#worst book

[ajy006]

Do you ever hate a book so much that you hate everything about it? I hate the author. I hate how she handles serious topics. I hate her writing. I hate how bad the story is. I hate the fanbase. I hate the characters. The book is so bad that it makes me angry. I was just about to forget about it but here comes the announcement that it's getting a live-action series and now I'm annoyed. Out of all the shows they could choose, why choose this one? Some books are meant to be just books.

I'm talking about boys of tommen

[libertyreads]

Best and Worst Books of 2020

This has been a mess of a year for everyone, but I actually managed to get a lot of books read. I decided to repeat this post from last year because I enjoyed going back through all the things I read and remembering how I felt about them.

I’ll try to avoid any repeats, but I’m sure it’ll happen at some point. If you want more info about my feelings on these books, check out my ratings and reviews on GoodReads.

Best Sci-Fi: This one was such an easy pick for me. All Systems Red by Martha Wells. This whole series just knocks it out of the park. The Murderbot Diaries is a series about a Security Bot who hacks their governor module so they can just watch their shows all day. Too bad the humans they’re assigned to protect are getting into trouble left and right. Worst Sci-Fi: Starstruck by Brenda Hiatt. I remember this being a free e-book that I picked up this year. I explained it to my husband as a sci-fi version of Twilight. You get a small town nerdy girl with few friends who suddenly becomes important when this alien boy pays attention to her. It was definitely a book of its time. Best Fantasy: A Fantasy that I really enjoyed this year was Fable by Adrienne Young. It is about a girl whose pirate father leaves her stranded on a deserted island after her mother dies. If she can survive, she can find her way back to him and receive her inheritance. It goes in depth about family and friendship. Plus found families. Am I right? Worst Fantasy: The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Oh boy. How do I get into it with this one without regurgitating my review? I had a problem with the author taking all of the best known magical stories of all time and twisting them throughout this dense book in order to point out that magic is a problem to be dealt with and not all unicorns and rainbows--just to rip that point out of the reader’s hands in the last four pages of the novel. Please read my review I go so in depth there. Best Contemporary: Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson. I think this was mostly just that I read this book at the right time. This book is about a family who is going through a hard time when the father is diagnosed with terminal cancer. They decide to spend one final summer at their cabin on the lake before he passes. I distinctly remember crying my eyes out at the end of this one and it hitting me so hard. Worst Contemporary: Girls in the Moon by Janet McNally. This was a Book of the Month pick for me at a time when they had less variety in their options. I felt like I couldn’t keep pushing back my picks every month. It’s a story about this rock band family who divorced in the late 90s and the fall out for their two children while one moves to New York to pursue a music career. A lot of fluff and almost no substance. Best Mystery: This is the year I realized that I like YA Mystery novels and not a lot else in the mystery genre. I had a three way tie for best Mystery and they call came from the YA Age Range. The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson, In the Hall with the Knife by Diana Peterfreund, and The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. These were all done so well and all taking the things I love about mysteries and twisting them. Worst Mystery: In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. I had heard so many amazing things about this book, but it fell so flat for me. I hate unreliable narrators. Why are they necessary in this genre? I feel like if you need an unreliable narrator to write a good mystery then you’re a bad mystery author. Best YA: Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton. This is book 2 in the Rebel of the Sands series. It’s a desert Fantasy that is written so well. The world building is fantastic. We have a rebellion, magic, and some amazing characters. In book two we see Amani thrust into court politics. I marathoned this whole series in a couple of weeks and loved the adventure. Worst YA: The worst YA book I read this year was Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke. I felt like the story went no where and the writing was overly flowery. I’m sure it does good things for some people but it’s the polar opposite of what I love in books. Best Adult: For this one we have a two way tie. The first book is House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas. Is this the next great American novel? Of course not. But I had an amazing time reading this book. I felt so many feelings and the world building was fantastic. The second book is In A Holidaze by Christina Lauren. I read an ARC of this for my Christmas in July and enjoyed it so much I had to read it again right before Christmas. It was perfect for getting in the Christmas spirit.  Worst Adult: This category is also a two way tie. I read The Broken Girls by Simone St. James and thoroughly disliked the mystery aspect of the story. I felt like it was left too open ended and it completely put me off. The second is a book of poetry called Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur. It felt like a lot of these poems were incomplete thoughts. Maybe it’s how open it is too interpretation again, but I really did not like this at all. Best New Release: This feels like the hardest category to pick from. If we’re going based on ratings, Check, Please! Volume #2: Sticks and Scones is the highest rated new release that I read this year. But I also have a couple of YA Mystery novels that I read this year that I loved and that stuck with me throughout the year. The first is The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson which is the third book in the Truly Devious series and finishes out that mystery arc. The second is The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes which I have been raving about since I read it this fall. The Inheritances games is the first book in a new series that is like a combination of Knives Out and Clue plus puzzles minus a few murders. It’s just so good. So, a top three for this category I guess. Worst New Release: The Bookweaver’s Daughter by Malavika Kannan. This one was easy to pick hands down. I felt like this book brushed over some major events that happened. As well, there’s a major lack of world building in this novel. I think with some polishing it could have made for a good middle grade novel but was sold as a YA novel. Best Backlist: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty. I’m normally not huge into Adult Fantasy, but I feel like the author does a good job of making the world accessible to the reader even though it’s vast with a lot of political machinations. Probably one of the best series I read start to finish this year. Worst Backlist: The Cruelty by Scott Bergstrom. I was going to put in Wink Poppy Midnight here again, but technically I gave The Cruelty the same rating and I wanted to avoid repeats. For this one, I gave a LENGTHY review about my problems with the book. I wanted to like it, but the author’s internalized ableism and misogyny really ruined the party here. Best 2021 ARC: This was a two way tie between “You Have a Match” by Emma Lord and “Shipped” by Angie Hockman. I had no idea I enjoyed these equally because they’re such different books. Both are contemporaries but “You Have A Match” is YA Contemporary about families and secrets while “Shipped” is an Adult Contemporary about a hate to love romance and work/life balance. Worst 2021 ARC: “The Castle School (for Troubled Girls)” by Alyssa B. Sheinmel. This one is more of a problem about what the publishers sold the book as. Because the book summary wasn’t correct when it came to the whole point of the book. So I went in with completely incorrect expectations. I think because of the plot twist I would have still rated it lower than the other 2021 ARCs I read, but it would have been a closer contest. Best Standalone: I Hope You’re Listening by Tom Ryan. This is a YA Mystery that came out this Fall that I really enjoyed. It’s about a girl who is present when her friend gets taken from the woods. Years later she still has trouble dealing with being the child left behind so she starts a podcast to help people solve missing persons cases. It also had a surprise cult element that I wasn’t expecting and really enjoyed. Worst Standalone: Meet Me at Fir Tree Lodge by Rachel Dove. This one is a bit blurred in my brain. I think that really speaks to how I feel about this one. It is about a girl whose life falls apart after a skiing accident and how she tries to put it back together. But it involves a romance with an Alpha Male character which everyone hates at this point. I wanted it to be sweeter and softer and more heart wrenching than it was. Best Book in a Series: All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I scoured my spreadsheets to try to find a book I hadn’t already gushed over, but there’s a reason this one is in the top of so many categories. I love Murderbot and following all of their misadventures. The Murderbot Diaries is a series about a Security Bot who has hijacked their Governor Module and just wants to watch their serials all day. But those pesky human’s they’re hired to protect keep getting themselves in trouble. Worst Book in a Series: I found the book in a series that I gave the worst rating to and I had to go over my review to try to remember what it’s even about. I read Legacy of Ash by Matthew Ward which is the first book in the Legacy Trilogy. And I still don’t remember much about it. I remember it being dense and hard to read without getting a lot out of the book in reward for my effort. It was a hard slog and clearly not great if I can’t remember what it’s about less than 9 months after I read it.

