Quite honestly I can’t stand only a few books that I’ve read, recently The Awakening by Nora Roberts.
Holy crap, do I reallllyyyyy want my money back. I was bored. So. Bored. The magic system was subpar, the characters just….ew, everything was so, so boring. The MC is an idiot.
What book is a zero star read for you?
I’m not counting DNFs because I feel like that’s cheating but I have four books I need to get some feelings out about.
The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer.
A historical fiction about the witch trials in England. Amazing idea, terrible execution. The FMC dissociates at key plot points so you don’t actually get a resolution, you just find it out at the end which made me so mad.
The Witch King by Martha Wells
I’m still not sure what happened in this book. The blurb on the back sounded so good and yet the writing style was so bad. IMO split timelines don’t work for fantasy books that require a lot of world building. If it had be a linear timeline the whole reading experience would have been so much better.
No God’s No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull.
Another book I just didn’t understand what was going on. It’s like a paranormal literary fiction. Once again, amazing ideas, terrible writing style. I really should just give up on literary fiction. I’m not smart enough for them.
The Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlene Harris.
These were just plain bad. I suffered through the first 3 and then stopped reading them. Even the show I stopped watching after season 3. Sookie as a character is so annoying I wish one of the vampires would just eat her. As a romance reader I’m so tired of the trope where a petite blond women has a magical fanny that makes all these “big bad” men fall in love and will rip each other throats out over.
I love the Sookie books. They’re kooky and that can be great sometimes. I did start to lose interest toward the end and have yet to finish the series (despite True Blood being one of my favorite shows ever). And at least there’s a reason why the vamps love her (extra tasty magic blood).
I agree! They’re a comfort read for me. I don’t get the people saying it’s just taking advantage of the paranormal romance trend - it’s actually quite an original genre mashup. More a mystery novel series where the heroine goes on some dates than a fantasy romance - the love interests are all flawed in very down to earth ways and it doesn’t follow a romance HEA formula. The supernatural universe was endearingly crapsack instead of being gritty, but it’s not just the real world with fangs either - all the different creatures feel properly inhuman. And it really was pretty queer inclusive for the time (Pam!), though hasn’t aged well in some ways.
I do get that not everyone loves the bizarre little montages of the heroine enthusiastically doing housework and planning really hideous outfits, but they’re just a bonus imo. Go Sookie, rock that twin-set!
Although, I was extremely creeped out by the old people going to their Descendants of the Glorious Dead confederacy history society thing - but I guess that’s probably just quite realistic? I’ve not read much else set in the southern US.
I’m glad you enjoy them (and I mean that genuinely). Maybe I’m just old and bitter haha
I stopped on the first page of the first Sookie Stackhouse novel. The overdone tropes.
I think there were a couple more. Just on the first page.
When my book discussion group talked about the book, they said she’d talked about starting as a romance novelist and saw that there was a demand science fiction/fantasy/horror. So, she swapped to writing this crap. Just so formulaic.
I love the Sookie books. They’re kooky and that can be great sometimes. I did start to lose interest toward the end and have yet to finish the series (despite True Blood being one of my favorite shows ever). And at least there’s a reason why the vamps love her (extra tasty magic blood).
Literary fiction is like that nursery rhyme, when it’s good, it’s very good, when it’s bad, it’s awful. I don’t think you’re not smart enough for literary fiction, but I might have found some authors that weren’t smart enough for literary fiction, lol.