Top Ten Tuesday #310

Hi all! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these, and that you had a nice Easter weekend, if you celebrate.

Anyway, it’s Tuesday, so that means it’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is Books I’d Gladly Throw In The Ocean, so it’s time to get SALTY (sorry for the terrible pun!). I honestly thought I wouldn’t have many of these, but it turns out that I have way more than I thought I did, so who’s ready for an extra long rant post. Let’s go:

1. Glass Sword-Victoria Aveyard

I think I’d be hard pressed to find a book that made me angrier than this one. The first book was very tropey and didn’t do much that was original with those tropes but was ultimately a decent enough read. This one however: it was slow, the main character was UNBEARABLE, there was hardly any plot, the romance was rubbish and I HATED the way that girl hate was still perpetuated. I would have hurled this one in the ocean if I could.

2. Graceling-Kristin Cashore

The main character in this one made me want to throw the book in the ocean. Katsa is the kind of “strong female character” that has absolutely no emotions, and despises anything feminine and thinks that she’s above other women because she’s like this. UGH IT MAKES ME SO MAD. Female characters can be both strong and in touch with their emotions and I really hated the way that Katsa seemed to be a 1D stereotype.

3. Foul Is Fair-Hannah Capin

This one hurts me because I so wanted to love it. A feminist retelling of Macbeth should have been right up my street. However the characters in this one were all so flat that it made me angry because if the characters had been better developed I probably would have really enjoyed it.

4. Not If I Save You First-Ally Carter

This one had me seething because I love Ally Carter. Her Heist Society books are so much fun. This was not fun. NOTHING HAPPENED. It was so slow, I felt like I was waiting the entire book for something to happen, plus it was pretty badly written with incredibly corny dialogue and the romance was terribly developed.

5. The Fault In Our Stars-John Green

Ah the first book I thought of when I saw this topic. HAS THIS MAN EVER MET A TEENAGER? THEY DO NOT SPEAK LIKE 40 YEAR OLD PHILOSOPHERS. I was so mad after reading this book that I wrote a 1000 word essay for my sixth form newspaper on how terrible it was. Both Hazel and Gus felt really poorly developed to me, and I thought the plot was weak.

6. The Invisible Library-Genevieve Cogman

It kills me to be putting a book about libraries on this list, but I was SO CONFUSED through the whole book. The plot was so hard to follow and I didn’t particularly connect to any of the characters, so by the end I was just confused and bored and wanted to throw the whole book out.

7. Alex and Eliza-Melissa De La Cruz

UGH THIS BOOK MADE ME SO MAD. There was a ridiculous amount of historical liberties taken with the plot and whilst I do get creative license, this book got some pretty basic and blatant stuff wrong (and yes, I am aware that Hamilton the musical also takes its fair share of historical liberties). But beside all that, the story just wasn’t good? It was slow paced, the characters felt flat and it felt like it missed the mark on the audience it was aimed for as it read much younger than YA.

8. The Fandom-Anna Day

This one was super disappointing because it had the potential to be really fun but it was poorly written, featured a lot of toxic teen girl friendships, the characters were flat, it was incredibly predictable and VERY SLOW PACED. I ended up feeling really frustrated by the end because it had the potential to be so good and it just wasn’t!

9. Lord of The Flies-William Golding

Ah school required reading, the bane of my teenage existence. In all seriousness though, Lord of The Flies is just a terrible book. It’s dull, the characters are barely developed at all and there’s way more focus on THEMES and SYMBOLISM rather than providing *gasp* a decent plot. Honestly one of the most tedious books I ever had to study at school.

10. The Court of Miracles-Kester Grant

Another one that I really wanted to love, but fell short of what I wanted. It was so confusing, there were multiple confusing time skips and the author really seemed to be rushing through the story. It also wasn’t really a fantasy which was what it was advertised as, and there were numerous historical errors. The characters were also very flat and weirdly it was actually too fast paced as we seemed to just skip through the story. It was such a shame because I think it could have been so good, but I ended up so frustrated with it.

11. The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Nighttime-Mark Haddon

What to say about this terrible book? It’s an offensive and stereotypical portrayal of a kid with autism for starters and the story just isn’t particularly good? It’s dull and fairly thin on plot and just not all that well written. Definitely one that I wish I hadn’t wasted my time on.

