I do enjoy an annual review, and this year I am kicking off my series of posts with a look back at all the most disappointing books I read this year! These are the ones that were a struggled to finish or that I couldn’t finished at all! 👎
As ever when I share negative reviews, this is just my own personal opinion and reflects my enjoyment of the book! We all have our own reading preferences, and you’ll see from the Goodreads averages I’ve included for comparison, that my rating is nowhere near the average (though don’t we all know you can’t trust GR ratings!). You can click through the link in that section to see reviews on Goodreads, and as usual, the title of the book will take you to my blog post review.
⭐⭐ I finished it but it wasn’t worth it
Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell
Goodreads Average: 4.27 (77,443 ratings3 / 904 reviews)
My Rating: 1.5
Lisa and I are very hit-and-miss, and it’s because her hits are such bangers that her misses are more of a let-down for me. Though, even a Lisa Jewell miss is still a decent book! This one though… something was off with this one, the entire plot felt like an episode of Law and Order: SVU and every single twist was easy to see coming because of that. The characters were either flat or too cartoonish to be believable, and nobody acted like a real person. I couldn’t wait for it to end.
The No-Show by Beth O’Leary
Goodreads Average: 3.80 (103,424 ratings / 14,502 reviews)
My Rating: 2
God this one was annoying. It had two huge offences – misleading marketing and a poorly produced audiobook full of disgusting mouth noises for 2/3 of the main narrators (neither of which are really the fault of the author). This book looks like a rom-com if you look at its title, cover and blub. It’s not a rom-com! It’s not funny or cute, and it’s barely even romantic. It’ll be very clear from the first chapter that it isn’t even about one man dating three women at the same time. It’ also has three main POVs which is too many, and I didn’t care for most of the characters.
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
Goodreads Average: 3.84 (96,437 ratings / 13,322 reviews)
My Rating: 2
This books is not what it advertises it’s to be. It’s not about linguistics, there is barely any true examination of the use of “culty” language and I learned nothing that I didn’t already know from watching documentaries, podcasts and Wikipedia entries about cults and MLMs. All that was new to me was the more modern day cultural cult-like fitness groups like Soul Cycle, Crossfit etc that use similar tactics to squeeze money out their customers.
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
Goodreads Average: 3.84 (53,700 ratings / 8,416 reviews)
My Rating: 2
I think if I had been reading this instead of listening to an eBook it would have been a DNF, but I was gardening with this on and it was just easier to leave it playing! It is a premise that is fun for a short story but the author did not have the goods to stretch this into a full-length novel. It’s very on the nose as a shallow allegory for the feminist movement, and I didn’t enjoy the author’s tendency towards repetition and really belabouring a point.
Lost Property by Helen Paris
Goodreads Average: 3.94 (2,064 ratings / 399 reviews)
My Rating: 2
I wanted this to be like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, or even Convenience Store Woman, but it wasn’t as good as those. I couldn’t connect to Dot as the main character and the emotional stakes and relationships didn’t quite work.
The Woman Who Lied by Claire Douglas
Goodreads Average: 3.96 (19,476 ratings / 1,614 reviews)
My Rating: 2
This is not the author for me! I had the same issue with this as I did with Then She Vanishes – predictable plots with stock characters that lack dimension. I’ve read and watched too many mystery thrillers and I could recognise the formula too quickly, I need more twists and surprises!
Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2) by Steven Erikson
Goodreads Average: 4.27 (77,443 ratings3 / 904 reviews)
My Rating: 1.5
I had my own saga with Malazan Books of the Fallen this year! Nobody was shocked when it turned out I did not enjoy this series! Though I did enjoy the first book – Gardens of the Moon – if only the author had written all his books as he did that one. The linked review is long… Deadhouse Gates was a struggle.
⭐ Life is too short, DNF!
Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #3) by Steven Erikson
Goodreads Average: 4.47 (61,694 ratings / 2,870 reviews)
My Rating: 1/DNF
The conclusion of my struggle with Malazan! I should have DNF’d Deadhouse Gates but the fanboys on the internet forums persuaded me to try to read the third book, the “best” book. I hated it. I quit it at 40% (500 pages!). I again wrote quite a bit about everything I did not enjoy about this book and the whole series!
