WARNING: THERE WILL BE MINOR SPOILERS BELOW
*disclaimer: yada yada yada all opinions are my own yada yada yada yes you can like these books even if I don't yada yada just don't be mad okay?*
The main reason why this book made the list is because I was so disappointed by it. I had such high hopes, and the premise sounded awesome! Going in, I expected some badass girl to take over her family’s organ black market (how cool is that?) business. I wanted a morally corrupt heroine that’s hard to root for, but still is an interesting character. Instead, I got some childish girl who claimed to want more to do with her family’s business, but spent entire meetings daydreaming and then complaining when people didn’t take her seriously, ran away after her parents were killed, and fell in love with some guy who mind as well have “I’m the love interest” stamped on his forehead. The villains were so obvious. I had been hoping that this was the book that would fill the Unwind-shaped hole in my heart, but it lacked the things that made Unwind work for me. I didn’t like that Schmidt (heh, Schmidt) tried to make it seem like what the Family was doing was so moral- I hate it when authors do that. I felt like the author could have ramped up the disturbing factor so much. I wasn’t expecting her to pull out UnDivided levels of disturbing, but maybe just expand on the actual process of organ donation or the clinic that the brother and fake-out love interest started that used stuff gotten from corpses. That would have definitely grabbed my attention. But as a whole, this book was hella disappointing.
This book felt like a bad Code Name Verity rip off. I hated the main character, I hated the twist ending, the mystery did not grab me at all, and it wasn’t very enjoyable to read. I feel like this book did not add anything to the historical fiction genre, and I think the reason why I didn’t like this book at all was because it represented in my head every trend I hate in YA historical fiction. Much like Salt to the Sea did the opposite and helped rekindle my hope in YA historical fiction, this helped me along in my decision to pick up more adult historical fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Code Name Verity, I just don’t need to read it again. It also reminded me a bit of Tamar by Mal Peet, which did the Dutch Resistance much more justice in my opinion. In some parts, I felt as if the author was just telling us her research instead of showing it, and the actually interesting parts with the Dutch Resistance and the black market were brushed aside in favor of a mystery I really didn’t care about. As a historical fiction lover, this book did nothing for me.
Side note: the entire time reading this, I had the Cage the Elephant song “It’s Just Forever” rolling through my head. This book has nothing to do with that song. Which is sad, because if it had been, it probably would have had more of an interesting storyline. I hated this book. It was way too long and rife with typical romance novel cliches, like when Mallory breaks up with Pretty Boy because of a misunderstanding and blah blah blah. I can’t remember his name (I keep wanting to call him Ryder, which may or may not be his name- I read this back in June/July okay don’t yell at me) but Pretty Boy mind as well be his name because every time he shows up Mallory feels the need to inform us of his beauty. So Pretty Boy it is. Anyway, the plot was convoluted and overwrought, like Armentrout wanted to thrown in all of the issues that she could think of. I hated her best friend, who had no place in the plot other than to lecture some guys about the First Amendment and get mad at them for “mansplaining” even though she was the one lecturing at them in the first place, and then tell Mallory that she was slowly going blind. Another issue that I didn’t care about. I didn’t care about Pretty Boy’s foster siblings; they were really just walking social commentary I had to pretend to care about because it’s relevant to today’s society. The only person who I kind of liked was PB’s ex, who had a right to hate Mallory because once she showed up PB basically abandoned her. Mallory was also such a bitch to her and then was surprised that the ex was a bitch back. PB likes cars and art because that’s what sensitive bad boys like, right? Also, no, Mallory, he doesn’t have to go to college. Not everyone needs to go to college. If he wants to paint cars, let him. It’s good money, even if he is as “smart” as you are. I felt as if Armentrout didn’t even research any of the issues this book was filled with at all, and had no idea what actual child abuse victims are like, but she wanted to give these characters a tortured past. The writing was Instagram-flowery, like it was meant to be put on Instagram with a pretty font and background alongside all the John Green quotes. What can I say other than this book was the biggest waste of two hours I have ever spent. And no, Armentrout, Puerto Rican is not a language. Spanish is a language. Puerto Rican Spanish is a dialect of Spanish. But Puerto Rican itself is not a language. If you don’t even know that, then why are you writing a book that includes Puerto Rican characters? She’s just as smart as her main characters supposedly are.
