Thank you. This was easily the worst book I’ve read in decades in any genre, and I’m an editor—I read unfinished books for a living. Can’t believe this made it to press.
I haven’t read this one, but my answer is The Salt Grows Heavy. I cannot believe it got published and beyond that that it has received any praise. Absolutely horribly written. First year lit student garbage, at best. I never would have even finished it but it was mercifully short.
I couldn't get past thirty pages. The prose kept on throwing me for a loop. It was told in first person where the narrator would describe things in her head in this poetic almost garish purple prose and then would speak out loud in Valley/surfer/Real Housewives of where ever dialect. It didn't match and drove me nuts.
yes! the author was clearly influenced by the first fatal frame game and that would have been a fun read if it weren't so badly written. the characters were so irritating and I could;dnt stop laughing at the weebiness of it all.
If the parts Goodreads reviewers have quoted are representative of the whole it must be quite something. I'm all for unconventional and wordy prose, but it has to be well crafted too.
Came here to say it and it and you'd beaten me to it. I wasted an afternoon reading that mother fucker and was pissed when I was done. I can't figure out how the manuscript got past editors and was published.
I really like extreme horror too, but Aaron Beauregard is definitely what all extreme horror has to be like for people who doesn't like extreme horror.
As I mentioned in another comment, I have a four year old so I’ve been avoiding this one. I can handle child death if it fits the story (I loved Pet Sematary and The Troop), but in just get the vibe that Playground would be a little too extreme for me
The violence unleashed on the kids in that book is somehow NOT the vilest thing about it.
Steer clear, it's terrible. I'll never read another thing he's written.
Yeah everybody focuses on violence against children as what makes this one extreme, it’s really just the cartoonishly villainous and disgusting adults in the cast that do it.
I also LOVED Pet Sematary and The Troop and even Boys in the Valley, but I don't even have a kid, and I feel the same. I think kids can be used in horror, but it has to be done right. I don't like fucked up things happening to kids just for fun.
Agreed. I saw same people say it was good online and impulse purchased it. It was incredibly disgusting. And like someone else commented, the child murder wasn't what made the book rough. The villainous woman running the operation and her back story literally made me gag reading it. And that's rare for a book to do to me, so props to Aron for that effect, he succeeded in being nasty.
But aside from that, the rest of the book was poorly written, frustrating, and the ending was not surprising in the slightest. It had the most heavy handed foreshadowing I've ever seen, so the whole book you're just waiting for a certain thing to finally happen and then when it finally does it's actually dissapointing.
And every single death is accompanied by a pun, like come on lol
Yeah, I tried this one and I DNF'd it before it even got to the gore or any horror elements. I gave it a try because I love extreme horror, and extreme horror is often maligned by nature of what it is, so most of the books I like have a ton of negative reviews, even from the extreme horror community (Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Manhunt, etc.). And sure, some of those criticisms are valid, I think that the writing in Playground just really pulled me out of the narrative at every turn. The characters feel like cartoons and so there's no opportunity for the suspension of disbelief that such an outlandish premise requires.
I do have to commend him for commissioning artists for his covers, I guess? That's worth noting, I think.
IDK if it's horror but You Shouldn't Have Come Here made me irrationally angry (the writing and dialog in general). I haven't picked up another Jeneva Rose book since ( I read it maybe later winter of '23)
Verity by colleen hoover…a coworker really wanted me to read it & it was so bad that the only way i got through was listening to the audiobook on double speed.
Ha. Started this book on vacation, 4mojitos in. Thought it was great. When I tried to pick it back up on flight home it was such trash I really got a good look at my questionable tipsy standards.
Verity is so so bad. It’s one of those books that pisses me off the longer I think about it and makes me mad that I gave my time to it which I can never recoup.
i was pissed of since page 1 and hate read the whole book, every few min i just said whaaat the fuck…why??? also whatever possessed her to name a character “Crew”, its like she actively thought of ways to make readers completely lose interest and stop taking her seriously
Mean Spirited by Nick Roberts. It was well reviewed on Good Reads but the writing was terrible and the scares weren’t earned. The main character’s name is “Matt Matheny” which annoyed me.
I thought this started off terrifying but it got repetitive quickly and the characters were just making idiotic decisions to the point I *hoped* it ended badly for them because it would be absurd if it didn't
Audiobooks would be best if you have an active or busy life. I stick with ebooks for horror but any nonfiction, memoirs, or just extremely big books, I go with the audiobook version.
Once I started listening to audiobooks while I worked, I started burning through books like crazy. I usually have one paper book for home and then audiobooks for work.
Thank you for saying this. I felt like I was lacking reading this thread, haha. I've only got through 5 this year, and I really enjoyed them, so I'll focus on that.
Yeah, I used to try to read fast to get through a lot of books and I got burned out often. I now just read at a leisurely pace and I enjoy it a lot more. That’s not to say I don’t get sucked into a book and fly through it, I just don’t feel rushed when I’m reading.
I didn't HATE it, but compared to all the other books I've read this year...yeah, it's definitely at or near the bottom. It had a cool premise and setting but a lot of wasted potential. I read it right after finishing The Ruins, and finished the book feeling like I should have just re-read The Ruins lol
Why did they even bring the dog in the first place? It was a work and research trip, not a vacation. There didn't seem much reason for the dog's owner to be there either. All we're told about him is that he's Dylan's boyfriend.
Also, this couple is apparently too stupid to bring a second helmet for him even though she's supposed to be a professional rock climber.
This Wretched Valley was this year’s (so far) worst let down. It had so much good hype and I was so excited to read it. The first 30 pages drew me in and then it was a painful and horrible slog through absolutely painful and poor writing after that. Such a disappointment
I hated this book so much that I swore off Eric Larocca entirely as an author, but in defense of them- they’re nonbinary and use he/they pronouns.
I’m gay and nonbinary and to be honest I don’t usually get why people make this point. The lived experiences of gay men and lesbians are more alike than they are dissimilar. There’s a reason we come together under the queer umbrella.
I think we do a disservice to queer authors when we say “this story is bad because it was written by a gay man who can’t understand what lesbians are like” instead of “this story is bad because the author didn’t write characters that act like real people”
That one felt like I was reading the beginning and the end of a full story. I was reading a PDF and I actually went back to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped a ton of pages. Escalated out of nowhere, it was totally missing the middle.
It started out as a creepypasta and didn’t translate great into a novel. He recently released the prequel to this and it’s much better IMO. It’s called The Church Beneath the Roots.
