Weekly Lists #217: 2020 Disappointing Books

Reading is honestly one of my favourite things. You’re taken away to a completely different world or form of reality, you can live vicariously through others… It even helps in passing the time in times of being at home more than you usually would! Unfortunately, with reading a lot come the inevitable lesser books. The ones that just don’t do it for you… Or even worse: put you off reading completely. And for the first quarter of this year, here’s some of the most disappointing books I’ve come across in 2020.

1. Neanderthal Seeks Human

There is an actual possibility that I just “didn’t understand” the book. Be that as it may, though, the experience of actually reading this book? It was just plain old off-putting. Characters whose actions undo what they say, an “awkward” girl that was just constantly spilling words and facts to the point where it was nothing but annoying and made me want to skip entire paragraphs… And the type of hops and jumbles that made the plot almost non-existent… There’s plenty of people who gave this book 5 stars as well, but for me? It was just a big ball of meh.

2. Make or Break at the Lighthouse B&B

Characters are really make or break for me, apparently, because in this one? It was the main character’s seeming sense of “I know all, am all, should get all” that put me off within the first couple of pages. Add to that a plot line that seemed so full of possibilities in theory and just didn’t move within the first quarter of the book? And I found myself actually DNF’ing this one, out of sheer “I don’t care about it”-ness.

3. To the Moon and Back

The only thing worse than a book that doesn’t catch your attention? A book that does get it right in the first half… And then just falls flat completely. You know that meme of “I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you”? That’s how I felt about this book.

4. Piece of Work

As an alternate version of the “some parts of the book worked, others didn’t”, I give you: some books in the series worked, some didn’t. In this case, I ended up giving the series as a whole a chance in spite of the first book. Well, that, and because I’d bought the series in one go – it just sounded so good!

5. Fix Her Up

Perhaps the most heartbreaking out of all of these: the re-read that you loved on the first read… And then just completely falls flat when you come back to it. In this case, it probably had something to do with the fact that I really did love the book the first time. You know, high expectations and all that. None the less, though, it isn’t often that I’ll lower my rating of a book on the second read (even if I did appreciate it less), but for this one, I had to make an exception to that rule.

Anyways, those are 5 of the more disappointing books I’ve read so far, this year. Have you come across any bummers? Books you had high hopes for, that just ended up not doing it for you? Be sure to let me know below!

-Saar