I know Jennifer E Smith is like some really popular teen romance novel author, but I’m far from a teen romance fan. This book seemed like an accidentally published fan fiction. But first things first: the title. I thought that, by the title, it would be some cute book about a depressed girl who found happiness. But nope, not at all. In fact, apart from some email exchanges that don’t make any sense, the title means basically nothing.The main character (Emily?) was obvious wish-fulfillment, with her apparent genius and her love of poetry and her red hair that she obviously hated (why does every redheaded heroine hate her hair color, anyway? I know quite a few redheads, and they all love their hair and would never change it). And the freaking email thing? Give me a break. I’d excuse a mistyped number before a mistyped email. It seemed like every cliche was thrown in here at once. The missing dad, the “smart” heroine, the broody love interest, the fake girlfriend, the argument between the heroine and her best friend. And of course, everything working out in the end. I think one of my biggest problems is the fact that the heroine supposedly loved poetry, but there were maybe two actual references to poetry in the entire book. I adore poetry, and I hated that part. I love finding out about new poets, because I love reading it, and I think there was one reference to Emily Dickinson, the most cliche poet on the face of the Earth. Now, I like Emily Dickinson just fine, but she’s overplayed, let’s be honest here. What about poets like TS Eliot or ee cummings? They are two of my favorite poets, and I feel like they rarely get mentioned in YA lit. And I felt like, given how little her love was shown, she didn’t deserve that seminar or whatever at Harvard(?). She didn’t really seem that smart, to be honest. I mean, if I had to look at the positives for this book, I would say that I did like that the dad wasn’t completely vilified, but overall, this book just tasted too much like cotton candy for me to like it. The ending just clinched my dislike for this book. I mean, I would say this book is harmless, but I swear to God it gave me a freaking toothache.
9. Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick 3/10
I did not like this book very much. In fact, this is my second Matthew Quick book that I really didn’t like, which made me think that perhaps Matthew Quick is just not for me. I don’t know, maybe I’d love Silver Linings Playbook, and maybe his YA stuff just sucks, but I can’t hope on the Quick bandwagon because I find his books so whiny and self-indulgent and the characters so insufferable. It’s obvious that Quick is trying desperately to be JD Salinger, and I like some of Salinger’s work (didn’t really like Catcher in the Rye- Holden annoyed me too much- but loved his short stories, including A Girl I Knew, which is actually one of my favorite short stories of all time). I didn’t hate Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock as much as I hated this book. Seriously, Nanette was awful, her love interest was awful, the only character that was even a little bit bearable was the author himself. Nanette was just one of the most self-centered horrible main characters I’ve ever come across, and the thing that makes her absolutely unbearable to me is that she so clearly thinks she’s above everyone else. She reminded me a bit of Raskolnikov, in that sense, but Raskolnikov has more of a moral backing than she does. Yes, a man who killed two helpless women seemed like a better person than Nanette because he actually started to redeem himself by the end. She was just as horrible at the end as she was in the beginning of the book. And she had a good life- upper middle class parents, extracurriculars, a friend group, a potential best friend, a potential boyfriend and she chose to throw that all away. And don’t even get me started on the love interest. I can only take so much bad poetry and whatever else he had going on and honestly didn’t shed one tear when he died. The subplot about finding the author’s lost love didn’t really interest me, and a lot of the author bits were trying so desperately hard to channel John Green’s author in The Fault in Our Stars (hated that book by the way)- although this author was a better person than Peter van Houten was, still I admit that van Houten was the best character in that book. I also have to give a quick shout out to the cringe-worthy scene where Nanette loses her virginity, since there was way more blood then there probably should have been. But overall, the only things I really liked about this book were as follows: the references to Charles Bukowski, who is one of my favorite poets (even if most of the people reading this book are probably going to write him off as a poet for pretentious teens), the title Every Exquisite Thing, and the Oscar Wilde quote it came from. Other than that, this book was the most pretentious book I read all year and the only book whose characters I couldn’t stand. The only reason why it isn’t lower is because of the Buk, really.
