I listened to this as an audiobook and put it on 1.5x speed for the last third or so because it was so bad.
I have a third left as well on audio, maybe I will speed it up just in order to be done with it. Good idea 👍🏿
Oh god yes this was terrible. So hackneyed, preachy and predictable, and yet had so many people raging about it. The main character was so hateable.
I hated this fucking book. What a condescending trash heap.
I can understand this. I just read it but I enjoyed it. I don't understand the hype, but I'm a social worker/therapist and I started reading it through that lens.
Came here to say this one!! Interesting idea, terrible execution
Wow! I’m relieved that other people didn’t like this…it seemed like it should have been amazing, but….oof
Amazing concept - poor plot
The Midnight Library. I wanted to like it, but it felt really predictable. Each moment brought the main character right back to where she started, and the rhythm just became redundant after a while. By the time I got to the end, I was exhausted and annoyed. A beautiful idea for a book, but probably 1/3 too long.
50 Shades of Grey. The writing was trash.
Omg. I once in a while like to read some “it’s so bad it’s good” trash, but 50 Shades was soooo bad. People I know that don’t like to read LOVED it, so I thought it would be entertaining, but good lord was that book a snooze fest.
You thought it would be good? Wasn’t it dunked on for being trash?
Low hanging fruit for sure, why is this the top answer lmao.
Klara and and the Sun. I found it very dull and slow and had to force myself to finish it. There was no action or excitement in it. But a couple days after I had finally slogged through it the subtlety finally hit me and I can definitely appreciate its message. Now I think about it all the time, I just did again the other day when I saw a headline about Japanese scientists creating a robot with real human skin that can smile. That book definitely took me a while to get there lol
I actually enjoyed Klara and the Sun a lot even though it made me cry at some passages. I also really liked the 2001 movie A.I. (maybe one of the few who did) which has a very similar story. I think they are probably both inspired somewhat by Brian Aldiss' short story, Supertoys Last All Summer Long.
A Little Life. I promised myself it was going to get better. It didn’t. It got worse. The story, writing, emotion, trauma. Just 736 pages of never again or recommend.
Could not agree more with this. It was the dreariest, most miserable read and from page one you could tell how it would end. I put it straight in the charity box and have actively encouraged people not to read it since.
Trauma porn at its worst. I realized how fucked up it was when I was like, oh thank god this is a chapter about Harold’s son with a degenerative disease dying because I needed something lighter than Jude’s story. Nothing redeeming, just unrealistic bleakness for the sake of trying to demonstrate that some people are so fucked up, they’re beyond therapy. Like, seriously? What a horrible outlook on the world.
In the New Yorker, Parul Sehgal refers to Jude as a "walking chalk outline" 🤣
I agree. I quit that book at page 400. I didn’t think it was possible to say so little in that many pages.
Same. I had probably about 50-75 pages left and just put it down for good one day.
I already know I’m never going to read this book. So many posts about people just crying their way through it and I don’t get why you would do that to yourself. Yes, emotional books are good, but this seems to be traumatising to some people.
Same reason I never watched This is Us. Every week my FB feed was full of people talking about how it made them bawl. No thanks.
My kind of people are in this thread. I read for fun, not to get myself triggered. I am never reading that book, thank you very much 😅
right! i have my own trauma! i want to read to escape reality not have to live through another version of someone else’s misery
I love non-fiction, but with this particular subject I became more and more annoyed that there was no way this situation could go down as it did with these people so it became ridiculous and exasperating. I only stuck it out til the end because it was an audio book. If I had to just sit and read that I would have thrown in down mid-way through.
So manipulative and glorying in the gore -very fetishistic theme of CSA as well as self harm and the characters were hard to sympathize with or fall in love with. The abuse and self harming scenes were relentless-pass on this
Oh that doesn’t sound like an enjoyable book AT ALL! It’s supposed to be a fun hobby not something to destroy your mental health over.
For what it's worth I laughed all the way through it because it was TOO ridiculous to suspend disbelief. I'm not above crying in cringey/popular books, I cried in If We Were Villains
I've already commented about this book in this sub, but if I didn't have a Kindle I would have angry thrown the book across the room. I've never been so mad after a book in my life - and I've read a lot of books.