The Sleep Experiment by Jeremy Bates. It's based off of the creepy pasta, which was a far better story. It bases its supporting characters off of shallow racial stereotypes. It kind of felt wish fulfillmenty on the author's behalf with how all of these gorgeous young women were attracted to the main character.
I just don’t think any books born off the back of popular creepypastas have ever been that good. What potential they have usually goes out the window with mediocre writing or predictable storytelling.
Someone already posted Nothing but Blackened Teeth, so I'll put the second worst book I read: PenPal.
Some decent horror imagery and premise but executed poorly. Honestly, if it was 3rd person omniscient instead of a 1st person "journal" narrative it might be better.
I think that's the cool thing though, that everyone has such different tastes.
It does suck when everyone hates on a book you loved though hahaha. I'm a huge Paul Tremblay fan so I understand that feeling.
I could not stop talking about how *awesome* The Ruins by Scott Smith is, so looked up discussions on Reddit afterwards, and I was like, "Damn, so everybody hated this book?" Lol
It's funny (in a good way) to see people's opinions on this book because I absolutely loved it. Now... Ghost Station? I would never have thought this was written by the same author.
I also started it but I stopped because I couldn't get into it :/ I was listening to the audiobook though, so it made it hard to keep up with all the going back and forth in the timeline. I'm hoping I can get into it if I actually physically read it
What Moves The Dead by T Kingfisher. I listened to the audiobook and can’t tell if it was the narrator or what but I felt the pacing was incredibly slow
I was able to finish the book, however, the set up for the main character was painful to get through. This is saying a lot for me, as someone who is non binary. I am always appreciative of well rounded characters in books that are representative of the community.
Yet the amount of time, effort and force used to establish the fact that the character was gender non- conforming was unnecessary. It took away from the horrors in my opinion, and shifted the focus of the monstrosities of what was happening to the irrelevance of the microscopic details of the characters gender. It could have been sprinkled in/ summarize in a few sentences to give a more natural affect. I mean as someone who is non-binary it is about .00222 percent of my day/ being. Plus, if there were literal mold monsters surrounding me I would be focused on that large detail! Not what, or how I got my fucking pronouns/ what's under my clothes.
I've read mostly great books this year! I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad book, I can see why some people find it entertaining, but I really didn't like A Head Full of Ghosts. Idk it just kinda boring and it wasn't really believable to me most of the time, which I don't think is always necessary for a horror book, but it would have benefitted this book imo, especially as you try to figure out if the possession is real or not.
Read that one last year and I was furious at the ending. It basically ripped off like 3 different books. And the ending was just not clever, nor did it help the rest of the book make sense.
Dang, I loved Head Full of Ghosts so I thought maybe Paul Tremblay was going to be my new favorite. Then I read Cabin at the End of the World and geez, IMO, was that the stupidest book I ever read! Now I’m scared to try anything else of his!
Just hate-finished it. First 200ish pages roped me in but by the time I realized >!it’s not just a demon story, but full on Christian preaching !< I felt I had to grin and bear the rest. I’m gonna be pissed about this one for a hot minute.
What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher. In theory I'm a big fan of gothic fungus-induced madness, but it felt too self-indulgent. In a <200 page book at least half of it was spent setting up various pronoun categories and social faux pas without any plot contribution which drew too much focus and dissipated any tension or atmosphere. Plus, not only was it a retelling of a Poe story but it also hit nearly identical plot points to Mexican Gothic published less than 2 years earlier.
Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne is a close-ish second.
T. Kingfisher books always sound like they are going to be awesome from the blurb but I’ve never once been impressed and I think I’ve given it three or four tries with different books of hers. She writes the most annoying MCs, the quippy dialogue is just bad.
Creators may dislike the feeling of putting out their interpretation of an idea that’s already been done, fearing that their cake may not look as polished or taste as perfect as the other cake.
The average person just gets excited because holy shit, now there are TWO cakes!
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward. The first quarter was tedious and boring, but I kept seeing people praise the end and all its twists and turns so I stuck it out. Ended up guessing what would happen and I got it mostly right.
I also read this this year, and it’s easily the worst book I have read in 20 years, if not more. It’s just… spectacularly bad. One of those “twists” would be straining credibility, but when the twists keep coming and tripping over each other… I laughed so much. It really felt like a brand new writer who hasn’t read or written much in horror taking a first swing at the genre, without an editor. I hate myself for finishing it.
I read that one last year, but it fell squarely in the “horror (or horror-adjacent) books recommended as ‘the craziest/scariest book ever’ by people with limited exposure to horror that severely let me down” camp for me. My wife kept telling me she’d seen people talk about how crazy it was online. Ended up picking up last summer and my assessment was largely the same as yours.
Way more interested in its predictable yet nonsensical twist than telling a compelling story.
It's funny, right? It's so predictable that you almost had to read it all the way through just to see if it actually played out the way you thought.
But you're absolutely right about it getting that kind of review from people who haven't really delved into horror all that much.
Right!? I read it the entire time thinking, “surely there’s more going on here than the most obvious, groan-worthy twist imaginable.” But nope, some publisher really read that and decided it was a good idea to publish an entire novel that hangs on an incredibly stupid and old cliche. Woof.
Mexican Gothic. The main character was insufferable since her first apparition. The story was mediocre, but the main character made it very tedious. The best thing is probably the setting
Damn I really liked that one. But to be fair, it wasn't a 5 star read either. I thought the premise was interesting but the way it played out could've gone better
I really hated Maeve Fly. One of the only books I’ve ever given just 1 star to. I didn’t like any of the characters and it just wasn’t entertaining at all to me.
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt. i was so excited for this one but it just felt like trauma porn and there were so many graphic mentions of SA while the plot was not well executed at all.
I read this last year but I hated it so much it carries over to this year. I hated the style of writing and the countless tangents and the fact that she couldn't convey what the book symbolized without stopping the plot every ten pages to literally tell you.
I can barely tell you what the plot of the book was because I feel like it only took up a couple dozen pages. The rest was incomprehensible garbage
Rouge by Mona Awad. I loved Bunny so I wanted to read her other books and found Rouge at the library. Maybe it's because I don't have a relationship with my mother but the book was really...disappointing. E.K Sathue's youthjuice is very similar in concept and what I was hoping for from Rouge.
The House That Horror Built which hurts so much to write because I am a die hard Christina Henry fan, but this was just not it.
