2023 got here a heck of a lot faster than I expected! It’s crazy to think it’s 2023 and I don’t know where 2022 went. I feel just like yesterday we were celebrating the New Year into 2022, and now it’s a brand new slate. I say this every year that I plan to blog more and be better at it..maybe this year I’ll stick to that!
The end of the year is my favorite for reading because I love all the statistics!
I wanted to talk today about something usually controversial. This is my list of the worst books, in my opinion, that I read this year. I’m also going to talk about the biggest disappointments, which are ones that I thought I’d love but turns out I did not. So, in no particular order, let’s talk about the ones I did not like at all or maybe DNF’d!
Squeak by Vera Valentine
My reading went a little off the rails in 2022. I thought it’d be fun to read some kooky books because it’s fun to talk about on my podcast (Pages n’ Pages on all streaming platforms!) and it is, but they’re also not good a lot of the times. This one would be one of those situations.This book was absolutely ridiculous. I understand that it’s not going to be this great literary feat, but like damn, it’s so dumb. The main kicker is that it was a MMF relationship, which is great, but then it revolved around the two men being shifters. Okay cool… but they’re balloon animal shifters. Yeah, you heard me right. They are balloons. I think it might be the weirdest thing I’ve read all year. The writing was not good, there were major plot holes and it was just bad. I think weird stuff, but weird stuff that I can actually enjoy. This was not it.
The Kraken’s Sacrifice by Katee Robert
I am a huge fan of Katee Robert. Her Wicked Villains series is my favorite and the Dark Olympus series is stellar. When I found out she was writing monster romances? Heck yes sign me up. Like I said, I like to read weird stuff. This series has not been for me because I find it a little underwhelming. But there’s something about The Kraken’s Sacrifice that I dislike so much. I find the idea of a half kraken/half man character to be so gross. I’m sorry, but tentacles are icky to me. He walked around on them like feet…but then he literally put them inside the female main character. Disgusting. And the little suckers? Absolutely hecking not. Count me out. Hard pass. I find that whole aspect of the book to be gross, and I can’t help but hear some gross squishy sound whenever it talked about him walking around. Totally gross. Not for me.
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
I’m not sure if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but man I do not like this book. I was so excited about this book – it sounded so interesting and right up my alley. Turns out, it was extremely boring and underwhelming. I hated all the characters but not in a good way and I found the plot to be really.. kind of dumb. I don’t think the setting was described well at all so I had a hard time picturing this place the characters were at and it was all really not utilized to its full potential. I was so into the idea but it just was not good. I still really don’t understand the point of what happened, I don’t understand the hype and I don’t understand how people can enjoy it. But to each their own.
Gallant by VE Schwab
What a disappointment. Somehow this book won Goodreads best young adult fantasy and science fiction, but I’m determined to think the people who voted only voted for VE Schwab and didn’t read this. It’s sad to think that this author one of my favorite books of all time, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, but then also wrote this underwhelming story. I was so unsatisfied with the ending and everything was so surface-level. VE Schwab can write a great book and is really great at writing vibes. You know, they’re so great at descriptive storytelling and has all the spooky vibes, but wow this book was just so… forgettable? I remember hating the ending and found it to be dumb in al honesty. I’m so sad about this.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia-Moreno Garcia
Another unpopular opinion I guess? Since this book also a Goodreads winner in 2020 for best horror and has a bunch of awards. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I also found this boring. It had an isolated creepy mansion and a macabre family, but otherwise a lot of this made me roll my eyes. I didn’t find it scary at all to warrant the best horror. I’m also not a huge fan of body horror and that aspect really made me not like this. Just not a book for me.
Love at First Spite by Anna E. Collins
Now, I don’t hate a lot of things, but I hate the characters in this book. I hate them. THe main character is a complete moron and makes the dumbest decisions known to mankind. The whole point is that she breaks up with her significant other and to spite him she buys the lot next door and tries to build a vacation house to ruin his life. She of course falls in love with the guy who is designing the house for her. I just hate everything about this book. This main character worked so hard to save this money, and instead of using it to buy herself a house and start over, she uses it to get back at her ex. Okay sure, sounds like a good waste of thousands of dollars. And she treats the love interest like garbage! Ugh I hate this book.