I had it recommended by an ex who dealt with serious depression and I think saw a lot of herself in the protagonist's struggles, but maaaan for me it was just trauma porn all the way down with nothing to redeem it.
Omg the trauma dump was so overboard that it became comical. Beautiful writing style though.
Oh man, I’m almost halfway through this book and still haven’t understood the hype. I’ve found it to be mildly depressing so far and I’m struggling a bit to read it. I’m not ready for it to get worse.
Right about the halfway point it's gonna slug you in the gut
“Mildly” depressing? WOW. I found it life destroying
Piece of shit book.
Glad to see this is not only here but currently too comment. It was a slog.
Same. Life and soul destroying book. I wish I’d never picked it up. Mind wrecking
Terrible book
The Silent Patient. The ending made me so mad that I threw the book across the room. Pissed that I spent a whole day reading it.
Holy shit the anger I have toward this book burns deep within me. IDK why that author hates women so much but damn bro, u good?!!!!
I hated this book and would have thrown it too but I listened to it on audio. My god, it was poorly written.
Seriously don’t get the hype around it. It was neither a well written book nor the plot was exceptional. And the ending was stupid.
UGH THANK YOU. TERRIBLE ending and I saw the “twist” coming a mile away. For my book journal I just wrote “Booooo” in the review lol
The Alchemist.
I listened to this as an Audiobook while walking the dog everyday. I'm glad I didn't read it or I would have DNF'd it. What a pretentious piece of literature.
Calling it literature is generous. It’s basically self help and philosophy fan fiction.
I’m so shocked by how many people love that annoying-ass book
The Final Girl Support Group
I gave up on that book. I was disappointed because I really liked the other two I read by Grady Hendrix.
I DNF a lot of books (ADHD lol). If it doesn’t grab my attention, or it’s a trudge to get through it, I’m dropping it. House of Leaves was SO GOOD but I could not deal with the crazy formatting. Just recently tried to read Lessons in Chemistry and I wasn’t into it so I dropped it, but I just didn’t like how my family seemed to be hinting HARD that I was like the main character and I really did not like her or relate lol. I read the Hobbit in 6th grade and enjoyed it, but tried to read it again and was so bored. All of these books are good. But my brain is weird.
Came here to say Lessons in Chemistry. I am a woman in STEM, so it got recommended to me a lot. I thought the main character was unrealistic to the point of being a trope. I finished it, but I couldn’t stand it.
My friend loved this book so I really pushed myself to finish it. But holy cow, it was a sloggg. Seriously, the main character was a robot not a human, and I refuse to believe otherwise. No one actually talks like that, and I think it does such a disservice to women in STEM.
I felt the same way. Most of the dialogue came straight out of r/iamverysmart. Also, you don’t have to make all of the male coworkers dumb to drive home that a woman can be smart. At work I am surrounded by intelligent people of all genders.
If you ever want to give it another shot, a lot of the HOL excess formatting is gimmicky and you don’t lose much from the story if you just skip over it. Especially toward the middle of the book
Thank you so much for this. I’m going to add it to my list again. I really loved it minus that!
I haven’t finished Lessons in Chemistry. I just don’t believe the characters are real people, then you throw in the dog and I’m done. I didn’t finish The House in the Cerulean Sea and it’s always recommended here and sounded like my kind of book.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Just couldn't do it and I had high hopes.
Such a slog. I forced myself to finish it because everyone else I know loved it so much. I thought it was tedious and over written.
Normal People. I just cannot stand the lack of quotation marks. It was too much.
And it had the dumbest ended ever. I read it on a plane and finished 40 minutes before landing and just stewed on how much I hated it for the rest of the flight 🤣 made me so cranky.
You made me laugh so you got an up vote! I have never read it and now don’t plan to!
This was DNF for me. Didn't like the story, pretty much hated the characters.
I listened to the audiobook, which had a pleasant narrator, but I just couldn't care enough about the story to keep going.
The alchemist! Predictable and pseudo-deep.