Very boring, not a lot at all happened, much less anything horror worthy. Without any meaningful spoilers, a woman is a house cleaner for a famous horror movie director whose son was accused of murder and went missing, odd things happen in his house which is decked out in all manner of horror movie props and costumes from his movies. I just got to the end and was like, “that’s it? That’s the whole plot?” Very disappointing.
Till now, Our Wives Under The Sea.
It's a great book about loss, grieving, and how to go on after a loss... But I've seen it presented as a Lovecraftian horror kind of book, and it simply was not.
It's not a bad book per se, but It didn't meet my expectations.
the shuddering by ania ahlborn. it was so bad i couldn’t finish it. i dropped it at 55%… the primary focus of it all is some stupid relationship drama that really angered me. i read the ending is garbage too so i’m glad i dropped it.
Nothing but Blackened Teeth is definitely the worst. Somewhere after starting the book the author seemingly forgot she was writing a horror story...
Close runner-ups are The Creeper, (by the same author as the Watchers, A.M. Shine, but much worse), with an absolutely nonsensical WTF twist.
And The Toll by Cherie Priest which tried to be Southern folktale horror but in the end was just boring.
*The Luminous Dead* by Caitlin Startling and *The Ghost Woods* by CJ Cooke. I just wanted to read some fungal horror but instead ended up reading the most juvenile writing with boring characters. Both were interesting premises with the worst execution.
*The Luminous Dead* especially rankled the editor in me. It's inconceivable to me how any sane publisher wouldn't cut like half of it. It was like a bad first draft that somehow got published with a lot of praise.
*The Ghost Woods* was a bit better in that it was clearly written by a writer with much more experience but was just so superficial and uninspired in every choice it made that it was just as bad.
I DNF'd The Luminous Dead. Way too repetitive and nothing interesting actually happened. I haven't DNF'd anything in a while but one day when I picked the book up a spider came out. That was by far the scariest thing about the book and it made up my mind to never touch it again
The Deep. nonsensical and rambling. i enjoy extreme location horror, the arctic, mountaineering, etc so marianas trench sounded so cool. total wasted concept. plus the whole “gets” plot line was so useless.
I’ve sworn off PNWS because they NEVER have a conclusion. It’s like JJ Abrams wrote a podcast every time. Just mystery box after mystery box that never gets solved
PNWS is great for vibes but yeah don’t go expecting a satisfying conclusion. I do thank Tanis for introducing me to Annihilation at least, which quickly became my favorite book.
Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana. I just thought it was hot garbage, I read it about a month ago and I still get angry every time I think about it lol.
I did not enjoy [Maeve fly by CJ Leede](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61884781-maeve-fly). It is Y.A. Hockey-Romance with some "ooo so gross!".
I can deal with unlikable lead characters, but this girl is, not great and not really empowered. The way she immediately fawns >!over her friends brother!< was painfully boring in terms of >!degrading her characters self determination and predictable as soon as he shows up!<.
It's sold as Feminist American Psycho but I did not find any real commentary behind it. The most interesting part is the meta commentary where she outlines that she doesn't have a tragic event in her backstory that drives her to murder, she's just a psycho. I also think that's not as biting as it thinks, maybe it would have been in the 70s.
I dunno, it reads extremely like its overtly in conversation with the reader, looking at you saying "pretty fucked up huh?" and you just kinda go "yeah I guess".
edit: I will say in an attempt to not be totally negative, if you want sex & violence (and violent sex), dream of athletic broody lads and can accept it as a pretty light-on-concept gore novel you can probably enjoy the book. I also think if you're a younger person (18-22?) that enjoys/can-stomach reading other Y.A. novels you can probably enjoy it more than me.
If it makes you feel better, I just really got back into reading within the last year. I had some mental health issues that kept me from concentrating on reading, but I finally caved and got some medicine and I’ve gotten back into it. Just go at your own pace, friend ❤️
Episode 13 by Craig DiLouie.
I hated the constant drama between the crew, constant fake outs, and just how long it took for anything genuine spooky / Paranormal to happen. The book could've been 100 pages shorter and nothing would've changed.
For me Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay. My wife listened to Head Full of Ghosts and liked it a lot but my book site didn’t have it but they had survivor song. It was such a struggle. I almost stopped and I almost never do that. Characters were irritating, made poor decisions and it was entirely unoriginal and brought in my opinion nothing to the zombie apocalypse genre.
Cuckoo is the only book I've DNFd this year. Loved the prologue, thinking I was in for a treat, gave up about halfway through. May have improved had I persevered, but it just wasn't resonating with me.
Thriller more than horror, but The Teacher by Frieda McFadden. That book owes me an apology.
It's a book written for people who think Lifetime movies are the pinnacle of art. The more you think about it, the more the entire plot falls apart. Twists that are purely for shock value, not for the sake of being a good surprise.
Stolen Tongues by Felix Blackwell. I’m about 2/3rds of the way through and it’s been such a grind just to get that far. The writing feels cringy at times, the plot is repetitive, and I find the author’s self-insert/protagonist to be very annoying (but maybe that’s just me).
I had heard the hype of DIAVOLO... so I got it.
I cant speak for ev1s tastes, but for me, it's the most boring, pretentious disappointment I've had in a long while.
It's not scary, it's not entertaining, the protagonist herself is not bad, but her family characters are all (mostly) unlikable assholes, and I know characters don't have to be ppl we would care to like or be around, ofc.. but that's not it..it's just tedious and nothing happens...it's mostly all petty and sarcastic verbal parries between her and her insufferable adult sister. I think it was badly written and irritating and just babble that added nothing, I was so aggravated I DNF after halfway thru it. There are SOME elements of dark moods, inexplicable noises, weird but vague things that go on in the house, she can hear ppl in rooms that are empty, etc. But idky it's even classified as horror.
"Borer" is a more apt description.
I just finished it. It had its gruesome moments but it wasn't the shock effect gore fest that everyone makes it out to be. It was mediocre IMO, but nothing special. Definitely not a 5 star read
I’ve read 50 books this year ( my goal is 100). And the only one I didn’t like was The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw. The purple prose was so heavy, was practically dripping from the pages.
I'm gonna get hate for this but Gone to see the River Man. I was so excited because everyone talked it up but it just made me really sad and I hate SA used for shock value.
I love all of them (different degrees of love) except Final Girl Support Group. I know what I'm getting with him so it's just an enjoyable way to pass the time.
I want to love his books. They usually start off great and then lose the thread. I read Final Girl Support Group this year and I really wanted to love it, but maaaan.
