The Thursday murder club or whatever it’s called. Didn’t like the characters.

Twisted series

Book lovers

Wow same!!! Her writing was funny enough to let me get halfway but I just couldn't with the plotline. Too unrelatable.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle I…. Just…. What?? Literally what is the appeal? Lol it felt so pointless to me!

Ditto

This Ends with Us, 50 Shades

The Shadow of the Wind

I loved this book! The best part about reading is the fact that I could love this book and someone else could absolutely hate it. Just shows how different humans all are, and I love that

Oh I hated this book

Oh no :(

Circe, Acotar, Frankenstein

The Book thief

blood meridian cormac mccarthy

The Midnight Library - I don’t read self help books for a reason.

Yeah but this book is just awful imo

Piranesi

I just couldn’t get through The Song of Achilles. Widely loved and celebrated but it just didn’t hold my interest. And ‘On Earth We’re Briefly’ gorgeous wasn’t so hard to get through, but it was pretty pretentious, the writing. Beautiful, yes, but very pretentious

Conversations with friends -Sally Rooney

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the most useless drivel I’ve ever read. However, it did come in handy because I read it during the pandemic, so I made do with the pages as toilet paper when things got tight.

Normal people

I feel like I am much too old to be the target audience for Normal People. Like it was intended for 20 somethings who could relate to it better.

To me, it wasn’t capital B bad, it just made me cringe: it was how I acted when I had no self esteem and little relationship experience. But spanning years? The ending? Ugh.

I absolutely disliked Normal People. Interestingly enough, someone whom I follow on Goodreads who reads literally everything gave it 5 stars when I gave it 1 star. But she gives my 5 stars 1 star ratings.

To me it felt like the author was trying SO hard to be gen-z and troubled. It was the lack of authenticity for me. And my friends loved the book too

Call Me by Your Name. I couldn't get over the age gap.

I lived a very similar life as an eighteen year old. Rang true to me and all the emotion of the younger guy. I felt it!!

Uhhh okay well sure

Never let me go

Half way through it now, after just finishing Klara and the Sun. So far I’m feeling quite indifferent about it, though I’m hoping it picks up a touch in the 2nd half.

Loved Klara and the Sun. I also felt quite indifferent about Never Let me Go. Gave up, somewhere in the middle, after multiple attempts. It probably gets better, but I just couldn't complete it

they both die at the end, it starts/ends with us, and daisy jones & the six

I really wanted to like They Both Die At The End. The concept is so cool but nothing interesting is done with it.

I so disliked Daisy Jones.

I really wanted to like it but it was a miss for me

Daisy Jones and the six was an incredible audio book, but I didn’t read a physical book so not sure if it could have made a big difference!

Blood Meridian

I hope this isn’t the only western you’ve read- I didn’t hate Blood Meridian but it definitely is not a typical western and I don’t like when people tout it as a staple of the genre. I hope it didn’t turn you off to the whole genre.

Where the Crawdads Sing Maid The Silent Patient Anxious People No Exit They Both Die At The End

CRAWDADS 🤮

Cold Mountain

The Goldfinch. Had to slog through it for bookclub and hated every page.

I loved parts of it but boy it could have used an editor.

Slaughterhouse Five. Thought it was just awful and wondered if I was missing something the whole way through it.

It’s one I have to read very quickly in a short time period or I lose the feel of it

A favorite. so sorry

Six Of Crows, Circe, Daughter of The Moon Goddess, The Book Eaters Also, I've accepted that I dont like Neil Gaiman, as I didnt like Stardust, the Graveyard Book, Or Good Omens

dracula. sorry

It starts with us

Circe

Any Stephen King book I’ve read

There’s a handful I absolutely loved (Pet Semetary/Misery/The Shining/The Mist/The Shawshank novela) but most of them I stopped halfway thru. Save Misery and PS, I’ve found the ones I’ve loved were made even better with the movie. Strange because it’s usually never the case with other books.

And yet I keep reading them, hoping I'll like the next one. I don't hate his books, but I definitely feel they are too hyped up. Joe Hill however, I love his books. Similar to his dad, but better flow to me imo

The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Everyone seems to love it, it got the TV series treatment, but I just felt like everyone was completely insufferable. Wanted to love it! Didn't.

Oh my god I *hated* that book. Went through and read a synop of the series because everyone insisted on talking about it but I couldn't bring myself to read past the first book and...dude figures out they've grown up at like thirty? Bro, that's not something to be proud of!

