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?
Hard disagree. The first book in the series is a bit rough, granted, but I would hardly put it into the same category as the rest of the books on this thread. Also, the points you bring up are valid, but you aren’t accounting for the fact that the protagonist with a mysterious background has a mysterious background that isn’t going to be all revealed in the first book in a 10 book series. Many powerful magical creatures actually can’t manifest during tech waves, just the weak ones. Extremely powerful creatures like dragons or djinn can only manifest ever seven years during flares. Her power words are explained in detail by book three. Her problem with phones makes sense as you read on. They are not by any means dating by the end of book one. It actually takes four books, and no, there is not a love triangle. Etc. etc.
Like, it’s fine that you don’t like the book, no book or series is for everyone. But it’s hardly 50 shades, either.
I wasn’t lamenting the fact that I didn’t know about her dark mysterious past, I was saying it’s an over used trope, one amongst many. And my bad, they were just eye fucking by the end of the book, but of course we needed a couple extra books of “will they, won’t they?”.
If you like the books that’s great. I, and a lot of other people, find them to be poorly written. The world building had a great starting point but falls apart the first time it’s questioned. If they managed to put bandaids on it through the series and come up with a decent explanation for things working then good for them. Everything else could have come from an Urban Fantasy Romance ad-lib. The series was sold as an action packed Urban Fantasy, and instead I got a generic UF romance novel and the biggest change from the formula that has been done over and over was that the love interest is a werelion instead of werewolf.