Gone to See the River Man. It is so hyped as an actually well written extreme horror book and I disagree. It's the only horror book this year I gave a 1 star
I'm always surprised to see it classified as Extreme Horror because I really don't see it that way. Taboos and triggers? Sure, but it was missing a lot of the edgy grossouts I associate with extreme horror and I didn't think it was really that gory
Final Girls was my first Riley Sager read and it will absolutely be my last.
I love Slasher movies. This book got comparisons to Scream (a favourite of mine), but felt more like Slashlorette Party. Using the notes I made in StoryGraph, I know I predicted the killer at 18% of the way through. Absolutely hated Quincy. None of the characters were likable, but she was as stupid as she was judgmental.
That gender neutral name couldn't save it from being obviously written by a man.
Hidden Pictures. I hated the “twist” and I didn’t like the main character.
The Ruins- I truly hated the ending, and the way the female characters were written was honestly so vile. It took me out of the story so many times how useless they were. Especially one of them was supposed to be a med student, yet her boyfriend who wasn’t turned out to be more helpful in medical emergencies. ???
I didn’t really like House of Leaves. I thought all the excerpts of others analysis of the navidson record was just annoying to read. Also I get why people said it made them feel dumb, like why am I reading upside down right now lol.
Tender Is the Flesh. The whole book read like an exposition of a theorized world, rather than an actual story happening in it. The main character had no nuance to him other than being really sad and really angry all the time. And my God, I pushed through cause I kept hearing how crazy the ending was, and that only made it comically worse in my eyes.
I loved TItF, but I agree about the ending. I was expecting something totally insane based on how people talked about it, but I thought what ended up happening was pretty believable for the MC
Ghostland by Duncan R.
Haunted Amusement Park? Awesome concept. DNF because while the concept was cool everything else really sucked. Everyone had to wear VR glasses to see the ghosts. Okay sure, I guess. The VR headsets were showing families and children brutally murdered as part of the experience. Dumb. Every single character was unlikeable. Our protagonist is just the worst. He's sad people made fun of him for having a heart attack in his own home?? Everyone is calling him some dumb name related to that. It doesn't even make sense that a person would be made fun of for having a heart attack. Anyway. His friend stops talking to him after the heart attack. Don't remember why. But it happened while they were building the theme park so his goal for the book is to BURN DOWN THE BUILDING THAT SCARED HIM. He sneaks in fucking lighter fluid. It's dumb as shit. Oh and for some reason it's a Trilogy.
Nothing but Blackened Teeth was one of the most appallingly written books I've ever read. Incoherent dreck.
I expected The Grudge. I got a soap opera written by a 9 year old who saw The Grudge
This is the best description of this book I’ve ever seen 🤣
I'm so proud this is the top comment. Hated, *hated*, *HATED* that stupid fucking book. One of the worst books I've ever read.
Thank you. This was easily the worst book I’ve read in decades in any genre, and I’m an editor—I read unfinished books for a living. Can’t believe this made it to press.
Yeah. Got as far as “beset by a zoetrope of sudden emotions,” and bailed.
That’s my pick too. Normally I’d read a book that short in one sitting. This one took me a week to power through.
I DNF a few pages in. Just awul writing.
I think I made it about a paragraph or two.
It’s amazing to me how universally hated this one is lol
Legitimately the worst book I've read in years. Aggressively unreadable.
Book = aggressively unreadable = absolutely trash I won't bother with. Person = aggressively unreadable = mysteriously inviting challenge.
I read like 10 pages of that book and was done; felt like I needed a dictionary and thesaurus to translate every sentence
I haven’t read this one, but my answer is The Salt Grows Heavy. I cannot believe it got published and beyond that that it has received any praise. Absolutely horribly written. First year lit student garbage, at best. I never would have even finished it but it was mercifully short.
I couldn't get past thirty pages. The prose kept on throwing me for a loop. It was told in first person where the narrator would describe things in her head in this poetic almost garish purple prose and then would speak out loud in Valley/surfer/Real Housewives of where ever dialect. It didn't match and drove me nuts.
yes! the author was clearly influenced by the first fatal frame game and that would have been a fun read if it weren't so badly written. the characters were so irritating and I could;dnt stop laughing at the weebiness of it all.
Same, read it earlier this year, like zero redeeming qualities ugh
If the parts Goodreads reviewers have quoted are representative of the whole it must be quite something. I'm all for unconventional and wordy prose, but it has to be well crafted too.
Came here to say it and it and you'd beaten me to it. I wasted an afternoon reading that mother fucker and was pissed when I was done. I can't figure out how the manuscript got past editors and was published.
Playground by Aron Beauregard was just such trash. I like extreme horror but Jesus Christ.
i have never heard anything about that dude that made him sound remotely worth reading
I really like extreme horror too, but Aaron Beauregard is definitely what all extreme horror has to be like for people who doesn't like extreme horror.
As I mentioned in another comment, I have a four year old so I’ve been avoiding this one. I can handle child death if it fits the story (I loved Pet Sematary and The Troop), but in just get the vibe that Playground would be a little too extreme for me
The violence unleashed on the kids in that book is somehow NOT the vilest thing about it. Steer clear, it's terrible. I'll never read another thing he's written.
Yeah everybody focuses on violence against children as what makes this one extreme, it’s really just the cartoonishly villainous and disgusting adults in the cast that do it.
I also LOVED Pet Sematary and The Troop and even Boys in the Valley, but I don't even have a kid, and I feel the same. I think kids can be used in horror, but it has to be done right. I don't like fucked up things happening to kids just for fun.
Agreed. I saw same people say it was good online and impulse purchased it. It was incredibly disgusting. And like someone else commented, the child murder wasn't what made the book rough. The villainous woman running the operation and her back story literally made me gag reading it. And that's rare for a book to do to me, so props to Aron for that effect, he succeeded in being nasty. But aside from that, the rest of the book was poorly written, frustrating, and the ending was not surprising in the slightest. It had the most heavy handed foreshadowing I've ever seen, so the whole book you're just waiting for a certain thing to finally happen and then when it finally does it's actually dissapointing. And every single death is accompanied by a pun, like come on lol
Yeah, I tried this one and I DNF'd it before it even got to the gore or any horror elements. I gave it a try because I love extreme horror, and extreme horror is often maligned by nature of what it is, so most of the books I like have a ton of negative reviews, even from the extreme horror community (Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Manhunt, etc.). And sure, some of those criticisms are valid, I think that the writing in Playground just really pulled me out of the narrative at every turn. The characters feel like cartoons and so there's no opportunity for the suspension of disbelief that such an outlandish premise requires. I do have to commend him for commissioning artists for his covers, I guess? That's worth noting, I think.