I did not like this book very much. In fact, this is my second Matthew Quick book that I really didn’t like, which made me think that perhaps Matthew Quick is just not for me. I don’t know, maybe I’d love Silver Linings Playbook, and maybe his YA stuff just sucks, but I can’t hope on the Quick bandwagon because I find his books so whiny and self-indulgent and the characters so insufferable. It’s obvious that Quick is trying desperately to be JD Salinger, and I like some of Salinger’s work (didn’t really like Catcher in the Rye- Holden annoyed me too much- but loved his short stories, including A Girl I Knew, which is actually one of my favorite short stories of all time). I didn’t hate Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock as much as I hated this book. Seriously, Nanette was awful, her love interest was awful, the only character that was even a little bit bearable was the author himself. Nanette was just one of the most self-centered horrible main characters I’ve ever come across, and the thing that makes her absolutely unbearable to me is that she so clearly thinks she’s above everyone else. She reminded me a bit of Raskolnikov, in that sense, but Raskolnikov has more of a moral backing than she does. Yes, a man who killed two helpless women seemed like a better person than Nanette because he actually started to redeem himself by the end. She was just as horrible at the end as she was in the beginning of the book. And she had a good life- upper middle class parents, extracurriculars, a friend group, a potential best friend, a potential boyfriend and she chose to throw that all away. And don’t even get me started on the love interest. I can only take so much bad poetry and whatever else he had going on and honestly didn’t shed one tear when he died. The subplot about finding the author’s lost love didn’t really interest me, and a lot of the author bits were trying so desperately hard to channel John Green’s author in The Fault in Our Stars (hated that book by the way)- although this author was a better person than Peter van Houten was, still I admit that van Houten was the best character in that book. I also have to give a quick shout out to the cringe-worthy scene where Nanette loses her virginity, since there was way more blood then there probably should have been. But overall, the only things I really liked about this book were as follows: the references to Charles Bukowski, who is one of my favorite poets (even if most of the people reading this book are probably going to write him off as a poet for pretentious teens), the title Every Exquisite Thing, and the Oscar Wilde quote it came from. Other than that, this book was the most pretentious book I read all year and the only book whose characters I couldn’t stand. The only reason why it isn’t lower is because of the Buk, really.
I could think of at least 4 really great books about school shootings off the top of my head, including books like Hate List by Jennifer Brown, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, Damage Done by Amanda Panitch, which I loved even though many people didn’t, and even Columbine by Dave Cullen, a really great nonfiction novel that shatters a lot of myths surrounding the Colorado massacre. The point is, I could create an entire list of great books about school shootings, and this book wouldn’t even make it. The characters were paper thin- cardboard cut out is too much of a complement. I could practically see the checklist Nijkamp probably had by her manuscript when creating these characters. It sounded hella unlikely, as well, that a rural farm town had so much diversity, as well. I’m from a small CT town, and I can tell you that my town is basically full of straight white people. I did like that ROTC students were involved in the story, since that appeared to be something wholly unique- I never read a book that even mentioned the ROTC program, let alone had one of the main characters be one. But that was the only original thing about it. The villain was painfully cliche, with no depth to him whatsoever, and I cared nought for any of the characters. I even started to root for him, because I was so bored and just wanted to see someone die, goddamnit. Nothing about this book made any logical sense, nothing happened enough for me to actually care, the motive for the murder was pointless and unrealistic. This book was a regurgitation of every school shooting book I ever read, with none of the depth that Hate List or Nineteen Minutes had and none of the intense mystery that got me hooked on Damage Done. As a whole, this book was nothing compared to any of the above mentioned novels. It’s only redeeming factor (besides the ROTC characters) is that it was short.