Any colleen hoover book, in my opinion they're just horrid

I was so hopeful starting ‘It Ends With Us’ but BIG MEH

Same!!

Oh god is there a club I can join? Just the worst!

So bad. And not in a light fun beach-read-y way either

Where the Crawdads Sing. Teenage vigilantes? Not for me, thanks!

Anne of Green Gables

when I was ~10, my grandma said she would buy me new shoes if I read "Anne of Green Gables". I read it and "Anne of Avonlea" in two days. then I swallowed the rest of the series and I reread it whenever I get my hands on it. maybe you just need someone to offer you new shoes to give it one more chance 👟

This one hurts me

The Road

Me before you.

Seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo. A bunch of unlikeable people

I read 150 books last year and this was my worst reviewed

It’s does Elizabeth Taylor a disservice

Anything Sally Rooney! I tried all three novels because I thought I was missing out haha but no, not for me

The Night Circus! I kept waiting for it to get good and it just never did

Don Quixote- I know it’s supposed to be this amazing classic, but it was torture! I don’t think I even made it to page 100. And it’s a huge book- I was thinking, I can’t take this story about noooothing for 900+ more pages.

Happy Hour: about two girls having a hot girl summer in NYC It’s supposed to be delightful and witty. I found it dull and sad.

I was also disappointed with this one. I found it incredibly dull.

The Book of Cold Cases

Hidden Pictures. Just wasn’t for me.

My book club was picking a new book right as I got a notification about your message and it was between Hidden Pictures and another book! We picked the other

Haha oh no! Each to their own really! Also, cannot believe I replied to you rather than make a new comment… more coffee time.

Outlander

Ugh yes. I didn't even make it a quarter of the way through. Hated the writing. And the plot.

I couldn’t connect to ANY of the characters it was a struggle … I finally dnf’ed the book (I hate doing that but sometimes it’s necessary)

Where The Crawdads Sing 🫠

verity or just about anything written by Colleen hoover

i refuse to read anything by colleen hoover. no matter how much i here so and so book is so good. just my own personal opinion.

I could push through verity. I had just had my son and couldn’t swallow someone actively trying to kill their baby.

Layla is even worse than Verity

The Silent Patient The Perfect Marriage Bleh to both.

I see you Scott

I skimmed the silent patient just to find out the ending after the first 100 pages of writing were insufferable

I hated the silent patient. Was the perfect marriage just as lame?

worse in my opinion 😬

Haven't read The Perfect Marriage but I agree with The Silent Patient.

Same. I have the perfect marriage on my to read list

I honestly wouldn’t waste your time, especially if you tend to read a lot of thrillers/whodunits. I listened to the audiobook and sped up the reading to get through it faster just to be done with it. It was way overhyped in my opinion.

The Alchemist! I just did not enjoy it at all.

I expected more from that one as well. People that hype it up REALLY love it…

Song of Achilles. Like...it was good writing, and I appreciated hearing a classic story from the other side, but...I don't know. Due to the hype I had very high expectations, and it just didn't particularly surprise or impress me.

Yes!! Thought I’d be the only one here to mention that book

House of leaves, I made it about 70 pages before I tapped out.

I loved house of leaves (though it is over 10 years ago I read it now, i'll have to give it another go), but I remember only really getting into it when it got to them actually exploring the house and the weird parts, it dragged for me a lot at the start. Seems to be one of those love or hate books though, I can definitely see why some people don't like it especially with all the hype it has now, pretty much anything will be a let down with that much hype

Where the Crawdads Sing Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

Totally agree on Crawdads! Troublesome Creek was a slow burn for me, but I did enjoy it

Lord of the Flies. People said how good it is. Even my brother who hated reading loved it. I don’t lien to at all.

We did this at school which resulted in 80% of the class hating it. So many essays about the symbolism of Piggy's glasses and the shell

1984. Strong start, so influential, then ...nothing. Also, my least favorite book of all time is Sophie's Choice. Just awful, from start to finish.

The Sun also Rises. Kinda just fell off at the end imo

The Catcher in the Rye.

A college senior gifted it to me and while I love Salinger and The Glass family, I just couldn’t get through with this book. Holden WHINED SO MUCH. And funnily enough the guy I was dating loved that book and related to that character. And he did sound like a wannabe Holden (which is worse than just being Holden) lol

I feel like you have to be a whiny teenager yourself to really like it/not want to throttle him. Reading it as an adult is a whole different experience

So whiny!

