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!

soo many books I start and then stop because I am bitterly disappointed with the writing.

recently…

the story collector

bestsellers I hated - tomorrow tomorrow and tomorrow

Hamnet. Tried three times, cannot get into it. I rarely read historical stuff because it’s not my thing so serves me right. That said, I loved the Wolf Hall trilogy.

Lord of the Rings - couldn't get into it, book or movie. As a Kiwi I almost never share that opinion with others though!

Normal People is one of the only fiction books I have ever truly hated. Two damaged (her) immature (him) people develop a toxic relationship and can't leave each other alone for decades after. I work around DV and this relationship was screaming "DO NOT FUCK / DATE / OR FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY HAVE KIDS TOGETHER". Awful. Cannot for the life of me figure out why why the author wrote the characters as if this was some great love. It's not. In real life it ends in protection orders, court battles and / or death.

Interestingly I found It Ends With Us to be rather realistic to the stuff that comes across my desk.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney was a struggle, I really REALLY disliked the main characters and just didn’t care what happened in their lives

I did enjoy Where the crawdads sing but was a bit disappointed at the end. Similarly Demon Copperhead - rushed through the last part.
I have enjoyed all of Dan Brown and JKRowling/Robert Galbraith and I’m not worried whether they are great literature but I think they are well written.
I did not enjoy the Girl on the Train, couldn’t tell you why.
Couldn't get past the first few pages of the Thursday Murder Club.
Never attempted 50 shades of grey.

The Girl On the Train

it was soooo disappointing and anticlimactic and I usually love that type of book.

I'm going to find this so cathartic.

I hated Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. What a load of crap!

I seem to hate popular fiction and I cannot understand why these are so loved:
Thursday murder club
Normal people - hated it
That Lisa Jewell one about the podcast - load of tripe, I tried another one of hers after that but nope same rubbish.
Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the sea - wanted to love it but didn't enjoy it at all

I did enjoy Lessons in Chemistry and Yellowface.
Also recently loved Anthony Horowitz Hawthorne series.

At least you finished it. I haven’t yet

One of the few books I’ve kept and re read years later is
by Milena black “ the great pretender” really loved it.

There are other books by same title…but Milena blacks the great pretender
is a black cover with two burning wedding rings on ..

This made me laugh! So true and formed the basis of a monologue in a swimming pool on holiday. Not only a ME but also a DA who casually makes a killer spaghetti sauce for her erstwhile lover the 6 foot tanned police chief. He loves her but she cant be tied down. She uses vine ripened Costoluto di Parma tomatoes each sliced to a thickness of precisely one eighth of an inch with her Saji Takeshi Gyuto Knife and a John Boos Maple Edged cutting board. She simmers the tomatoes gently in El Poaig olive oil. I could go on and the stories are ALWAYS THE SAME! Oh and her niece who is the best recruit at Quantico is shockingly a lesbian. ( Her niece doesn't get on with her mother because she is ORDINARY and doesn't understand her amazing daughter but Aunty Kay does!).
It is probably over 20 years since I read those books but my mind has been scarred forever!

Books titled "The [insert person or profession, bonus points if it's relatively unusual] of [insert place, bonus points if it's in Asia, Africa or an area of conflict]"

They're almost always trite and disappointing.

I like Kate Atkinson but haven't yet managed to finish "Life After Life". I've never been even remotely tempted to pick up either the Fifty Shades of Crap books or those Twilight teenage twaddle ones. I completely agree with the poster who observed that too many writers now are obsessed with inserting twists instead of following narratives through to logical conclusions - a deeply irritating trend.

I ran out of steam when I tried to describe the saucepan she was using and lamely came up with "... like Le Creuset...only better!"
And not only the slim elegant fingers: she wears an elegantly understated blouse from from Hermés with just one pearl button undone revealing the curve of her Marie Antoinette like breasts. She also expertly drives a manual top of the range Mercedes, men wonder how she affords it and how she changes gears so smoothly!

