It wasn’t particularly well-written and had a relatively simplistic plot, so it just felt like most of the 500+ pages are spent aimlessly rambling about brand names and rich people 
1 Like
YES. I’m usually a book > movie person, but the movie was so much better. I just felt like Kwan spent most of the book name dropping brand names which I didn’t really care about
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I couldn’t get into the Harry Potter series or The Lord of the Rings series.
2 Likes
For me it was The Night Circus. I was a little disappointed once i finished the book. Im not even sure what i was expecting to be honest but i believed the hype and was let down. Though I did love the Starless Sea its actually a favorite.
Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - DNFed like 32% of the way in because it was so repetitive and boring
ACOTAR - not into the writing style.
1 Like
Anything by Colleen Hoover. I’ve read 5 of her books and I just cannot like them. I don’t get the buzz!
While I enjoyed the author’s style and vivid descriptions, I was disturbed by the novel’s “magical negro” theme.
I read “Educated” with the PBS News Hour’s book club, Now Read This. I was moved by Westover’s memoir about overcoming trauma.
From Blood and Ash and Fourth Wing. I get why they’re popular, but they’re not for me.
fourth wing or educated
"Although ‘Verity’ by Colleen Hoover has garnered a large and dedicated following of readers who appreciate its intense and suspenseful storytelling, it didn’t quite resonate with me personally. While I can acknowledge the author’s skill in creating a gripping narrative with well-developed characters, I found that the dark and unsettling themes within the book made it a challenging read for my own preferences.
The novel delves into deep and complex themes, including obsession, secrets, and blurred lines between reality and fiction. It’s lauded for its ability to keep readers engaged and on the edge of their seats, but for me, the intensity of the story and its mature content made it a less enjoyable reading experience.
Literary preferences are highly subjective, and what resonates with one reader may not resonate with another. While ‘Verity’ has received widespread acclaim and love from many readers, it’s important to remember that each reader brings their own unique tastes and sensibilities to a book. In this case, while I can appreciate the book’s merits, it didn’t quite align with my personal reading preferences, and that’s perfectly okay."
All of the Harry Potters books
2 Likes
Same here! I thought the entire series held questionable themes and had an ugly view of Muggles that made me deeply uncomfortable. There isn’t a single Muggle who’s noteworthy. Some don’t even get much time on the page, like a glancing mention of Seamus Finnegan’s dad who was astonished to find his wife was a witch and the Grangers. The latter are perfect nonentities who get shipped off so quickly by Hermione you wonder why Ms. Rowling introduced them in the first place. While Lily Evans’s parents are admiring of the new world into which she’s fallen, too much time is spent on Petunia’s continuing distress over her sister getting involved with “freaks”, as she calls them.
Arthur Weasley is a member of the Ministry and his job forces him to associate with them. Yet he knows almost nothing about how their world works. He has to ask Harry how to use Muggle money. Ronald shouts on the phone because it’s long distance (ho boy). The Weasleys nearly demolish the Dursley living room because they enter through a blocked-up flue rather than the front door. Arthur Weasley constantly wonders how Muggles manage without magic–as if magicless people were poor denizens of a some Third World country where they don’t have hot and cold running water. Molly Weasley shows decided disapproval when she sees Muggle stitching in her husband’s neck after he’s attacked by Nagini. (Obviously, Muggle medicine is considered vastly inferior to magic even when it’s used as a viable or better alternative.) When Arthur Weasley meets Hermione’s parents, he practically vibrates with excitement when he asks them that he understand they’re Muggles and asks them what that’s like. I wonder how he would have responded if they’d snapped back, “I understand you’re a redhead. What’s that like?”
Then there’s the unfortunate Prime Minister. He’s forced to endure Cornelius Fudge’s continual appearances without being able to counter them or keep him out of his office. A portrait announces the Fudge is on his way and he pops into the PM’s personal space with a cheerful demeanor as if to say, “I’ve got the power to come and go as I please. What are you going to do about it?” Imagine the PM’s outrage when he learns that there are witches and wizards on his staff–without his knowledge. It’s like learning you’ve got enemy spies within your camp and you’re forced to put up with them.
That’s how Muggles are treated. They’re either hated by the Death Eaters and their ilk, treated like exotic animals in a zoo or blithely walked over like indigenous people forced to endure the incursions of colonizers. In fact, the more often the word “Muggle” was used, the more I began to associate it with other nastier words like nigger, kike, faggot, spic, wop, dago, towelhead, sandal wearer, wetback, etc. You pick your own derogatory term and slot it into place. You’ll see what I mean.
I don’t think Rowling was even that imaginative. She wrote about gnomes, dwarves, giants, witches, wizards, hippogriffs, unicorns, mermaids, vampires, werewolves, zombies, hippogriffs and centaurs. But haven’t we read about these creatures in other novels? She didn’t create anything new here so what’s so special about her novels? Neil Gaiman wrote his bespectacled, messy-haired wizard Timothy Hunter with an owl familiar in 1990, six years before she published her first Harry Potter novel.
Initially, her books seemed to embrace diversity. (Remus Lupin’s lycanthropy and Severus Snape’s outing of it had been compared to closeted homosexuality.) But he’s bonded to a shapeshifter woman instead of a man. Snape is revealed to have cherished a tendresse for Lily Potter, a shocking denouement indicated nowhere in any of the previous novels. As someone pointed out to me, given his obsession with Harry’s father, you’d think Snape had been infatuated with James Potter.
Perhaps her writing has literary merit. But her cavalier treatment of certain “other” in her novels just rubs me the wrong way.