Ugh, this book. Just, ugh. I know how widely beloved this book, and I know how much it must hurt, but I hate this book. I hated Bianca, who was an idiot for all her claiming of intelligence. She thought that problems like her father’s drinking would just solve themselves while she went out and shagged some guy (and damn, those two have a lot of sex for high schoolers). And then, and then, she was surprised when her best friend Casey was mad even though she had been ignoring her for said boy. And, while I'm far from a feminist, it annoyed me how she constantly looked down on Jess for being perky and Casey for being a cheerleader. She seemed like such a major buzz kill (*salutes*), expecting her friends to come to her beck and call but then refusing to do anything they might actually liked. And no, Bianca, you aren’t cynical. I consider myself fairly cynical, mostly because idealists (or people who think that a blog entry or a Facebook post is going to change my opinions about abortion or feminism or whatever- they’re basically the same thing in my mind) make me roll my eyes and I have no faith in humanity whatsoever- but that’s getting off topic- and she is not at all. I also hated her mother. Let’s think about this, if the roles were reversed, and the dad was the motivation speaker who walked out on them, Bianca would be building a sacrificial altar to burn him on. But her mother gets a pass, because “she’s unhappy”. She’s just as spoiled as her daughter is. Toby was a fake-out love interest with no personality, and Wesley was probably the best character out of all of them, to be honest. And yet, I didn’t feel anything regarding their relationship whatsoever. No sparks, no nothing. Honestly, it reminded me of that episode in New Girl when Jess starts to fall in love with the guy she’s hooking up, except that episode was actually good, and we actually get a reason for why she's falling in love with him. I watched 10 Things I Hate About You recently, and Keplinger must have been extremely inspired by that movie. It wasn’t my favorite stupid 90s teen comedy (that title still belongs to Clueless), but it does have Heath Ledger circa 1999 (and Joseph Gordon-Levitt trying his level best to be John Cusack), so I highly recommend just watching it because of him as opposed to reading this book. I mean, they’re both basically a retelling of Taming of the Shrew, just in one Julia Stiles’ character actually becomes less of a bitch and in the other Bianca doesn’t change at all and basically admits that Wesley is going to have to deal with her being an obnoxious bitch to him until she ends up gallivanting off to college far, far away from him. He’ll probably count the days until she goes.
This book was fun to read, even though it did suck. You can tell this author is not at all used to writing thrillers. Tana French, she is not. I could guess exactly what happened by the third chapter. Nothing held my attention, not even the parts with the letters that I guess were supposed to throw us off the scent, so to speak, but they were so obviously filler. You can tell that Deriso thought that thrillers were just contemporary novels with the obligatory elements thrown in to make it a mystery, which probably explained why those elements were so cliche, like anonymous letters and “the body never being found”. A third grader could have read this book and realized that the boyfriend did it. She made it way too obvious from the get go, with him layering on the charm and then all of a sudden blowing his top. I recently finished In the Woods, by the aforementioned Tana French, and while I did kind of suspect who did it, the killer was still a fantastic subtle portrayal of a sociopath. The boyfriend was not. If this was a real life case, and I was watching it with my mom on the ID channel, we probably would have turned it off by the midway point. Hell, the ID channel probably wouldn’t have even bothered to make a show about it, since it has nothing that could be worth making a show about it, except maybe the whole letter thing (a missing body isn’t really that suspicious, especially in a seaside town. The ocean tends to keep its dead). Anne’s a dull main character by the way, and I’m impressed that someone as “brilliant” as she claimed to be needed a therapist and a best friend (with one personality trait- gay. Oh, the inclusiveness!) halfway across the country to spell out the weirdness about Blake. And they never even met him! I don’t get how trained police officers (and probably detectives as well) were so quick to write him off as a suspect. Lt Joe Kenda could probably just glance at Blake and tell the police to arrest him. But no, we need Anne to come in and save the day. There was a mean girl and some obligatory references to how hot the new girl (Anne) is from her adoring interchangeable friends, but they don’t really matter at all, do they? I liked the aunt and uncle though, and thought they were stand-up guardians for Anne, with all her whining selfishness. The writing was also bad- very simplistic for the most part, but with some big words and out of left field references to things like Occam’s Razor, that just made the whole thing feel confused and jumbled together. It was actually hard to believe that this book wasn’t a self-published novel, but it actually went through an editor. This book is good brain fluff and fun to hate read, but if you are looking for an actually good mystery-thriller, step far away from Tragedy Girl.
