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!

😂😂😂well somebody has to like them! Good thing we're all different. I have never met anyone else who disliked TPB so I'll sit on my own with that one.

To redress the balance, I'm another Sarah Waters fan. I think my favourite is The Night Watch but Affinity runs it pretty close. I was scared witless by The Little Stranger and had to stop reading it at bedtime......

I get most of my books from the Library/Borrowbox these days, & looking at my history, I remembered that I couldn't finish these:
All the Colours of the Dark - unbelievably bad, couldn't get beyond chapter 3. And it was recommended at my local Waterstones! Glad I didn't buy it.
The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild - how this won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse comic literature prize I'll never know.

@CoffeeCantata I also love Sarah Waters. Fingersmith is one of my favourite books. I just hope she's working on something new - it must be 10 years since The Paying Guests.

Yes - get scribbling, Sarah!

I liked Poisonwood Bible until close to the end. It then became not believable and that tainted the whole story for me.

That is my favourite review of Jane Eyre!

In all seriousness, those raving reviews all over hardbacks and bestsellers need addressing. They should skip the celebrities who may or may not have read it and yet still say that it is amazing, and ask @Chemenger and similarly honest people to review them instead 😀

I know OP has asked for disappointing reads, but can I give a shout-out to AN Wilson’s novel series which starts with Incline our Hearts?

It won’t suit everyone- it’s inspired by Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time but set from the 50s to the early 200Os and has some hilarious characters from the literary and religious worlds. Each novel is self-contained but is also part of a sequence, so you see the characters over several decades against a backdrop of social change.

Sometimes the people doing the reviews for the book cover just say ‘ fans of .. ( whatever writer it is) will love it’ I take it that the actual reviewer may not have done themselves, but I was a born cynic! Lol

Saturday was utterly ridiculous. The poetry, gah.

Yes Fingersmith is great fun! I think my favourite Sarah Waters is ‘Affinity’ though - just loved the mixture of the dark Victorian supernatural, mixed in with the forbidden love in a prison environment. In fact, I bought it to read a second time in the Autumn once those chilly nights draw in!

The leopard in the snow.
Read the book and watched the film.
Boring the end.

Oh Jesus, yes. Saturday was the last McEwan I ever read. I vowed never to waste time or money on such preposterous and yet dreary writing ever again. The poetry in Saturday was just embarrassing.

I think there are two reasons people don't get published. The first is that what they are writing doesn't have mass appeal - so I write space opera, which is unfashionable, think 'Brigerton' with space ships and telepathy, not a cat in Hell's chance. Others don't get published because the first reader doesn't like an unsolicited MS - unsolicited stuff gets short shrift. To some extent it is who you know and who you are - but even that can be chancy. I was, for example, intrigued to notice that my copy of 'The Children's Book' by A S Byatt is dedicated to Jenny Uglow ('Lunar Men') who I remember being hyped as a new and unknown author (I also think that 'The Children's Book' would not have got past the first reader had it not been by Byatt; it's a densely written historical novel set between 1895 and c. 1920 and full of detail, which a new writer might be asked to remove - also suspect Byatt would not accept the term 'historical novel' for it either!). I know someone slightly who is definitely 'someone' but who self-publishes perfectly reasonable books but on very niche subjects.
How some books get published I do not know, they are so awful. Must be because they appear to be so bland they will appeal to anyone!
I liked 'The Midnight Library'. Got a chapter into the second book of '50 Shades of Grey' (never tried the first) and thought 'boring' and not well-written. I like 'Emma', it's funny. I like 'Persuasion' better, though. Can't stand 'Wuthering Heights' and everyone has the same name!

Worth pointing out that without the likes of Colleen Hoover the entire publishing industry would collapse. Best-sellers like her massively cross-subsidise the vast majority of titles that sell a few thousand copies at best.

Lessons in Chemistry. I think it had such amazing reviews from a variety of people, I asked for it as a birthday present so I could read it in hardback instead of waiting for the paperback. I enjoyed the first few chapters and then it was as if it turned into a different book, with the dog narrator, the stereotyping, and the tied-up-in-a-bow ending.

I actually enjoyed that book - all tastes are different, so maybe have a look at a book before writing it off!

I read The Road for book club years ago. I hate dystopian fiction and really didn't fancy it but I gave it a go and hated it, really hated it. Then it disappeared - only to reappear in the washing machine after a full load! I wouldn't recommend as it shrunk a couple of fleeces, but it felt good to have it go through a wash, cleansing!

Same, I read a lot, love reading, it’s very rare I don’t finish a book but I found TMC boring

Oh I loved it!

The girl with the dragon tattoo dragged and dragged and dragged......then it exploded into pure genius fantastic amazing story.....

So many people raving about Thursday Murder Club - read all R O’s books - very average !
Plus Kala - long winded.

My Mum bought me 'Where the Crawdads Sing' and would tell anyone who'll listen what lovely book it is. I hated it. I really hated it. My Mum and I have entirely different taste in books.

Why? I thought them beautifully written

But aren't they trying to be 'average'? To be easy, undemanding, cheerful page-turners, based on the single premise that very old people can be cool? That's certainly what I assumed RO was after, based on all his years working in TV production -- to find a widely-liked, effective formula.

I totally loved it 📘🔫👵🏽

I agree with you!