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?

GloomyDarkness You did better than me. I read about 50 pages then started skimming.

I managed the first page of Crawdads - I find the fact that the writer’s DS and DH are implicated in the murder of a poacher, for which they have never been questioned, too problematic.

OMG a fellow hater of this book - I have to keep my mouth shut when people rave about this and the follow ups. Utter rubbish money making project for RO.

Lady Chatterley's Lover was extremely racy & shocking at the time. They tried to ban it. These days it's ploddy & tame compared to recent books.

This brings back bad memories

just dire

I read The Therapist by B A Paris last year. It was dreadful. Never bothering with another book by them.

Where The Crawdads Sing was equally dreadful. Didn't understand the hype.

Controversially the worst book I think I've read in recent times was Wuthering Heights. I hated that book so much.

All the BA Paris novels seem to be about men imprisoning women in some way. ('Behind Closed Doors' - the film was cathartic). So I am now avoiding. I have read 'The Breakdown' too.
I enjoyed 'Behind Her Eyes' by Sarah Pinborough but you can only do that twist once. TV version was okay.
I also enjoyed Crawdads although I don't think even in the States a child would have been left to fend for herself alone like that for so long, so it wasn't very realistic.

Recently, the only thing I hated more than the Crawdads wibble was the absolute car crash that was A Little Life.

I loved Piranesi though.

So many different perceptions!

Ralph’s Party by Lisa Jewell. I can’t remember the actual story or characters I just remember hating every page of it. I used to feel I had to finish a book once I’d started but thankfully no longer waste my time doing that.

I don't recall this aspect???

Ah thank god you said this. Everyone was raving about it and I just didn't get it. Really creepy fetishisation of abuse and self-harm, plus so homophobic.

Oh no I just started this one and I bought the bullet one as it was a special deal. 😯

Bloody hell, I’ve just googled that - how the hell did they evade questioning? 😲

Agree, on Me Without You, again, a really horrible fetishisation of disability. Plus the idea that beyond a certain level of disability you're better off dead. Plus really stupid and major medical / physical improbabilities e.g. someone with a high level SCI has feelings throughout their body. Just, no.

@AinmÁlainn completely agree with you on Thursday Murder Club although I finished it believing it would improve....it didn't. Would have happily buried Richard Osman under the bench by the end tbh.

Haven't read the second one. I couldn't now explain the plot or the murderer as it was very unmemorable. The fact that the police liaised with the 'old folk' in the sheltered accommodation reminded me of the Secret Seven by Enid Blyton! Maybe Blyton was Osman's influence?😁

I’ve just bought that book, was looking forward to reading it🙁 I’ve read some pretty heavy going books in my time and have never referred to R&J’s book club for inspiration 🙂

My conclusion is that Book Clubs choose some really bad modern novels. Going back to the 'Classics' is often more rewarding. Currently trying Virginia Woolf for the first time.

I read that. Premise sounded interesting so I read it thinking there must be a fascinating explanation where as it turned out it was just a totally implausible scenario which got more stupid as time went on.

Weirdly the two books that jumped out at me when thinking about 'my worst book' of recent times were My Favourite Wife, Tony Parsons and The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry. I was massively irritated by every single character in them and yet ploughed through those novels straightforwardly so they must've been fairly engagingly written.

I'm a shocking 'started so I'll finish' reader like a PP and it took me months to finish A Gentleman in Moscow and I'm determined to finish 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Both of which have much more sympathetic characters and yet I'm really slogging my way through.

Well they left the country and never went back.

And the absence of a body - the Zambian police concluded that Mark Owens had disposed of it.

Gone Girl irritated me too. It took a long time for the book to be even remotely interesting. The language bothered me.

My book club is a very small group and we choose quite different genres each month. It is quite good to try something you wouldn't normally read but I never waste time reading anything I hate. A Little Life was the all time low - I kept flipping forward to see if things improved but they never did. We have read Virginia Wolf (not a fan).

Came to post the exact same thing.

what a load of crap that was 🤣 grateful
it wasnt a long book and i didnt waste too much of my life on it.

another one that seems to get a lot of love on MN but i thought was a waste of time
was ‘Still life’ 🥱

OP, I was listening to a true crime podcast (different cases every week) and a scenario like this actually happened. I think the husband knew though. I'll see if I can find it.