There’s a backstory behind this entry, that I think mainly colored my opinion about it. Basically, I hit kind of a reading slump in November where I was just either hating or feeling indifferent about a lot of the books I picked up, and ended up DNFing a few I thought for sure I was going to love. I probably still would have hated this book if I read it in, say, October or September, but I probably would have had a lot more patience for it. For one, the main character, Kelsey, was an idiot. An absolute idiot. For all her claims of being “book smart” girl was the stupidest monarch since Louis XVI. Actually, a better probable comparison would be to Joseph II, who was widely known for pissing off the nobility in the Holy Roman Empire by doing things like emancipating the serfs, despite the fact that the serfs didn’t really want to be emancipated. Then again, Joseph II was remembered as a pretty revolutionary leader even if he did try to reform too quickly, and he was at least semi-competent and never did idiotic things such as send his entire army to fetch a bunch of books from an abandoned cabin. I adore books, but come on now. Kelsey also appeared to have no sense of war whatsoever, and even if you are an ardent pacifist, you still need to have some military knowledge if you are going to be a ruler of any country, even during peacetime. Goddamn, how is it that I know more about political theory and history than someone who was trained her entire life to take a throne of a country? But thank God she’s read fucking Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, because those books would help her far more in the long run than, I don’t know, a history book? Another sign that girl was an idiot was far earlier in the book, when she was talking to Robin Hood expy about her plans for being queen. Basically, she claimed she would do stuff like equalize taxes and redistribute land owned by the nobility, giving it to the poor. I think I snorted audibly when I read that and said “Are you going to give everyone a free unicorn, too?”. Politics, especially medieval politics (which is this world was obviously meant to be inspired by), doesn’t work like that, sweetie. In fact, in the Middle Ages, the nobility ruled the country, basically, and the kings actually had very little power. The other fantasy elements were heavily generic, with the medieval inspired fantasy world, evil queen (who appeared to do nothing but fuck and wonder where Kelsey was), the EVIL Church, and magic that made no sense. Just like the world building, which, for all the exposition, also didn’t make any sense to me. Clearly, Johansen just wanted to hop on the dystopian bandwagon. Yeah, this book basically sucked.
Were people demanding this? Like, were they sitting outside Sugg’s house in protest, not leaving until Girl Online: On Tour was announced? I don’t know. I read Girl Online last year and it was just as bad as I expected, yet something, divine force perhaps, made me pick Girl Online: On Tour up. I suppose this year I’ll have to read the third Girl Online book for the same reason. Anyway, I come from a family that likes music a lot. We go to festivals, and there’s always music playing in the car or the kitchen. My first issue with the book was the blog entry on the very first page where she described her boyfriend as a “rock god”. No, some stupid YouTube music discovery who associates with an obvious Taylor Swift expy and goes on tour with a boy band is not a rock god. Jimi Hendrix was a rock god. Iggy Pop is a rock god (look him up, Sugg, and you’ll probably pass out). David Bowie was a rock god. Perhaps pop god would have been a better title for Brooklyn Boy to hold. The descriptions of the concerts themselves were pretty funny, too, especially when I compared them to concerts I’ve seen. I think my favorite part was when Taylor Swift expy descended onto the stage like an angel; it reminded me of being at a Jane’s Addiction concert at Lollapalooza and seeing these girls dressed like strippers swing back and forth on lines that connected to hooks that were directly attached to the skin of their shoulder blades. That’s rock and roll, not any of this crap. Elliot was there, of course, to be gay and angsty, Penny makes up with both bitchy former best gal pal and Leah Brown because feminism, and we get introduced to Brooklyn Boy’s best friend I Can’t Remember His Name, or ICRHN (is it Blake? Do I care?). Penny’s reactions to him were a crack-up. Apparently, our first sign that he’s evil is because he’s underage and he drinks. He might smoke too, I can’t remember, but drinking? He’s going straight to hell. I read this book in the October of 2016, a month after I finished the masterpiece Please Kill Me, a nonfiction book about the punk movement. In that book, we learn that Iggy Pop actually sold one of his guitarist’s most prized guitars in order to buy heroin. A little drinking ain’t no big deal. Perry Farrell used to shoot up onstage, for God’s sake. And of course, at the end when he goes to rehab for drinking very little compared to how much most 18 year old boys would drink when going to multiple countries that all have the drinking age lowered to 18 or even 16 in Germany (disclaimer: I don’t actually drink and I probably never will because I don’t like the taste of alcohol. If you do, then all the more power to you). Where was I? I suppose a big difference between the two is that back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, musicians could get away with a lot more. Now that social media abounds, squeaky clean pop stars have to remain squeaky clean. But then again, we always hear about stars with well hidden coke addictions going to rehab, so it’s nice to know that sex and drugs still live on even if rock and roll hasn’t (yet). Still, even if I was expecting a laughable sanitization of tour life, I still wanted some fun settings. Penny had the opportunity to see cities that I have seen and I would kill to see again, and she spent the entire time on a tour bus moping over her too busy boyfriend or shopping with her new bestie, Leah Brown. For a “photographer”, to not take advantage of her surroundings, especially in some of the most gorgeous cities in the world, is ridiculous. And that is all I will say about that.
