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!

Some people certainly know how to monetise their contacts. I’m sure his book wouldn’t have been published if he wasn’t a telly personality, and would have had no chance of being made into a film. So depressing- this is where the money goes - not to the best but to the unfairly hyped.

I remember various playwrights moaning years ago because Stephen Poliakoff’s portentous but mediocre plays always got sumptuously filmed by the BBC, often using up the total drama budget for new plays. One said ‘He must have mates at the top of the BBC!’.

Sadly, I think this is how it works.

The List by Yomi Adegoke was simply dreadful.
The characters were all influencers and content creators (?) and much was made of their extreme fashion choices, false eyelashes and one very lavish wedding. An attempt was made to shoehorn in some social issues but it really didn’t work.
I was amazed that the Guardian gave it a positive review-and that the critic understood the impenetrable patois spoken by the ever so cool characters.

I'm aware, I still thought the characterisation was poor.

I love Jodi Picoult, well written without drying your brain, and always thought provoking. I learned a lot about wolves and the right to die argument in Lone Wolf, and learned a lot about bees and the transgender controversy in another one of hers, whose title I can’t remember.
I liked the Fifty Shades trilogy because my dds are adopted, as is the main character - it’s been a while but I think I may have skimmed through the sex.
I don’t like the early Dorothy Koomsons but she’s really found her stride with the more recent ones.
I loved the Da Vinci code when I read it years ago and have more of Dan Brown’s to read.
I find tastes definitely change. I used to like chick lit and family sagas, but have now moved towards psychological thrillers, and also historical fiction, mainly about the Tudor monarchs.

I spent a couple of years as a school librarian and I found it depressing that so many children’s writers were clearly writing to order on fashionable social issues. I felt that very few simply wrote the books they wanted to write - they needed to get published!

Suddenly there were kid’s books on terrorism, gender issues, migration and similar. I’m sure they have their place but when I read them, they just didn’t seem to come from the heart - they were so formulaic they could have been the work of AI (but it was a decade ago…) and perhaps soon will be!

This may be all very well but where are the classic, universally appealing children’s classics of the future? I can just see an author pitching to a publisher and being told their story isn’t modish or issue-driven enough to be commercial.

Oh yes! I forgot about this. I’ve tried to read it several times but it begins so miserably that I can’t bear to continue. Life is shitty enough without reading misery porn.

I get a bit fed up with spotting the boxes being ticked in lots of new novels. Main characters always tend to be autistic or add or add or auadhd. But it's not even that, because there have always been those characters (thank you the poster who identified Mr D'Arcy! And Mr Stephens), it's just now they're holding a massive sign post over their head, because authors appear to think we're too thick to get it.

Big up to the fluffy chic-lit book i read that managed to tick all the isms, all the alphabet AND had abusive, dead parents. And affairs. Didn't have dementia though, because that's another one that's increasingly popular, so lost points there. But none of it actually added to the plot.

This thread has inspired me to try a few more 'bestsellers' just to see if I dislike them!
I will order them from the library or get them on 99p deals from Amazon. Has anyone noticed the huge increase in the price of kindle books? I wanted to take the new Strike novel on holiday but I am not paying £17.99
when it is £15 hardback.

@SmurfnoffIce
Agreed, Angela's Ashes was THE worst book I've ever read.. one more description of eyes filled with pus & I would have hurled.

As I said, probably my favourite book is Secret History by Donna Tartt. Other posters have mentioned The Goldfinch by the same author. I really enjoyed three quarters of this book but was so disappointed by the way it ended - it just sort of fizzled out.

Talking of twists, I think Cat' s Eye by Margaret Attwood is brilliant.

We were going on holiday to Croatia. One of the things I look forward to is going to Waterstones and choosing a couple of holiday reads. On this occasion, there was a very keen female shop assistant who decided she would accompany me round the shop recommending various books to me. We ended up with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid - not really the sort of book that I would go for but I didn't want to disappoint her (stupid, I know).
Anyway, it was a ripping good yarn, though embarrassingly racy. Not really my sort of book but a good holiday read.

(The female assistant hasn't been there since - I think her colleagues might have got fed up with her chatting to customers while they were left manning the till.)

Ripping good yarn! Love it.
We read Daisy Jones and the Six in my book club. I believed it was biographical for about 1/2 the book! Reading books outside of my usual genre is what I love about my book club, though I have a line!

I really enjoyed it - or maybe enjoy isn't the right word. I found it compelling. I'd probably come off the back of some lighter reading though. Staying on a "you read this so we think you'd like this" track for too long can be draining.
Sometimes you need to plop a Maeve Binchy in there to re-align your chakras!

and learned a lot about bees and the transgender controversy in another one of hers, whose title I can’t remember.

Mad Honey - Jodi Picoult, which is pronounced Pee-co (I listened to the book which has a forward read by the author).

Cat’s Eye is great. I cried about her brother.

Also Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.

I thought Normal People was awful, really can't understand what all the fuss is about it!

I hated the girl on the train. I got sick of reading about how Rachel got drunk. I couldn't finish it.

Lessons in Chemistry. I read (less than) half one Christmas. Finished it on holiday two years ago.
absolutely rubbish.
there are a lot of “influencers” I now won’t read books they recommend.
only ready it because I was lay in a sunbed and kept thinking I’m missing something and it’ll get better!

I had to read Hard Times in my first year at uni. First Dickens I had ever read and I was underwhelmed. Steered clear for years and then after my first baby was born, I stormed my way through most of them and loved them. Still not read Barnaby Rudge or A Tale of Two Cities, but I can't get excited about them for some reason.

Great expectations is a good read and a Christmas Carol. I also like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
I don’t like older books much though usually and found Wuthering Heights really difficult to get to grips with. I only bought it because the song had come out and Kate Bush I found fascinating!

I loved this book!

Me neither, so boring!

Really? I loved it.

I started listening to the Lisa Jewell podcast one (Birthday Twins???) as an audio book a while back and gave up. The minute step by step descriptions of the most boring actions totally unrelated to the plot or characters were excruciating. Dull writing style aside, the whole thing just gave me a low level sense of anxiety, which is not what I am after in a book. Keep meaning to google for plot spoilers and see how it all panned out. I have an idea.

All I remember is the loving individual descriptions of Every Potato I Ever Knew.