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'm in a book club so have to read books that I wouldn't ordinarily choose (which can be a good thing).

The absolute worst pile of shite was The Tattooist of Auschwitz. FFS there are so many brilliantly written books about the holocaust or WW2 but this one was abysmal. Utter drivel. But I also hate The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - think that book is deeply problematic and an awful way to have children enter the history of the holocaust.

Hated The Life of Pi (see it had an mention upthread) - struggled through that and will never get those hours back. Still no fucking idea what it was about.

Crawdads was implausible from start to finish plus the bullshit spelling out of the ending as if us readers were too thick to work it out.

I don’t think it does trivialise childhood abuse. I think often people trivialise their own abuse because it’s all they’ve ever known….I’ve not been abused really but I can remember saying something to a counsellor about my childhood and her looking horrified and me saying “No it’s ok, it hasn’t affected me!” That’s what Eleanor is doing. Also, she’s never ok.

My late dad loved it and he was an English lecturer and very well read!

@Haus1234 couldn't agree more. After all the hype over The Midnight Library, I decided I had to read it. Repetitive, vacuous drivel.....

I love most of JoJo Moyes stuff but hated Me Without You.

Same. Well, I didn’t exactly hate it but the premise of the book left a nasty taste, ethically. And it was dizzyingly implausible. How many of us in the UK actually have a Lord/Lady Someone living round the corner and up the hill?

It is a series of books set in Botswana. According to someone I knew who had lived there the way people spoke was true to life and the name of the agency worked. I quite liked the first two or three but they got very samey.

I think the podcast was A Date With Dateline. This is the case:

www.upi.com/Archives/1983/01/14/Fugitive-fakes-death-and-returns-as-twin-sister/2797411368400/

Don't say that, it's in my to read pile. OTOH, How To Stop Time by Matt Haig - I looked at all the glowing reviews on the front and wondered what I missed. An Amazon review said if Stephen Fry AND Graham Norton both like it then that's a dire sign and I couldn't agree more.

Currently reading American wife which was given to me by my sister in law for Xmas. A huge brick of a book and now half way through I see why. Every room they go into or house they go to is described in length. 2 pages to describe the boyfriends house, what's on his shelves, what's in his cupboards, what's in the fridge....... who cares just get on with the story.
Also it's supposed to be based on the life of Laura Bush meaning her boyfriend/husband in the book is George W. He's described as a charming, charismatic man who people are drawn to and has a gusto for life. Doesn't equate for me from what I've seen as George W the president , to me he seemed a shrunken little man and weasely

Ditto!

Here is a decent telling of the story:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Marie_Hilley

Stranger than fiction.

Matt Haig is a plonker

The shopaholic books wanted to give the main character a slap

A book a friend wrote and self publised that was trying to be 50 shades and was just awful

The baby trail by Sinead Moriarty really disliked the main character so couldn't get invested in the story.

I have no guilt not finishing books I hate now as far too many other books to read.

I picked up a copy of IIRC The Phoenix in a charity shop, readthe first page and it was like a Cold Comfort Farm parody (rather than the other way around). Burst out laughing and haven't taken Lawrence seriously since.

The Room by Emma Donoghue, I hated it so much I threw it in the bin.

That was my conclusion but still felt like a waste of time.

Middlemarch felt similar for different reasons that perhaps I'd missed the point by not being from the time period I found it very dry and cared little about the characters.

Wuthering heights felt mis sold - didn't feel like a great love story to me even as teen - and at time I quite like melodramas - while I could see the love story in Jane Eyre and issues with it.

I like a lot of SF’s books (with the exception of the overlong, self-regarding Human Traces) but I do find them all a bit derivative, even pastiche. They never quite find their own voice.

I listened to the audiobook for book club and the narrator sent me to sleep. I love the night circus and this was disappointing

Glad I'm not the only one thinking 'A Little Life' - it's such a long book too so really wasted a lot of my time ploughing through that one!

I recently picked up the Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont. I've been an Agatha Christie fan since childhood and was looking forward to this fictionalised story of the Harrogate disappearance. But OMG it's dire.

Cliched characters and odd prose with unusual. Sentence structure that. Made me want to. Hurl it at the wall.

I enjoyed Eleanor Oliphant, it was quirky.

I recently read The Girls Who Disappeared by Claire Douglas. I enjoyed it until the ridiculous implausible ending.

I find so many books get ruined by the last quarter feeling rushed and an intriguing story turning to utter rubbish.

The ending of Gone Girl was infuriating and unbelievable.

I know it's a Mumsnet favourite but I hated secret history by Donna tartt. Also agree with all those who hated a little life - just unceasing misery from the first page to the last. Really should have given up on it, but I'm usually one for ploughing through once I've started.

MrsDanversGlidesAgain I have to admit I've tried no other D. H. Lawrence books as I was so underwhelmed by Lady Chatterley's Lover - I was a bit worried I may have written him off too soon but maybe not.

I can't find the film I referred to as being carthartic version of BA Paris's Behind Closed Doors. I must have confused it with something else but the nasty husband was locked in the house without food as the friend helped the wife escape to the airport.

The Wise Woman by Philippa Gregory. I normally love her, but this one I just found repulsive, it made me feel dirty.

And it's a bloody awful plagiarism of Kind Hearts and Coronets (or the novel Israel Rank perhaps).
Genuinely the worst novel I have ever read.

However - I quite liked The Miniaturist, and I enjoyed Matt Haig's Midnight Library when I read it a few days ago.