Books I Hated in 2019: The DNFs & Disappointments

Whilst this year has been one of my best for reading, there have been an awful lot of books that didn’t live up to the hype surrounding it. And I also DNF’d one of the biggest YA books out there.

This is the fourth post for Bookmas, created by HaileyinBookland. I’ll leave the prompt sheet down below, and whilst I’ll mainly follow this there are quite a few that I’m changing. If you’re interested in seeing my previous Bookmas posts, they’re all available here. I’ve had a few days off due to working on University deadlines, but I’m back and ready!

I only DNF’d two books this year, so I decided to mash it up with my most lowest rated books and the biggest disappointments.

The Cruel Prince [DNF]

Unpopular opinion: I seriously hated this book with a passion. The main characters are insufferable and I couldn’t get past 100 or so pages in either audiobook form or physical. It’s a whole load of bullying, Jude punching a random guy in public for no reason, and this awful writing style that is trying to mimic Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market, but failing miserably.

There, I said it.

Lily’s Just Fine [DNF]

The main character, Lily is (somehow) even worse than Jude from The Cruel Prince. There’s this planning committee for this community festival/carnival and she jumps on board, drags all sorts of people from school into it without properly asking, ends up trying to take over and control the entire thing, as well as then assigning roles to the people she dragged to the meeting and decides for them that they will spend their entire summer doing this. There’s also this weird romance where there is no build up, they kiss, and all of a sudden they’re both like omg i rly liked u for a whil now. Despite nothing being mentioned in their POVs.

Me, Earl and The Dying Girl

This was a popular YA / Teen book back in 2013 with a film adaptation coming out later in 2015. How this was published I will never know. A lot of the content was not okay and should not be even written for teens. It was uncomfortable as an adult to sit there and be like this was targeted for children… The writing style and narration itself was boring, with the author trying to be edgy and pushing humour that it was incredibly boring and lacklustre.

Since You’ve Been Gone

I had so much hope. A bucket list for the main character to complete, written by her best friend who has mysteriously disappeared – what could go wrong? Whilst some of this book was entertaining, and I did enjoy some plot points – there was a lot where I didn’t feel quite submerged into the storyline. For most of the time it was a solid 3 star, it was the “plot twist” that really threw me off from liking this. I went through so much for that to be the twist, the ending, the pinnacle of my suffering.

Wanderlust

Wanderlust was my first ever dark romance and read during Smutathon. Whilst this has had so many amazing reviews, I don’t think this particular story or even dark romance in general is for me.

So Sweet

If this wasn’t so short, I probably wouldn’t have finished it. The writing style felt very amateur and weak. The plot at first had sounded great – a woman on a matchmaking sugar daddy site, gets match made with the CEO of the app. I didn’t care about the couple, the characters felt incredibly two dimensional and the “conflict” was so incredibly cringe-worthy.

The Bride Test

The Kiss Quotient quickly became one of my most favourite books of the year, all time, and it’s the book that started my romance reading frenzy. So I was incredibly excited for the second instalment. I think my hype and wanting something similar to the first is what made this book so disappointing. It also seemed like everything I loved so much in The Kiss Quotient wasn’t present.

Angels and Demons

I never thought such a popular book and author could be so incredibly boring. 600+ pages of nothing, a narrative and plot which is just… insane. And a plot twist that is so incredibly ridiculous I was ready to DNF it with only 20 pages left.

Ice Planet Barbarians

Having not read any alien romance or smut before, I didn’t expect to fall in love with this book. But from all the raving reviews, I thought I would have enjoyed it a little more than I actually did. Whilst there were certainly steamy scenes, I hated the main female protagonist. (And I continued to hate her in the second book Barbarian Alien.) It just needed something a little extra in my eyes.

Charlotte Alicia