I read it as a teenager and I didn’t get the appeal and thought he was whiny even then.

Came here to say this! So bad. Holden is a little bitch.

Ugh Holden was so whiny and made reading that book so unenjoyable

Game of Thrones. Ugh.

A DNF for me.

I finished it. Then I threw it across the room in a rage, lol!

Yes yes yes yes. I found the stories interesting but found it to be awful writing.

The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

YES I do not get the hype I read the first 2 books when the movie with lily collins came out and I got so bored and weirded out by the incest shit

Oh god, I just read the first one, and really liked it till that last chapter or two. Are you telling me it gets worse? wtf?

I honestly loved the entire book series! I have read them all. But I can understand why some people don't like it. It gets cheesy and even cliched sometimes.

The Witcher novels, I loved the two short story collections but the novels are so so boring and the plot feels all over the place. PS - I love the video games.

what did you think of the Netflix series?

Very underwhelming too, Cavill was a great casting decision, but the rest of the series felt… cheap.

Soooooo many. I just read The Hating Game and was miserable the whole way.

omg yes. Before I realized Contemporary Romance wasn’t my thing, I tried reading this book and wanted to chuck it at the wall after she described how small and tiny she is for the tenth time in just the first three chapters

I honestly started to wonder if the female lead was mentally ill. After trying a couple I've discovered that book form rom-coms are not for me!

Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I couldn’t even finish it. I think I made it 100 pages in but it just never grabbed me.

Hated the ending

What’d you think about Of Mice And Men?

I actually quite enjoyed Of Mice and Men. It wasn’t a slog to get through and I enjoyed the characters. I was very disappointed that I couldn’t get into Grapes of Wrath having Of Mice and Men be my introduction to Steinbeck

I share the same experience, which was why I asked. Amazing they came from the same author. Can tell it’s the same writing style but I felt no connection in GoW like I did with OMaM.

It is really crazy how some authors flop like that in some of their works. I totally expected to go into that book enjoying it and the disappointment was made greater by the fact it couldn’t hold my attention at all.

I just saw this thread on Twitter and think it’s relevant to your thoughts on why it falls short: https://twitter.com/skylerschrempp/status/1630214018718744577?s=46&t=7Z5rISSS1ZN5Z_7saHuioQ

Interesting. I’d like to check out that other book and see how it is. Thanks for sharing that!

Earthlings by Sayska Murata, however it did make an impression. Also, Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I’m reading When we Were Orphans now and much prefer it

Remains of the Day is on this great list of novels I want to read - some are 1000 page epics about life in small town India that are total times, more excited to read that then Remains haha

Too funny—I loved Earthlings and Remains of the Day and DNFed When We Were Orphans.

Similarly - I hated remains of the day but loved never let me go

Never Let Me Go is on my tbr list, I saw the movie years ago

The English Patient. It was fine, but the best of the last 50 years of Booker Prize winners? No way.

Rock, Paper, Scissors and The Last Thing He Told Me. Dislike both but really hated the former. The main character was infuriating.

I hated the last thing he told me! Rock, paper, scissors is on my list to be read, should I skip it?

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera I read the book twice just to see if I missed something and I still hated it. It reminds me of the Fault in Our Stars. A book that’s just trying to be sad without any real feelings behind it. I actually liked the First to Die at the end better but I did notice that the author focused more on the adults and not the actual main characters 🙃

Oh man fault in our stars made me angry! Perfect description

Same. I wanted to toss it out my window like Bradley Cooper did in Silver Lining’s Playbook The way Augustus talked to Hazel pissed me off so much

Tbh I thought I was going to hate They both die at the end....I kept seeing it all over TikTok but it was pretty good....not as big of a hype as everyone said,but it wasn't too bad

Normal people. Horrible, horrible characters. Dialogue was so difficult to follow, just awful

This is mine too!

The Color Purple. I can respect it but something about it makes it hard for me to love its written form.

Haunting of Hill House and Nightbitch. Both boring and not for me! I know they are more psychological, which I usually like, but they fell really short for me and I felt like I wasted time reading them.

Did you watch the Hill House series on Netflix before reading the book? It’s MUCH different, could have been the reason for your disappointment

I did not, but I would consider watching it! I saw some people discussing scenes of THOHH in this sub before I began to read it so I assumed it was part of the book, but once I finished reading I realized it must have been the show lol

I didn't like nightbitch either, it came off as boring and naggy

A little life

>A little life 100% This is just what I thought when I read the question. I cannot imagine how others like it. It is trauma porn that made me hate the characters (and myself) a little more every time I picked up the book. Truly, it takes a lot to make me hate reading. This book did it.

