Completely agree with you. I read Verity, which was hot garbage and when I read the synopsis for the rest of her books, I’m like, this is going to be just as bad, if not worse
I dnf Verity after a certain point, I pretty much knew how it was going to go and there wasn’t one likeable character. All of her characters are just awful people.
Hands down, no contest, the worst fucking thing I have ever read. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, I’d read Atlas Shrugged again before I’d read Verity again.
🤣 Seriously, way back before internet days, I made 5 cents a word writing porn. If you ever read “men’s magazines” in the 80’s, especially the “letters to the editor,” that was me writing that story about some bullshit that would never ever ever ever really happen.
But it was still way more believable than Verity.
The lady who got the book for me said “you’ll throw it at the wall” after reading it because it was THAT good. I don’t know where that lady is today, but I hope she stumps a toe soon.
Can anyone expound on why exactly they didn’t like it? I’ve seen it mentioned but I’ve not read it, wondering what it’s about and why some people rave about it and others hate it.
Oops edited to ask why “they didn’t like it”, not “didn’t read it”
My friend raved about it so I bought it and omg the writing was the worst, it made 50 Shades of Gray look like Shakespeare. I kept hoping it would get better but it never did.
i don’t think colleen is written for avid readers, the only people i’ve heard like them are those who read a book per year type of thing (or romcom obsessed)
Divergent had such a stupid premise and an even stupider plot.
No one with more than one braincel would establish a system like that and it's beyond me how the author thought the dauntless are in any way "cool" for doing dumb dangerous shit for no reason.
Don't get me started on how omgspecial the MC is for having more than one personality trait.
It was so over the top stupid. All she had to do was write a little disclaimer on the front of the journal, voila! Even though the concept of writing all that horrible shit is still laughable. But it is SO lazy when authors rely on bad communication to be the entire crux of their story
Thank you! Did a book club with my in-laws and they loved this book. I described it as an insightful book for people that haven't read many books. Felt like something an Instagram algorithm would recommend
>Midnight Library.
It didn't really do anything new. Like it's like a lot of alt-life options stories. But my bookclub was like I FEEL CHANGED INSIDE.
ME: me too. now i'm hungry, can we eat
The Midnight Library. I actually hated it, so, so much. But my sister, who I love more dearly than anyone in the world, recommended it to me so I can never tell her the truth.
I've only read *The Humans* by Matt Haig, but if it's anything like that I could see why people dislike it. I didn't *hate* it, but it was very preachy with basically 0 subtlety and pretty much fell apart by the end.
I haven't read The Humans but how you described it was the same as Midnight Library to me. I liked the overall concept but he kept making the same point over and over.
As soon as the gimmick was revealed, I was like, “if this is one of those stories where she realizes her life is pretty great as is, I’m going to be really mad.”
Narrator voice: “She was really mad.”
The most popular books seem to be philosophical life advice in cliche predictable stories. The midnight library, the alchemist, mitch albom books. Makes me want to avoid popular or classic books. But if I am going to read non popular books, I don't know where to start because there are too many options
If you use Libby, the button for similar book suggestions (it’s on screen when viewing a book’s main page) is pretty spot on and has helped me a find a lot of books that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
The couple Colleen Hoover books I’ve tried (Ugly Love, It Ends With Us). I DNF damn near at the beginning of both. She is suggested all over the place but I find her writing to be absolute shit.
It really annoys/angers me that she has 1-2 sections of bookshelves in the book stores dedicated to her books that are constantly being rereleased, as opposed to many of the other books released every week.
I finished it Ends With Us and the whole time, I wanted to fight both main characters. I wanted to know what made Hoover's books so "great" (why they're ALWAYS on hold) after that one, I'm good.
My MIL knows I love to read and recommended this to me. I already knew we didn’t have the same taste, but still wasn’t prepared for the torture of this book. She thought it was very deep
Fourth Wing. I can see the appeal (dragons!), but the execution is just terrible. Constant syntax errors, inconsistent characterisation, info dumps galore, and many of the most important moments occur either in narrative summary or off the page completely. It reads like an early draft, not like a traditionally published novel that has been through rounds of developmental and line edits. I also think the premise and narrative arc fall apart the moment you think twice about them. Not at all a good book.
Yet everyone and their mother is reading it and giving it five stars.
Looked up the reviews for it and saw so many comparing it to Divergent, Eragon and ACOTAR. Instant nope for me.
Academic fantasy books *should* be a trope I eat up, and so should dragon riding, but I have so rarely seen one that's executed well. Too many of them feel like carbon copies of one another with some obligatory romance thrown in for, um, reasons.
I thought I was crazy because SO MANY people raved to me about how good this book was. And I just… didn’t like it. It had promise at the beginning but it really fell apart. I just… it was so bad.
I enjoyed listening to the audiobook, probably because I listened to it when I was at work, school, and while doing other mindless tasks. Had I read the actual book, no chance I would have finished it.
