Top Ten Tuesday – 1/26/16

January 26, 2016 by Jamie @therebelliousreader 22 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme of lists hosted by The Broke and The Bookish

This week is a freebie week so I decided to go with “10 Overhyped Books That Disappointed Me”. This could be trouble waiting to happen. *nervous sweating*

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Top 10 Overhyped Books That Disappointed Me:

1) To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han – This one didn’t work for me because it read entirely too juvenile. The main character acted more like she was 12 instead of 16 and it was all just really silly. I don’t think I like fluff too much and this was sugary sweet annoying.

2)Ready Player One by Earnest Cline – This one relied way too much on the 80’s pop references. So much so that they served no purpose other than to be a “Hey, remember that thing? Wasn’t that awesome?” and then back to the plot. It was a mess. I also didn’t feel any type of connection to the characters. This could’ve been great but it just didn’t work for me.

3)Illuminae by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff – I just read this book this month and it definitely has potential. I just feel like it relies way too heavily on the gimmick and because of that the story suffered. I liked the main character, Kady, but everyone else and everything else felt underdeveloped. The little bit of writing that was present was good and I hope that there’s more emphasis on it in the next book. I haven’t given up hope for this series yet.

4)If I Stay by Gayle Forman – This one was just so boring. I didn’t have any kind of emotional attachment to the story. I’m a terrible person, I know, but I also didn’t like Mia. That…sounds horrible given the circumstances. I’m gonna stop now. I swear I’m not a horrible person!

5)An Ember In the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir – This one just took way too long for me to get invested. Over 200 pages of me being bored out of my mind and disliking Laia (grrr how I disliked Laia) made this a pain to get through. The ending was good but it wasn’t a good enough payoff when I had to suffer to get to it.

6)Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell – Oh, this one was problematic for me. So, problematic. I won’t get into that here ’cause I have a review up on my goodreads but I hated the characters in this one. I enjoyed the beginning up until the romance all of a sudden started and then I was just rage reading until the end while occasionally banging my head against the wall. I just really didn’t like it. Don’t even get me started on the caricatures (no, not characters) of black people that Eleanor had as friends. *rages so hard, brain explodes*

7)Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige – This one was really boring. Like, really, really boring. I didn’t connect with any of the characters and I wanted more from the world building. Not much to say ’cause there wasn’t much to this one for me.

8)City of Bones by Cassandra Clare – Please, put your knives away. I know everyone loves this series but this book was off putting for me. I didn’t like any of the characters except for Simon and I didn’t really like the plot. I have no motivation to continue with this series but I did love The Infernal Devices trilogy and it’s one of my favorites so I guess something good did come out of this series in the end.

9)The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider – This one is pretentious as hell. Annoying characters throughout the whole thing and cringe worthy dialogue that’s meant to be thought provoking and poignant. This book made me dislike teenagers for a month after I read it.

10)The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey – Again, annoying, terrible characters. I wanted to punch Cassie for Cassiopeia and the fact that everyone and their grandmother got a P.O.V made this feel cluttered and I was so annoyed. I hated the characters so much that I couldn’t enjoy the story itself. Also, the romance was icky to me. It just felt weird.

Are there any hyped books that you didn’t care for? I would love to know!