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!

Stephen King is a really good writer - I don't know if anyone could disagree with that. But that doesn't mean that everyone is going to enjoy his books. He is primarily a horror writer and that just isn't a genre I enjoy. Sounds like it isn't for you either.

Having said that, I really enjoyed 11/12/63 which isn't horror at all. I don't like sci fi, but I find that magical realism like this, where there's one magical or unrealistic aspect and everything else in the world stays the same, can sometimes be really interesting. And I thought the premise in this book was fascinating and it was really well done.

I also enjoyed The Stand, but preferred the first half of the book where it's all realistic, something you can imagine happening, to the end of the book where it all gets a bit too magical for me. But enjoyable, nonetheless, and I like a big thick book to get stuck in to.

I like his short stories a lot, his novels less so. I loved Salem's Lot, but I didn't find it very scary - more of an action adventure with added vampires - and I had been assured it was terrifying, so I was a little disappointed about that.

It's a cliché to say it at this point, but the man just can't write a good ending, and most of his books could be a third less long.

I read books that sounds interesting to me, not because they're a bestseller. In fact, I can't think of a book I've recently read that was actually a best seller. I tell a lie, I can think of one, but in my defence I didn't know it was a bestseller until after I'd read it. But no, I prefer to find out for myself rather than have other people tell me what I should be reading, that way it's my own fault if I'm disappointed, and no one else's....