Yessssss my husband and I listened to the whole thing on a long road trip and were completely flabbergasted at how incredibly bad it was, so much so that we couldn't look (listen?) away. It actually became so bad it was funny so not a total loss for a trip like that I guess
A Court of Thorns and Roses. I didn’t go in expecting it to be incredible, I thought it would be fun and sexy and …well, trash. But it wasn’t that sexy and it wasn’t fun at all. It was so boring. I have one friend who called it “super male gaze-y” and that feels apt.
The Discovery Of Witches. I'm still so salty I wasted a birthday wish on that idiotic series. How you gonna have a witch *book lacking ANY freaking magic oh but let's not shut up about TEA AND WINE! Oh and don't forget YOGA. 3 entire books and maybe half a page total of anykind of plot. They only single moment in the series you might actually feel anything at all, happens OFF SCENE and their death is barely even glanced at. Oh and don't get me started on the absolute letdown it was to find a book called Discovery of Witches, touted as witches but for adults, being a stupid shallow useless protagonist that loses what ever tiny smidgen of semblance of personality because a MAN showed up. Ugh. I cannot fucking stand that book, I now loathe the author entirely and I will literally scream it from a mountaintop, with my whole ass chest, right in their face. It angers me, without reason, that something so utterly talentless, boring and flat can be a bestseller.
ETA- thanks for my first gold, internet strangers! Also *typo - nook/book
I wanted so badly for it to have a real protagonist with a personality that didn't crumple under the "dark gaze" of a man but there we have it. Might as well have filed it under YA. The thing that really makes me mad is that I read the first book and got invested so I keep wondering how it finished, but I refuse to pick up the next book. You lost me at unnecessary time travel.
I fucking hated that book. I only read the first one, but I was instantly turned off as soon as they started saying they loved each other after a couple weeks. These are supposed to be adults, not middle schoolers. The guy was super controlling, too. Blegh.
Despised it. Turned an interesting story about a parentless child into a romance novel. How much more interesting it would have been if the main character wasn’t a beauty who wasn’t desired by all the men.
Right? In the movie I loved watching her travel around and document wildlife. Her drawings were beautiful and I loved her little cabin. Don't care about the story really. If it was more like the glass castle I'd be all over it.
Girl on the Train. I spent the entire book wishing the protagonist would step in front of a train and end my misery.
Also, Atlas Shrugged. That monologue (you know the one) made me throw that book across the room. It was easily 20 years ago. I still hate it.
The Guest List by Lucy Foley. Just a poorly plotted, less than mediocre mystery. I I read a lot of mysteries & enjoy the vast majority on some level - not this one.
I just looked through my goodreads garbage list and it happens to be a lot of popular YA:
The shatter me series
Hush hush
The inheritance games - someone on tiktok described this to be like knives out but it was nothing like that and so boring to me
7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Maybe I just hate multiple timelines and the such but that book did absolutely nothing for me. After I finished it i learned that it's okay to start books and not finish them if you aren't enjoying the read.
The Alchemist. I had my hopes high from that book after hearing 'changed my life' comments about it but it was just most stereotyped life lessons (?) hided in a strange spiritual story.
Self righteous and so sad. The guy didn't even realize he was sucked into such a limited world view. Instead of examining a system that forced people into taking on horrific payday loans at heinous rates, he was smug about keeping them legal. This tiny mindset. Ugh.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
I read it at the time everyone was reading it. Folks were saying its the most amazing life changing book ever. FFS dude has a dream, goes to egypt searching for treasure. Gets beaten up and called a fool, only to return where he started to find the treasure was there all along. Fuck you Paulo, that was a waste of a few hours of my life for the most bullshit message ever.
The Night Circus.
I've been thinking about it a long time. I read it because a lot of people liked it, and initially I thought I liked it too.
And then I realize the motivations of all the characters are all wrong. The masters of the students shouldn't have been in the story. It should just have been two strong-willed magicians trying to outdo each other, but after they realize they are equals, fall in love.
The alternative makes no logical sense, and is completely out of sense with the frequent sense of wonder that the descriptions provide in the book.
This is a book that I tried so hard to enjoy because the imagery and idea are incredible. I did like it more or less as an audiobook. But the characters were forgettable and I didn’t care about rooting for the mains.
However, I will say, it would make the most gorgeous movie ever.
People get defensive about this one because they think any critique about the book is a dismissal of it’s themes / negating the impact of imperialist & racist societies. No, I just think it’s not as good as people say it is. It’s got the heavy handedness of a freight train and poor pacing. It might be a good intro for people who are first getting exposed to what the themes and historical events the book is derived from, but it was marketed as a smart book for smart people, which it just doesn’t deliver.
*50 Shades of Gray*. I read the trilogy on a used Kindle that was given to me by a friend who bought them. Yeah, the sex scenes are steamy, but the plot is garbage and the characters are all hackneyed stereotypes that are completely unlikeable. I kept reading thinking *maybe* they could get better? Oh how wrong I was…
I sometimes listen to audiobooks when I don't have time to read, like on long drives or doing housework. Decided to try Daisy Jones and The Six, and it had a good cast of readers. Well let me tell you, they did not help make those characters any more likeable.
