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.

@tobee that was just me writing how I see it. Dickens is far better! There's a lot more to him than people think. That book in particular is very complex - I think you'd like it.

Eat, Pray, Love - after the main character was crying on the floor in agony once too many times, I shut the book. A few years later it was chosen for my book group and I tried again to no avail. Somehow I enjoyed the movie, but maybe because I found the settings beautiful.

The Great Gatsby - I just don't get the appeal.

Me too

Now, The Salt Path. I agree with everything everyone has said about it and yet I still enjoyed it, I listened to the audio version and it was so vividly described and beautiful. Haven't tried the follow ups though.

I love Dickens; I think he's my favourite author! Not read Our Mutual Friend yet though.

Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - particularly where the story stops and there's an awkward bit of explaining to a character

I hated this book. The author just tried to be too clever instead of being good. I also hated The Luminaries. Long, boring and written in a weird faux Dickens style.

The Midnight Library

Ai just don't know why it was so popular, it's basically The Faraway tree re worked.

I can't see the love for Hamnet. I'm half way in and nothing happens. I haven't picked it up in ages

Found American Psycho the most pretentious bit of crap.
Dont get the Ian McEwan love either. Atonement, Nutshell, On Chesil Beach.
Read The Road by Cormac McCarthy on a summer holiday and spent the day feeling really depressed despite my beautiful surroundings.
Enjoyed Gone Girl, but found her other books very tedious and gratuitously graphically violent.

Anne Frank's diary-im an awful person for saying this,but it didn't make sense
I know her story but the book just went in and on
I got 5 chapters in and gave up

50 shades of grey-my mate raved about it-i forced myself to read it,2 hours of my life,I'll never get back

The woman who went to bed for a year
I gave up about 10 pages in

I think the range of books was called 'I ♥ new york' or something (had a bloke called Alex Reid in it)
Utter drivel

Oliver twist-my grandad had loved it-i read his copy and didn't get it
I think I was too young to read it at the time and have never went back

I wanted to read the girl on the train,but my mil said she'd read it and thought it was crap so I didn't bother

I loved the shopaholic books,but the last two where drivel
Becky needed to grow up,stop shopping and get some serious therapy

The curious incident of the dog in the night time - I read it far too late, nearly 20 years after it first came out and I thought it sounded interesting . Had too many expectations. I wasn't entirely convinced and thought the ending was rushed.

The Handmaid's Tale - should have read it when I first heard of it back in the early 90s. The next book I read prompted me to write "If Harper Lee had written THT it would have been much better". Although I note I also put that I loved reading it because the prose flows over me, so I suppose we can forgive the thin plot and the emotional detachment.

As pp, The Catcher in the Rye (I was so over teenage wangst)

I quite liked Elinor Oliphant. I am continually wryly amused to note the number of Mumsnetters who quite obviously didn't read it all the way through - for instance, it was recommended on a thread requesting light-hearted reads (!) and another poster dismissed it as "a make-over novel".

Oh and the unmumsy mums book

(Cannot remember what it's called)

It was about a lady who died and her sister had to step up and be a parent to her niece and nephew

She didn't seem to do much parenting and the niece kept hinting she had a big surprise

God knows what it was,the book went to the charity shop

Cathy glass books-started out good but then it was 'took child to the contact centre,brought child home again,I'm such a brilliant parent,my kids are perfect,took child to contact centre,had a casserole,I'm the perfect foster carer,took child back to the contact centre'

And then,at the end 'my mum died/my son got married/my daughter had a baby'

I could have saved her 250 pages and just announced the news on her website rather than going round in circles for 249 pages

And there was always a happy ending-a neat stopping point which just doesn't happen

Casey Watson is going the same way with her perfect family and happy ever afters with neat endings

American Psycho is a hard read but the film is brilliant and probably what it was written for.

Ian McEwan always strikes me as a bit sweaty palmed and I bet he has ED. All his characters have leather bound desks next to windows - bore off. Saturday is the biggest pile of self satisfied cringe I've ever encountered - he might as well have phoned that book in over a motivational Teams "catch-up".

oh, and Norman Mailer: the Gospel According to the Son. Trite and unoriginal.

Anne Franks Diary is a bit harsh. It’s a diary not a novel

Yy to Saturday. I did finish it I suppose but I remember feeling amazed it had been published.

Really really didn't get the hype with this one either! Odd.

Anne Frank’s diary try is overrated? As literature?

Words fail me.

Yes the silent patient was most disappointing. Quite a slog and a disappointing 'twist'

The Time Traveller's Wife and Midnight Library were both awful. I see a lot of us think the same!

You might be my fiction twin. Lincoln.... pretentious knobheadery. The Lovely Bones. No. Just very middling to poor.9

Star of the Sea, on the other hand, one of the few books I've ever read more than once and a really class work of fiction.

What else would you recommend?

Mill on the Floss - hated it
Time Traveller's Wife - Just. Didn't. Care.
Bleak House - will it ever stop???
On Chesil Beach - hates himself and all his characters
Ulysses - so indulgent
Anything by John Updike - reader, I tried...
Anything by Ian Fleming - so misogynistic and appallingly written
Anything by Jackie Collins - trashy

But do love Jane Austen and Prayer for Owen Meanie absolutely blew me away

Oh and Life of Pi. I can't believe I actually finished it but I feel like I wasted my time.

Howling at the Thomas diagram! I loved the Thomas trilogy, but I have two degrees in the early Tudor period which certainly helped 😁

I've had Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason on my nightstand for two years now. Objectively I should like it and all the reviews are excellent. I try to read a new chapter every so often, but I just can't get on with it. For a story about a young women's mental health - that's meant to be equal parts funny and devastating - I just find it tedious and the main character hugely unlikeable.

I agree on some of these but differ on others.

Ian Fleming though? Of course they’re misogynistic. But they’re the best pulp spy nonsense ever written. Casino Royale is a masterpiece of its type.

Fifty Shades of Grey books (well only managed the 1st one)... utter poo imo 💩