Books you feel were overrated

[ClearSky456]

Just finished Lessons in Chemistry and kind of wondering what all the fuss was about?! Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it but given so many people had told me I HAD to read it, I was left feeling a bit underwhelmed.

Anyone else felt the same, or anyone felt like this about another book recently? I had the same feeling with Daisy Jones and the Six too.

I bought The Midnight Library at the same time and didn't bother after HTTBT. Both unloaded to the charity shop.

OP, I could have written your post word for word. Both books I could not get on with. Daisy Jones I gave up after a couple of chapters - just dreadful.

Exactly @BreakfastAtMilliways re The Tenant. It's themes are startlingly modern and as you say, doubtless informed by Branwell's behaviour

It was big a while ago now but Me Before You infuriated me, completely ableist and smug.

I only finished reading it so I could be completely sure of how totally awful it was.

Oh god I hated Me Before You and The Midnight Library . I also couldn’t finish It Ends With Us and didn’t love Yellowface. I am however very partial to a bit of Bleak House ….

The Goldfinch.

Which is a massive let down because The Secret History is one of my favourite books ever.

Couldn't finish it (GF), it just wandered around and was, well, boring. 🤷

Harry Potter. Also His Dark Materials. HP is full of fan-fiction-level 'Star Wars'-y binary goodies vs baddies plots, and HDM has no plot at all, but they're both drenched in a comforting candlelit atmosphere that seems to be enough to make them hits.

Crawdads actually made me angry. It was a book club read and I was assured it was full of beautiful, descriptive writing. Well, yes it was, but what it WASN'T full of was a decently written story. I loved the sense of place and hated every single, shallow, stereotypical character.

The Master and Margarita.

I remember very little of the plot, but my abiding impression is the literary equivalent of those contemporary dance shows where everyone dresses in black and has moments of dancing together with tenderness and honestly that are almost heartbreaking, then they suddenly pull a wild expression, run around a bit with their arms out behind them and fetch up on the other side of the stage dancing an equally breathtaking but emotionally utterly different moment that seems to have no narrative link at all to what was previously happening.

I've just looked it up on Wiki to remind myself what happens and discovered many critics consider it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century 😳

I'm quite clever, but not very sophisticated.

Agreed! The ending made me so angry, it went against everything that had been set up in terms of character & place, and made no sense, it wasn’t a clever twist just a forced ‘yeah that’ll do’ ending, ridiculous.

And the “poetry’ was shite and cringey.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

Exquisite writing but the characters and the plot were insufferable.

Demon Copperhead. Persevered but it was just too long.
Captain corelli - awful. Took me six months to read. Read about ten books alongside it.
Wuthering Heights - feel I ought to give it another go but nah.
Anything by Dickens. I'm just not a Dickens person. More Austen.
North and South. Was just dull but I was very young when read it.
Da Vinci Code - so awful. I lasted about five pages. Derivative drivel.

I love the master and margarita when I read it in my early twenties. It just made total sense to me and was top of my favourite books for a long time.

i think with classics and ‘best’ books it comes down to when you read it and what’s going on in your life. So for some people it won’t resonate and it is a bit dull but for others it is deeply meaningful

Oh, the poetry! Why it all had to be written out and not 'she found some poems that resonated with her' I will never know, they were DREADFUL.

Glad to see some of the books I like to complain about have been mentioned! I think Ian Mcewan is a very poor writer, and every book of his that I have read (I have given a few a good go!) I have hated. I also think Harry Potter is absolutely appallingly written (the world is cool though). I recently read Sorrow and Bliss and thought the main character was abusive to her husband and absolutely unbearable.

It has been absolutely years since I read the lovely bones and I think at the time I enjoyed it. HOWEVER the author was raped and a man who was later exonerated spent 16 years in jail. I read something she wrote when he was released and she was just like ‘eh….🤷‍♀️’ about this poor fella who’d lost 16 years of his life for a crime he did not commit. So now I feel strange when I think about TLB.

Novelists should stick to novels and not try to supply their own poetry as well, unless they’re called Thomas Hardy - Tolkien was another bad one for cringeworthy rhymes (not to mention the nerdy glossaries, notes and companion volumes to LOTR).

OMG all my fave books are most hated. Tolkien is the best thing ever.

cannot abide Tolkein
too many bloody battles

But that's good! Makes life more interesting.

How can you say this?! 😢

Oh crikey so many I hated that others loved.....
Normal people
White teeth
Secret History
Night circus
American dirt
Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow

Am in a book club and I read alot of books, but boy I hated these with a passion!

I agree about Lady Chatterley. It’s a surprisingly dreary novel. Women in Love is Lawrence’s masterpiece.

It’s funny how authors become famous for works that really aren’t their best. Aldous Huxley, for example, is most famous for Brave New World, yet Point Counter Point is much better. Anthony Burgess is famous for A Clockwork Orange, but his Enderby novels and Earthly Powers are far superior. And George Orwell is a much better essayist than novelist. Even Thomas Hardy is probably best known for Tess of the D’Urbevilles. Again, not his best work.

I didn't get Girl on the train, just seemed to drag on and on. Tried the film as well and wasn't impressed.

Biggest disappointment ever though, 8 year old me finishing Charlie and the chocolate factory (best book ever) and moving on to the utter tosh that is The Great Glass Elevator, worst sequel ever!

Following another thread I am currently reading The Night Circus, but god I'm finding it so boring. The magic stuff isn't magical at all, and it's a very pale comparison to Jonathan Strange.

I've alway been very strict with myself about not abandoning books but I'm seriously considering it. Im over 60 now and frankly life's too short.

I adored The Master and Margarita, one of my favourite books of all time. I would say that the translator is very important. Everyone I know who hated it read a different translation from the one I read.

Yes I love the master and margarita and was delighted to see a stage production of it at the Barbican many moons ago