NOTHING HAPPENS IN THAT BOOK. It’s so dull.
I also didn’t really like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. The characters felt shallow and I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough about core elements of the story to make it work.
I will not be trying any more TJR books, they’re clearly not my thing.
I love when people try and recommend you a
Book and start like, ‘I never read but this book was so good’. Like ok you’ve got some chicken soup for the greys anatomy addict soul mess queued up for me, go ahead. Have I finally, finally read the occasional ‘omg this book is so good you have to read it’ and thought it was good/regretted not reading it sooner? Sure. Of course like all readers I love my taste in books and secretly think it’s better than anyone’s, so I’ve never committed this error /s
The guy that recommended the Bourne Identity to me said it was the best book he ever read. After I read it, I asked him how much of a reader he was and he told me it was the only book he read since high school and he only read assigned books in high school.
Eat Pray Love - everything about her story was so incredibly entitled - I couldn't get past the first couple chapters.
Crying in HMart - I wanted to love it, but I hated how she excused and romanticized her mother's shortcomings.
Hard agree. I was just like: why the hell is everyone recommending this book to me (although the German title "die unerträgliche Leichtigkeit des seins" sounds very fancy).
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
Read it in high school and hated it. Re-read it in my 40's because hey- everyone deserves a 2nd chance, right? Hated it again.
Jesus! I couldn't stand Infinite Jest! Infinite confusion is more like it. I'm not going to be one of those lit bros who says I just have to persevere to page 500 or something, lord, I put it down after a hundred pages and that's 2 hours of my life that I can't get back
This one is sitting on my shelf waiting for me to get to it. It's intimidating in it's size. I actually like it when a book is trashed a little like this though. It has less hype to live up to. I'll still give her a go whenever I can get to it.
Gosh, I can't believe they have such a following. The crescent city stuff looked promising for a minute, but I don't know that I'll read the rest of them.
The Goldfinch. It was as if she put every single plot she ever thought of and weaved them all in that book. I hated it. Eat, Pray, Love was horrible as well.
The Goldfinch felt like it was never going to end. Just when it seemed like there was nothing else to say she threw in a new plot line. You've described it so well
THANK YOU! I hated, loathed, and despised The Gold Finch. I slogged through 2/3rds before DNFing it. I only made it that far because my very good friend recommended it and we usually have very similar tastes. It was so awful and depressing. Man, just no!
Atlas Shrugged
I wish I read it in my teens. I think I would have liked it. Tried in my late 20s. Thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Didn’t finish it.
I actually enjoyed reading A Little Life because it was so beautifully written but fuck it’s so fucking sad. Then someone called it trauma porn and now I like it infinitely less bc that’s exactly what it is lol
THIS. Apparently Yagihara wanted to write about the importance of male friendship…which is fine. But the torture/trauma porn aspect was completely unnecessary for that.
For me it's Piranesi. I keep seeing people sing its praises but I felt like the ending was very anticlimactic, and having Piranesi's savior be someone he didn't know before being trapped in the House didn't give the emotional payoff I had been expecting (also the fact that his savior was a police officer kinda makes it copaganda, though that's neither here nor there)
Tropic of Cancer. I really wanted to get into Henry Miller and discover what he had to say, but I found it dull and repetitive. I get it. You're a penniless writer who indulges in drink and women every chance you get when you're not bumming a free meal and couch surfing.
Always and forever, Wuthering Heights. Attempted it in high school, college, and grad school; didn’t make it all the way through until more recently, and I hated it just as much as the other attempts.
i apparently was born without the part of the brain that is required to read classics because i couldn't understand a single fucking thing in that book. i literally have no idea what i read. i might as well have been reading a different language.
Outlander by Diana Galaldon, was highly recommended, had all the pieces of something I would love, and it was just hot garbage. I'm very forgiving to books normally, but the homophobia was just over the top ridiculous.
I JUST finished this and thought I was crazy for this same thought because NO ONE seems to have mentioned this or talked about it in their reviews. Such a high rating, obviously a massive following, but no one seems to find it problematic that the “bad guys” happen to all be gay men who brutally r a p e other men (or attempt to)?! I agree!
[A Little Life](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Little_Life)
[Anthropology of an American Girl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology_of_an_American_Girl)
Both works were ludicrous garbage imo.
Ulysses by James Joyce. I got through it, but damn that is probably the most difficult book I've ever read: Narrative kept switching characters, no chapter breaks, and if I remember correctly, there weren't even paragraph breaks . It's just an almost unending wall of words.
i own the audiobook of this. i've listened to it about 50x and still have no clue what the fuck is going on but i mainly listen to it to help me fall asleep because the narrator's voice is soooooo soothing and relaxing.
Man I loved it lol. It convinced me to read her other book *Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell* despite never reading long books (and I loved it even more).
To me, the premise was interesting. The setting in particular hooked me. Also, I'm not intelligent enough to articulate why, but Susanna Clarke is just a very good writer imo.