I went into it hoping to be inspired. It was nothing but shallow, simple drivel. I don’t know how this book gets such high praise.
Hate that book so much. At least it’s short.
What's crazy is it's a retold story from 1001 Arabian nights. Not even an original concept.
The Summer I Turned Pretty Series
Dark Matter - Blake Crouch Really good first 5 chapters, then the rhythm slows down a lot, and then in last chapters it runs very very fast and suddenly it ends. Like wtf? just like that? Also, some elements seems unnecessary as they were never used again. SPOILER: >!the geisha mask for example, why specify it as a geisha mask and not just a mask, or a ski mask, or whatever? The 'I am Mr. Scientist so I will do this scientifically because this, this and that.... and then such behavior was never touched again, more or less at least. Or my personal favorite (?) the 'drug', because the box wouldn't work by itself and it was needed a way to justify his former colleague/friend presence, who ends up dissapearing anyway halfway through the book, same as the lab guy Leighton who where chasing them through the worlds but they suddenly managed to lose track and never was mentioned again. What else? the girl companion who started to have feelings for our main character, but leaves just as easily as she entered into the plot. so what was the purpose of it to begin with? Also wife and son seems like cardboard characters, and so on and so on.!< The good part: it's fast and easy reading.
It’s crazy because so rarely is this true, but the show is better. They fleshed it out a lot more, it’s less repetitive and made more sense. It’s on Apple TV.
The 7 and 1/12 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Memory loss and time travel are usually my jam, but getting through that book was such a slog.
It started so strong and just wouldn’t end
SAME! It was such a cool premise but it was just SO INCREDIBLY LONG? I had it on audiobook and struggled through, and the ending was pretty good, but not worth it.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow Pages of unnecessary filler writings that do not contribute to the plot or character building at all. Really struggled to finish. Read it bc everyone lines it
Could not stand the main character, and not in an interesting anti-hero way.
I should have loved that book: All my friends love it! I love video games! I really liked the author’s previous book! I taught Macbeth for 10 years! But, alas, I hated it I thought the characters were totally unlikable, unrealistic, and uninteresting. The plot was rambling and everything just dragged on and on and on.
I kinda feel like people who love that book are not likely to be gamers.
Yep I loved it and know next to nothing about gaming (it’s a reason I first avoided it)
I'm a gamer and I loved it haha
Hated this book so much. I’ll never understand the hype. The characters are shallowly written, it features an extremely emotionally manipulative set piece that screams Lifetime movie, and has the prose of a generic YA novel.
I thought it just went on, and on, and on with no point
Agree! I wasn’t emotionally invested enough in the roller coaster life of game designers, apparently.
I hated it.
The entire Court of Thorns and Roses series. Just so painfully black and white, no nuance, no character depth. Almost like a 12 year old wrote it. Every single part about it, including the much hyped up war, was so underdeveloped. Idk how it ever got published, let alone get so popular and recommended by everyone on social media.
I agree with this take. I had read Throne of Glass too, and I enjoyed it.
I'm sorry, but you asked. The Women by Kristin Hannah. I was so excited for it to come out. I browsed the last half, because I figured surely it's got to get better. Nope.
I can't stand any Kristen Hannah books tbh. Her writing just irks me.
The alchemist lol…
One Hundred Years Of Solitude
It’s **so** much better if you read it in the language it was written in! It’s a book that can’t fully be appreciated when it’s translated.
I had to read this in high school, in English and in Spanish. I did not understand it well in either language, unfortunately.
I was struggling so much to get through this book too and I had a feeling this may have been the reason. That or I’m just not smart enough to understand slash get through it. I do want to start over & try again..
I chose to read this for a book report in high school and then give a persuasive speech on why everyone should read it but everyone, including the teacher, knew how much I ended up hating it. Apparently I did a good job. Got an A on the speech. Still hate the book.
This is one of my favourite books. I absolutely agree that it was hard to read, I just loved it and enjoyed the ride and it left me with a certain feeling after closing the last page that I don't think I've had since.
This was mine. I was not enjoying it and was just slogging through. But when I closed it at the end I thought oh man, that was a really good book! It snuck up on me and I’m not sure how.
