What has been your least favorite book this year?

[krystee]

As a spin-off of the best book so far this year, what has been your worst?

I just read My Husband's Wife, and it was so melodramatic. I almost always just leave star reviews and not written reviews on Goodreads, but on this one, I specifically commented, "It felt like someone dared the author to write a book that includes every dramatic situation that has ever happened to a human being and she responded, "Challenge accepted!'"

I wanted to know the end so I kept reading, but it was so far-fetched that I felt nothing for any of the characters.

Spoiler alert about the drama:



Marrying for money, is husband cheating or not, divorce, affairs with married men, kid with special needs, rape, cheating, murder, murder has a twist, wait murder has a SECOND twist, suicide, adopted siblings in love, paternity questions, alcoholism...the list goes on.

[mrspez07]

I haven’t rated anything below a 3* this year.
The most disappointing read of those 3’s was Saints for All Occasions which I just finished. It just ended and I was waiting for the big secret reveal and reaction that I felt the book description had kind of indicated.

I’ve read a couple of 3* memoirs this year as well, and I’m realizing that most memoirs are chaotic stream of thought type books without a linear or well-organized outline, which often annoys me. Priestdaddy is the main one that was disappointing.

[charlatti]

I’ve had a lot of mediocre books, but the one that still annoys me is Alone: Lost Overboard in the Indian Ocean. Yes, it’s an amazing survival story but it’s bizarrely boring and the main takeaway seems to be that if you survive you can make a lot of money as a public speaker.

[charlatti]

Jul 31, 2018 18:02:31 GMT -5 mrspez07 said:

I haven’t rated anything below a 3* this year.
The most disappointing read of those 3’s was Saints for All Occasions which I just finished. It just ended and I was waiting for the big secret reveal and reaction that I felt the book description had kind of indicated.

This almost always happens with these threads: that was one of my favorites of the year! I wasn’t expecting any kind of twist or surprise, though, and I loved the character development.

[tacokick]

I am a serious book giver-upper so this is tricky for me, I rarely get that far.

[tacokick]

Night Film by Marisha Pessl was the worst by far. It was bizarrely racist and badly written. I forced myself to read to the end out of pure self loathing I guess.

[travella]

Touch by Courtney Maum.

[ufcasey]

Everless by Sara Holland (ya fantasy book, first in series I will never read more of).

Spoilers beware: if your father dies telling you that the Queen is dangerous and absolutely cannot meet you, would you then decide that the best way of finding out why he said that is to become a personal attendant to the Queen? If someone you basically just met offers to break into a vault with you so you can see if something of your father's is kept inside it (which you never describe because you don't know what it might be yourself), you tell them you do not want to break into it, and then they get caught breaking into the vault without you anyways, would you then take their punishment of forty years for yourself because it was 'your fault'? (um, how were they going to figure out what was your father's stuff without you being there?) Would you develop strong romantic feelings for someone you last saw when you were both seven years old, you are now both seventeen, he barely speaks to you, and he's engaged to someone else?

This book was stupid as heck and I felt dumber for having read it.

[scribellesam]

I rarely finish books that are below three stars, so I only had a few to choose from. My lowest graded book that I finished this year was Shadowsong by S Jae Jones. It was the sequel to a book that was in my top ten last year, Wintersong, so it was extra disappointing. The first was dreamy musical fairy tale about the Goblin King, the sequel was a confusing mess about the female protagonist’s screwed up relationships with her siblings and mental health struggles. Not what I was hoping for at all.

[Nonny]

Well, I stopped Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations at 6% for being insufferable.  

Then I hate read The Buried Giant because I didn't want to stop a second book club book in a row.

They are both awful, but for very different reasons, and going forward I'm writing off anything authored by Thomas Friedman on sheer principle because as far as I can tell he's always insufferable.  Kazuo gets a reprieve because I've read one of his other books and really liked it, but The Buried Giant was just the wrong genre for his style of writing and so stupidly boring that I'd literally rather watch paint dry than read that book again.

