I have two. The Ritual and Drowning.
The Ritual is pure smut. 61 chapters and every one contains a graphic, demeaning sex scene. I’m convinced the author was an adult film screenwriter and decided to try their hand at writing a novel. There isn’t a single likable character in this book.
Drowning isn’t a great work of literature. I felt that the characters were very two-dimensional. I hated how naive the author made the protagonist. It made me have a lack of sympathy for her. The ending was series finale of Dexter bad.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I listened to the audiobook years ago and hated it but my coworker made me give it another try. Reading the physical copy just made me despise it more. Nonsensical, overwritten and Feyre is so committed to being an idiot that it feels intentional at points. Just insufferable and I really do not understand Maas’ popularity.
Controversial, but I also hated Project Hail Mary. I found the writing to be irritatingly bad, and the audiobook narrator did not help. He did a good job of encompassing who Ryland Grace was supposed to be but the problem is I cannot stand Ryland Grace. Besides finding the writing insufferable, I just found everything else to be so bland and boring. There’s no tension and there’s no interesting characters to latch onto. I don’t want to spoil the “big twist” so I’ll leave it there.
Right lol this was exactly what I thought. Like if you like the book, sure I can understand how the audiobook elevates it, but my problem was I hated it and the audiobook just made it so I couldn’t ignore things by skimming over them.
Project Hail Mary is very polarizing. I think you’ll find a lot of support here in your opinion. I thought it was awful.
I have to assume Maas’ popularity is not coming from the first book. It’s incredibly mid and I had zero investment in the love story. I was like “eh, whatever, I bought them all, may as well keep going.” The second book is a complete 180. The books don’t improve much writing wise, but you end up with a bunch of likable characters that don’t show up until the second book and the characters make the books a lot more fun to read. Suddenly it’s campy enjoyable sexy bad and not just mediocre bad. The second book is metaphorically (and kinda literally) night and day from the first book. For what it’s worth.
Anything from SJM has been a letdown. ACOTAR is mediocre at best (except for maybe the last book) and ToG is plain. Yeah, in ACOTAR you fall in love with the side characters but Feyre is just annoying; can’t say the same for ToG. The CC series goes up and down between the two books.