As you may know, I do a Best Books post at the end of every year. Well, thanks to Fadwa @ Word Wonders, I was inspired to do a counter post of my worst books that I ended up reading this year.

As a disclaimer, this list is just the books that I read this year and disliked for whatever reason. These are all my opinions, and I don’t mean to trash other people’s favorites. Some I just didn’t like personally, while others I might’ve found offensive or harmful. Feel free to hit me up in the comments!

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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

After nearly everyone I followed on Twitter raved about this book, I dove in knowing I was going to love it. When I ended up feeling more or less “meh” about it, it was really frustrating. It was also hard to admit to myself that I ended up not liking a book that all of my bookish friends had loved. I don’t talk about my opinion of this book that much, mainly because I know it means a lot to a lot of people.

The Atrocities by Jeremy C. Shipp

When I go searching for a spooky, creepy book, the books I end up choosing aren’t normally what I wanted them to be. This book was no different, but I really wanted it to be. Lots of horror books end up being disappointing to me in only one regard: it wasn’t scary. This book wasn’t scary, but in addition to that, the ending was just weird. I was expecting so much more, and this book just dropped the ball on it.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

This book is a hit or miss for those who read it. Either this book tears your emotions to shreds and you sob through all 850 pages, or you hate the thing with a passion. Now I had high hopes not because of expectations, but because I actually enjoyed the first, say, 350 pages. But then the book kept going and going and there was just no point to it at all. I could understand why people called this book torture porn when it just kept going only to torture this one character. After adoring the first half of the book, it was just disappointing to read the last half and hate it.

The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone

Similar to my reasons for The Atrocities, I picked this book out because I knew it would be scary. I’m terrified of spiders, so a scary book with spiders in it should have been my downfall. But this book was less about spiders and more about the government and relationships than actual spiders. There were a few really creepy parts with spiders, just as promised, but it never really got to the really creepy.

Bygone Badass Broads by Mackenzi Lee

After adoring Mackenzi’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, I was really looking forward to reading more of Mackenzi’s work. Especially now that I’ve started getting more into non-fiction, I was really excited to learn more about important women in history. And while I did learn, the book was also riddled with trans and/or enby phobic lines, as well as just offensive humor in general.

The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw

When you read the summary of this book, you expect to get a well rounded witchy story with maybe a bit of romance. Well, when you actually dive into this book, you get the well-rounded witch story for about 25 pages before the love interest is introduced, and then it spirals from there. The romance was shoved to the forefront, and it was one of the worst developed romances I’ve read. I just couldn’t get behind it.

The Owls Have Come to Take Us Away by Ronald L Smith

I love aliens. I love alien stories, I love watching “documentaries” about aliens, I love alien books. This is one alien book that I really didn’t like. I can’t even remember anything remarkable about this book, other than the ending. The ending, compared to the rest of the book, made no sense to me, and I just really couldn’t get over it. The writing wasn’t that good, either.

She/He/They/Me by Robyn Ryle

This book promises to be a choose-your-own-adventure style type book on gender. Being non-binary, I’ve found myself more interested in the concept of gender. However, this book ended up being more about gender roles than gender, and I was slightly upset with that. I was told I’d get something, and then got something different. A lot of the information also focused on the binary, which was not what I expected.

Escaping from Houdini by Kerri Maniscalco

You may have seen my reviews for the first two, but I really enjoyed Stalking Jack the Ripper and Hunting Prince Dracula. So I was really hopeful of this third book. But then a second love interest was introduced, and the mystery seemed half as well developed, and the original mystery-solving power couple Audrey and Thomas were both at half brain power. Overall, this book was half what the others were, and it was just wildly disappointing.

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