Books you feel were overrated

I had the exact same experience with "The Heart's Invisible Furies" and I really wanted to love it

The first two have a different narrator, who is much better, not sure why they replaced her.

@baileybrosbuildingandloan I enjoyed the first two Thursday Murder Clubs as read them in traditional format.
I tried the third on Audible and it's also the only one I've ever returned. I will have a go at reading it but could not get on with the narrator. Made me hate characters I liked! Just too much.

Absolutely, The Tennant of Wildfell Hall is an exceptional novel

I loved Catcher as an angst ridden teenager! I must read it again at some point and see if the intervening 40 years has changed my view of it.

@Pocketfullofdogtreats Gentleman in Moscow is brilliant, isn’t it? I also loved All the Light We Cannot See, it’s well worth a read.

Same! Really love it and re-read it often.

Absolutely agree. A load of boring rubbish. How it became a best seller is anybody's guess. But I bought it because of the hype.

Love Wolf Hall and Owen Meany and Madame Bovary and so many others mentioned. I haven't read many of the over hyped ones, probably for that reason, though I think I have many of them queued up somewhere on my kindle. The Book Thief I have managed about 2 chapters. Crime and Punishment I was encouraged to read as a teen by my French/Russian teacher. Time I will never get back. She was also well into Sartre. Decided at an early age I don't give a hit about navel gazing men. 😂

Girls of 15 loved it! I didn't.

I loved the Star of the Sea too! Mystery and history! Also didn't like Lincoln in the Bardo or The Lovely Bones. Maybe you and I have the same taste? Have you read A Gentleman In Moscow? Cos I loved it, and you might too!

The girl with the dragon tattoo series. It’s just one huge technology advert.

nothing happens during the majority of the books and then it leaves you on a cliff hanger

(now I sound like a mentalist. I probably am.)

I really disliked the Salt Path too, I so wanted to love it but they seemed quite irresponsible and also as you say, judgemental. The descriptions of the surroundings were ok and issues explored interesting, but I couldn’t imagine enjoying their company. I think you need to feel an affinity to them to enjoy it.

The Power - Naomi Alderman, who, I was amazed to read, was a protege
of Margaret Atwood
I had to leave a book group when declaring that I would not read it, diligently
or otherwise.
I’ve read a few sanitised auto/biographies recently, no goss, plenty self-aggrandisement though, or sterile facts, figures, theories, dry as dust.

@EthelMcUnready I love Catcher In The Rye too but dislike all the others on your list. Catcher has a special place in my heart, I don't know why. I first read it at 15 and became absolutely obsessed with it, I bought copies of it for everyone I knew that Xmas and re-re-re-re-read it multiple times over the next few years, to the point where it was just part of my life, I'd always have it with me, I took it everywhere and dipped into different passages throughout the day (and night!) according to my mood. I have never done that with any other book before or since.

Pleased to say that gradually tailed off and I have a more normal relationship with it now but due to all of that nonsense I feel it's part of my history. (I don't tell people all of this in everyday conversations, I just say that I like it.)

@SerafinasGoose I totally agree Anne Bronte is undersung.

”Dickens: hit and miss”…

You can only be an academic.

Eleanor Oliphant

A lot of it can be around your stage of life. I read the 5 people you meet in heaven when I was quite young and it did make me think. Reading it now it seems trite

i I didn’t mean CCM but I remember seeing a scene from the film with Penelope Cruz running down the road with flat feet flipping along and I couldn’t take it seriously after that

the book I have despised most and regretted reading was Jemima J but I don’t think that was ever widely rated!!

The Handmaid's Tale is IMO one of the most overrated books of the 20th century.

Likewise 1984. Octavia Butler churned out a far better dystopia.

Agree with a lot of the ones posted on here. I'd be amazed if many women truly appreciated Fowles' 'The Magus'. His 'Collector' is a lot worse. I've rarely read such creepy, sinister, misogynistic tripe.

Dickens: hit and miss but I do love Great Expectations and Bleak House.

Brontes: mostly wonderful (but Anne is undersung). I find Villette a far better novel than Jane Eyre.

I'm also not sharing the Austen love. I do 'get' the irony but I find her depictions of those cloistered societies and the woeful lot of the women profoundly depressing. Charlotte Bronte agreed, calling her books akin to a carefully fenced, finely cultivated garden. Which is OK I suppose if you like that sort of thing.

'The Book Thief' is a YA book and should probably be read with that in mind. I find it OK: enjoyed it but haven't rushed to reread.

As for The God of Small Things, I have to disagree there. Absolutely beautiful novel.

Oh, another one, though not in anyone’s library of greats: Blood Orange.

A decent enough book to read on check the plane. But why the hype? Poor stuff.

Oh no 😂! My friend loved it so much, I could never admit to him that I didn’t enjoy it. I feel the same about My Beautiful Friend & lots of people love that so it’s probably me 😂.

Omg ME TOO

I thought of this book when I read your thread title and was so pleased to see it was this book you were referring to!

it was my local book club choice and they all loved it. I was like What??? It was dull and full of stereotypes and I felt absolutely no chemistry between the main couple - she didn’t even seem to like him?!

I read it at aged 16, 20/30ish and again a couple of years ago in my 40's. I think it's brilliant. I guess literature, like all art, is subjective.
Sorry, I really liked Lessons in Chemistry, Crawdads, Elinor Oliphant too. I'm not terribly high-brow obviously.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies - I probably would have enjoyed it ok if everyone hadn’t told me it was the best book ever!
Agree re crawdads - the whole story was in the second half of the book. If I’d ripped the book in half and started with the second half I would have enjoyed it much more instead of reading all that drivel about a bloody marsh!