Huh? 🤔

Sent it straight back to the library. Very hackneyed writing.

"The Book Thief" - fuck me it's not good. Overlong, very strained and leaning hard on Dickensian tropes that don't come off, e.g. Rosa Huberman. compared throughout to a wardrobe!!!!!!
I had to teach the wretched thing. Naturally I maintained a professional distance; I never say a book is shite while I'm teaching it. Interestingly lots of pupils said it was way too long and repetitive.
The film is far far worse, and pulls every punch.

"The Bell Jar" the second half is weak, also spotted by students. Don't get me started on the poetry.

Any prose writing by Maya Angelou after "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", though her poetry is OK.

"Catch-22" hasn't worn well. I loved it in my 20s, read and re-read it. Tried again a couple of years ago in my late 60s. Deary me. Terrible - straight to the op shop.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle! It went on and on and on. I kept reading thinking it would get better. It never did. 😟

Before the coffee gets cold. The short stories in this were all in the same vein. I didn't get past the second one. So repetitive. A bit like reading a few sessions in a fortune tellers tent is all I can relate it to! Very surreal and totally unbelievable.

Thursday Murder Club
All Fours
The Signature of All Things
The Lovely Bones

I didn’t enjoy:
Conversations with Friends,
Emma - so dull,
Saturday (Ian McEwen),
On Beauty,
first three Harry Potter Books,
The Sea (Banville) - just too depressing,
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - couldn’t get past the absurd premise of easily sneaking in and out of a concentration camp,
Where the Crawdads Sing - the ending ruined it.
There are much more on my meh list but they were so meh I can’t remember all the titles!

From other people’s hate lists I actually loved All the Light We Cannot See, Catch 22, The Great Gatsby, The Bell Jar, The Hobbit and The Book Thief.

I enjoyed The Bee Sting but I think he was trying to cleverly construct the characters storylines into a certain structure and there were some sections that dragged and could have been shortened a lot but overall enjoyed it - Skippy Dies is a much stronger book.

Jodi Taylor St Mary’s Chronicles. Enjoyed several of the short stories, but found the full-length novels very disappointing.

Robert Galbraith’s The Casual Vacancy was gripping, but couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters of Strike.

I always have to say how much I hated I am Pilgrim on these sort of discussions because I am still annoyed by it, and I didn't even get past the first 100 pages. I just could not stand the main character at all, and it was such a huge book, the thought of being in his head while he banged on about how wonderful he was and how big his penis was for another 500 pages - ugh! No amount of exciting plot will make up for that.

Interesting to see All the Colours of the Dark mentioned, I have read 2 others by Chris Whitaker and really enjoyed them both, but also found them sort of overwritten. So I wonder if he got more so in the most recent novel, or if I just have a higher tolerance for that sort of stuff! I did read the first few pages in preview and it didn't really grab me, I've been meaning to give it another try though.

Conversations with Friends. I think I just expected too much because of all the hype, and it was good but nothing really 'wow' about it. Found a lot of it repetitive by the end.

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult - I enjoyed some of her earlier books, so I know she is always about an "Issue", but this was just overkill and preachy and every other aspect outside of the issue felt underdeveloped.

Atonement - God that was boring and the pacing was all over the show.

Apples Never Fall by Lianne Moriarty - I didn't care much for the plot, didn't care about any of the characters and the end just made it feel like a waste of time pushing through. I loved Big Little Lies so had high hopes.

I loved Demon Copperhead though, I thought it was amazing.

I bought the Shades of Grey trilogy based on the reviews and was livid!

the most appallingly badly written book. I leafed through it at the supermarket just to see what it was all about... A six-year-old would know more about writing than whoever 'wrote' this book.

A bit off piste; but I loved Jacqueline Wilson so was quite excited when Think Again was released. I'm a similar age to Ellie the main character and the way she and her friends spoke was so unrealistic "I do love you so" 🤣
I also found it very predictable.

I won't be bothering with any of the other for adults sequels.