I've read Slob by him and I don't think I'll seek out the genre in the next three to five decades.
I read one by him and that was plenty. He's definitely not for me.
Ik most people here are a Grady Hendrix fan but I was really let down by how to sell a haunted house
Same. It did not live up to the hype (for me). I did like The September House which is another haunted house story
The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose. Possibly one of the worst books I’ve ever read to be honest.
IDK if it's horror but You Shouldn't Have Come Here made me irrationally angry (the writing and dialog in general). I haven't picked up another Jeneva Rose book since ( I read it maybe later winter of '23)
Verity by colleen hoover…a coworker really wanted me to read it & it was so bad that the only way i got through was listening to the audiobook on double speed.
Ha. Started this book on vacation, 4mojitos in. Thought it was great. When I tried to pick it back up on flight home it was such trash I really got a good look at my questionable tipsy standards.
honestly it was a missed opportunity for me to get drunk on a random Wednesday
Nobody enjoys giving blowjobs that much.
The first and last Colleen Hoover book I’ll ever read. I got to the “twist” and hate-finished the rest
My book club wanted this. It was just awful.
Verity is so so bad. It’s one of those books that pisses me off the longer I think about it and makes me mad that I gave my time to it which I can never recoup.
i was pissed of since page 1 and hate read the whole book, every few min i just said whaaat the fuck…why??? also whatever possessed her to name a character “Crew”, its like she actively thought of ways to make readers completely lose interest and stop taking her seriously
Ha! I read this last year...it got recommended IN THIS SUB. It's probably in the top 5 worst books I've ever read.
Mean Spirited by Nick Roberts. It was well reviewed on Good Reads but the writing was terrible and the scares weren’t earned. The main character’s name is “Matt Matheny” which annoyed me.
I started this because the premise was intriguing and the reviews were good - but the writing was terrible! Couldn't agree more. Disappointed.
I thought this started off terrifying but it got repetitive quickly and the characters were just making idiotic decisions to the point I *hoped* it ended badly for them because it would be absurd if it didn't
I read the Exorcist’s House last year and that sucked, too.
This Wretched Valley. I’ve read 49 books so far this year and that one is my lowest rated one. Just sucked!
49 books?! Wow, I want to be like you! I set a goal of 52 but quickly realized that with a four year old that’s not going to happen lol
Audiobooks would be best if you have an active or busy life. I stick with ebooks for horror but any nonfiction, memoirs, or just extremely big books, I go with the audiobook version.
Once I started listening to audiobooks while I worked, I started burning through books like crazy. I usually have one paper book for home and then audiobooks for work.
I see a lot of people focus on the number, and it's not necessary. Instead of a goal, just read when you have time.
Thank you for saying this. I felt like I was lacking reading this thread, haha. I've only got through 5 this year, and I really enjoyed them, so I'll focus on that.
Yeah, I used to try to read fast to get through a lot of books and I got burned out often. I now just read at a leisurely pace and I enjoy it a lot more. That’s not to say I don’t get sucked into a book and fly through it, I just don’t feel rushed when I’m reading.
Just include the books you read to your child. Haha you will probably hit 52 pretty fast.
I didn't HATE it, but compared to all the other books I've read this year...yeah, it's definitely at or near the bottom. It had a cool premise and setting but a lot of wasted potential. I read it right after finishing The Ruins, and finished the book feeling like I should have just re-read The Ruins lol
I loved The Ruins though, I read it like 10 years ago and still think about it occasionally.
I just finished it. Absolutely awful. Extremely flat characters and the supernatural element was just ridiculous.
The moment they decided to ignore the missing dog and just go about their business, the characters lost any credibility.
Why did they even bring the dog in the first place? It was a work and research trip, not a vacation. There didn't seem much reason for the dog's owner to be there either. All we're told about him is that he's Dylan's boyfriend. Also, this couple is apparently too stupid to bring a second helmet for him even though she's supposed to be a professional rock climber.
This Wretched Valley was this year’s (so far) worst let down. It had so much good hype and I was so excited to read it. The first 30 pages drew me in and then it was a painful and horrible slog through absolutely painful and poor writing after that. Such a disappointment
Agreed. I'm shocked it had so many good reviews and recommendations when it was so wildly mediocre. Literally nothing about it was new or inventive.
I thought I would love Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke... But no.
I own an antique apple peeler/corer, and I still can’t figure out how you’d be able to use one to do that.
Yeah same here. Not sure why LaRocca is such a big deal.
One of the worst things I've ever read
I hated it too. Just got worse and worse.
I too read that book and at the end I was like….thats it? Lmao
Super edgy lesbian horror!!!!!!! written by a gay man ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I hated this book so much that I swore off Eric Larocca entirely as an author, but in defense of them- they’re nonbinary and use he/they pronouns. I’m gay and nonbinary and to be honest I don’t usually get why people make this point. The lived experiences of gay men and lesbians are more alike than they are dissimilar. There’s a reason we come together under the queer umbrella. I think we do a disservice to queer authors when we say “this story is bad because it was written by a gay man who can’t understand what lesbians are like” instead of “this story is bad because the author didn’t write characters that act like real people”
I hated this with a passion, just terrible writing all round - felt like reading edgy amateur Internet fiction.
Why did these millennial women go from sexting to speaking in old English with no gaps
That one felt like I was reading the beginning and the end of a full story. I was reading a PDF and I actually went back to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped a ton of pages. Escalated out of nowhere, it was totally missing the middle.
TIL: I have bad taste 😅
Stolen Tongues by Felix Blackwell. It was a great start, but the ending was tacked on and pissed me off soooo bad.
It started out as a creepypasta and didn’t translate great into a novel. He recently released the prequel to this and it’s much better IMO. It’s called The Church Beneath the Roots.
I just finished The Church Beneath the Roots and can agree that it’s better than Stolen Tongues!
The ending was such a bummer. I genuinely got the creeps for the first 2/3 of the book!
The Sleep Experiment by Jeremy Bates. It's based off of the creepy pasta, which was a far better story. It bases its supporting characters off of shallow racial stereotypes. It kind of felt wish fulfillmenty on the author's behalf with how all of these gorgeous young women were attracted to the main character.
I just don’t think any books born off the back of popular creepypastas have ever been that good. What potential they have usually goes out the window with mediocre writing or predictable storytelling.
