Worst of 2023
Jan. 3rd, 2024 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penwallaDid not have enough entries for a full ten this year. I read a lot of mediocre books, but in the end, I DNFed a lot of books immediately that probably would have made this list. (DNFs will be a separate post!)
In no particular order...
Book Boyfriend by Kris Ripper (Adult Contemporary Romance, MLM rep)
It's easy to write a romance that doesn't quite land, but Kris Ripper goes above and beyond by producing a so-called romance where the love interest doesn't even appear to like the protagonist, and as far as I call tell, only hangs out with him when they're lonely or need a place to stay and doesn't have money. I'm not at all convinced Art even reciprocates PK's friendship, let alone any of his romantic feelings. That said, PK is also too neurotic to enjoy reading about, and his missteps aren't funny enough to overcome how cringey they are. It's just a deeply charmless book.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (Adult Fantasy Romance)
You can read my detailed recap series and my multiple blog posts about all the things wrong with Fourth Wing, so I won't rehash them here, but suffice to say this is one of the worst books I've ever read.
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (Adult Historical Fantasy, WLW rep)
Imagine starting with the premise "women are gripped with feminist rage so hard they turn into dragons" and then writing hundreds of pages of the protagonist ineffectually navel-gazing without saying anything remotely interesting about women or feminism. And then the author forgets that the dragoning is supposed to be a metaphor and caps off the book with a few chapters about how the dragons are perfect beings that can do no wrong and that can save the world. Unlike all those real oppressed people who Barnhill barely mentioned, who are too stupid and human to get themselves unoppressed.
No more boring "feminist" novels about 1950s white housewives! Society has evolved beyond 1950s white housewives!
The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero-Lacruz (Adult Fantasy, WLW rep)
I read a lot of books this year with stunning worldbuilding. And also this one! The religions in this book are egregiously underbaked, considering their massive plot importance. The pacing of this book is terrible, dragging where it needs to fly and racing where it needs to linger. The author has discovered adjectives and literally no other way of making their writing interesting, which is unfortunate because the writing is so overwrought it makes every structural problem worse. Also, our two protagonists are some of the dumbest, most tedious women I've ever met, and I was genuinely hoping one of them would die just so we could swap to someone else. It would have been great if either of them ever learned a single lesson, or utilized a single brain cell, but alas. They did not.
Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas (Adult Historical Romance)
Nothing is worse than when a romance tries to convince you to care about an objectively useless guy. It's obvious from the get-go that Fitz and Isabella's romance is doomed, so why do we have to waste so much page time on it? For that matter, why does the author keep trying to convince me Millie is at fault somehow? She had even less choice than Fitz did, and she got even less out of it, and somehow it's her fault for not telling her husband who has explicitly told her he's not into her that she's in love with him? Come on. Also, the weird sex pact is so unsexy and so creepy. I was full body cringing during those sex scenes.
The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz (Adult Thriller, Poly rep, Bi rep)
This would be an order of magnitude better if the protagonist didn't have the appeal of a wet saltine cracker. Just a deeply anxious, petty, annoying person to have to spend time with, and you're trapped with them in this thrill-free thriller where the revelations actually make the book stupider and worse.
In no particular order...
Book Boyfriend by Kris Ripper (Adult Contemporary Romance, MLM rep)
It's easy to write a romance that doesn't quite land, but Kris Ripper goes above and beyond by producing a so-called romance where the love interest doesn't even appear to like the protagonist, and as far as I call tell, only hangs out with him when they're lonely or need a place to stay and doesn't have money. I'm not at all convinced Art even reciprocates PK's friendship, let alone any of his romantic feelings. That said, PK is also too neurotic to enjoy reading about, and his missteps aren't funny enough to overcome how cringey they are. It's just a deeply charmless book.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (Adult Fantasy Romance)
You can read my detailed recap series and my multiple blog posts about all the things wrong with Fourth Wing, so I won't rehash them here, but suffice to say this is one of the worst books I've ever read.
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (Adult Historical Fantasy, WLW rep)
Imagine starting with the premise "women are gripped with feminist rage so hard they turn into dragons" and then writing hundreds of pages of the protagonist ineffectually navel-gazing without saying anything remotely interesting about women or feminism. And then the author forgets that the dragoning is supposed to be a metaphor and caps off the book with a few chapters about how the dragons are perfect beings that can do no wrong and that can save the world. Unlike all those real oppressed people who Barnhill barely mentioned, who are too stupid and human to get themselves unoppressed.
No more boring "feminist" novels about 1950s white housewives! Society has evolved beyond 1950s white housewives!
The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero-Lacruz (Adult Fantasy, WLW rep)
I read a lot of books this year with stunning worldbuilding. And also this one! The religions in this book are egregiously underbaked, considering their massive plot importance. The pacing of this book is terrible, dragging where it needs to fly and racing where it needs to linger. The author has discovered adjectives and literally no other way of making their writing interesting, which is unfortunate because the writing is so overwrought it makes every structural problem worse. Also, our two protagonists are some of the dumbest, most tedious women I've ever met, and I was genuinely hoping one of them would die just so we could swap to someone else. It would have been great if either of them ever learned a single lesson, or utilized a single brain cell, but alas. They did not.
Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas (Adult Historical Romance)
Nothing is worse than when a romance tries to convince you to care about an objectively useless guy. It's obvious from the get-go that Fitz and Isabella's romance is doomed, so why do we have to waste so much page time on it? For that matter, why does the author keep trying to convince me Millie is at fault somehow? She had even less choice than Fitz did, and she got even less out of it, and somehow it's her fault for not telling her husband who has explicitly told her he's not into her that she's in love with him? Come on. Also, the weird sex pact is so unsexy and so creepy. I was full body cringing during those sex scenes.
The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz (Adult Thriller, Poly rep, Bi rep)
This would be an order of magnitude better if the protagonist didn't have the appeal of a wet saltine cracker. Just a deeply anxious, petty, annoying person to have to spend time with, and you're trapped with them in this thrill-free thriller where the revelations actually make the book stupider and worse.
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Date: 2024-01-10 07:38 pm (UTC)