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
While I did appreciate Children in Time by the same author for it’s originality, I don’t think he is the writer for me. I waited ages to get this audiobook through my library and then I had to quit it by 20% because I could not stand the protagonist! I hate smug, flippant characters. I do not find them charming, it’s irritating. I also don’t enjoy the narrator’s framing of “I’m telling you a story and I’m telling you I’m omitting parts to sound to be irreverent.” However, the world-building and the setting were very cool (very The Outer Worlds / Killyjoys!), so I was quite disappointed about this.
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
Goodreads Average: 3.86 (74,088 ratings / 12,193 reviews)
My Rating: 1/DNF
This book set a new record for the furthest I’ve got through an audiobook before quitting! 76% was a lot of listening hours, and at that point, I was trying to speed it up to 2x speed and it still felt slow I realised I was bored out of my mind and I just didn’t fucking care! I wrote quite a bit about what I didn’t like about this book but in a nut shell I found it very slow, and all the characters are flat stereotypes which makes it really predictable despite the interesting and unusual premise.
It is however a really cool audiobook production, with added sound effects that really help build the atmosphere. Just a shame the book wasn’t better!
Nothing But The Truth by The Secret Barrister
Goodreads Average: 4.09 (2,935 ratings / 228 reviews)
My Rating: 1/DNF
This one was my mistake. I thought I’d be more interested in the details of UK law than I was, I have no need to retain this information so I just know it’ll go in one ear and out the other. It is also one of his latter books, reviewers who are more into this kind of thing say it’s not as good as his earlier ones.
❌ Audiobooks quit in the first chapter
Assistant To The Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer, read by Em Elridge
The bizarre narration of this had me searching within the first 2 minutes whether this was read by an AI! I found countless Reddit posts of people who’d done the exact same thing, so I am by no means alone with this! The cadence of her voice sounds robotic, and the words she emphasises in a sentence are weird.. it just doesn’t sound like a human reading it! There was no way I could listen to this. I have no idea what the actual book is like!
The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix, read by Adrienne King
The narrator was fine with this one but the protagonist was not for me. I was quickly bored and didn’t think I was likely to be interested in where it was heading. A shame because I did enjoy The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by the same author.
What did I learn from these reading flops?
Every (subjectively) bad book I read helps me make better choices in the future, and potentially saves me the time I might otherwise trying to power through something I am not enjoying in the hope it might “get better” (it rarely does!).
So what does this batch from 2024 teach me? There are a few things these books have in common:
- Characters that lack depth and dimension, which often leads to…
- Predictable plots that don’t challenge me, especially if it’s a mystery book!
- Two books on this suffered from misleading marketing where the promise on the cover did not match the contents.
- Most of them were audiobooks, but I am less choosey about what I’ll try to read on audio and do pick the books I expect to be ‘easier’ and won’t need me to be as engaged as I am when reading on the page.
- A bad narrator can also kill all potential enjoyment in a story.
- I should stay away from Steven Erikson’s books!
How did your 2024 year of reading go? If you’ve shared a review of your worst reads feel free to pop a link into the comments, I’d love to take a look! I often find what people don’t like about a book more interesting than what they do!
I’ve also now completed my little series of reading-focused annual review posts for this year:
- Worst reads of 2024
- Best reads of 2024
- Reading activity review for 2024
Funny NK Jemisin should be on your list. I forced myself to finish The Obelisk Gate this year in a buddy read with a couple of friends. It wasn’t good. I mean, book one wasn’t all that good either, but I wasn’t expecting book two to be a lot worse. I did consider reading the final book but as the year has progressed my interest has waned – I have too many books that I want to read to bother picking up one that I don’t.
I had the same experience with that series, and I did read the third book and it did get worse 😂 the weak parts are the same in The City We Became, which is frustrating because the overall premise is very unusual, I think it could have worked if she’d given the characters any dimension and life of their own. It is extremely heavy handed and repetitive with the message too!
I don’t understand why Broken Earth gets such acclaim. All I can think is that a lot of people haven’t read broadly enough and so they think it is something so “new” and “inventive” and so it must be good.
Sounds like my decision not to finish the series, or read anything more by this author, was a good one