Worst Books of 2021

[penwalla]

Worst books I read, not worst books that were released, because I did not actually get to all the 2021 releases on my TBR. And I already have a long list of 2022 releases ready to go. Ah well. This was a good reading year for me in terms of quality. Most of the books I read got at least three stars! I didn't even have ten books I felt were worthy of a spot on the worst list! But regardless, here we go:

1. The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

• One of the most annoying protagonists I have ever had the displeasure of reading about, and since this book is in first person, we are stuck in her head the whole time. She is relentlessly self-analytical and self-aware and yet her behavior does not get better or worse in a way that feels like a character arc
• A really unsatisfying ending
• I didn't comment on this in my initial review because at the time I didn't care, but the science in this book is laughably bad
• The premise is pretty flimsy, to be honest--why wouldn't her husband just have a normal affair? Or get a divorce?--and the book does not do anything to save it

2. Aetherbound by E.K. Johnston
Man, I have a weird relationship with E.K. Johnston's books. I read four of her books this year and three of them last year, and I enjoyed all of them except this one, but I disliked this one so much that it retroactively made me like the other ones less. In addition, I have read some criticism of her work (particularly That Inevitable Victorian Thing, which has a premise that is...extremely questionable...if you think about it at all) that has made me rethink it.

• This book is very short, very little actually happens, and yet it feels long because it's really boring
• The plot of the book is interspersed with "world-building" chapters about an Empire that are just...there for flavor? it left a bad taste in my mouth. Why bother with an Empire conquering if nothing comes of it?
• Which is the problem with this book. Nothing comes of anything. The characters never encounter any difficulties that aren't immediately solved. There's no tension at all.
• The trigger warnings at the beginning of the book were useful but also wholly inaccurate
• It genuinely feels like the summary of a book, not an actual fleshed out story

3.  The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I read this because my mom asked me to so I could attend her book club. Then when I disliked the book she wouldn't even let me come. So I was subjected to it FOR NOTHING.

I'm also going to note that I do not seek out books about suicide as a rule and would not have picked this up on my own.

• Holy shit, this is one of the tritest, most repetitive books I have ever endured
• I love being forcefed platitudes
• Frankly, I didn't think it handled the subject matter all that well? it feels like a self-help book with a weird conceit, not a novel
• You can predict what the moral of each chapter will be from the first couple lines
• This is fiction that teenaged antis would approve of--very moralizing, very unproblematic
• The prose is dry and extremely info-dump heavy
• Nora is the kind of protagonist you hope will die so the book will end
• Genuinely depressed to see people calling this great sci-fi or great fantasy

4. Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin

This was one of the first, if not the first, books I bought when I got my new Kindle. Kindle, baby, I am so sorry.

• big tiddy liddy????
• the worldbuilding is as fragile as wet tissue paper. the worldbuilding is France, but with some names changed, and the Catholic Church is there (THE ACTUAL CATHOLIC CHURCH) but they have witch-killing knights also
• our heroine has a case of not-like-other-girls disease that is. terminal.
• this is billed as an enemies to lovers forced marriage romance but what actually happens is that a witch is forcibly married to a witch killer using a forced marriage set up that is weak as shit, and halfway through the book they are in love, but no one has to change their behavior or reevaluate their beliefs
• not even witch killer dude! because you see, this book also has a severe case of fake nuance, where you invent a marginalized group (witches) but then make some of them evil so that both sides are equally bad!
• every reviewer who compared this to fanfiction owes me $2.99 because no one is coming up with wildly entertaining forced marriage plots like fanfic authors are.
• protagonist keeps using magic and everyone keeps smelling it and somehow no one figures out she is a witch
• oh and the portrayal of WOC in this book is questionable as fuck

5. Jade Fire Gold by June CL Tan

Oh, I wanted to like this one so bad. I got into danmei this year. I read a lot of Asian-inspired fantasy. I had high hopes.

• The pacing is not very good, imo. It takes forever to go anywhere, and then the ending happens quickly with important events happening off the page.
• None of these characters felt like real people to me and I could not get invested
• The romance had no chemistry at all. Which I should have expected, because this book was being repped as "What if Katara was the Dark Avatar and Zuko was hunting her down" and Zutara is a ship I have never liked or understood.
• Tan's writing style really doesn't work for me