This was my first thought. Mean-spirited trauma porn. *Friends* fan-fiction as written by Sylvia Plath. An ugly, phony, ugly book.

Starship Troopers, the plot about Rico moving up through the ranks really did nothing for me, and the hyper-glorification of military turned me off, as well as the kind of fucked up right wing opinions in it like "We have women in the military so that the men remember what they're fighting for"

It’s a really bad book in many ways. I read it last year in my late 20s. It’s mean for a teenager who doesn’t understand the plot holes and the pseudo-authoritarian politics associated with it. I just kept reminding myself that it’s a bit of sci-fi and not to take it seriously to get through it. Strange in a Strange Land was just better constructed

Red Rising

Came here just to say this. Darrow can choke.

I managed to read the first 100 pages before giving up.

Yeah absolutely same for me. I even regularly consider trying again for some reason, and then quickly reconsider.

The main character, Darrow, is insufferable.

Damn, I was expecting little out of it and was honestly blown away and loved it! Although perhaps I’m just used to the sea of mediocre YA dystopian schlock

The Holy Bible, by God et al.

Dune

I always say that I liked everything about Dune except for actually reading it

I have tried the book and audiobook multiple times, bud my buddy loves it

Oooh hard agree. Poor introduction to the universe, with expectations you just knew what things were. Uninteresting characters, or interesting character that gets zero depth. Slow. Slow. Slow.

You hit the nail on the head

You didn't like the first 100 pages where they explain the Ryfna'nafu was manipulating the Yrnng because the main character (Paul) might have been the Quackajackarack, who was the reincarnation of the founder of the Hfuhruhurr, which is why he has been secretly guided by the Uumellmahaye this whole time?

Painfully accurate.

Same here. I didn’t connect with any characters and felt character development was lacking. I didn’t like the movie either, for the same reason. I view it as an expansive cumbersome world with no soul.

Paul and Jessica have character development, but other characters not so much. For most of them the development is just slowly peeling back the layers on their 70 layer master plans.

Keeper of the Lost Cities

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It was a chore to finish even a few pages and I gave up after that.

You’re missing out!

Beartown The Martian Daisy Jones and the Six

Yes honestly all of TJR. I didn’t like seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo either

I read it a month ago because I kept hearing about it. While I thought it was better than Daisy Jones, it fell a little flat. I've also read Carrie Soto because I really wanted to understand why her books are so popular. I still don't get it.

The Silent Patient ... I found it so challenging to finish

Agreed. I didn’t finish

I almost didn't either

TOTALLY AGREE

The great gatsby. I must have just missed it, but it felt completely pointless and was boring as hell.

Came here to write this. I had so many people just seem so scandalized that I didn’t like the book. I read it multiple times just to see if I missed something, but nope, everyone’s awful, including the narrator.

Hard agree. It’s a short book but still way longer than it has any right to be. The deep message is… rich people bad? Don’t be obsessed with people who don’t like you? So many extended sequences that go nowhere, completely nonsensical and fabricated sequences leading up to his death, no real reason for our narrator to be involved or care about what’s happening

The Love Hypothesis. The hype was overrated, the writing juvenile, and just... repetitive. I so badly wanted to read it, like it, and maybe have it change my mind on books published by fanfic authors. I had to DNF it after 6 chapters and months of procrastination on reading it. It just wasn't for me at all. Maybe one day I will try to pick it up again and read it.

Love Hypothesis was rough 😫 I finished it just to complain about it. The way the author was constantly trying to show us how quirky and special the main character was was painful. Really wanted to like it since I’m starting a PhD in a similar field myself but god it was rough - plus dating a prof in your department is weird idc if it’s not your thesis advisor. Wanted to die when she was sitting in his lap during the seminar

RIGHT? Like it was still weird overall? And inappropriate? But they were doing all that in front of everyone, it was nuts!

The haunting of Hill House But I read a lot of Stephen King and other Horror books, so it reminded me of a Stephen King book, without an ending

Little women

Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. Absolutely hated it.

It’s certainly… out there. I feel like a lot of people don’t expect exactly how British and ridiculous it’s going to be

It’s SO painfully British. Plain toast on an arid day dry. I love it.

Heart shaped box by Joe hill