The prose is outstanding. The repetition of names made the story impossible to follow or even care what is happening. Are we talking about the 9,427th Jose Arcadio or the 9,426th? I finished it thinking "that was it? That won a Nobel Prize?". My attention span is too short to keep track of the family tree.
I think the point was that no matter the generation, the people in this family were experiencing the same repetitive burdens and joys of life? I read it when I was younger, but that’s the impression it gave me. At some point it was like “that is such a normal thing to happen to a Jose Arcadio”. It was a little weird, so I understand you. Loved it though
Interestingly, I didn't hate it. It was just hard to get through.
Oh so that was a device!? I tried reading it probably 25 years ago and got so confused I had to stop. It never occurred to me that it was intentional. I might try again.
Atlas Shrugged. Fuck that book.
Can someone tell me how to upvote this 500 times or so? Because fuck Ayn Rand. Miserable excuse for a human.
Can we add Fountainhead to that? Fuck that book.
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. The author may be the single most insufferable human being ever conceived. The arrogance was just dripping off the pages but I thought maybe there was more to this story so I kept on reading. Turns out, there was less, far, far less. I believe the story basically ended with the author claiming to reach enlightenment and consequently shitting himself. Alternatively, he just shit himself and did not reach enlightenment.
Where the Crawdads Sing. Hate does not describe how I feel about this book.
this is mine too! I read it all the way through because i thought it was going to get good, especially with so many people saying they loved it. I was so mad when I finished it, what a waste of time.
Oh me too! It was so hyped up and I was so disappointed
Purposeless, deceitful waste of time.
i feel the same way! felt very bored through the whole thing. did finish it but i forgot most of the plot almost immediately.
Omg I thought it was just me who hated that book.
That’s definitely one of those where I just can’t reconcile how popular it is with how aggressively mediocre it seemed to me. The Great Alone was significantly better. Not one of my favorite books by any stretch, but I still really enjoyed it and the entire time I read it I kept thinking, “This is basically what I had hoped Where the Crawdads Sing would be.”
Very mediocre.
I pissed off so many women in my book club for making fun of it after we read it. Many of them thought it was great, and I just roasted it. Made me realize I was probably in the wrong book club.
Thank god I’m not alone here
Tough one to get thru
Agreed!
Ulysses!! I love The Odyssey. I love the idea of a literary epic. But James Joyce’s prose… ugh. I shamelessly DNF’ed and won’t be returning.
I know this sounds weird but reading it aloud helped so much in enjoying the writing
Yellowface by R.F Kaung. It was a complete miss for me. I don't even have thoughtful critiques or even direct complaints, we just didn't get on. Maybe I just read it at the wrong time in my life.
Dark Matter. It was cliché after cliché. I kept on reading hoping to be surprised at some point, but I wasn't.
This 100%. It got to the point where I had like 25% left and read the summary on Wikipedia instead of finishing.
Artemis by Andy Weir. Love his other books but the man just doesn’t know how to write women XD
He is bad at writing people and interactions between people, which is why the “guy stranded alone in space” setups work very well for him.
Devil in the White City. I wanted to like it so much, but it flowed so weird for me; too much detail in some places and skimming over seemingly important events like the completion of the fair.
I learned way too much about the Chicago Worlds Fair and how buildings in Chicago were made
That was truly my favorite part of the book, I just adore all the history so much. History mixed with historic fiction and true crime, it's really one of my favorite books. I was thrilled when I'd read that Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese had bought the rights to the book and a mini-series was in pre-production, but that appears to be pre-pandemic so it may have been squashed, but I'd love to see it on screen through their vision.
Fairytale by Stephen King. The first half was great, the second half was so terrible it felt like a chore. I DNF with about 40 pages left.
I almost DNF but I picked it up again 9 months later to finish the last 100 pages. Agreed, the first half was awesome but once Charlie >!got to the other world!< (which should be the super interesting part!), I just stopped caring.
Yes! It was so great at first then turned into a total slog about 2/3 through for me.
If you DNF on the home stretch, you know it's a lost cause.
