Before you start reading, you might want to have a mop at the ready. There's going to be a lot of tea spilled.
Now that we're over that uncomfortable segue, the way that I'm qualifying a book as popular is if it has over 1,000 ratings on goodreads or the author has a different book with over 1,000. For me, disliking a book means I gave it one or two stars.
1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
This is a hard one to summarize. It's mainly about a kid named Charlie, who I think is about 14. It follows him through high school as he deals with growing up.
I found Charlie, as a character, to be both immature and pretentious simultaneously. I could have dealt with one, but with both, he seemed to be more of a lens to portray the story then a person. In addition to that, many important issues were brought up and then dismissed. This could have been a lot longer and much better.
2. Sadie, by Courtney Summers
The story follows a girl named Sadie whose sister was murdered. She believes she knows who did it, and most of the story is her tracking them down.
Courtney Summers, in my experience, has a tendency to ask what the worst things are that humanity can do, and then tries to back them all into one book. Ignoring that awkwardly worded sentence, this just wasn't compelling. It was more sad then it was a thriller. I'm not insinuating anything here, but why do women have to be treated badly before they can be empowered? All of the reviews calling it feminist seemed off to me. Like I said before, I was just horrified.
4. The Outsiders, by S.E Hinton
I feel like everyone knows the plot of this already. It's about a group of teenagers who have fights over arbitrary social things, but more violent then usual. I found every single character to be stupid. Their choices were awful, their motivations were unclear, and Ponyboy was poorly developed. There was some emotional punch, but it was overshadowed by the poor dialogue and plot.
5. The strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender, by leslye walton
It's hard to give a summary of this. It was a multigenerational story of trauma that centers on two siblings, but it was a lot more confusing then that.
I found this to be slightly racist in the way that it described POC characters (of which there were two). It also used the G slur very frequently in a very uncomfortable way. It was also pretty sexist. The female characters were all abused due to a curse, but it was repeatedly called love. Abuse is not love, and equating the two is very problematic. In addition to that, the writing was disjointed and the ending was disgusting. There is literally no other word that I could use to describe it. If the author were male, it would be violently misogynistic. In this case, it was merely pointless and horrible. Sorrow and pain are not beautiful.
In conclusion, I really dislike a lot of books. And I don't know how to format blogs.
Now that we're over that uncomfortable segue, the way that I'm qualifying a book as popular is if it has over 1,000 ratings on goodreads or the author has a different book with over 1,000. For me, disliking a book means I gave it one or two stars.
1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
This is a hard one to summarize. It's mainly about a kid named Charlie, who I think is about 14. It follows him through high school as he deals with growing up.
I found Charlie, as a character, to be both immature and pretentious simultaneously. I could have dealt with one, but with both, he seemed to be more of a lens to portray the story then a person. In addition to that, many important issues were brought up and then dismissed. This could have been a lot longer and much better.
2. Sadie, by Courtney Summers
The story follows a girl named Sadie whose sister was murdered. She believes she knows who did it, and most of the story is her tracking them down.
Courtney Summers, in my experience, has a tendency to ask what the worst things are that humanity can do, and then tries to back them all into one book. Ignoring that awkwardly worded sentence, this just wasn't compelling. It was more sad then it was a thriller. I'm not insinuating anything here, but why do women have to be treated badly before they can be empowered? All of the reviews calling it feminist seemed off to me. Like I said before, I was just horrified.
4. The Outsiders, by S.E Hinton
I feel like everyone knows the plot of this already. It's about a group of teenagers who have fights over arbitrary social things, but more violent then usual. I found every single character to be stupid. Their choices were awful, their motivations were unclear, and Ponyboy was poorly developed. There was some emotional punch, but it was overshadowed by the poor dialogue and plot.
5. The strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender, by leslye walton
It's hard to give a summary of this. It was a multigenerational story of trauma that centers on two siblings, but it was a lot more confusing then that.
I found this to be slightly racist in the way that it described POC characters (of which there were two). It also used the G slur very frequently in a very uncomfortable way. It was also pretty sexist. The female characters were all abused due to a curse, but it was repeatedly called love. Abuse is not love, and equating the two is very problematic. In addition to that, the writing was disjointed and the ending was disgusting. There is literally no other word that I could use to describe it. If the author were male, it would be violently misogynistic. In this case, it was merely pointless and horrible. Sorrow and pain are not beautiful.
In conclusion, I really dislike a lot of books. And I don't know how to format blogs.
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