Disappointing Bestsellers

[LittlleMy]

Hello everyone 🙂

I just wondered if anyone else has bought a ‘bestseller’ that otherwise wouldn’t have appealed without that status only to be hugely disappointed?

So I realise I’m slightly late to the party but I just finished ‘The Housemaid’ by Freida McFadden and it was such a struggle to get through! It felt more like it was written for the Young Adult market. Barely any descriptive text, always telling rather than showing, ridiculous coincidences, underdeveloped characters, juvenile writing especially sentences like ‘’there was something about that room that was very scary” “his expression sent a chill down my spine”. Highly predictable in parts, silly in others and just so very average!

Don’t come after me if you loved it, this is just my opinion of a recent book that really shocked me that it was able to reach the dizzying heights of becoming a bestseller.

I thought it might be fun to hear from any fellow disgruntled readers if they’ve had similar experiences! With Autumn just round the corner, and me needing a new list of books to read, this post may help some of us avoid similar disappointments!

Ah! Well if we have similar tastes, I did enjoy Dream count by chimamanda ngozi - good, similar to Americana , the silence in between (about the rape of Berlin), the husband by maud Ventura, green dot, shy creatures by Claire chambers. Another excellent one is Trespasses by Louise Kennedy.

Oh, me too! Thought there was something the matter with me… everyone was raving about it, and I kept trying to get into it, but just couldn’t!

The hardback version is proving up and wonky unit in the spare room at the moment, so the cost didn't go to waste. Doubt I’ll bother with it again.

Anne of Green Gables series of books, I just cannot get past the first half of the first one. On and on and on about not much. I absolutely love the tv series (80s) but the books just waffle on and on

Agree with this - so repetitive!

I lost the will to continue with Normal People. I skim read a few random pages to take me to the end. Thursday Murder looks too twee for words, and not even in a cosy escapist way. Just plain irksome.

The Thursday Murder Club. I’m going to give the Netflix version a go though.

Normal people and thursday murder club. Deadly boring

I love wolf hall and bringing up the bodies. One holiday i was stuck for reading material and read both of them twice.

How to Kill Your Family, by Bella Mackie. Found the relentless cynicism of the narrator very grating! I couldn't finish, and I normally get through thrillers with real aplomb!

Thank you for the validation. It was like a combo of chat gpt and parody.

I loved these though I came to them very late. I read all of them, and then read all her other books to make up for lost time. I loved Anne's university days and early married life. The last one is very sad, but also overly sentimental and nostalgic. If I ever reread, I'd skip that one. It's the season 7 of Gilmore Girls equivalent.

Wolf Hall, have being trying since 2010 to get into it and just cannot.
Spare and Entitled, were quite good in parts, but all the glaring errors...

The Thursday Murder Club! So glad others found it dull. I found the characters, particularly females, unconvincing. I generally find male authors don’t do female characterisation well.
Still haven’t finished it and not sure I ever will, I just couldn’t give a sh*t who did it.

Most of them, to be honest. Best sellers are the ones pushed by the publishers as being the books they think will make them the most money. They're often bloody dire.

have not RTFT.
The Safekeep - utter tosh. Badly written with a "twist in the plot" that you can see coming from about page 2.

The Alchemist. I. do. not. have. the. words.

My 18 year old DD read this and said it was really really bad. Hated it. Worst book she'd read in a long time.

Said it was only the cover and the title that must have got so many people to buy it as the thing itself was such a bad story and prose was terrible!

The great Gatsby.

In my previous life I used to interview authors in front of an audience , and she was the only author who ever supplied the questions to ask and only those questions would be answered .
Some of the answers were to make the audience laugh and to make the interviewer
( me ) look a bit silly .
I was also with her one to one and was chatting and she was very happy to tell me which other famous authors used to try and chat her up at other book events .
Not a nice lady .

Wolf Hall was tough going and is still unfinished on the bookshelf. I haven't finished watching the BBC adaptation either. Very slow going.

I was disappointed with Tackle by Jilly Cooper and I have tried and failed 3 times to read White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

That's true, but even if you step back and judge them according to their kind, how do they compare with books by Philip Pullman, Malorie Blackman, Terry Pratchett etc? I speak as someone who's devoured the Potter books several times over and particular relished the big, baggy ones that might have benefited from some editing, but I have my doubts about how well they compare with His Dark Materials. For beautiful writing and the originality of an idea, Pullman leaves JKR in the dust.

Nooo! The first one is in my top 20 of all time, it’s just so beautifully written. The first few chapters are magical.

Another vote for We Need to Talk about Kevin, here. I’ve never been so irritated by a writing style in my life. I read about a quarter of it, then got up out of bed, put my shoes on and physically took it outside to the wheelie bin. I couldn’t even risk putting it in the kitchen bin for fear it wouldn’t be ‘gone’ enough.

I'm amazed at the hatred for Wolf Hall, it's one of my all-time favourite books. I've read it more than once (and Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light), watched the tv series multiple times AND listened to Ben Miles read the whole trilogy on Audible. I think her writing is exquisite.

Nor could I. I just couldn't get into it at all.

Sorry - off-topic…but in contrast to what yo say re Anne of G G, can I recommend the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. They were a revelation to me - stratospherically better than the TV series. Brilliant writing, and some quite hard-hitting bits too - not sugary at all.

Back to adult bestsellers!

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. I read dozens of rave reviews, it was all over the bestseller tables in Waterstones but I found it to be such impenetrable dross, with awful characters and repetitive/ridiculous plotting that it made me actually cross!!

I will waste no time on an author who thinks they're really clever because one or more previous books have been well received. So, everything by Colson Whitehead, Rachel Cusk and Donna Tartt after their first bestsellers, for example.