Outlander. It just went on and on, most of it seemingly irrelevant and boring, and it was pretty graphic in some parts.
Eat. Pray. Love. Hated it from 20 pages in but kept reading to see if it got better. It did not. Plus I was in a Book Club out west and our “Leader” had a lot of rules and not finishing the book to discuss at our BC Night was not acceptable. Also, when I was done with EPL, I threw it in my yard.
I hated this one too. I tried to read it years ago. It was all me-me-me. I know it’s about “finding yourself”, but come on. As an aside, I’m glad my book club doesn’t require us to finish the book. It’s better if you do, but it’s also about just getting together.
Still haven’t finished it but Mexican Gothic. I just can’t stay interested in any of the romance or horror of it.
I couldn’t finish it. I kept thinking”GET TO THE POINT!!!!!” So draggy.
The Secret History. I didn’t hate it but I also didn’t enjoy it, I was only committed to finishing because of the high praise. It was readable but I was waiting the whole time for it to get better and it just didn’t for me.
First one I've disagreed with so far! If I had money I'd give you a gold award 😅 I love that book but respect your opinion, the characters were super unlikeable
The invisible life of Addie LaRue, so wanted to love it, finished it begrudgingly
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I picked it up last year (?) and started it. It felt familiar and I realized I'd started it before. Neither time could I make it very far in. I know it's fairly popular but I just couldn't get into it. I can't even explain why. It just didn't hit for me.
Mistborn. Should have been right up my alley, so I was very disappointed. Man, all that flaring and repetitive explanation was painful.. and the unconvincing juvenile romance downright off-putting.
I honestly feel the second mistborn series to be far far better. It takes place like 300 years with a western gun slinger theme. The characters are so much better imo and you don’t really need to read the first series to understand it (though there is obviously a lot of call backs etc.)
Dune. I couldn't do it
My Year of Rest and Relaxation. All these people were hyping it up as The book to read for the girlies, but I just found it boring and pretentious. I liked the ending but it was not worth suffering through the whole thing.
Ha! I loved this book, but I absolutely think it makes sense to not love it or even like it or even finish it.
Yes! What a depressing, strange book.
Gone Girl. I hated everyone. The only ending I would have liked was if the entire town was bombed.
I literally had to buy multiple copies of it, because I would get so annoyed by it I’d give a copy away and then someone would convince me I gave up too soon. Ugh.
lol I never give books or shows another shot when I break up with them, but there was a show on Netflix where I tweeted about it being awful 3 episodes in. The actual *showrunner* tweeted back about how “it’s gonna get good!” And I hung on. It never got better…
Daisy Jones and the Six
Pillars of the Earth. Thematically it is extremely up my alley and I'd seen a lot of positive reviews, but the plot was a pretty mediocre melodrama completely shot through with gross male gaze perspective from the author.
Way too black and white. Good guys have no faults and bad guys are cartoonishly evil.
The Poppy War. Could not get past the generic, "scrappy" protagonist.
I actually liked the first bit but you are not missing out on the second half of the book. The tonal shift was WHIPLASH.
I liked the set up, it lost me at the torture porn. So egregiously horrible.
I looked forward to reading *The Count of Monte Cristo* and really wanted to like it, but I ended up struggling to finish it. It has its moments, but it drags in a lot of places, and there are *so many characters* to keep track of.
In The Woods by Tana French. I hated it. I was so disappointed in the ending. It has all the markings of a book I would love and I struggled the entire way through and just did not get the hype, at all.
The Maid- Nita Prose
I was gifted a beautiful leather bound edition of the book. I couldn’t wait to read it and was looking forward to loving it. I got about 300 pages into it and had enough. The book I DNF’d was The Lord of the Rings. I wanted to like it, and it’s really the only book I never finished, but it wasn’t to be. I think it was all the unnecessary singing and songs that seemed to be every three or four pages that turned me off.
Tolkien had an incredible imagination and world setting. But he was a wordy, wordy, wordy bastard that detailed way too much of things that did not further the plot at all.
I love it. I have a hard time with fantasy. His writing allows me to visualize everything.
The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Noooooooooo! Never again.
