Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books a Lot of Folks Love But I Didn't

Hosted each week by That Artsy Reader Girl, it's a meme for listing the top ten for everything bookish.

Today's topic is Unpopular Bookish Opinions! So, today I'm talking about books I hated but have really high ratings on Goodreads. Yeah, these will be really unpopular opinions and I'm probably going to be stepping on some toes but all of us have books where we feel like we're the black sheep opinion-wise and here are my black sheep books.

Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy, #1)
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 4.13
My Rating: 2 Stars
I might as well start with the big one! I had high hopes for this series due to its popularity but I was not a fan of Rose and there was so much focus on gossip which bored me. Now, I'm really going to step on toes because... I did not like Dimitri. I know, so many folks love him, but I didn't. I read to Blood Promise and I gave up after that because I found it to be really boring and I really didn't care who lived and who died.

Starcrossed (Starcrossed, #1)
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 4.07
My Rating: 1 Star
I did not like this book at all. To quote my review "This book was basically a Twilight with mythology mixed into it". Since I did not like Twilight and was really tired of the Twilight tropes, that pretty much sums up my feelings towards this book. I actually read this entire series because back then I never gave up on books or series. I gave every book 1 star and I started to give up on series when I did not like them.

Significance (Significance, #1)
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 4.12
My Rating: 1 Star
I was lured into this book by all the positive reviews but it honestly was not for me. It was way too sappy and featured a ton of insta-love. I really could not stand it and never bothered to continue the series. 

Sweet Evil (Sweet, #1)
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 4.11
My Rating: 1 Star
Yeah, another that lured me in by the positive reviews (and the dress on the cover). I didn't like the characters, the story had holes, and I found a lot of elements in this book troubling (and if I read it now as an adult I would likely find more problematic elements). It probably was another one of those books where it was not for me as it deals heavily with lust and yeah...not something I like to read about. Again, never continued the series.

Inescapable (The Premonition, #1)
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 4.03
My Rating: 1 Star
I don't see this one around much anymore but it was pretty popular online probably six or seven years ago. Like Starcrossed, I saw this to be a Twilight copy. Unlike Starcrossed, I didn't bother reading the rest of the series.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #1)
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 4.07
My Rating: 2 Stars
This is one that is still really popular on the blogosphere and I picked it up because of the original hype. I wasn't that impressed by it and found it cliche. I don't think it was my kind of book, but I was pressured by the hype.

The Named
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 4.06
My Rating: 1 Star
All of the characters felt flat to me and I really did not care what happened to them. Overall it was not a memorable read to me.

Prince of Wolves (The Grey Wolves, #1)
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 4.05
My Rating: 2 Star
Another that I don't hear about much anymore, but this was a pretty popular indie book. Again, this was a case of too much insta-love for me. I actually read until the third book, because I hoped the other books would have less insta-love but I eventually gave up.

9. The Demon Trapper's Daughter
The Demon Trapper's Daughter (The Demon Trappers, #1)
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 3.99
My Rating: 1 Star
I don't hear much about this book anymore but when I joined the blogosphere this book was so hyped! So many blogs I followed were raving about it! I read the second book as well because I was hoping I was going to see what everyone else was raving about but no, I hated it.

10. Embrace
Embrace (The Violet Eden Chapters, #1)
Avg Rating on Goodreads: 4.01
My Rating: 1 Star
This book had so many YA paranormal cliches. The main character was annoying, she was caught in a love triangle, and she was a special snowflake. It was just nothing new and nothing I enjoy reading about.


I feel like this is a super negative post so I want to end of a slightly positive note.
I read all of these books in 2012 or 2013, shortly after creating a Goodreads account and my blog. I was taking in so many book recommendations and I did not think about whether I would like the books. It's clear from the books above that I'm not a fan of books like Twilight, books with insta-love, soulmates, or themes of lust. I knew this then and from the synopsis of the books, I knew that these things were in the book but I so blindly trusted the hype. Now, I have better judgment when it comes to whether I want to read a hyped book. We all have different opinions and I know now that I don't always have to listen to the hype. Do I still give books negative ratings? Yeah, of course. My radar for whether a book will work for me doesn't always work, but very few of my negative ratings are for the overly hyped books. In fact, I don't give negative ratings very much anymore because I've gotten better at recognizing what works for me and because I now DNF books (I discussed this a bit in my DNF discussion).

What hyped books did you not like? Here is your chance to talk bad about the books I liked!


3 comments :

  1. Vampire Academy is a series I've been meaning to kinda try but just haven't yet. I saw the movie which everyone said was awful and "read the book instead" haha- but I haven't got around to it. I keep going back and forth. :)

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  2. It's always interesting to see how people's opinions of the same book differ. I haven't read any of the titles you talked about yet though.

    My TTT.

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  3. Well, there's not a book here that I would want to read so... I hear you!

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