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.

As I think a PP has mentioned some books are better listened to than read. Thinking in particular of the Wolf Hall trilogy which I really struggled with in the written format but absolutely loved when I had them as an audio book. I’ve listened to several books that I wouldn’t have touched in book form.

I came here to say that. Absolute yawn fest

I find this with several of Donna Tartts books. Promising start but quickly deteriorates into a huge anticlimax

Absolute worst was The Alchemist.

For such a short book it was painful to finish. Trying hard to be deep and meaningful but it was just utter crap for me.

I also find Anne Tyler difficult to get into.

A court of thorns and roses by Sarah J Maas. It’s absolutely baffling to me why this is so popular - I made it about a quarter of the way through but the storyline and writing are just absolute dross. Good PR team behind it I think

I'm with you. I loved it

Obviously your opinion is valid.

I wasn't treating this thread as being literary criticism, just total kneejerk reaction and ridiculously subjective. Certainly couldn't defend any of my choices, and they would probably make many people's hair stand on end.

I agree with a lot of these. It goes to show how clever marketing is , some of these books were absolute must reads of their time.

The bit in Eleanor Oliphant where she goes to get her nails done has me in stitches.

Then the haircut later makes me properly bawl. "You've made me shiny." 😭😭

But yeah, whoever thought it was about getting a makeover was seriously missing the point.

I like a lot of the books that have been mentioned! But some I found disappointing, including;
A Thousand Splendid Suns. I thought it was badly written.
The Kite Runner
All The Light We Cannot See
Wuthering Heights
Still Life
I was also a bit disappointed in Shuggie Bain. Parts of it I enjoyed, but other parts were too repetitive and boring. I found it quite forgettable, despite its important subject matter.

I love the Harry Potter books though. I think we have to remember that JKR wrote them for children. As such, they're brilliant stories well and simply told. She has such a vivid imagination.

(Although I think that the books after about no 3 needed some serious editing - I think her editors were a bit in fear of her as she's such a popular author, but the books got longer and longer, and that wasn't necessarily a good thing)

Having read the whole of The Slap, I can confirm that none of the characters had any redeeming features apart from Connie’s aunt. Perhaps if she’d been featured more, we’d have found out she was selfish, racist and having an affair with a married man.

Gone Girl. I couldn't engage in any way with any of the characters.
The Remains of the Day. Dull. Maybe too subtle for me.
12 Rules for Life. Reasonable start, if verbose and pretentious. By halfway through I was thinking, "I'd cross the road to avoid having a conversation with this chap."

Hamnet - was a book club choice. Couldn’t get into it so gave up.

I work with Reading Groups in a professional capacity and have never heard of any group who hasn't loved it.

My partner read it and loved it too.

I haven't got round to it yet!

The Secret History is my all time favourite book! But I can also see why people dislike it.

I loved A Gentleman in Moscow, but it is definitely slow.

The island of missing trees - finished but thought it was awful

all souls by javier marias

love by Angela carter

late city by Robert Olen butler

how to rule the world by tibor fischer

all books I finished and then rued the time I wasted on them

Several on here, but the worst for me was Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I loathed it but read it in my 20s when I had the impression it was a cool book to like, and when I cared about things like being cool, so I forced myself through page after turgid page. Thank goodness I don't care about cool anymore and no longer feel the need to torture myself with books I don't enjoy.

JEMIMA J!!!

Oh bloody hell that's a blast from the past. It. Is. Utter. Bollocks. About a fat bird who fancies hot men but they don't fancy her because they're shallow. She loses weight and conquers the world but that illustrates that fat people are brilliant and shouldn't change. And we know she's clever and witty, because she keeps telling us 'I'm clever and witty'.

A friend lent it to me and oh what fun we had drunkenly slagging it off, happy days.

On Crawdads, I thought it was OK but I didn't believe the bits where she was starving but refused food out of pride. I don't think hunger works like that.

Yes! And (spoiler alert) it ends with her being a happy size 12 with the man of her dreams🙄

and going from obese to size 0 with no excess skin etc

and storylines that start and then never get mentioned again

its like she was trying to write a Bridget jones style novel to ride of its popularity but decided to not put much thought into it

I enjoyed Lessons in Chemistry but did find the heroine a modern day Mary Sue. Nobody can be that kick-ass and strong and tough in real life. Also found the daughter unconvincing. Genius or not, she talks more like a teenager than a 5 year old or whatever she’s meant to be.

I think The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is far more appreciated now by a modern readership who really get the complexities of addiction, abuse and codependency portrayed in the novel. Anne Bronte’s insights (no doubt informed by her experience with her brother Branwell) were ahead of their time.

The daughter was so annoyingly precocious and the dog was twee. Also agree the heroine was a Mary Sue. I did enjoy the cooking show part.

genius and precocious kids ruin books for me. If an author can’t write kids then don’t just write a mini adult. It’s grating.

Showing my age here, but in the early 80s there was a big furore about a book ‘revealing’ and exposing the secrets of the British secret service called Spycatcher by Peter Wright. The government tried very hard to prevent its publication and there were all sorts of court cases and inquiries.

Whilst overseas, I saw it for sale in a bookshop so thought I must buy it to find out what the fuss was about. I even went to great efforts to hide it in my luggage to smuggle it home! I don’t know why I bothered. It was the most boring and pretentious piece of work I’d read for a long time. I gave up after a couple of chapters, but it sat impressively on my bookshelf for several years to show how anarchic I was! 🤭 It eventually ended up in a charity shop somewhere.