TOP TEN TUESDAY | BOOKS I DIDN’T LOVE AS MUCH AS I EXPECTED TO

Alright, this week is a freebie, so I’m doing the flip side of the freebie I did on September 27, where I listed books I didn’t think I’d like but ended up loving. So this week I’m looking at books I expected to absolutely love, but didn’t end up loving quite as much as I expected to. Now, this doesn’t mean I didn’t like these books. Some I might have even really liked. This is just a comparative thing – ones that didn’t live up to my expectations based on reviews, hype and recommendations.

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I had heard glowing praise for Piranesi. Everyone seemed to be talking about it, and saying that it was one of the best books of last year. I hadn’t really enjoyed Clarke’s writing when I tried to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. But that was also a very long book, and I didn’t make it very far. This one was much shorter. I liked it. It was interesting, and original. But it was also referential to an expected familiarity with texts I’m not at all familiar with, and though you can read it without knowing anything, it really does benefit from knowing at least some of that context (like who Piranesi was). Alright, but not a favourite. I loved Simon and the Homo Sapiens Agenda. Leah is a companion novel, and one that centres an overweight queer teenaged girl, something I was so excited to read. There were things I loved about it, but it really didn’t compare to Simon and I didn’t connect to the characters the way I expected to. We Are the Weather was fine, and made some interesting points. But it didn’t really stick with me, didn’t have that much in it I didn’t already know, and didn’t make me feel much of an emotional connection. Small Island I was very excited about. I read it in preparation for watching the television series based on it with a few of my favourite actors in it. Again, it was a fine book. I wanted to know what happened in the end. But I didn’t really care much about the characters, it felt a bit too long, and though it raised some important issues surrounding race, it otherwise didn’t really leave me with much that stuck with me.

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Olive was okay. I only read it in case the sequel came up on my reading list for the BookTube Prize, so maybe the problem was that I didn’t have any natural interest in it. It was well written, the character of Olive was believably unlikeable, and it explored characters and lives that aren’t usually represented. But I didn’t really enjoy it, and I don’t feel much of a desire to re-visit Olive. Mrs. Fletcher is one I genuinely didn’t like. I found it extremely problematic, I didn’t like or care about the characters, and it never redeemed itself. The Wall was one of those books that’s so obviously written by a man that the female characters just don’t work. I didn’t find the story that interesting, and there wasn’t much there for me to connect with. Ask Again, Yes was talked about everywhere for a while. I thought it looked interesting, so I gave it a shot. It’s one of those looooooong family sagas with characters who aren’t that sympathetic and I felt like it take a long time to get where it was going. It wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t the book for me.

             

I went into Five Feet Apart expecting one of those stories about sick teenagers that makes you kind of melt into a blubbering, messy puddle of goo (there’s a pleasing mental image for you – you’re welcome). But this one really didn’t. I got really sidetracked with inconsistencies in medical protocols and just never managed to connect with the characters that much. I wanted to know what happened, but then when I got there I had an abiding feeling of, “oh. That’s it?” Not my favourite YA. I’m not big on romance, so the next one was another experiment. I found it a bit tedious, I didn’t like the protagonists that much, I don’t like books where you’re rooting for two people to get together who are with other people, so in order for that to happen, other characters have to get hurt. It was kind of a damp narrative that I really just couldn’t get invested in. From a Low and Quiet Sea was decent – I liked the writing, and I thought it did a good job in parts. But I went into it expecting it to blow me away based on what I’d heard, and it just didn’t. The Power was an interesting thought experiment, it won the Women’s Prize the year I read it, and I appreciated what she tried to do, but it didn’t entirely work for me. Still recommend it if you’re looking for explorative feminist fiction, but it’s not my favourite.

That’s it for me! A roundup of some of the books that didn’t entirely work for me, or just didn’t live up to my expectations. I’m sure there are some books on this list some of you loved, so feel free to voice disagreement! Most of these books are just here because of my feelings about them, so I fully expect some different ones!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.