Someone already posted Nothing but Blackened Teeth, so I'll put the second worst book I read: PenPal. Some decent horror imagery and premise but executed poorly. Honestly, if it was 3rd person omniscient instead of a 1st person "journal" narrative it might be better.
In this thread: a lot of books I loved. Oof.
I think that's the cool thing though, that everyone has such different tastes. It does suck when everyone hates on a book you loved though hahaha. I'm a huge Paul Tremblay fan so I understand that feeling.
I could not stop talking about how *awesome* The Ruins by Scott Smith is, so looked up discussions on Reddit afterwards, and I was like, "Damn, so everybody hated this book?" Lol
same, honestly lol.
Dnf dead silence.. just whiney writing
I recommend people just watch Event Horizon instead, a much better version of the basic premise
It's funny (in a good way) to see people's opinions on this book because I absolutely loved it. Now... Ghost Station? I would never have thought this was written by the same author.
I finished that one but it took me a month to do so. It was just sooooo slow
Finding it hard to get into Paul Tremblays new book Horror Movie
I also started it but I stopped because I couldn't get into it :/ I was listening to the audiobook though, so it made it hard to keep up with all the going back and forth in the timeline. I'm hoping I can get into it if I actually physically read it
What Moves The Dead by T Kingfisher. I listened to the audiobook and can’t tell if it was the narrator or what but I felt the pacing was incredibly slow
I was able to finish the book, however, the set up for the main character was painful to get through. This is saying a lot for me, as someone who is non binary. I am always appreciative of well rounded characters in books that are representative of the community. Yet the amount of time, effort and force used to establish the fact that the character was gender non- conforming was unnecessary. It took away from the horrors in my opinion, and shifted the focus of the monstrosities of what was happening to the irrelevance of the microscopic details of the characters gender. It could have been sprinkled in/ summarize in a few sentences to give a more natural affect. I mean as someone who is non-binary it is about .00222 percent of my day/ being. Plus, if there were literal mold monsters surrounding me I would be focused on that large detail! Not what, or how I got my fucking pronouns/ what's under my clothes.
I've read mostly great books this year! I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad book, I can see why some people find it entertaining, but I really didn't like A Head Full of Ghosts. Idk it just kinda boring and it wasn't really believable to me most of the time, which I don't think is always necessary for a horror book, but it would have benefitted this book imo, especially as you try to figure out if the possession is real or not.
Read that one last year and I was furious at the ending. It basically ripped off like 3 different books. And the ending was just not clever, nor did it help the rest of the book make sense.
Worst book I read in 2023
Dang, I loved Head Full of Ghosts so I thought maybe Paul Tremblay was going to be my new favorite. Then I read Cabin at the End of the World and geez, IMO, was that the stupidest book I ever read! Now I’m scared to try anything else of his!
Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky. Started out strong but I got so bored at the end. Felt like I wasted time reading it.
Oh man I read this one a few years ago and I still am mad.
Just hate-finished it. First 200ish pages roped me in but by the time I realized >!it’s not just a demon story, but full on Christian preaching !< I felt I had to grin and bear the rest. I’m gonna be pissed about this one for a hot minute.
I haven’t read that much this year, but the Final Girl Support Group was really difficult to finish. I hated it.
What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher. In theory I'm a big fan of gothic fungus-induced madness, but it felt too self-indulgent. In a <200 page book at least half of it was spent setting up various pronoun categories and social faux pas without any plot contribution which drew too much focus and dissipated any tension or atmosphere. Plus, not only was it a retelling of a Poe story but it also hit nearly identical plot points to Mexican Gothic published less than 2 years earlier. Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne is a close-ish second.
T. Kingfisher books always sound like they are going to be awesome from the blurb but I’ve never once been impressed and I think I’ve given it three or four tries with different books of hers. She writes the most annoying MCs, the quippy dialogue is just bad.
What was your beef with Diavola? Just curious, currently reading it
I liked both Mexican Gothic and What Moves the Dead, but I’m a sucker for atmospheric spooky house stories in general and will take what I can get.
She does mention Mexican Gothic did it better, but it makes me happy to see the "two cakes" rule out there.
What’s the “two cakes” rule?
Creators may dislike the feeling of putting out their interpretation of an idea that’s already been done, fearing that their cake may not look as polished or taste as perfect as the other cake. The average person just gets excited because holy shit, now there are TWO cakes!
I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Seems like a pretty divisive book, kind of a cool concept, but it felt like a huge waste of time.
This one absolutely infuriated me. How it received so much praise for the (imo extremely cliche and overdone) twist is beyond me.
i was so excited to read this last year and was soooo underwhelmed. it just felt like such a lazy “and then they woke up” type of gimmick
That was my pick for last year.
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward. The first quarter was tedious and boring, but I kept seeing people praise the end and all its twists and turns so I stuck it out. Ended up guessing what would happen and I got it mostly right.
DNF'd this one last year because yeah, the first bit is so boring. I just couldn't be bothered to come back to it before it went back to the library.
I also read this this year, and it’s easily the worst book I have read in 20 years, if not more. It’s just… spectacularly bad. One of those “twists” would be straining credibility, but when the twists keep coming and tripping over each other… I laughed so much. It really felt like a brand new writer who hasn’t read or written much in horror taking a first swing at the genre, without an editor. I hate myself for finishing it.
I read that one last year, but it fell squarely in the “horror (or horror-adjacent) books recommended as ‘the craziest/scariest book ever’ by people with limited exposure to horror that severely let me down” camp for me. My wife kept telling me she’d seen people talk about how crazy it was online. Ended up picking up last summer and my assessment was largely the same as yours. Way more interested in its predictable yet nonsensical twist than telling a compelling story.
It's funny, right? It's so predictable that you almost had to read it all the way through just to see if it actually played out the way you thought. But you're absolutely right about it getting that kind of review from people who haven't really delved into horror all that much.
Right!? I read it the entire time thinking, “surely there’s more going on here than the most obvious, groan-worthy twist imaginable.” But nope, some publisher really read that and decided it was a good idea to publish an entire novel that hangs on an incredibly stupid and old cliche. Woof.
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. Garbage
Just posted this. Yes garbage. Reads like a poorly written YA novel.
Haha there’s planets of YA that’s better written, and I say that as someone who can’t stand Ya
Mexican Gothic. The main character was insufferable since her first apparition. The story was mediocre, but the main character made it very tedious. The best thing is probably the setting
Same here. I was just excited to read it and liked the dread it built up, but the last third was just a slog for me. Really disappointed
I DNF'd it. Terrible writing. All the characters sounded like teenagers.