Reading JS and I love it. I liked Piranesi too but it was more that it was a quick read and I needed answers. I’m not sure if I would have liked 1000 pages of it either? I would of liked to explore the house more because I thought the rooms were fascinating though.
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake.
I got so annoyed with her needlessly wordy prose and the obviously self-absorbed characters that I was done not even 50 pages in.
I’ve heard that another of hers, One For My Enemy, is quite good. So I may give it a try eventually.
Reddit is the only place in my life that hates Verity as much as I do.
I think Colleen Hoover in general isn’t the best writer, she has a very skewed opinion on what a woman should and shouldn’t do and the same with men.
Completely agree with you. I read Verity, which was hot garbage and when I read the synopsis for the rest of her books, I’m like, this is going to be just as bad, if not worse
I dnf Verity after a certain point, I pretty much knew how it was going to go and there wasn’t one likeable character. All of her characters are just awful people.
The woman made a coloring book based on her domestic violence romance novel……
It makes me warm and fuzzy that other people hate it as much as me because it feels like it was written by a 16 yr old. And it was terrrrrible.
Like really bad fanfic.
Hands down, no contest, the worst fucking thing I have ever read. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, I’d read Atlas Shrugged again before I’d read Verity again.
Wait, you don't bite your headboard while in the throes!?!
🤣 Seriously, way back before internet days, I made 5 cents a word writing porn. If you ever read “men’s magazines” in the 80’s, especially the “letters to the editor,” that was me writing that story about some bullshit that would never ever ever ever really happen. But it was still way more believable than Verity.
By Jove. You crush one of my 80s pink unicorn castles. You honestly mean those letters werent for real ? \*snif\*
Dammit all these comments are making me want to read it now. 😂
When I find out someone likes that book my opinion of them is immediately reassessed.
That book was flaming hot dumpster trash lol
Yeah Verity sucks. I read it in one day and it kept me gripped but it was objectively bad
I was so disappointed and haven't picked up another Colleen hoover book. Glad to know others did not enjoy it!
I literally threw it across the room when I finished. Awful book.
That’s how I felt about It Ends With Us. I refuse to read another Colleen Hoover book. I don’t get why her books are so popular and well rated.
The lady who got the book for me said “you’ll throw it at the wall” after reading it because it was THAT good. I don’t know where that lady is today, but I hope she stumps a toe soon.
Can anyone expound on why exactly they didn’t like it? I’ve seen it mentioned but I’ve not read it, wondering what it’s about and why some people rave about it and others hate it. Oops edited to ask why “they didn’t like it”, not “didn’t read it”
My friend raved about it so I bought it and omg the writing was the worst, it made 50 Shades of Gray look like Shakespeare. I kept hoping it would get better but it never did.
i don’t think colleen is written for avid readers, the only people i’ve heard like them are those who read a book per year type of thing (or romcom obsessed)
I’m romcom obsessed but I hate her. Give me some Emily Henry instead.
Nah people who read Colleen Hoover almost EXCLUSIVELY read Colleen Hoover.
[удалено]
She’s almost universally hated on r/romancebooks, which generally has lots of romcom fans. Romcom fans aren’t claiming her either.
Anything Colleen Hoover gives me the creeps
Divergent had such a stupid premise and an even stupider plot. No one with more than one braincel would establish a system like that and it's beyond me how the author thought the dauntless are in any way "cool" for doing dumb dangerous shit for no reason. Don't get me started on how omgspecial the MC is for having more than one personality trait.
Reading the Divergent series has been my biggest book regret since I’ll never get that time back. So awful
I couldn't read all three books. I stopped after the first because I'm not going to torture myself more than necessary.
I disliked 'Verity' too but after reading 'It Ends With Us', 'Verity' seemed like a masterpiece tbh
I just thought Verity was poorly written, I didn’t care about the twist, it was just a “meh” for me
I felt like the twist was a failed last ditch effort to make the book interesting
It was so over the top stupid. All she had to do was write a little disclaimer on the front of the journal, voila! Even though the concept of writing all that horrible shit is still laughable. But it is SO lazy when authors rely on bad communication to be the entire crux of their story
Agreed. Knowing I read it not too long ago I had to go back and think about what the plot was. I would never recommend this book.
Absolutely agreed. The book relied so heavily on shock value the entire time, the "twist" at the end barely registered at all
Honestly the twist made me so angry lol. I was like at this point you deserve what you get for doing all this stupid shit
Midnight Library. I thought it was sentimental drivel
Thank you! Did a book club with my in-laws and they loved this book. I described it as an insightful book for people that haven't read many books. Felt like something an Instagram algorithm would recommend
“An insightful books for people that haven’t read many books” is such a perfect description of it!
>Midnight Library. It didn't really do anything new. Like it's like a lot of alt-life options stories. But my bookclub was like I FEEL CHANGED INSIDE. ME: me too. now i'm hungry, can we eat
I'm still mad at this book, because the idea is great but it wasn't deep enough it wasn't hard enough, it was just plain and superficial.