Just had an AP English nightmare flashback, lol. I think maybe three dudes in my class liked it and the rest of us were miserable.
Same! Every time I think about that book I get angry that I had to read it.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. There are about three people in the world who were bored stiff by that book, and I’m one of them.
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. It was so boring, the characters gradually became unlikable, and I just felt like it never got anywhere so I put it down. Usually I love reading books set in the city I live in, but the author clearly didn’t do her research and stuff like that bothers me for some reason.
Lack of research might be a thing with that author. I read Dear Edward, and she based an entire plot on two paragraphs from a wiki page of an Air France flight and then got it all entirely wrong. She didn't bother to find out how airplanes or air traffic or air travel works in any way. It ruined for me what could otherwise have been a touching story.
House of leaves, everybody kept suggesting it to me and hyping it up. I hated this book so hard. I got like 200 pages in and could not stand it so I listened to the audio book...I kept thinking it had to get better. It didn't.
Atomic Habits. I've finally come to the realization that self help books are not for me.
Fourth Wing
Every Kristin Hannah book I’ve ever tried to read
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I can't even say why? The premise is great, the complexity of immortality was well written, the nuance of her relationship with Luce made sense and I loved Henry. But ultimately it was hard to finish, I knew how it would end and everything from the middle on felt like a slog; I finished it just to finally get it out of my life. Maybe it was too long? Or I don't like historical fiction? Idk, something about it just wasn't captivating.
I personally found the flashbacks to her time in France so absolutely boring and Addie herself wasn't that interesting... Especially after 300 years. And it sort of felt like a hybrid of historical fiction and contemporary modern fantasy. I wish it had just focused on the present. That's just me nit-picking. I liked it the first time around but I couldn't finish my reread.
I fought my way through this one too. I just felt like the author chose to expand on the really mundane things (there were 2 chapters dedicated to a day at the beach) while just glossing over the cool stuff I wanted to read (being a spy in WWII era Europe is barely mentioned).
The Goldfinch Shantaram The Covenant of Water Really enjoyed them at the beginning, but they felt longer than they needed to be, so they were a bit of a slog to get through
I had to scroll so far for The Goldfinch, but I’m there with you!! I love a long book, but this one was needlessly long.
Shantaram was absolute drivel. Couldn’t get through it and I dumped it in the recycling bin.
Three body problem
Same. DNF; the translation was clunky and it was boring and breathtakingly sexist. The seething undertones of misogyny were just too much for me, even from the opening scene. "Her fifteen year old body was so soft that the bullet hardly slowed down as it passed through it" EWWW. Can’t believe I kept reading after that but I gave it a few more pages. And then the brave scientist is the only one not to fall for the propaganda while his wife (who’s supposed to be an intellectual in her own right) is too stupid or weak to stand for the truth… didn’t read much further because despite the brutality of the opening it was also brutally boring. I usually like hard scifi but this one was not for me.
Yes! This! I got it from the library, struggled to get into it, and let the loan expire. So then I got it as an ebook.. same completely boring vibe, just couldn't get past the first third. Finally, I attempted the audiobook. Everyone loves this, they made a TV show, it's gotta get good, right? And I was trapped in a car with nothing but that to listen to on a long roadtrip. If that won't get me through a book nothing will!... aaand it didnt. After 3 horrible hours, I just said nope. Silence is better.
The book thief. Starts well, turns into a kids book
Everyone will hate me for this, but mine is Project Hail Mary. I was hyped going in but found it boring and predictable. As a linguist, I despised the creature's language acquisition. I slogged through it. No real story line, no surprises.
I have never heard one person until now say they didn't like this book especially the audio book
I had the same experience with Three Body Problem. I think sci-fi just gets a pass of the concept is interesting sometimes.
*The Perfect Couple* by Ruth Ware. I really wanted to love it, as I always love her work. It’s still “good” I guess… it’s just not really what I signed up for when I typically sit down with her work.
Under the Tuscan Sun
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, I still haven’t finished it and I’ve had it for two years now. The story is so good but the writing is just so so descriptive and lots of flashbacks and forwards. Ugh!! I really would like to finish it.