Most disappointing books you've read this year?

[whatausername]

Off the top of my head, mine are Modern Baptists by James Wilcox, Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding and Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert. The first two, to be fair, are very much of their time but even so they were incredibly unfunny and not particularly well written.

I loved Lessons In Chemistry.

Lessons in Chemistry and Crawdad's
I got the latest Nina Stibbe out of the library on the basis of a glowing review in the Spectator but gave up. Very pedestrian.

Lessons by Ian McEwan - couldn’t finish it

Has anyone said In Memoriam - I just didn't understand the hype; I didn't think it was well written - or original.

I also was disappointed by Tomorrow etc - the two sales people in Waterstones were RAVING about it and said that it didn't matter if you didn't like gaming, it was about much more than that. I though it was OK, but given the huge hype, disappointing. (They did also recommend Kala, which I did enjoy).

Ok I have another.
and the main reason I am disappointed is that I saw it recommended on more than one MN thread. And also because it is being made into a big-name movie with Florence Pugh.

The Maid by Nita Prose. As if someone read ‘Eleanor Oliphant’ and ‘Thursday Murder Club’ and decided to try to cash in on their popularity all in one handy book. The result is humourless, dull, and as though you are being hit over the head repeatedly with the author’s Moral Message but still end up unsure what it is meant to be.

Avoid!!

Lily by Rose Tremain. I feel like the author read Fingersmith and decided to have a go at their own tale of an orphan with really crap results. Unrelenting misery.

The Richard coles one. I wanted to switch off and read something light.... I just got irritated by his jolly japes of vicar life.

I loved Leonard and Hungry Paul, one of my favourite books!

Milkman by Anna Burns - just awful. Gimmicky: dense/no paragraphs/no names given. Extremely dull.
Agree. It was awful, a DNF. I hope the Booker judges squirm with embarrassment every time they remember they gave it the prize.

This was also the opinion of most of m bookclub. However we all enjoyed Lessons in Chemistry.

Isaac and the Egg.
II’m so cross that I wasted a book token from a lovely person on it.

Based on the gap between expectation and reality, mine is probably The Fraud too (ZS books are reliably like to love for me, and this should have been right up my Victoriana loving street but it felt lazy and busy and meh).

The flat-out worst book I read this year was Bring No Clothes, Charlie Porter. The pictures were nice.
The worst I mostly skimmed was The Office of Gardens and Ponds, Didier Decoin. 90% Men Writing Women aimless sex cringe.

Where the crawdads sing
Fat Chance

A Little Life, just so depressing

I couldn’t finish Lessons in Chemistry - really don’t understand what the fuss was about. It was unfunny, ridiculous and the main character(s) were all obnoxious.

The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer was not good at all.

The worst for me was Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason- I nearly threw it out of the window

Late to the game but "Girl, Woman, Other" . Gave up on it . Didn't get why it won awards. Horrible characters and didn't care about any of them.
Also "Again, Rachel". I loved Racbel's Holiday" when it came out but Marion Keyes has turned the Walsh family into a shallow bunch of materialistic, shallow airheads. Hated it. Designer label after designer label. Yawn.

Another one thoroughly disappointed by Lessons in Chemistry. Really thought it would have a bit more about it. Silly, and not in a good way. Story just skipped along far too conveniently. Trite. Lacking wit and edge. Didn't bother with the show after reading it.

Late to the game but "Girl, Woman, Other". Gave up on it. Didn't get why it won awards.
Wasn't her bff on the judging panel or something like that?
Horrible characters and didn't care about any of them.
There were too many of them so nobody got full attention or depth of character. The book was merely random peoples' lightweight thoughts; it was less than the sum of its parts.
Gave up on it.
It ended up with all the female characters coming together in one place to celebrate one of the women but, for some reason, the chapter focused on a (pretentious/pseud) male instead.

(I loved both Hamnet and Lessons in Chemistry 😱)
My most disappointing book was The Great Gatsby. I just didn’t get it and thank goodness it was short as I found it so dull.

Before the coffee gets cold - do not understand why it is so popular?

I hadn't heard of Lessons in Chemistry before I read it, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Someone mentioned Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller, which is probably my favourite of the 60+ books I've read this year.

I don't think I'd be disappointed by Richards Osman and Cole as I expect them to be shit.

As a lover of crime fiction I've just this past hour finished a Kathy Reichs Temperance Brennan novel, which was awful. Lazy plot device of making the bad guy a cop - won't say which book, as we don't like spoilers do we?

Nothing happened in the majority of the last half of Lessons in Chemistry ! So much so that I had to skip back to check I wasn’t re-reading a huge chunk of it. What a snooze fest. I thought it started quite strong in a twee light read sort of way, but then in the second half there were just pages and pages of her disobeying her boss by saying science words on the telly. A waste of time.

Small Pleasures by Claire Chambers.

Loved it right to the end. Then hated it more than almost any other book!

Hamnet left me cold too and Lessons in Chemistry is gathering dust, only got a few pages in and just dumped it.

Murder Before Evensong. He's such a nice guy and I was really hoping to like it but I really struggled to finish it.

(Also, it did irritate me that it was subtitled "A Canon Clement Mystery" right from the start. This is the first one! You only get to call it "A ... ... Mystery" when you've published more than one!)

Wholeheartedly agree

Somehow, our book club ending up reading 'Glasgow Kiss' as someone recommended it saying it was hilarious... worst book I have ever read, yet see lots of people reading it and the sequel(s?).