Okay so, here’s this week’s slightly belated Top Ten Tuesday, and it was a prompt I couldn’t resist - books I’d happily throw in to the ocean! I think over the years I’ve got fairly good at picking up books that don’t make me want to yeet them across a room, but there have been a few that have slipped through the net…
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
Book 1:Allegiant by Veronica Roth
I actually quite liked Divergent, and I didn’t hate Insurgent. But oh my goodness, did Allegiant grind my gears. If you’re going to write a dual narrative, both first person, I SHOULD NOT NEED TO KEEP CHECKING WHICH POV I’M READING. The amount of times I had to keep flipping back to the start of chapters to figure out which the heck character I was following was so frustrating. Maybe this is why I don’t write in first person… Also, the ending was terrible. I understand why this movie franchise was never completed!
Book 2: Kingdom of Ash by SJM
Okay, so I did go through a phase when I was younger where I read a lot of SJM. However, by the time KoA came out, I really was only reading this for the conclusion, as opposed to because I was super keen. I’d read so many books with these characters at this point, I wanted to know what happened to them. But I spent so much time just shouting at this book. By the end, I was hate-reading. The friends I was staying with at the time kept asking me why I was still reading it when it was clearly annoying me so much. BECAUSE CLOSURE, I would say, and then proceed to rail against the fact that I was SEVEN HUNDRED PAGES IN AND STILL NOTHING WAS HAPPENING.
The short version is: I hate it when book series get so popular that the publishers no longer seem to think the books need editing. KoA is nearly 1,000 pages long. The story could have been told in 400. Especially getting published roughly the same time as Priory, which absolutely needed all 900-odd pages, it made this look far too indulgent of a page count.
Book 3: ACOWAR by SJM
I will get off my SJM rant train after this, but this one felt too much of a scream to not mention. I genuinely enjoyed ACOMAF, and was looking forward to the finale of this trilogy. However, the representation in here was so harmful, so offensive, that I cannot believe that the publishers didn’t pick it up. It’s either that or it was wantonly ignored - more proof, perhaps, that publishing can care more about the money than it does about not spreading harmful stereotypes about LGBTQ+ individuals.
I then started reading more around SJM and rep and realised that there was also really harmful rep in the earlier Throne of Glass books that I hadn’t picked up when I was younger. I unhauled all my SJM books and have gladly avoided her books since.
Book 4: All The Invisible Things by Orlagh Collins
To be honest, this book probably wouldn’t have made this list if I’d not been in first lockdown while reading it, during a school holiday, and had literally nothing better to do. But I did, and I kept reading it, long after I should have DNF’d. This book just tried so hard to be edgy, I think, to be ‘teenage’ and ‘cool’ (maybe I’m just out of touch?) but it felt meandering and lacking in direction and had things happen for the sake of them, as opposed to driving the plot forward. There were some serious issues raised in this book, but I just don’t think they were dealt with well, or how they should have been - to me they felt more there for sensationalist value, which I am absolutely not a fan of.
Book 5: Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon
I did not want to chuck this book to the other side of the room until right near the end. Up until that point, I’d thought this book was pretty good, solid 3.5 stars for me. But the problem with retellings (and I’m sure this is not the only book this applies to, it just happens to be one I’ve read) is that sometimes, the original story can feel shoehorned in. And that’s exactly how I felt about this one. This would have been a great story… if they hadn’t bothered with the whole Beauty and the Beast element. So really, I’d like to chuck that part of this book in the sea and keep the rest of it.