[rhi-reads-and-writes]

I renamed Onision's books

Daddy issues 1

Daddy issues 2

Daddy issues 3

[regbian-moved-to-lezbianz]

did ANY of you have to read the chocolate war in school...if so please message me i wanna complain

[mugglenet]

Every time I hear that “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” is someone’s favorite “Harry Potter” book, I have to bite my tongue.

[uss-edsall]

[insomniac-dormouse]

Half of my animal anatomy book is dedicated to horses there’s not a single reptile in here no fjucking turtle what’s even the point

[readtillyoudie]

Where Shadows Dwell -Julianne Kelsch

Synopsis: 

 For Lily Frost, love is a double edged sword. She craves it, she needs it, but the asking price for love may be her life. After her mother's apparent suicide, Lily is forced to face the hard reality that she no longer has a family, and when a friend shares with her his concerns that her mother's death may have been murder, she leaves California, determined to find the father that abandoned her when she was a child. Instead, she finds James Prescott, a man she realizes can give her what she's looking for. James is tormented by his mother's unsolved murder. More than anything, he wants to see her killer lifeless, lying in a shallow grave. When Lily enters his life he realizes that he hasn't been living. Lily shines for him, a light that finally pierces the darkness. For the first time in years, he feels hope. Their relationship blossoms and Lily discovers that she is worthy of love. But then without warning, everything implodes. Investigators learn that Lily's Father murdered James' mother. To make matters worse, her old boyfriend returns and nearly kills Lily in a drunken rage. She survives, but his attack becomes the catalyst that throws the lovers into a battle for their lives. Can James let go of his dark shadows or will his lust for revenge consume him? Can Lily give her life to a man that is determined to see her father dead? Will their love survive or will the past destroy their future?

If you go through my book reviews, you’ll see that I’ve given few bad reviews. It’s not because I never read bad books. Oh no.  Mostly it’s because it annoys me a lot to give bad reviews, to actually have to think about how bad the book was or because I hated it. Normally I read those books and then I have to go and read a good book. Normally a re-read. 

This was one of the WORST books I’ve read. I did finish it but that was only because I kept thinking “ I have to read it to review it. I have to. Maybe it will get better” IT DIDN’T.  Every time I thought it couldn’t get worse? It did.

Okay, see, now that’s why I don’t like reviewing books I didn’t like. I end up criticizing them a lot. 

Okay, bad things. First of all, why such a long synopsis? I HATE long synopsis that tells us half the plot. Or, in this case, pretty much all the plot. There’s only one slight plot twist that isn’t in the synopsis and, guess what? I discovered the plot-twist way before it was presented. Way before.

You know what, THIS is a plot twist.

It wasn’t a good read. There is insta-love, there is a weak plot, people that are too goody shoes, an obvious plot (I know I’m repeating, but seriously). 

This is a book you read if you have nothing else to read. It’s a good book if you want to be a grammar-nazi and know what’s going to happen and be exasperated by all the insta-love and obvious break-ups and bad people being ALL bad and good people being ALL good. Well, except for the plot-twist. Which it isn’t.

I really can't say much more. I didn’t like it and it pains me to continue to remember it.

It did touch into the subject of... well, forget it. I don’t have a good thing to say about this book.

Overall, obviously: 1/10