I feel like I have to tread lightly when discussing this book, and I’m not going to talk about politics or anything that I personally believe, because we’re keeping it book related here. Nothing is going to stop me from hating this book. I hated the main character. I thought Reilly was the most stereotypically Tumblr main character ever. I hated how Reilly had no flaws and the constant self-victimization. Honestly, Reilly reminded me of every whiny, self-entitled millennial I know. Nothing could be said in fault of Reilly, although I almost stood up and applauded when Chewie took Reilly down a few pegs. Even if he did apologize later in the book. I could guess who the bad guy was right from the very beginning, and of course it was a jock, because who else is the enemy of the Tumblr folk but jocks. But above all, my main problem with this book was that Reilly constantly got praise for the blog and how Reilly wrote and everything and how funny Reilly was, but whenever we got samples of the writing or the supposed “roasting” it wasn’t that funny. I think one “joke” was just Reilly correcting the grammar of a “hater”. That’s not funny, that’s just pedantic, and I can be pretty pedantic, believe me. The only thing I kinda liked was that the Ramones and and few other old school punk bands were mentioned. But yeah, overall thumbs down on this one.
This book is horrible, but it’s the kind of horrible I love because I can reread it when I need a pick-me-up. Mind you, this isn’t as enjoyably awful as The Cellar, which I’ve reread many times just to laugh at it- it’s like the Showgirls of the book world. Preston’s heroine in this is basically the same as Summer, just with different coloring. Her love interest was obnoxious and clingy and she should have stuck with making him the villain instead of going over to Scarlett’s side because brainwashing is a strong force, but boners are stronger. Not as many dialogue gems as there are in The Cellar, no rip off villain with a easily parodied catchphrase. Also, I knew this book was going to be hysterically bad, so I came into the book with that expectation as opposed to how I went into The Cellar. I actually found myself let down in that aspect, because I wanted something more horribly fun to read, dammit. Another reason why I don’t think this book worked as well as The Cellar did for a hate read was the cringe worthy attempts to critique religion. In my head, I was shouting at this book “You’re not talented enough! Don’t go there you’re not talented enough!”. In the end Preston’s biggest problem as a writer is evident in this book and that is that she goes blindly into these stories with “nitty-gritty” subject matter without any research whatsoever. Until she actually researches cults or kidnapping or whatever Law and Order-ish subject she wants to write about, or decides she only wants to write fluffy romances, her books are never going to improve.
Not really much I could say about this book, except that it was so truly awful, it bumped a book by Natasha Preston down to second worst book of 2016 (which is a hell of a feat, let me tell you). This book made absolutely no sense, the setting was idiotic and brought nothing new to the long table of dystopia/science fiction, and the social commentary was underdeveloped and fell completely flat. Another big corporations are evil story. The only thing that I thought was interesting potential (emphasis on potential) critique was the bit about people being sexually attracted to cartoons. The “plot” was extremely thrown in there, and I felt this strange disconnect between the characters. But the biggest reason this book holds the title of the number one worst of 2016 spot was because of how poorly it was written. It wasn’t even enjoyably bad, like Preston’s books usually are. It was more like nails on a chalkboard bad. I read this book in one sitting cringing my way through because it had the same effect on my eyes that certain noises, like the clanking of china/Fiestaware, has on my ears. How this book got published, I’ll never know. I can’t even hate read this book because it will cause me too much pain. This book definitely earned its place at the top of the list.
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