12. Sea Witch-Sarah Henning

Very ironic to use this one for this topic given that it’s sea based! This was meant to be a dark, villain origin story and what did I get instead? A fairly dry historical retelling of witches in the 17th or 18th century in Denmark with a slight hint of fairytale. It was so slow, the characters were underdeveloped, the world was underdeveloped and it descended into one of my least favourite tropes, girls hating other girls for no apparent reason. I would definitely leave this one at the bottom of the ocean.

13. Wintersong-S.Jae Jones

It was long, it was confusing, it was slow paced and it was more pretty words than actual substantive plot. I know some people like that, but I am not one of those people. I need things to actually be happening in my books and for 90% of Wintersong, nothing was.

14. We Are Blood and Thunder-Kesia Lupo

This book was such a SLOG. The world and magic wasn’t developed, there was barely anything happening for most of the book, the characters were underdeveloped and there was a romance with an uncomfortable age gap (16 & 23) which I was not behind. If I hadn’t been reading this for review purposes then I wouldn’t have finished it because it just wasn’t very good.

15. One Day-David Nicholls

Though not as painful as the film (please never allow Anne Hathaway to do a film where she needs to do any kind of accent EVER AGAIN, she cannot do them), One Day the book was still not a pleasant read. Neither Dexter nor Emma are particularly likeable characters and the repetitive format of them connecting on the same day every year had me bored. I never really got why the two characters liked each other since they didn’t even really seem to get along that well! It’s very hard to connect with a story where there are only really two characters, when both seem like awful people and you’re not rooting for either.

16. Stealing Snow-Danielle Paige

TWO WORDS: LOVE QUADRANGLE. QUADRANGLE. There are THREE LOVE INTERESTS for the main character in this one and that’s just ridiculous. She has no chemistry with any of them, and none of their relationships are developed at all. The characters are flat and hardly developed, as is the world, it’s just not a particularly good book and made me very mad that I wasted my time reading it.

17. Allegiant-Veronica Roth

I know what you’ll all think, that I want to throw this book in the ocean because of THAT ENDING, but weirdly that was the only part of the book that actually made sense to me? Don’t get me wrong, it’s anti-climactic and poorly done, but the actual event that makes everyone mad, wasn’t what made me mad. What made me mad was that the book was slow paced and NOTHING HAPPENED, it was such a limp squib of a trilogy ending.

18. Days of Blood and Starlight-Laini Taylor

There’s actually a particular moment I can pinpoint where this book made me want to throw it in the ocean. There’s a completely unnecessary and gratuitous attempted rape scene which made me so mad! But aside from that, the book in general is just not great: it has far too much relationship angst which I hate, the pacing was HORRIBLE, and it was just incredibly depressing as a story. The third book is still sitting on my shelf waiting to be read because I was so put off by this one but as it’s only a trilogy I would like to finish for completeness sake.

19. Slated-Teri Terry

The writing style in this one infuriated me, it was so dull and slow and she kept overusing certain words. The main character was also really dull and had hardly any personality for most of the book and it just felt like a setup book for the next one in the series, which didn’t really work as I found this one so boring that I didn’t want to continue.

20. Strange The Dreamer-Laini Taylor

I had a similar problem here as with Days of Blood and Starlight, rape is used as a plot device here, almost every main character seems to have either been raped or the product of rape without any real thought to the effect it had on them. This whole book seemed to trivialise and normalise rape for me and that made me really angry. The characters also felt bland, the world poorly developed and the plot was forsaken for the sake of a lacklustre romance.

So that’s it for this week, a bumper list to make up for the slightly shorter one last week. Have you read any of these books? Did you enjoy them? (it’s okay if you did!) What books made your list this week? Let me know in the comments.

I’ll be back with another Top Ten Tuesday next week, the original topic is meant to be Books That Sound Like They Could Be Crayola Crayon Colours, but honestly I can’t really think of anything for that topic, so instead I’m going to do Spring Book Covers, since we did Autumnal & Wintery Book Covers last year and I really enjoyed doing those ones (after this I only needed to do summery book covers and I’ll have the whole set!).