It’s hard to go into books with no expectations, as much as I try to. I try to keep myself neutral but then I get my hopes up anyways. However, sometimes when I get my hopes up, I get let down. This year there were five books that disappointed me. That doesn’t mean they were necessarily bad books, but I just wasn’t happy with how they turned out. Below the cut you will find those five books.
- Love, Heather by Laurie Petrou
This was one of my many eARCs this year and I was definitely intrigued by the premise. This book made me bawl and was just really intensely emotional for awhile because it hit on one of my sensitive areas. I wouldn’t call it a trigger because I don’t want to belittle the concept, but its something that can be hard for me to read about. Anyways, I really, really enjoyed the build of the book. However, after all that anticipation and build up, I was really disappointed with the way the book ended. I don’t want to spoil it but I just didn’t like the way the climax of the book happened. I have a whole review here if you want to read more of my thoughts.
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
I read this book because I loved the show by the same name, so even though I had googled the book and new that it wasn’t quite the same as the show, I went into the book with fairly high expectations. I really shouldn’t have because I definitely should know better. However, I was disappointed with the book. I wanted it to be more like the show, which is a completely unfair expectation. That being said, I have a longer post about this book compared to the show here.
- When Paris was Dark by YM Masson
I was really excited to get this one because it’s one of the first physical copies of a book I’ve been sent. Additionally, I loved the idea of a historical fiction, occupied Paris from a child’s perspective. It seemed really interesting to me. When I finally picked it up, I found myself really interested in the history of the story. That was really cool and felt very realistic. However, the thing that disappointed me was the dialogue in the story. A lot of the dialogue felt unrealistic to the time period and read as vaguely stilted. I still enjoyed the story on the whole, but I hyped myself up too much and it just didn’t match up with my expectations. I have a post about it, which can be found here.
- The Waking Forest by Alyssa Rees
I was really intrigued by this book. It had two points of view in two very different worlds and they were supposed to come together. I was interested to see how they would. The writing for this book was also beautiful. However, I found myself a little bit disappointed with how the whole story came together and how the two points of view merged. It just felt a little bit it was all a dream, and then it became something completely different. I didn’t hate the different part, it just wasn’t what I expected and what I really wanted. So I was a bit disappointed. On the whole, I still enjoyed this book. It just didn’t completely work for me.
- Red Power Murders by Thomas King
This last book I forced myself to read because it was a book that we were considering for a lit circle book at my school. I was intrigued because it was a mystery, and I really enjoy those, but once I started to read it, I found myself dragging. I wasn’t really interested in the main character, and it also turned out that it wasn’t the first book in the series so I was missing out in that sense. It also took awhile to get into the exciting part of the story, and while I enjoyed that, it wasn’t enough. I just ended up being really disappointed. Again, it wasn’t a bad book, but it didn’t meet my expectations.
Those were my five most disappointing reads of 2019. Tell me yours in the comments below!
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