Hi, friends! Last week I shared my top 13 favorite books of 2017 with y’all and today I’m sharing my top 8 most disappointing books that I read in 2017. These are not my lowest rated books (one of these I even gave 4 out of 5 stars to!) These are just the books that I had such high hopes for, but in the end they were disappointments. Some bigger than others!
Starting off the list was Mary Kubica’s newest release, Every Last Lie. Y’all, I was so disappointed in this one and it pains me to say it because Mary Kubica wrote The Good Girl, which is one of my all time favorite thrillers. I’ve read everything she’s written and loved every single one, but this one was just not what I expected and not in a good way, I feel like your opinion of this book comes down to the ending. If you love the ending, you probably loved this one, but I hated the ending.
I can usually trust my Amazon recommendations, so when this book appeared on my screen, I was super excited. A southern fiction book set in Alabama? Sign me up! Those are my favorite kinds of books and I had high expectations that this one would be like Cancel the Wedding, which was my favorite read of 2016, but oh goodness it wasn’t! This one was dull and uninteresting. I can’t even remember what it was about. I remember not like the ending at all, though. And the romance storyline felt flat to me.
Christina Lauren’s newest release was my most anticipated book of the year and I was beyond disappointed in it. I’ve only read maybe one of the Beautiful series by this author, but I had high hopes that this one was going to be like The Hating Game, which was my second favorite book of 2016 and is now one of my favorite books of all time. This one was nothing like that one. The romance was so lack luster and the book was just boring. All it talked about was the characters’ jobs and how the two companies planned to merge. There were no cute interactions between the two characters, which was what I absolutely loved about The Hating Game. So disappointed in this one.
I did go on to read Christina Lauren’s other book that came out in December and it was better, but still not anything to get excited about…
I hate that a book with such a pretty cover is on this list! I read Laura Dave’s other book Eight Hundred Grapes two years ago and loved it and was so excited about this one! It’s about a Youtuber who is famous for her cooking videos. Someone hacks her account and reveals that she’s a fraud, so she has to return home. I had high hopes for this one, and I didn’t completely hate it, but it wasn’t anywhere near as good as I hoped it would be. The ending left a lot of things unresolved, like there could be the possibility of a sequel, but I didn’t love this one enough to continue in the series if there is one. I didn’t hate it, but it was still a disappointment.
Ruth Ware is famous in the thriller world and I was all kinds of excited about her newest book for 2017. Oh my goodness gracious, I couldn’t even get through this one, y’all. If there is a book that would win the dullest award on this list, it would be this one. I read until page 150 and finally had to DNF it. Very rarely do I DNF a book that I’ve already read a good chunk of. This one was just so dull and uneventful. NOTHING EVER HAPPENED. Maybe if I had stuck with it longer, I would have enjoyed it, but oh man was it a disappointment.
Words cannot express how sad I am that a Lauren Layne book is in a list of my biggest disappointments. Lauren Layne is my go to romance author and I love everything she writes. And I did really like Ready to Run. I even gave it 4 stars! But I had such high expectations for this “Bachelor” reality show romance and it was nothing like I thought it was going to be. It’s my least favorite LL book, but again, I really enjoyed it! I just thought with a plot like that and a pretty cover that it was going to be my new favorite series ever, and sadly it was just okay.
Our October book club selection was Colleen Hoover’s newest book Without Merit. I love Colleen Hoover. Her books are memorable and addicting and exciting to read. This one wasn’t any of those things. It was odd. I felt it tried to be too much and tackle too many issues and in the end it just missed the mark. You can see my full review here.
And now my biggest disappointment and least favorite read of 2017. If you’ve followed me and my reading journey this year, you know how much I hated this book. I don’t mean to be rude. I know how much time and effort and work goes into writing a book, but this book was just not for me. I’ll just copy and paste my review from back in February so you can see my exact thoughts since it’s been 11 months since I’ve read this one.
And then I read this thing. The Young Wives Club by Juile Pennell. I hated this book. I’m truly sorry if you’ve read this and loved it, but never has a book angered me like this one. I was eagerly awaiting this book after first learning about it on Netgalley. The cover is just gorgeous and I love a good wedding story. When I read that the book was about 4 young wives, I had in my head that they would be in their mid twenties. I had a REAL problem with the age of most of the main characters. One of the girls has just graduated high school, one is in college, one’s age isn’t mentioned but she is the oldest of the group, and one SHOULD BE a high school senior.
Now, I realize that people get married very young. Many of my friends got married in their early twenties. I just could not get past the fact that one of the girls DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL to marry her boyfriend just because he was going away to LSU to play football. Did she really think she didn’t need to get a high school education?! Did she really just aspire to follow her husband around the rest of her life and not have any interests/passions of her own?? I despised this character. She acted like her entire world revolved around her boyfriend and then husband. In fact, all the girls did this. I liked Gabby the best, but she was nothing to write home about. Every one of the girls seemed immature and self reliant on the man. I only gave it a second star because the characters realized their mistakes at the end. I just hated this book. I even threw it away instead of passing it along to my friends because I don’t want anyone to read this book. I know the book teaches you not to do the very thing that made me hate this book so much, but I could not get past the annoying main characters. It was just awful!
Those are the books I was most disappointed in from 2017. Did you read any of these on my list and have a similar experience or totally different? I’ll love to hear!
Those are the books I was most disappointed in from 2017. Did you read any of these on my list and have a similar experience or totally different? I’ll love to hear!
I can't believe Hello, Sunshine was on your list ha!! 😳😳 I really liked this one, it hooked me right from the get go. I do agree that the ending was left too open ended. I was like…. that's it? But I still really liked it overall. It was my first time reading this author.
I felt the same about “Without Merit”. Too many issues to deal with in one book. I read a lesser known Colleen Hoover book called “Too Late”. Probably one of my worst books of 2017. I understand this wasn’t a regular book with a regular publisher, but it was not good. It was a quick read, but it just angered me. I didn’t mind “ The lying game”, it definitely wasn’t her best read, but there were some unresolved issues at the end.