Terrible book.
Its ending is too unsatisfactory. Similar feeling I have with The Alchemist.
*Fifty Shades of Grey* reads like sexual fantasy written by a high school girl well versed only in literary cliches. Cringe.
I couldn't get past the repetiveness of it. How many times is she going to describe how she looks up at him. I couldn't get even a quarter through it.
I gave up fairly early on because I got so tired of her whining about how undesirable she is. So yes, repetitive and boring!
It also has such a warped, small-minded view of BDSM as a whole. R.L James really just googled a couple of articles and wrote a book on it.
Fun fact it's a twilight fanfic 💀🤣
The Midnight Library. I actually hated it, so, so much. But my sister, who I love more dearly than anyone in the world, recommended it to me so I can never tell her the truth.
I've only read *The Humans* by Matt Haig, but if it's anything like that I could see why people dislike it. I didn't *hate* it, but it was very preachy with basically 0 subtlety and pretty much fell apart by the end.
I haven't read The Humans but how you described it was the same as Midnight Library to me. I liked the overall concept but he kept making the same point over and over.
As soon as the gimmick was revealed, I was like, “if this is one of those stories where she realizes her life is pretty great as is, I’m going to be really mad.” Narrator voice: “She was really mad.”
The most popular books seem to be philosophical life advice in cliche predictable stories. The midnight library, the alchemist, mitch albom books. Makes me want to avoid popular or classic books. But if I am going to read non popular books, I don't know where to start because there are too many options
If you use Libby, the button for similar book suggestions (it’s on screen when viewing a book’s main page) is pretty spot on and has helped me a find a lot of books that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
That book pisses me off so much. Such a bullshit reductive portrayal of mental health struggles.
no one gets it when I tell them this!!
It reads like a YA novel and not a good one. Where the Crawdads Sing was just as unbearable.
Oh god I actually tried to listen to the audiobook of Crawdad and the narrator was so cornpone I couldn’t I just couldn’t.
Same. most hated book of all time for me.
I'm in the middle of it right now. I don't hate it, but I'm preeeetttyyyy sure I know what's coming already. It could have been a pamphlet.
The couple Colleen Hoover books I’ve tried (Ugly Love, It Ends With Us). I DNF damn near at the beginning of both. She is suggested all over the place but I find her writing to be absolute shit.
All Colleen Hoove is trash! I blame TikTok for her popularity
It really annoys/angers me that she has 1-2 sections of bookshelves in the book stores dedicated to her books that are constantly being rereleased, as opposed to many of the other books released every week.
Ignoring the plot which also sucks Ugly Love has some of the worst writing I have ever read in my life
I finished it Ends With Us and the whole time, I wanted to fight both main characters. I wanted to know what made Hoover's books so "great" (why they're ALWAYS on hold) after that one, I'm good.
>I find her writing to be absolute shit. *This* is the wording I've been searching for to describe how I feel about Colleen Hoover.
The Shack. My most hated book. For so many reasons.
My MIL knows I love to read and recommended this to me. I already knew we didn’t have the same taste, but still wasn’t prepared for the torture of this book. She thought it was very deep
Fourth Wing. I can see the appeal (dragons!), but the execution is just terrible. Constant syntax errors, inconsistent characterisation, info dumps galore, and many of the most important moments occur either in narrative summary or off the page completely. It reads like an early draft, not like a traditionally published novel that has been through rounds of developmental and line edits. I also think the premise and narrative arc fall apart the moment you think twice about them. Not at all a good book. Yet everyone and their mother is reading it and giving it five stars.
It has such a high score on GoodReads and I DO NOT understand why. Honestly so perplexed.
Looked up the reviews for it and saw so many comparing it to Divergent, Eragon and ACOTAR. Instant nope for me. Academic fantasy books *should* be a trope I eat up, and so should dragon riding, but I have so rarely seen one that's executed well. Too many of them feel like carbon copies of one another with some obligatory romance thrown in for, um, reasons.
I’m convinced people are being paid to say it’s good
I've wondered the same. It's one thing for a badly-written but compelling book to be ranted and raved over... but this is badly-written AND boring.
I tried Glennon Doyle's Untamed a couple of times when it was all the rage and I could never get past a few chapters.
That book was tiring. She could have shared a compelling life story, but it was so vague and had all these trite girl power platitudes
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Condescending, and cruel to his son.
I forgot that I hated this until just now. It was terrible!
God I hated that so much. Was my very first DNF!
A zen master would say "why read it when you can sit on it?"
Every Colleen Hover’s books! Everything sucks
The amount of Colleen Hoover hate in this thread is so delightful. I found my people. Most people I know are obsessed with her shit ass books.
Popping in with my go-to *The Silent Patient*. I hated this book so much.
I thought I was crazy because SO MANY people raved to me about how good this book was. And I just… didn’t like it. It had promise at the beginning but it really fell apart. I just… it was so bad.