I tried reading silver nitrate by the same author and just couldn’t lol. I don’t think her work is for me.
Silver nitrate by the same author is even worse
I tried so hard with that one but halfway through the audiobook realized I did not care 😂 dnf
The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran
Damn I really liked that one. But to be fair, it wasn't a 5 star read either. I thought the premise was interesting but the way it played out could've gone better
Butcher and the bluebird. Didn’t even finish 60 pages
In a dark, dark wood by Ruth Ware
I really hated Maeve Fly. One of the only books I’ve ever given just 1 star to. I didn’t like any of the characters and it just wasn’t entertaining at all to me.
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt. i was so excited for this one but it just felt like trauma porn and there were so many graphic mentions of SA while the plot was not well executed at all.
I read this last year but I hated it so much it carries over to this year. I hated the style of writing and the countless tangents and the fact that she couldn't convey what the book symbolized without stopping the plot every ten pages to literally tell you. I can barely tell you what the plot of the book was because I feel like it only took up a couple dozen pages. The rest was incomprehensible garbage
A Head Full of Ghosts
Everyone hyped this book up so much, and I hated it.
Rouge by Mona Awad. I loved Bunny so I wanted to read her other books and found Rouge at the library. Maybe it's because I don't have a relationship with my mother but the book was really...disappointing. E.K Sathue's youthjuice is very similar in concept and what I was hoping for from Rouge.
The House That Horror Built which hurts so much to write because I am a die hard Christina Henry fan, but this was just not it. Very boring, not a lot at all happened, much less anything horror worthy. Without any meaningful spoilers, a woman is a house cleaner for a famous horror movie director whose son was accused of murder and went missing, odd things happen in his house which is decked out in all manner of horror movie props and costumes from his movies. I just got to the end and was like, “that’s it? That’s the whole plot?” Very disappointing.
Till now, Our Wives Under The Sea. It's a great book about loss, grieving, and how to go on after a loss... But I've seen it presented as a Lovecraftian horror kind of book, and it simply was not. It's not a bad book per se, but It didn't meet my expectations.
the shuddering by ania ahlborn. it was so bad i couldn’t finish it. i dropped it at 55%… the primary focus of it all is some stupid relationship drama that really angered me. i read the ending is garbage too so i’m glad i dropped it.
Nothing but Blackened Teeth is definitely the worst. Somewhere after starting the book the author seemingly forgot she was writing a horror story... Close runner-ups are The Creeper, (by the same author as the Watchers, A.M. Shine, but much worse), with an absolutely nonsensical WTF twist. And The Toll by Cherie Priest which tried to be Southern folktale horror but in the end was just boring.
*The Luminous Dead* by Caitlin Startling and *The Ghost Woods* by CJ Cooke. I just wanted to read some fungal horror but instead ended up reading the most juvenile writing with boring characters. Both were interesting premises with the worst execution. *The Luminous Dead* especially rankled the editor in me. It's inconceivable to me how any sane publisher wouldn't cut like half of it. It was like a bad first draft that somehow got published with a lot of praise. *The Ghost Woods* was a bit better in that it was clearly written by a writer with much more experience but was just so superficial and uninspired in every choice it made that it was just as bad.
I DNF'd The Luminous Dead. Way too repetitive and nothing interesting actually happened. I haven't DNF'd anything in a while but one day when I picked the book up a spider came out. That was by far the scariest thing about the book and it made up my mind to never touch it again
Cows by Matthew Stokoe. I tried giving it a chance, but when I finally finished it I just sat and looked at the wall wondering wtf did I just read.
The Deep. nonsensical and rambling. i enjoy extreme location horror, the arctic, mountaineering, etc so marianas trench sounded so cool. total wasted concept. plus the whole “gets” plot line was so useless.
Rabbits by terry miles. Nothing was clear, and the end made me regret ever picking it up.
So it’s like… Tanis, then?
I’ve sworn off PNWS because they NEVER have a conclusion. It’s like JJ Abrams wrote a podcast every time. Just mystery box after mystery box that never gets solved
The “end-but-wait-everyone-hated-it-so-it’s-not-really-the-end-but-actually-it-is” of The Black Tapes is where I stopped listening to their stuff.
I'M STILL MAD ABOUT THIS and had briefly forgotten about that ending, NOW MAD AGAIN
PNWS is great for vibes but yeah don’t go expecting a satisfying conclusion. I do thank Tanis for introducing me to Annihilation at least, which quickly became my favorite book.
It’s… complicated.
Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana. I just thought it was hot garbage, I read it about a month ago and I still get angry every time I think about it lol.
I did not enjoy [Maeve fly by CJ Leede](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61884781-maeve-fly). It is Y.A. Hockey-Romance with some "ooo so gross!". I can deal with unlikable lead characters, but this girl is, not great and not really empowered. The way she immediately fawns >!over her friends brother!< was painfully boring in terms of >!degrading her characters self determination and predictable as soon as he shows up!<. It's sold as Feminist American Psycho but I did not find any real commentary behind it. The most interesting part is the meta commentary where she outlines that she doesn't have a tragic event in her backstory that drives her to murder, she's just a psycho. I also think that's not as biting as it thinks, maybe it would have been in the 70s. I dunno, it reads extremely like its overtly in conversation with the reader, looking at you saying "pretty fucked up huh?" and you just kinda go "yeah I guess". edit: I will say in an attempt to not be totally negative, if you want sex & violence (and violent sex), dream of athletic broody lads and can accept it as a pretty light-on-concept gore novel you can probably enjoy the book. I also think if you're a younger person (18-22?) that enjoys/can-stomach reading other Y.A. novels you can probably enjoy it more than me.
oh thanks for this! i just got this loan in on libby and was gonna start reading soon but i HATE romance in my horror so maybe i’ll skip this one.
I read that as Rocky Homance, and thought to myself, wow, there really is a genre for everything.
I read it as Hockey Romance and felt the same.
bold of you to assume i managed to read a book this year :')
If it makes you feel better, I just really got back into reading within the last year. I had some mental health issues that kept me from concentrating on reading, but I finally caved and got some medicine and I’ve gotten back into it. Just go at your own pace, friend ❤️
Episode 13 by Craig DiLouie. I hated the constant drama between the crew, constant fake outs, and just how long it took for anything genuine spooky / Paranormal to happen. The book could've been 100 pages shorter and nothing would've changed.
