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!

You are actually me!

I did finish the first two but only got about 5 "orbits" into Orbital.

I've recommended Yellowface to loads of people for an entertaining, slightly lacking in depth, read.

I have tried and failed to get into “Where the Crawdads sing” 3 times.

I was not a fan of Normal People but loved the TV adaptation.

Never read it myself but can recommend the film!

I LOVED the Beekeeper of Aleppo.

One of the worst written books ever. How so many read this book baffles me (I read a few pages of a friends copy on holiday once). The writing was SO poor. The author clearly had no writing skills.

Totally agree!

As a reverse - World War Z book - great. Film - awful. Same with Children of Men.

I enjoyed the midnight library!

Before I joined a book club, I used to have this thing where I HAD to finish a book. It was like a sickness, no matter how terrible the book I had to finish it. And then 50 shades of Grey came along. It has the honour of being the first ever book in my entire life that I started reading and could not finish.

I find those books on kindle unlimited are all very samey and not good

The Da Vinci Code
The Beach
Emma
Agree with Thursday Murder Club.

I enjoyed Yellowface. I hadn't heard anything about it before and found it interesting.

I can do similar with City of God. Fantastic film, terrible book.

Absolutely dreadful book. I didn't even finish it.

Wolf Hall

The Cottage and The Darkness Within by Lisa Stone.
Awful books. I don't think those books are bestsellers but I think I've only read positive reviews of them and I can't understand how anyone can see how one dimensional they both are. And how ridiculous.

What works for her fostering books does not work for this kind of book

I kept thinking I'd already read the book, they were just the same book with different names!

The Da Vinci Code. Surely the most laughably awful book ever written.

And people would rave about it like it was true and meaningful, with these deep earnest expressions on their faces like they are privy to real secrets and international conspiracies.

Just about the worst book ever.

Yeah The Beach was awful but I did enjoy the film

A Court of Thorns and Roses. I wanted an easy-read, fantasy-style book to get lost in after the birth of my son and I'm still annoyed by how bad it was! I battled my way through (have to admit it got marginally better towards the end, but still pretty pants) then vowed to never read another in the series.

Also The Salt Path. The narrator seemed so feckless and mean-spirited I couldn't understand how anyone enjoyed it. At least I feel slightly vindicated now...

I've read and enjoyed quite a few others mentioned on this thread though! Different strokes etc.

I’ve just read this. I was really looking forward to it but from page one o knew it was going to be rubbish. I persevered as I was on holiday so had plenty of time to kill and it was an easy read, just a really crap one!

Agree with many already listed , especially The Thursday Murder Club, and Eat Pray Love , which was vomit-inducing .
Must confess that the fall from grace of the “author” of The Salt Path gave me great satisfaction- the most irritating book ever !
I couldn’t finish The Time Traveller’s Wife , or The Lovely Bones .

Completely agree!

The Da Vinci Code was so go because it was so bad! I read a few of his other books too in my backpacking days. All equally enjoyably bad!

Agree with Thursday Murder Club, I really wanted to like it. Also the Rev Richard Comes books.

More recently I read Butter, I kept ploughing through despite finding it pretty dull and slow as I thought surely it must get better.

I could not finish Butter

One of the things the TV adaptation did better was flesh out one or two of the minor characters simply by having a good actor in the role. I thought Eanna Hardwicke was astonishing in the thankless role of Rob, Connell's friend who dies by suicide. In the novel, his death was a transparent ruse to prompt Connell to fall into a depression. The reader didn't care, because all the character had ever done was be a mildly misogynistic background creep, several years ago. EW was just as creepy, but you saw Rob's frantic loneliness and failure to cope with post-school smalltown life.

(I quite like Sally Rooney's first couple of novels, but I think part of the point is that the characters are vapid, self-absorbed, extremely young fuck-ups. By Intermezzo, when everyone involved is in their mid- to late thirties, the failure to Use Your Words is a lot harder to bear.)