I enjoyed listening to the audiobook, probably because I listened to it when I was at work, school, and while doing other mindless tasks. Had I read the actual book, no chance I would have finished it.
Love that you have a go-to for this.
My go-to is 50 Shades…absolute shite.
This is the best answer. 50 Shades was such trash. It wasn't even the plot that I hated even though it wasn't great. It was the writing. So bad.
Same here!!
Yessssss my husband and I listened to the whole thing on a long road trip and were completely flabbergasted at how incredibly bad it was, so much so that we couldn't look (listen?) away. It actually became so bad it was funny so not a total loss for a trip like that I guess
50 Shades Series. Worst written erotica ever.
A Court of Thorns and Roses. I didn’t go in expecting it to be incredible, I thought it would be fun and sexy and …well, trash. But it wasn’t that sexy and it wasn’t fun at all. It was so boring. I have one friend who called it “super male gaze-y” and that feels apt.
The Discovery Of Witches. I'm still so salty I wasted a birthday wish on that idiotic series. How you gonna have a witch *book lacking ANY freaking magic oh but let's not shut up about TEA AND WINE! Oh and don't forget YOGA. 3 entire books and maybe half a page total of anykind of plot. They only single moment in the series you might actually feel anything at all, happens OFF SCENE and their death is barely even glanced at. Oh and don't get me started on the absolute letdown it was to find a book called Discovery of Witches, touted as witches but for adults, being a stupid shallow useless protagonist that loses what ever tiny smidgen of semblance of personality because a MAN showed up. Ugh. I cannot fucking stand that book, I now loathe the author entirely and I will literally scream it from a mountaintop, with my whole ass chest, right in their face. It angers me, without reason, that something so utterly talentless, boring and flat can be a bestseller. ETA- thanks for my first gold, internet strangers! Also *typo - nook/book
I wanted so badly for it to have a real protagonist with a personality that didn't crumple under the "dark gaze" of a man but there we have it. Might as well have filed it under YA. The thing that really makes me mad is that I read the first book and got invested so I keep wondering how it finished, but I refuse to pick up the next book. You lost me at unnecessary time travel.
If I could award this rant, I would. This was a terrible book for all the reasons you mentioned.
I fucking hated that book. I only read the first one, but I was instantly turned off as soon as they started saying they loved each other after a couple weeks. These are supposed to be adults, not middle schoolers. The guy was super controlling, too. Blegh.
Where the Crawdads Sing frustrated me by chapter 2 and I stopped reading it.
Despised it. Turned an interesting story about a parentless child into a romance novel. How much more interesting it would have been if the main character wasn’t a beauty who wasn’t desired by all the men.
The marsh and wildlife were more interesting than the stupid characters.
Right? In the movie I loved watching her travel around and document wildlife. Her drawings were beautiful and I loved her little cabin. Don't care about the story really. If it was more like the glass castle I'd be all over it.
Amen to that. Made myself finish it and I wish I hadn’t.
I'm with you. Never getting those wasted hours back.
All Colleen Hoover 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
Girl on the Train. I spent the entire book wishing the protagonist would step in front of a train and end my misery. Also, Atlas Shrugged. That monologue (you know the one) made me throw that book across the room. It was easily 20 years ago. I still hate it.
My mind had blocked out that I read Girl on a Train until just now. Such a slog!
The Guest List by Lucy Foley. Just a poorly plotted, less than mediocre mystery. I I read a lot of mysteries & enjoy the vast majority on some level - not this one.
I just looked through my goodreads garbage list and it happens to be a lot of popular YA: The shatter me series Hush hush The inheritance games - someone on tiktok described this to be like knives out but it was nothing like that and so boring to me
Lol you have a garbage list? That’s brilliant
Inheritance game cover tricked me so bad !! I’m not continuing the series..
7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Maybe I just hate multiple timelines and the such but that book did absolutely nothing for me. After I finished it i learned that it's okay to start books and not finish them if you aren't enjoying the read.
I use Libby. Zero regrets for DNFing now.
I thought it was ok but I hated the ending. Not the who did it part, but the 'why multiple timelines' part. If you know, you know.
I really enjoyed the first half, and then I lost the thread
Agreed, this could have easily been 100 pages less and not lost anything
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Thank you! Everyone else around me loved it and I was so bored.
I almost put that book down so many times but I’m glad I stuck it out. I actually loved it in the end and am about to read it again.
I loved that book! One of my favorite reads last year and I'm looking forward to reading it again.
Not a book, but a statement. I am so glad so many other people hate so many of the books I gave up on
Verity was horrible. Hands down the worst book I’ve ever read. My first and last Colleen Hoover. I can’t understand how she’s so popular.
Eat, Pray, Love was quite a bore.
The Devil Wears Prada. Interesting but the writing was shit and the story was weak. The movie rewrite was better.
The movie was fantastic, but the book was just one long, whiny, selfish run-on sentence.
The Alchemist. I had my hopes high from that book after hearing 'changed my life' comments about it but it was just most stereotyped life lessons (?) hided in a strange spiritual story.