[bex]

I hated "The Vengeance of Mothers" by Jim Fergus. I just finished it last week and it was awful. It was a sequel to One Thousand White Women, which I remember liking even if it was kind of dumb lol. This one was dumb and not enjoyable and predictable and just bad.

[minzy]

My least favorite read so far of the year was The Vegetarian by Han Kang. A South Korean woman decides to stop eating meat and basically removes herself from her family and society as a result. Her “artistic” BIL becomes obsessed with painting flowers on both of their bodies and he has sex with her for one of his “projects.” She continues to descend mentally and at one point attempts to personally photosynthesize. Spoiler alert, at the end, she heads into the forest to become a tree. It won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 after being translated into English. Why, I do not know. One saving grace is that it’s a pretty short book.

[minzy]

Aug 1, 2018 0:15:16 GMT -5 Nonny said:

Well, I stopped Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations at 6% for being insufferable.  

I’ve removed this one from my lengthy list of “someday” titles because of your negative review (and have added The Sixth Extinction since you thought it was good). Thanks! 🙂

[bex]

Jul 31, 2018 21:18:24 GMT -5 tacokick said:

I am a serious book giver-upper so this is tricky for me, I rarely get that far.

I'm trying to be better about this - just stopping books that I don't like. I was trying so hard to get through The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates but I still had like 400 pages left after reading it for months (I kept stopping it to read other stuff) and I finally figured.....why bother? I don't like it, its a chore to read it, and there are other books out there I want to read. But it's hard for me to reach that point and I wish I would just STOP when I realize reading a certain book is a chore.

[minzy]

Aug 1, 2018 5:37:39 GMT -5 bex said:

I hated "The Vengeance of Mothers" by Jim Fergus. I just finished it last week and it was awful. It was a sequel to One Thousand White Women, which I remember liking even if it was kind of dumb lol. This one was dumb and not enjoyable and predictable and just bad.

One Thousand White Women was one of the first books my IRL book club read. Looks like it’s safe to skip the sequel! We realized much later that it started what turned out to be a very long (inadvertent) streak of books featuring at least one dead baby. We’ve since changed course, thankfully.

[abs]

I'm another serial quiter. Life is too short to read bad books.

I'll go with Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand. I kept thinking it would get better but it never did. Very mediocre book.

[CrazyLucky]

I read Tell Me I'm Wrong. It's about a woman who thinks her husband is a serial killer. I hated both the story and the way it was written. I have no idea why it has an average rating of 3.76 stars.
I need to be more like tacokick and abs and start giving up on awful books.

ETA: I also hated the Immortalists.  It was so highly rated and in a bunch of "Best of" lists, but I thought it was terrible.  Four kids in a family go to a fortune teller and she tells them the day they will die.  And then they all live in such a way as to make her predictions true.  One of the kids was a 7 year old boy.  I had a seven year old boy while I was reading this. I couldn't suspend my belief enough about how 7 year olds act.  

[rainbowchip]

Jul 31, 2018 17:24:20 GMT -5 krystee said:

As a spin-off of the best book so far this year, what has been your worst?

I just read My Husband's Wife, and it was so melodramatic. I almost always just leave star reviews and not written reviews on Goodreads, but on this one, I specifically commented, "It felt like someone dared the author to write a book that includes every dramatic situation that has ever happened to a human being and she responded, "Challenge accepted!'"

I now kind of want to read this book just because of this. Lol

[rainbowchip]

My least favorite this year so far is Now That You Mention It. I'll get into why during the book club discussion in September.

[snshne322]

A Maya Banks romance, Keep Me Safe. Ugh, the characters were unbearable.

I did have a surprising amount of 2 star books, but this one was a one star.

[wesleycrusher]

Non-fiction: Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe. You would think it would be interesting, and it's already a short book. But there are so few women pirates that most of the book is just filler.