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher
Well, this is my first and probably only T. Kingfisher book. I found this to be so completely silly but not in a good way. It was pitched to me as a low-stakes fantasy and sure, it was, but no one told me the main character was one of the most annoying characters known to mankind. It’s so quirky that she asks a million questions and never stops talking. That’s not frustrating at all. I found everything about this book to be weird and pointless and I didn’t like it at all.
My Killer Vacation by Tessa Bailey
Can I tell you how over the “I’m such a small woman and oh my god the love interest of this book is SO tall he makes me feel SO small because I am SO small” trope and I’m going to shove it down your through every other page? If I read one more, I’ll vomit. Guess what – the main characters of this book fit that to a T. Plus the main male character just gave me the creeps. Something about him felt icky. This was also basically insta-lust and I thought it was gross. I thought this was going to be so fun – it’s a murder mystery and a romance? Hell yeah count me in! I just thought everything about their romance was gross and creepy and the mystery was very underwhelming.
Owen by Elle M. Drew
I feel horrible about this because I signed up to be on this author’s street team and I was super excited for her books. She writes about plus-sized women and also about shifts – why wouldn’t I love that? I read one and really liked it, but wow was this book bad. The writing felt almost kind of juvenile and didn’t flow well at all. I felt it was repetitive and underwhelming. But I do think this author writes really great sexy scenes. I do like the hero Owen. Other than the fact it mentions he’s a lonely, loner bear almost every single page. I love that sooo much.
My most disappointing books almost hurt more than the worst books. These are books I’d thought I’d love but they did not live up to expectations.
Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood
This is the biggest disappointment of the year. I absolutely loved The Love Hypothesis with all my heart. It does have the small girl large guy trope, but it’s not shoved down your throat every page. There’s no constant reminder of how big his hands are or how small he makes the main female character feel. At least I don’t think so. But unfortunately Love on the Brain didn’t feel much different than The Love Hypothesis and that made me sad. But Adam and Olive were charming and fun, while Levi and Bea were not. Honestly it feels like a lesser version of The Love Hypothesis – same gropes, same characters just different names and sometimes even the same kinds of scenes! Ali, come one, you have to be better than that. I’m afraid she’s going to be like Sally Thorne and have a killer debut and just go down hill from there. I hope not because I love the women in STEM aspects of her books, but if we don’t get something even a little different.. I’m going to be so very sad.
The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
What a weird book. What a weird twist. I strongly dislike the paranormal element of this story and I feel that wasn’t involved, this would be much better. I wonder how I can give some of his past books 5 stars but this one far from that. I just feel so meh about this book, you know? Just meh. It’s okay. It’s nothing stellar. I liked some parts of it – unreliable narrator, a few of the twists, but it was just pretty average.
Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
This is definitely an unpopular opinion because so many people love this book, and that’s great. I enjoyed it. But when my expectations were so high because it sounded so unique, I was bound to be disappointed. There were things I liked about it – the family aspect was great, but there are a few moments that I didn’t like. But the romance was just not it for me. I think the chemistry felt off and we didn’t get enough time or pages to have them fall in love. It felt too quick.
Also – THE PUNS! One or two, fine. But I cannot with this book and its puns. I hate them. There were what felt like 1,000 puns in this story and I don’t see it talked about at all in reviews. It was SO annoying.
Ace by Angela Chen
As someone who figured out their sexuality late in life, it’s books like this that are important. I identify on the ace spectrum and wanted to do a lot of reading about asexuality. This is one that is talked about a lot. So I’m glad it exists for that reason. It just wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I thought there was too much conjecture on the author’s life that didn’t help me understand more about asexuality – which was the whole point of the book. Overall I was disappointed with the way this was told.
Late Night Reading 