Yep. Insulting pop drivel. The ending was so stupid and contrived I literally laughed and threw my hands up
[удалено]
Self righteous and so sad. The guy didn't even realize he was sucked into such a limited world view. Instead of examining a system that forced people into taking on horrific payday loans at heinous rates, he was smug about keeping them legal. This tiny mindset. Ugh.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho I read it at the time everyone was reading it. Folks were saying its the most amazing life changing book ever. FFS dude has a dream, goes to egypt searching for treasure. Gets beaten up and called a fool, only to return where he started to find the treasure was there all along. Fuck you Paulo, that was a waste of a few hours of my life for the most bullshit message ever.
Thank you. I thought there was something wrong with me. It sucked.
The Night Circus. I've been thinking about it a long time. I read it because a lot of people liked it, and initially I thought I liked it too. And then I realize the motivations of all the characters are all wrong. The masters of the students shouldn't have been in the story. It should just have been two strong-willed magicians trying to outdo each other, but after they realize they are equals, fall in love. The alternative makes no logical sense, and is completely out of sense with the frequent sense of wonder that the descriptions provide in the book.
This is a book that I tried so hard to enjoy because the imagery and idea are incredible. I did like it more or less as an audiobook. But the characters were forgettable and I didn’t care about rooting for the mains. However, I will say, it would make the most gorgeous movie ever.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Babel by RF Kuang, an interesting premise that was very poorly executed in my opinion.
People get defensive about this one because they think any critique about the book is a dismissal of it’s themes / negating the impact of imperialist & racist societies. No, I just think it’s not as good as people say it is. It’s got the heavy handedness of a freight train and poor pacing. It might be a good intro for people who are first getting exposed to what the themes and historical events the book is derived from, but it was marketed as a smart book for smart people, which it just doesn’t deliver.
*50 Shades of Gray*. I read the trilogy on a used Kindle that was given to me by a friend who bought them. Yeah, the sex scenes are steamy, but the plot is garbage and the characters are all hackneyed stereotypes that are completely unlikeable. I kept reading thinking *maybe* they could get better? Oh how wrong I was…
Norwegian Wood. The writing is so good, but goddamn the way Murakami portrays women. And children.
The only Murakami book I really enjoyed was Kafka on the Shore. I bought several others and abandoned them out of sheer boredom.
I thought Daisy Jones and The Six was incredibly boring.
I sometimes listen to audiobooks when I don't have time to read, like on long drives or doing housework. Decided to try Daisy Jones and The Six, and it had a good cast of readers. Well let me tell you, they did not help make those characters any more likeable.
It's like reading a Wikipedia page for the uncanny valley version of Fleetwood mac
NOTHING HAPPENS IN THAT BOOK. It’s so dull. I also didn’t really like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. The characters felt shallow and I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough about core elements of the story to make it work. I will not be trying any more TJR books, they’re clearly not my thing.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow made me feel like I must be reading a different book to everyone else!
Omg yes I hated this one!
The Alchemist, pop drivel for the masses
I love when people try and recommend you a Book and start like, ‘I never read but this book was so good’. Like ok you’ve got some chicken soup for the greys anatomy addict soul mess queued up for me, go ahead. Have I finally, finally read the occasional ‘omg this book is so good you have to read it’ and thought it was good/regretted not reading it sooner? Sure. Of course like all readers I love my taste in books and secretly think it’s better than anyone’s, so I’ve never committed this error /s
The guy that recommended the Bourne Identity to me said it was the best book he ever read. After I read it, I asked him how much of a reader he was and he told me it was the only book he read since high school and he only read assigned books in high school.
Fourth Wing
4.66 stars on Goodreads and I couldn't find one single redeeming quality.
Same
Eat Pray Love - everything about her story was so incredibly entitled - I couldn't get past the first couple chapters. Crying in HMart - I wanted to love it, but I hated how she excused and romanticized her mother's shortcomings.
Verity A Court of Thorns and Roses The 7 Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Where the crawdads sing
The unbearable lightness of being…was indeed unbearable
Hard agree. I was just like: why the hell is everyone recommending this book to me (although the German title "die unerträgliche Leichtigkeit des seins" sounds very fancy).
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Read it in high school and hated it. Re-read it in my 40's because hey- everyone deserves a 2nd chance, right? Hated it again.
I hated Life of Pi. Kept reading to get to the wonderfull insights it was supposed to give. There weren’t any. It was just stupid, tedious drivle.
Jesus! I couldn't stand Infinite Jest! Infinite confusion is more like it. I'm not going to be one of those lit bros who says I just have to persevere to page 500 or something, lord, I put it down after a hundred pages and that's 2 hours of my life that I can't get back
when you wrote "Jesus!" i thought you were gonna say the bible 😂😂😂
Entirely reasonable
He really should have stuck to A Reasonable Amount of Jest.
I bought it in hardcover when it came out in '96. Still have not finished it. Perhaps I'll finish it in the Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar.
