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!

Anything by Freida McFadden, she knocks out so many books a year she doesnt take any care in her writing anymore.

I agree, OP.

I read The Housemaid earlier this year after it was chosen as part of my workplace book club.

I also read the first paragraph of 50 Shades of Grey when a friend recommended it years ago. I'd taken it home so put it on my bookcase spine to the wall so that no one could see what it was until I saw her to return it. Absolutely dire!

Tbh, when I read about people struggling to get their writing published, I wonder what absolute crap they are producing. Or, maybe, it's actually really good but wouldn't have mass appeal. Who knows!

I've always avoided bestsellers because I've never thought popular = good with regards to anything.

Popular = accessible to the majority and requires little effort 🤷🏻‍♀️

The Time Traveller's Wife. I want to boot that book into oblivion. I did finish it but loathed it.

Also Midnight library, it is trash!

Agree.
It was dire

I dont understand how it is now a movie with A list slebs?!?

Sixty shades of grey
The woman who went to bed for a year
The girl on the train

Cathy glass books-they started off good,the first few really captured me but the last few have been awful
It's all 'I picked up x from contact,parents didn't show up,went home and had a casserole and what a good person I am to the unfortunate child I have in my care' rinse and repeat all the way through the book until the magical ending of either living their best life with their parents or other foster carers

Would you say more about what didn't work for you in The Thursday Murder Club, @MintTwirl? (And indeed, anyone else who has read it and not been keen.)

What I found jarring about it was that it was so calculatedly feelgood, it was as though it had been written by a committee with its eye very firmly on the ball. Basically the message is that it's OK to be dull and incredibly banal, watching reruns of Taggart and obsessed with Costa branches, because even killer-cool former spies and streetwise young cops think you are endlessly cool.

It was the other way around for me. I loved the book but thought the film was really disappointing.

re The Salt Path. I admit I didn’t get beyond reading the blurb. Lots of friends have read it and loved it, but it just seemed so far fetched to me. When it all came out a couple of months ago I did feel vindicated.

I finished it but didn’t enjoy it at all

I read this recently. So boring

I was given that for Christmas one uear and read it over a couple of days. After deciding it was two days of my life I was never getting back, I then watched the film to see if it was any better 🤦🏻‍♀️

It then became two days, 1 hour and 47 minutes of my life I was never getting back.

Utter drivel.

You should try her other novel, Her Fearful Symmetry. It's one of the most unintentionally funny things I've ever read, full of venomous ghosts, death kittens, mad substitutions, faked deaths etc.

Yellow face
Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow
we solve murders

Me too! Couldn't get past page 20 as the writing was so terrible!

Most books are vetted and selected by middle class women under the age of 40 with no qualification other than an English Lit BA and possibly an MA in "Publishing". Most bestsellers are bestsellers due to marketing strategies and budgets.

That's why a lot of bestsellers are underwhelming

The revenge plot by Jackie Kabler. I struggled on to the end but awful plot line and just crap!

Always found Lucy Foley a basic beach read. Nothing original, but nothing taxing. I keep reading the new ones though, and then wonder why I did 😂

Eat Pray Love. Loathed it, both the book and the film, but especially the book.

Wolf Hall, especially Mantel's confusing habit of using 'he' to mean Cromwell even when Cromwell wasn't the last man named. I lost count of how many paragraphs I had to re-read because I'd misunderstood who was speaking. I did enjoy the TV series, though.

Sadly I think most books now are selected to appeal to twenty-something TikTokkers with no qualification at all, an attention span of 30 seconds and a lot of followers. They're the ones who make bestsellers. (I'm looking at Colleen Hoover.)

I still get angry at myself when I think about the waste of the short span of time we have on this pale blue dot that was reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

My sister describes him as 'the Poundland Paulo Coelho' and she's bang on.

Alice Sebold who wrote Lovey Bones writes a lot about rape and murder. A man served 16 years in prison for her rape before being exonerated. She identified him months after the rape, then failed to pick him out in a line up, but still insisted in court it was him. Both men were black of course. She has since acknowledged the miscarriage of justice and apologised. I read the book years ago but wish I hadn’t.

When I read the first few pages I was convinced I’d already read it - but searched through my Kindle and Audible libraries and I definitely hadn’t.
The world really doesn’t need one more book that starts with mysterious death in the woods, followed by angry locals upset with new commercial development, and loathsome owner being stalked by mystery guest who knows her from the past 😂

Forgot to mention that I completely agree with the PP who've mentioned Fifty Shades of Grey. Some of the worst writing I've ever seen in a published book. You could play a drinking game with how many times the narrator (Ana or whatever her name is) says 'my inner goddess performed a back flip' or similar. And the Twilight books that it's based on are pretty awful too. One of the very first lines in the first novel of the series is something like 'My carry-on bag had a parka'. Riveting, dramatic stuff.

I’m part of quite a few book clubs, groups and watch a lot of book tok for recommendations.

Absolutely agree about freida McFadden - everyone raves about her. None of her books have any depth, and they are written like they are aimed at teenagers. Also, most of her female characters are the same.

same goes for ST Abby’s Mindfuck series. Everyone went on about how amazing it was so I ordered it and couldn’t get past the first book. Again written like it’s for young adults, full of unnecessary sex just for the sake of it. It was so unbearably realistic it was almost laughable. Awful book. But apparently I’m in a minority to think that.

I've just finished Demon Copperhead. Started well, but i think it was over long and the last couple of chapters were the best.
Counting down the days till The Hallmarked Man is released.