Fiction: Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero. Again great premise (teenage detective squad all grown-up going back to investigate their last case) but the execution was just awful

[Vespasia]

Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson. I loved The Kind Worth Killing so this was extra disappointing. It was just another crappy "thriller" that tried too hard to be twisty and just ended up predictable. I actually skipped about half the book and then skimmed the end to see what happened. So glad I didn't waste my time.

[travella]

Aug 1, 2018 9:08:53 GMT -5 rainbowchip said:

My least favorite this year so far is Now That You Mention It. I'll get into why during the book club discussion in September.

Now That You Mention It was also on my least favorite list. However, I disliked Touch a little more.

[tacokick]

Aug 1, 2018 6:25:26 GMT -5 bex said:

Jul 31, 2018 21:18:24 GMT -5 tacokick said:

I am a serious book giver-upper so this is tricky for me, I rarely get that far.

I'm trying to be better about this - just stopping books that I don't like. I was trying so hard to get through The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates but I still had like 400 pages left after reading it for months (I kept stopping it to read other stuff) and I finally figured.....why bother? I don't like it, its a chore to read it, and there are other books out there I want to read. But it's hard for me to reach that point and I wish I would just STOP when I realize reading a certain book is a chore.

Free yourself! I used to try to power through and occasionally I do if I truly wonder about the ending or whatever but seriously, I’ll stop 10 pages in and move on. Or less! Then I enjoy the next book that much more. Reading isn’t a chore!

[tacokick]

Aug 1, 2018 7:56:14 GMT -5 CrazyLucky said:

I read Tell Me I'm Wrong. It's about a woman who thinks her husband is a serial killer. I hated both the story and the way it was written. I have no idea why it has an average rating of 3.76 stars.
I need to be more like tacokick and abs and start giving up on awful books.

ETA: I also hated the Immortalists.  It was so highly rated and in a bunch of "Best of" lists, but I thought it was terrible.  Four kids in a family go to a fortune teller and she tells them the day they will die.  And then they all live in such a way as to make her predictions true.  One of the kids was a 7 year old boy.  I had a seven year old boy while I was reading this. I couldn't suspend my belief enough about how 7 year olds act.  

I wanted to love this but didn’t. I only cared about 1-2 of the sibling’s stories.

[bex]

Aug 1, 2018 12:50:56 GMT -5 tacokick said:

Aug 1, 2018 7:56:14 GMT -5 CrazyLucky said:

I read Tell Me I'm Wrong. It's about a woman who thinks her husband is a serial killer. I hated both the story and the way it was written. I have no idea why it has an average rating of 3.76 stars.
I need to be more like tacokick and abs and start giving up on awful books.

ETA: I also hated the Immortalists.  It was so highly rated and in a bunch of "Best of" lists, but I thought it was terrible.  Four kids in a family go to a fortune teller and she tells them the day they will die.  And then they all live in such a way as to make her predictions true.  One of the kids was a 7 year old boy.  I had a seven year old boy while I was reading this. I couldn't suspend my belief enough about how 7 year olds act.  

I wanted to love this but didn’t. I only cared about 1-2 of the sibling’s stories.

The only one I thought was interesting in how it turned out was simon's, because even living a high risk lifestyle like that wouldn't guarantee that he died on that specific day.  I found the other ones kind of ridiculous.

[wesleycrusher]

CrazyLucky , bex , tacokick

re: The Immortalists- Simon's story was my favorite.

SPOILER: Click to show

The overall premise is interesting to consider- - would they have died on those dates had they not known them?

[tacokick]

Aug 1, 2018 14:04:24 GMT -5 wesleycrusher said:

CrazyLucky , bex , tacokick

re: The Immortalists- Simon's story was my favorite.

SPOILER: Click to show

The overall premise is interesting to consider- - would they have died on those dates had they not known them?

Yes! Exactly!

[secretlyevil]

Made for love - it was so bad and just...rediculous.

[spedrunner]

You by Caroline Kepnes

I had such high hopes for this book and really disliked it!

I have not had many 2 star books for the year, so thats a plus!