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Most disappointing books you've read this year?

160 replies

whatausername · 14/12/2023 14:56

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.

OP posts:
Mothership4two · 30/12/2023 01:53

Helloandgoodmorning2 · 28/12/2023 11:42

(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.

We read The Great Gatsby in book club and I thought I would love it. It left me cold. It's basically about how the rich and selfish elite always come out on top

Q2C4 · 30/12/2023 02:07

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. Plot holes you could drive a jcb through.

Panicmode1 · 30/12/2023 13:39

Q2C4 · 30/12/2023 02:07

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. Plot holes you could drive a jcb through.

Agree with this - I was reading it when I first commented on the thread....definitely very disappointing!

DecafOatMilkCappucino · 30/12/2023 13:46

I loved Where the Crawdads Sing. Took a while to get into it but once I did I was hooked.

I'm currently trying to read the Wim Hoff book but my god, it's the worst piece of writing I've ever read. It's written stream of consciousness style, he rambles on and on about how amazing he is, how he was born to be the ice man, lots of pseudo science and spiritual bollocks thrown in. I really want to start cold water swimming this year and I can't imagine it will be as painful as trying to read this book.

TattiePants · 30/12/2023 14:14

Completely agree about When the Coffee Gets Cold. It was an interesting concept but all the female characters were indistinguishable from one another and I could see the ‘twist’ a mile off.

I’d read every Kate Atkinson book apart from Human Croquet which has say on my shelf for 29 years as I knew it was going to be a let down. It was.

Also read Penance a few weeks ago and only got to the end by skipping big chunks. I think m 20 years too old for it.

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 30/12/2023 14:15

121 pages into Robert Harris's Act of Oblivion and finding it rather flat. It's got the usual hyperbolic reviews - 'so enthralling that if you'd disembowelled me while reading it I doubt I'd have noticed!' er, I rather think you would, somehow 🙄Another 400 odd pagesto go so maybe it picks up.

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 30/12/2023 14:18

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?

Reichs, like Patricia Cornwell, found out sometime around the turn of the millenium that she could churn out any lazy, cliched formulaic garbage and a lot of their fans would lap it up regardless. Shame, because the early stuff from both of them was excellent.

Angrycat2768 · 31/12/2023 18:27

I hated Demon Copperhead. But I think I gave up on it before it got good ( about 3/4 of the way through!) My book club loved it. I agree about Lessons in Chemustry. An awful, unbelievable main character and stupid story. I've just finished Tomorrow and tomorrow and Tomorrow. Absolutely loved it and didn't want it to end. I'm not into gaming but I just loved it anyway! I was reading it by a pool though.

Scarlet2906 · 31/12/2023 21:25

The Warriors by Sol Yurik.
It isn't much like the film (the film is what it is and a bit of an acquired taste in itself).

The gang members are very young in the book and none of them are likable. The book is more geared towards social commentary on race, misogyny , poverty and social class in 1960s New York. There's very few moments of fighting or much action at all in the book. Most of the characters were underwritten and 'flat'.

I didn't think it was a total disaster though, the part where Ismael is shot is better in the book. He was shot by a gang member who thought he was setting the gang members up, calling the meeting and informing the cops on where to find a load of gang members in one place. In the film Luther, a member of the Rogues (a gang that doesn't exist in the books) tells the Warriors the reason that he shot Cyrus was that "I just like doing things like that".

The names of the gangs and the clothes that they wear were a lot better in the film though.

BlackLambAndGreyFalcon · 31/12/2023 21:36

CarterBeatsTheDevil · 30/12/2023 00:45

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!)

He has! He's published two Canon Clement mysteries.

I LOVED In Memorium. The characters were so vividly drawn for me. The ending was a but unrealistic though.

PollyPaintsFlowers · 31/12/2023 21:36

Hamnet, Wolf Hall and a book about Trump by Michael Wolff

CarterBeatsTheDevil · 31/12/2023 22:08

@BlackLambAndGreyFalcon He has now but he hadn't when I bought it, which was well before June when the second one came out. I just thought it was a bit cheeky!

Tarragon123 · 31/12/2023 23:21

I'm really struggling with Tomorrow x 3. I'm only up to p75. I'll plod on just now.

I love the Rev Richard Coles, but oh my, his first book. I had no idea what was going on. As PPs said, you need either a dictionary or a a guide to Anglican religion. It also deeply annoyed me that it didnt state when it was set. It became clear it was set in the mid to late 80s, but why not just say that.

I actually liked Richard Osman's series, but I enjoy books that are character driven, rather than plot driven. Some of it is twee, but sometimes that's what I like :)

Mushroomwithaview · 01/01/2024 01:36

I recently finished Tomorrow x3 @Tarragon123 . Ehhh.... it was meh. I rather hoped that the ending would make it all worthwhile. It didn't. It was a clever character study, I think. But I didn't much like or care about the characters.

rosaprimula · 07/01/2024 23:34

To Paradise - another heap of relentless misery. I would not like to rent space in Hanya Yanagihara's head.
Mother's Boy - I bought this in HB as a present for myself - Patrick Gale is such a beautiful, humane writer but I find it hard to recollect any of it.
Seven Moons of Maali Almeida...OMG,this is a struggle. Am ill in bed so probably why I failed to get along with the English gothic of Andrew Michael Hurley's ' The Loney' (I loved Starvacre).

XelaM · 07/01/2024 23:37

A Little Life - just terrible

coolmum123 · 08/01/2024 09:39

my disappointing reads of 2023 were Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - I didn't even finish it, so boring and dull. John Grisham the Judges List. This was the 2nd book by him that I wished I hadn't bothered with so I won't be reading more of his now.

Mushroomwithaview · 08/01/2024 22:40

I was expecting more from Evelyn Hugo. It was fluff. I finished it, but haven't recommended it to anyone.

BaconAndAvocado · 02/02/2024 18:18

The Promise by Damon Galgut.
Could not get into it.

riotlady · 02/02/2024 18:49

Stone Blind. For something that’s meant to be a retelling from Medusa’s perspective, she’s a fairly undeveloped character and she’s barely bloody in it! And all the character voices sounded exactly the same

Pinkstars2501 · 02/02/2024 18:55

I've just given up on The Silent Child by J.G Kelly.

It's not my usual thing anyway, but Christ it's boring. I just find it so slow going, I'm sure lots of people enjoyed it but I've just given up at nearly half way through. Life's too short.

JustAnotherCunningStunt · 04/02/2024 22:23

BaconAndAvocado · 02/02/2024 18:18

The Promise by Damon Galgut.
Could not get into it.

Did you finish the promise? I usually love Galgut. I found this hard at first but it got better. Def a solid 8/10 for me

BaconAndAvocado · 05/02/2024 07:30

JustAnotherCunningStunt · 04/02/2024 22:23

Did you finish the promise? I usually love Galgut. I found this hard at first but it got better. Def a solid 8/10 for me

Show quote history

No, my TBR pile is too overwhelming!

I give a book 50 pages if I’m wavering. Think I gave The Promise quite a bit more as it was a prize winner.

GalileoHumpkins · 05/02/2024 09:23

Babel by R F Kuang, just couldn't get into it, the writing was so dry.

MamaGarl85 · 17/02/2024 23:45

Have just finished Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh....it is one of those books where you keep waiting for something to happen then it did a couple of chapters from the end and it was still massively underwhelming!