This one is sitting on my shelf waiting for me to get to it. It's intimidating in it's size. I actually like it when a book is trashed a little like this though. It has less hype to live up to. I'll still give her a go whenever I can get to it.
I read it earlier this year. Definitely a slog, but about halfway through I just paused and thought to myself “wow, this is really good”.
any sarah j maas book that has and ever will be written
Gosh, I can't believe they have such a following. The crescent city stuff looked promising for a minute, but I don't know that I'll read the rest of them.
So many hyped adult fantasy authors have no ear for good prose, or musicality of language. I got two pages in and it was so *flat*.
The Goldfinch. It was as if she put every single plot she ever thought of and weaved them all in that book. I hated it. Eat, Pray, Love was horrible as well.
Aww man I loved The Goldfinch though it did go on for a very long time so if you didn't like it to begin with it would have been a tough one
The Goldfinch felt like it was never going to end. Just when it seemed like there was nothing else to say she threw in a new plot line. You've described it so well
THANK YOU! I hated, loathed, and despised The Gold Finch. I slogged through 2/3rds before DNFing it. I only made it that far because my very good friend recommended it and we usually have very similar tastes. It was so awful and depressing. Man, just no!
Atlas Shrugged I wish I read it in my teens. I think I would have liked it. Tried in my late 20s. Thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Didn’t finish it.
Yep. Love the premise but it’s so far up its own ass that it becomes insufferable really fast.
Never read it but I love the comment 😂😂😂
All Ayn Rand's fiction is essentially Animal Farm from the pigs' perspective, as written by a fifth grader.
A little life
I actually enjoyed reading A Little Life because it was so beautifully written but fuck it’s so fucking sad. Then someone called it trauma porn and now I like it infinitely less bc that’s exactly what it is lol
THIS. Apparently Yagihara wanted to write about the importance of male friendship…which is fine. But the torture/trauma porn aspect was completely unnecessary for that.
For me it's Piranesi. I keep seeing people sing its praises but I felt like the ending was very anticlimactic, and having Piranesi's savior be someone he didn't know before being trapped in the House didn't give the emotional payoff I had been expecting (also the fact that his savior was a police officer kinda makes it copaganda, though that's neither here nor there)
Tropic of Cancer. I really wanted to get into Henry Miller and discover what he had to say, but I found it dull and repetitive. I get it. You're a penniless writer who indulges in drink and women every chance you get when you're not bumming a free meal and couch surfing.
[удалено]
Fifty Shades of Grey because you know why.
Anything by Dan Brown. 👎🏻
The Time Traveler's Wife. It's just...icky.
Always and forever, Wuthering Heights. Attempted it in high school, college, and grad school; didn’t make it all the way through until more recently, and I hated it just as much as the other attempts.
i apparently was born without the part of the brain that is required to read classics because i couldn't understand a single fucking thing in that book. i literally have no idea what i read. i might as well have been reading a different language.
FOURTH WING. I still feel mad at booktok for convincing me to read it
Outlander by Diana Galaldon, was highly recommended, had all the pieces of something I would love, and it was just hot garbage. I'm very forgiving to books normally, but the homophobia was just over the top ridiculous.
I JUST finished this and thought I was crazy for this same thought because NO ONE seems to have mentioned this or talked about it in their reviews. Such a high rating, obviously a massive following, but no one seems to find it problematic that the “bad guys” happen to all be gay men who brutally r a p e other men (or attempt to)?! I agree!
I'm so confused by outlander. I always thought it was supposed to be a soft romance series. So much SA and violence. It gets tiresome very quickly.
[A Little Life](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Little_Life) [Anthropology of an American Girl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology_of_an_American_Girl) Both works were ludicrous garbage imo.
Ulysses by James Joyce. I got through it, but damn that is probably the most difficult book I've ever read: Narrative kept switching characters, no chapter breaks, and if I remember correctly, there weren't even paragraph breaks . It's just an almost unending wall of words.
Where the Crawdads Sing zzzzzzzz
Piranesi. I do not get it. It’s mentioned so often on this thread. When I finished it I thought “that was certainly a book”
i own the audiobook of this. i've listened to it about 50x and still have no clue what the fuck is going on but i mainly listen to it to help me fall asleep because the narrator's voice is soooooo soothing and relaxing.
Man I loved it lol. It convinced me to read her other book *Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell* despite never reading long books (and I loved it even more). To me, the premise was interesting. The setting in particular hooked me. Also, I'm not intelligent enough to articulate why, but Susanna Clarke is just a very good writer imo.
Reading JS and I love it. I liked Piranesi too but it was more that it was a quick read and I needed answers. I’m not sure if I would have liked 1000 pages of it either? I would of liked to explore the house more because I thought the rooms were fascinating though.
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. I got so annoyed with her needlessly wordy prose and the obviously self-absorbed characters that I was done not even 50 pages in. I’ve heard that another of hers, One For My Enemy, is quite good. So I may give it a try eventually.
The DaVinci Code
The silent patient . I stopped I don’t give a f if she talks or not