Most disappointing books you've read this year?

@Pupsandturtles I read If We Were Villains in 2021, and I really loved it, rated it 5 stars on goodreads. I hadn't read The Secret History at that point, I have since read it and I thought it was brilliant too. I can see the similarities and I think reading them in the order I did allowed me to enjoy them both as individual stories with one clearly influenced by the other, as I didn't have the irritation of "this is a rip off" in my mind as the comparison to The Secret History wasn't there when reading If We Were Villains.

Miss Benson's Beetle was another book ruined by its ending. Up until then I was really enjoying it too.

I had heard a lot about The Thursday Murder Club being tosh so read it with low expectations, but found I really enjoyed it. I read it in the evenings when I was tired and in need of cosy unchallenging comfort and it fitted the brief perfectly.

Similarly I didn't expect much from The Satsuma Complex, although I love Bob and his Athletico Mince podcast especially, and I only bought it on Audible to support him. But I ended up quite enjoying it mainly because he narrates it (with Sally Philips) and some of his voice characters and themes from the podcast pop up humorously. I don't think I would have finished it if I'd bought a physical copy.

Exactly sums up how I felt after finishing it too!

Another vote for lessons in chemistry. Yawningly predictable.

anyone read If we were villains? I wanted to love it but couldn’t stand it- such a bold faced rip off!

I listened to Eileen on Audible and enjoyed it. I never felt like there was nothing going on with it.

Ah ok thanks - might check Eileen out!

Cross post soz @SmugglersHaunt btw I preferred Eileen - more going on.

I quite enjoyed Eileen, even though it dragged on a bit I liked the ending, I didn’t see it coming.

I have just read My Year of Rest and Recuperation (think I’ve got that right). Blimey, pages and pages of monotonous daily life, strange events that weren’t explained, meaningless conversations.

I feel like their editor told them to wrap it up as the ending seemed abrupt and just wrong. So strange. I need to read Marian Keyes or something as a palette cleanser.

Oh was going to try that. I read her 'Year of Rest and Relaxation' and it was brilliant and hilarious (imo)

Seven husbands was genuinely one of my favourite books i have read in a long time! I finished it and said to DH I wished it didn't have to end!

Have just finished Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh....it is one of those books where you keep waiting for something to happen then it did a couple of chapters from the end and it was still massively underwhelming!

Babel by R F Kuang, just couldn't get into it, the writing was so dry.

No, my TBR pile is too overwhelming!

I give a book 50 pages if I’m wavering. Think I gave The Promise quite a bit more as it was a prize winner.

Did you finish the promise? I usually love Galgut. I found this hard at first but it got better. Def a solid 8/10 for me

I've just given up on The Silent Child by J.G Kelly.

It's not my usual thing anyway, but Christ it's boring. I just find it so slow going, I'm sure lots of people enjoyed it but I've just given up at nearly half way through. Life's too short.

Stone Blind. For something that’s meant to be a retelling from Medusa’s perspective, she’s a fairly undeveloped character and she’s barely bloody in it! And all the character voices sounded exactly the same

The Promise by Damon Galgut.
Could not get into it.

I was expecting more from Evelyn Hugo. It was fluff. I finished it, but haven't recommended it to anyone.

my disappointing reads of 2023 were Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - I didn't even finish it, so boring and dull. John Grisham the Judges List. This was the 2nd book by him that I wished I hadn't bothered with so I won't be reading more of his now.

A Little Life - just terrible

To Paradise - another heap of relentless misery. I would not like to rent space in Hanya Yanagihara's head.
Mother's Boy - I bought this in HB as a present for myself - Patrick Gale is such a beautiful, humane writer but I find it hard to recollect any of it.
Seven Moons of Maali Almeida...OMG,this is a struggle. Am ill in bed so probably why I failed to get along with the English gothic of Andrew Michael Hurley's ' The Loney' (I loved Starvacre).

I recently finished Tomorrow x3 @Tarragon123 . Ehhh.... it was meh. I rather hoped that the ending would make it all worthwhile. It didn't. It was a clever character study, I think. But I didn't much like or care about the characters.

I'm really struggling with Tomorrow x 3. I'm only up to p75. I'll plod on just now.

I love the Rev Richard Coles, but oh my, his first book. I had no idea what was going on. As PPs said, you need either a dictionary or a a guide to Anglican religion. It also deeply annoyed me that it didnt state when it was set. It became clear it was set in the mid to late 80s, but why not just say that.

I actually liked Richard Osman's series, but I enjoy books that are character driven, rather than plot driven. Some of it is twee, but sometimes that's what I like :)

@BlackLambAndGreyFalcon He has now but he hadn't when I bought it, which was well before June when the second one came out. I just thought it was a bit cheeky!

Hamnet, Wolf Hall and a book about Trump by Michael Wolff