I just read a terrible book

[Orangeis]

Bring me back, B A Paris.

What a load of absolute tosh. A man's partner dissapears, 6 years later he gets with her sister and lives with her. The big twist is.....the new girlfriend is actually the missing sister. He didn't realise this as she had a different hair do.
That's hours of my life I'll never get back. I feel like taking the book in to the back garden and burning the bugger.
What's your worst book and why?

I loved the Earth's Children series of books.. Clan of the cave bear etc. Until... the last book in the series ... utter crap, waited soooooo long for the final book. It spoiled the series as it was so bad, I honestly wish I had not read it.

Just finished The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. Omg it was dire. So dull. And it made literally zero sense. Why would the government spend millions of pounds on realistic child robots? Like, why??? None of it made any sense whatsoever.

Eat Pray Love. Self-indulgent shite.

I've only heard of Colleen Hoover in relation to Book Tok and how all the books that go viral as a result of Tik Tok raving over them, tend to be awful. Hoover is often used as an example.

This nakes me feel better because I didn't get past the first few chapters!

Thoroughly disliked The Lovely Bones. Forced myself to finish it but wished I hadn't bothered.

Recently tried to read The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes for the second time - got slightly further this time, maybe 2/3 of the way through and I just can't be bothered again. The characters are horrible to one another. I normally love her stuff.

I buy a lot of audiobooks, and have the audiobooks of the Thursday Murder Club. The first couple are read by a good voice artist; maybe that's why I've enjoyed them. The last one was by a different voice artist and it was annoying.

I preferred the random, annoyed Bill Bryson struggling through Australia or rainy seaside towns for no particular reason, rather than know-it-all Bill Bryson the biology teacher.

I was scrolling to see if anyone remembered the Fear Street book with the same plot. It was Sunburn - Alison was thought to have drowned, she actually hadn’t but blamed her sister Marla for “letting” her die. Comes back and murders Marla and starts impersonating her. Invites the now dead sister’s group of old friends around to murder them too. Gave me nightmares when I was 10 from the description of the decomposing sister found I think in a shed?

www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/176438

Ah yes and the other highly acclaimed novel I just couldn't get through was My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.... SOOOOO BORING!!! 😴😴

Every single charity shop in the UK has a copy of The Island at any given time.

Everyone on the book Facebook groups I follow raves about Colleen hoover and verity, I think it's another I will just google the outcome and avoid reading.

Just checking someone had already put this. I feel bad being negative but anything which might save someone buying and reading this book is worthwhile.

Oh, and After Me Comes the Flood.

Similarly boring and pretentious. Sorry Sarah Perry (though I don't suppose she'd mind being compared to Virginia Woolf)

I also gave up on A Little Life.

And left Cloud Atlas on a train.

I loved Spool of Blue Thread but there are other Anne Tyler I couldn't get into.

@WFHbore2023 if it helps, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is streets, no whole countries, better than Malibu Rising.

I agree the latter is really tedious and if I'd read it first I probably wouldn't have read any more of her books. So believe me when I say that The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (and Daisy Jones and the Six) are both much, much better written and far cleverer. Honest 😀

A Gentleman in Moscow - entire premise was bullshit.
I couldn't get past the fact that this aristocrat was apparently sentenced to house arrest in a hotel by the Bolsheviks, rather than being simply shot or sent off to Siberia for hard labour.

And I hated "All the light we cannot see".

I couldn’t get on with Lady Chatterly’s Lover either (seen every film version though!)

Loved Maurice by E. M Forster thoughts, the (imo) more interesting book on which it is clearly based.

@beastlyslumber I thought it was a shame - Jessamine Chan could have written so much more convincingly if she’d explored the real relationships in that book, the manipulative ex and the Orwellian social services and the impossible demands of work and childrearing at the same time. I think she’s got a point about ideal modern motherhood being a bit of a cult, but going all sci-fi wasn’t the way to do it.

Give me Margaret Attwood every time.

That reminds me of something, but I can't remember who said it:

'Life is NOT one damn thing after another. It's the same damn thing over & over again.'

DH & I started listening to The Thursday Murder Club but both felt that it wasn't going anywhere interesting & we didn't care about any of the characters, so we gave up. It's a shame, as RO seems likeable, funny & clever, & I loved the Desert Island Discs episode about his life. I expected something qute special.

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper. Set in a brothel in Pompei. It was just relentless disgusting abuse of women, forced upon them, time after time for the entire story. Every other page was about them giving blow jobs to gross men.

The reviews were reasonable so I was really disappointed. Honestly thought a man must have written it - it was so grim, it turned my stomach, but that wasn't the point of the book - it was supposed to be uplifting and about the sisterhood... the details and relentlessness didn't add anything either. A few accounts would have been enough. It was almost written in a porny way... ugh.

I just don't get how a woman can write that.

Omg yes! This book was dire.
I’d forgotten about it until you mentioned it. What was Sadie Jones thinking, writing this drivel?.

WHAAT! 😯All the Light We Cannot See is probably one of my favourite books of all time!!

'Timeline' by Michael Crichton - it was so dumb and it was like.... 'Oooh, a book where people are going to go back in time to Ancient France and look, there just happens to be a group of associates where one is an expert swordfighter and one's an expert in French cultural and languge history and one's a rock climber [yes it comes into it somehow]' DH and I just refer to it as 'That stupid book' and we know exactly the book we mean!

Recently tried to read The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes for the second time - got slightly further this time, maybe 2/3 of the way through and I just can't be bothered again.

I was also rather underwhelmed by Grown Ups. Thoroughly tedious navel gazing family; I finished it feeling as if I’d gone 10 rounds in the Relationships board. 😂 TWWSML is several varieties of implausible anyway and I think MK could do with a proper editor these days.

Ugh yes! What was it even about?? Gang warfare and shoes?? Then obviously it ends without resolution as she wants to sell more books, screw that.