Ten Of My Most Debbie Downer Reads

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This Week’s Topic is Ten Books I Read Lately that were Bummers and I’m going to share that bummer energy with you and let you disagree with me 🙂

To clarify disappointed does not necessarily mean hate. Most of these books were decent books and ones that I would read again, they just were underwhelming compared to my expectations. Plus this is kind of fun because I am constantly shoving books I love down everybody’s throat so it’s fun to talk about ones I never bring up because they were just an “eh” for me. These are the “eh” books (da dum)

 

• We Were Liars – E. Lockhart

This was just not the book for me. It just felt like it was trying so hard to be poignant and different that is felt so pretentious. I think this one just had my expectations so high that nothing was going to meet them but this didn’t even come close.

 

• Me and Earl and the Dying Girl – Jesse Andrews

Immature high school boys are just characters I don’t relate to and don’t enjoy as much. When they’re in the context of the story GREAT, when they are the story…

 

• Fishbowl: A Novel – Bradley Somer

I think this book was just different than I expected so it left me feeling blah. Not good or bad just *shoulder shrug*

 

• Mosquitoland – David Arnold

Mim and this book wanted to be quirky so bad that I hate myself for using the term “quirky.”

 

• Luckiest Girl Alive – Jessica Knoll

Another case of a book that is trying way to hard (I know that phrase sucks for the vagueness). Instead of being a complex revenge motivated main character. We get a cold one-dimensional robot alien type person. I love unlikeable narrators but I have to believe where they are coming from and I just didn’t believe anything about Ani enough to care.

• Lola and the Boy Next Door – Stephanie Perkins

This is the case of some unattainable expectations, Anna and the French Kiss was probably my favorite YA book that I read last year. So following it up with Anna’s slightly annoying younger sister was probably not my best decision. Maybe one day I’ll give this book another shot.

 

• The One and Only – Emily Giffin

I didn’t even finish this book. I love Emily Giffin and devour most of her books. This one though. My friend described it to me as, “Remember the Titans without any of the deeper issues and if Hayden Panettierre’s character was an adult who decided to get with her friends dad, Coach Boone.” That description has more detail than this book.

 

• The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins

Never say a book is the “Next X,” it never is and hearts break everywhere.

 

• The Visible Man – Chuck Klosterman

This is fundamentally an ohkay novel and if you like Klosterman already then by all means try it, but I spent the entire novel wishing it would just end. It’s always a pity when your favorite author rights a book that you don’t love and borderline hate out of boredom.

 

• The Book of Joe – Jonathan Tropper

I gave this book a 4 on goodreads. I don’t remember because looking back it is definitely a 2-3 in my mind but whatever, I liked it more at one point maybe. The main character in this one felt like he wanted acceptance so bad when all I wanted was for him to flip everyone off and ride out of town to live an infinitely better life.

 

Were you also let down by any of these books or are any of them ones I should give another shot? Let me know in the comments 🙂