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!

'Poundland Paulo Coelho' really made me laugh

I hope it's better than the audio books!

The Lovely Bones. Maybe because my friend hyped it up so much but I hated it.
Couldn't finish Eat Pray Love.

Loved The Beach, hated the film!

Normal People - no speech marks to show dialogue. Just literally: blah blah blah he said. Blah blah blah she replied

Awful

But how would anyone have known not to buy the salt path? I think the point is a lot of people really loved the book but were disappointed later when the truth came out. That’s different from a book that makes you wonder why it sold so many copies.

The Marlowe murder club. Facile trite.

As per so many of you Where the Crawdads Sing, and the Housemaid was just point horror style writing for a slightly older audience!

I also didn’t enjoy the Girl on the Train. I thought it seemed a thinly written attempt to emulate the success of Gone Girl.

And A Little Life was just misery porn.

The miniaturist was ridiculous to me. So much overlaying of modern progressive sentiment on an historic setting. Plus they just ignored the core mystery of the miniaturist and it was never resolved.

I did enjoy Yellowface and Thursday Murder club for fun, light reads though.

Normal People - cannot care about these naval-gazing, beret-wearing characters
Thursday Murder Club - so glad I got it from a charity shop so it wasn't a complete waste of resources
Sad for me to admit but I am having a hard time finishing Demon Copperhead EVEN though I love Barbara Kingsolver and an pretty sure she's a genius
The Safe Keep - some nice writing in places but Jesus, the lingering looks and unfinished sentences....... Boring!

Very interesting thread for someone in a publishing adjacent job!

re: 50 shades - that was unusually bad writing because it was a very unusual publishing journey - it was an extremely unusual self-publishing success which made it to mainstream without a traditional publisher - when it started to do huge numbers a publisher very quickly gave her a big deal but there was no time for the normal editing process to take place, they just put it out as she’d written it to capitalise on the existing momentum. That’s why the writing is utterly awful. Many books start out like that but they usually go through multiple rounds of edits - structural edits (sometimes several), then line edits, then copy edits, then proof reads.

I’m not at all surprised that people are finding some of these bestsellers disappointing. Publishing is in a strange space at the moment. Lots of publishing deals are being handed out to celebrity or celebrity -adjacent ‘writers’ and to people with big Twitter or Instagram followings. The logic is that these people bring their own publicity machine and that it’s easier to get people to buy a book written by someone they’ve heard of, so the books are more likely to sell. However, they’re not more likely to be good!

I think publishers are also very nervous about our attention spans now so we have fewer ‘quiet’ books being published and pressure on authors to come up with a big grabby one-line pitch or ‘hook’ - as a huge priority over and above the overall quality of the manuscript.

There are lots of great authors out there - for example loads of great writers of thrillers whose books you might argue are better than Lucy Foley’s (not that I have anything against her and I quite enjoyed the midnight feast one!) … but if the marketing and publicity campaign is spot on then a mediocre book can do incredibly well. With Foley’s first book the branding and cover was genius - the image was incredibly bold and powerful and memorable and it really stood out. Some authors from privileged backgrounds also fund their own marketing and PR machine on top of the publisher’s - which is why you might see them popping up on places like BBC breakfast or The One Show, when other perhaps better writers will simply never get a look-in.

I find it helpful to have a relationship with a good bookseller at a decent bookshop who can advise you on what’s really a good read.

Waterstones thriller of the month / book of the month titles do tend to be quite well chosen based on merit. And reader reviews to help but of course these can be quite variable in quality.

Came to say Where The Crawdads Sing AND Orbital! We obviously have the same taste

Crawdads was mawkish and Orbital was Emperors New Clothes

i finished Thursday Murder but didn’t rate it.

There’s something about Kevin … predictable shite
The Beach … entertaining for a few chapters, then descends into nonesense
Lovely Bones / Lucky - Alice Seabold is not for me

Thursday Murder Club - Osman thinks he’s a cross between Conan-Doyle & Dickinson, because he used his name, privilege & connections to get a slightly entertaining book published. If anyone else has written it, no publisher would give it houseroom - he should have subtitled it “Emperors New Clothes”

I haven’t tried many of these but I must disagree about The Thursday Murder Club - I love the whole series; Wouldn’t life be boring if we all liked the same things?

Any Sally Rooney books for me - dull with no action to speak of and awful, unrelatable characters.

Oh I really TDVC and Emma is just pure joy!

Butter was at least 100 pages too long and I didn’t really understand the relationship between the two women. There’s much better (and shorter!) Japanese fiction out there.

It took me two goes to read The Thursday Murder Club but I did really get into the series and enjoy it.

I don’t know anyone who enjoyed The Ministry of Time and I have I no doubt it got so many accolades because the author works in publishing.

I enjoyed The Salt Path and given that it’s still a Sunday Times bestseller plenty of people are still buying it regardless of the Observer’s investigations.

Must admit I liked TSAK just a bit heavy going in places but otherwise pretty good I thought!

Also find the complaint about Foley ‘basically writing the same book in different locations’ very interesting because actually what authors are being advised at the moment is that ‘consistency and predictability of offer’ is what builds loyal readers and sells more copies - if you think of authors who do well in that space like Claire Douglas and Gillian McAllister you can arguably see that sort of pattern - publishers at the moment seem quite nervous about authors taking risks and doing things that are different

Magpie by Elizabeth Day is atrociously, jaw-droppingly bad. Only got it published because of who she is.

I've just finished The Safekeep and got really fed up with the drawn out sex section. It made me really cross because I'd thoroughly enjoyed it till then! However, I loved the rest of the book so I'll forgive it.

Yes to Thursday Murder Club. People looked at me like I was mad when I said I gave up on it.

Marriage Portrait. I started it but just couldn't bring myself to continue.

Secret History. I'll be shot down here, but I felt like it just went on and on and on and on. I finished it though and feel I may be the only person who didn't love it.

Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone. Just couldn't be arsed. Maybe it's because I was reading it to DCs and it felt too wordy.

Girl on the Train - I mean, not terrible but not remotely as good as I thought it was going to be. That Eleanor Oliphant crap, ditto.

Thank you! Great insight!

Absolutely hated A Little Life...

I hated Yellowface and got a long way in to the turgid Babel before I realised it was the same author and DNF.

In memoriam - SO derivative, sterotyped and awful but I know I'm in a minority with that one.

I have just read Butter and actually rather enjoyed it....

I’ve given it a wide berth as bestseller or not the premise just doesn’t appeal.

Alongside that is the fact that publishers seem to have outsourced their marketing to both the author (so they don’t sign authors who don’t have an established route to market already) and also they depend far too much on book bloggers “reviewing” their books from NetGalley as newspapers no longer do much in the way of book reviews. Book bloggers have ended up with far too much say in an industry that doesn’t actually employ them (see also then being allowed to become associate members of the Society of Authors).

Wolf Hall- like wading through treacle.
Captain Corellis Mandolin- managed 200 pages but just couldn't finish it!