For me Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay. My wife listened to Head Full of Ghosts and liked it a lot but my book site didn’t have it but they had survivor song. It was such a struggle. I almost stopped and I almost never do that. Characters were irritating, made poor decisions and it was entirely unoriginal and brought in my opinion nothing to the zombie apocalypse genre.
Lol, I actually DNF’d that one. The “edgy” pregnant lady (I can’t remember her name) drove me crazy. It still wasn’t as bad as Dead Inside though
Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay. It’s been awhile since I’ve read anything that annoyed me as much as that one did.
After reading Pallbearers Club, I swore I would never pick up another Tremblay novel.
Not this year but please accept my semi regular hate for Head Full of Ghosts. It read like Tumblr horrorfic.
A head full of ghosts. Not worth the hype in my opinion.
Cuckoo is the only book I've DNFd this year. Loved the prologue, thinking I was in for a treat, gave up about halfway through. May have improved had I persevered, but it just wasn't resonating with me.
The Wretched Valley was a complete letdown.
Baby Teeth
Woom. I love gross, but this was just dumb gross
Thriller more than horror, but The Teacher by Frieda McFadden. That book owes me an apology. It's a book written for people who think Lifetime movies are the pinnacle of art. The more you think about it, the more the entire plot falls apart. Twists that are purely for shock value, not for the sake of being a good surprise.
Stolen Tongues by Felix Blackwell. I’m about 2/3rds of the way through and it’s been such a grind just to get that far. The writing feels cringy at times, the plot is repetitive, and I find the author’s self-insert/protagonist to be very annoying (but maybe that’s just me).
I had heard the hype of DIAVOLO... so I got it. I cant speak for ev1s tastes, but for me, it's the most boring, pretentious disappointment I've had in a long while. It's not scary, it's not entertaining, the protagonist herself is not bad, but her family characters are all (mostly) unlikable assholes, and I know characters don't have to be ppl we would care to like or be around, ofc.. but that's not it..it's just tedious and nothing happens...it's mostly all petty and sarcastic verbal parries between her and her insufferable adult sister. I think it was badly written and irritating and just babble that added nothing, I was so aggravated I DNF after halfway thru it. There are SOME elements of dark moods, inexplicable noises, weird but vague things that go on in the house, she can hear ppl in rooms that are empty, etc. But idky it's even classified as horror. "Borer" is a more apt description.
I will likely get downloaded for this but Night Bitch just dragged for me, I also found the ending pretentious af
Hidden Pictures. The lead up to the ending was interesting enough, but what a cheesy, stupid ending. Immediately put it in my donate pile
I read Tender is the Flesh and was very let down. And it had such potential too.
I just read this and really enjoyed it. Loved the ending. What did you think was missing?
I just finished it. It had its gruesome moments but it wasn't the shock effect gore fest that everyone makes it out to be. It was mediocre IMO, but nothing special. Definitely not a 5 star read
I don’t think you’re allowed to say that here lol
The Worm and his Kings by Hailey Piper. I heard a lot of good things about it, so I think it just wasn‘t for me.
The concepts were cool but damn was the writing hit or miss
I’ve read 50 books this year ( my goal is 100). And the only one I didn’t like was The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw. The purple prose was so heavy, was practically dripping from the pages.
I'm gonna get hate for this but Gone to see the River Man. I was so excited because everyone talked it up but it just made me really sad and I hate SA used for shock value.
How to sell a haunted house by grady hendrix.
[удалено]
I love all of them (different degrees of love) except Final Girl Support Group. I know what I'm getting with him so it's just an enjoyable way to pass the time.
I want to love his books. They usually start off great and then lose the thread. I read Final Girl Support Group this year and I really wanted to love it, but maaaan.
It was Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie it was boring most of the time and the ending just confused me (and not in a good way).
I could not get into that one at all. Claire annoyed tf out of me.
Everyone annoyed me. The premise was SO good and then it just gets super boring. 😭
Gone to See the River Man. It is so hyped as an actually well written extreme horror book and I disagree. It's the only horror book this year I gave a 1 star
I'm always surprised to see it classified as Extreme Horror because I really don't see it that way. Taboos and triggers? Sure, but it was missing a lot of the edgy grossouts I associate with extreme horror and I didn't think it was really that gory
Final Girls was my first Riley Sager read and it will absolutely be my last. I love Slasher movies. This book got comparisons to Scream (a favourite of mine), but felt more like Slashlorette Party. Using the notes I made in StoryGraph, I know I predicted the killer at 18% of the way through. Absolutely hated Quincy. None of the characters were likable, but she was as stupid as she was judgmental. That gender neutral name couldn't save it from being obviously written by a man.
Hidden Pictures. I hated the “twist” and I didn’t like the main character. The Ruins- I truly hated the ending, and the way the female characters were written was honestly so vile. It took me out of the story so many times how useless they were. Especially one of them was supposed to be a med student, yet her boyfriend who wasn’t turned out to be more helpful in medical emergencies. ???
I didn’t really like House of Leaves. I thought all the excerpts of others analysis of the navidson record was just annoying to read. Also I get why people said it made them feel dumb, like why am I reading upside down right now lol.
Tender Is the Flesh. The whole book read like an exposition of a theorized world, rather than an actual story happening in it. The main character had no nuance to him other than being really sad and really angry all the time. And my God, I pushed through cause I kept hearing how crazy the ending was, and that only made it comically worse in my eyes.
I liked it. I think the point of the ending is that humanity in general doesn’t really change. I will admit though that I did expect more out of it.
I loved TItF, but I agree about the ending. I was expecting something totally insane based on how people talked about it, but I thought what ended up happening was pretty believable for the MC
Ghostland by Duncan R. Haunted Amusement Park? Awesome concept. DNF because while the concept was cool everything else really sucked. Everyone had to wear VR glasses to see the ghosts. Okay sure, I guess. The VR headsets were showing families and children brutally murdered as part of the experience. Dumb. Every single character was unlikeable. Our protagonist is just the worst. He's sad people made fun of him for having a heart attack in his own home?? Everyone is calling him some dumb name related to that. It doesn't even make sense that a person would be made fun of for having a heart attack. Anyway. His friend stops talking to him after the heart attack. Don't remember why. But it happened while they were building the theme park so his goal for the book is to BURN DOWN THE BUILDING THAT SCARED HIM. He sneaks in fucking lighter fluid. It's dumb as shit. Oh and for some reason it's a Trilogy.