Scrolling through this sub and r/suggestmeabook and I am continually enraged by seeing Piranesi mentioned. I had high expectations going into that book and it was a let down for me, but I thought it was a decent book and didn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other. Now after I see it recommended on every goddamn thread and praised as if it is the greatest piece of literature the world has ever known, I cannot stand this book. If I never saw the word Piranesi again my life would be better. Sometimes I want to quit reddit entirely just to avoid seeing this posted. I don’t quite know how this happened but I don’t think I will ever be able to think about it without rage again
Anyone else have a book like that? LOL
by rosaharn
16 Comments
Anything Colleen Hoover lol. I read and couple of her books and never got the hype. Now she is everywhere and it’s so annoying. I don’t get it. There are so many good romance authors that don’t add a bunch of trauma sprinkled in for no reason.
Why would you hate a book simply because so many others like it?
The Midnight Library. It was fine, nothing special but the hype was unreal.
I haven’t read Piranesi but I admire your committed rage to Popular Thing Bad.
*Fourth Wing.* I really hated the first and last third, but the middle third was kinda fun, so I came out of it kinda eh, wanting to cut the author some slack and hope the future could be better. But it gets SO much love from the Romantasy crowd, I see young people attributing it to ‘inventing’ ideas that are decades old, etc. Plus I learned the author isn’t a young new author at all, she’s written TWENTY books before. It pushed me from a mildly negative meh to loathing it.
Also the *Locked Tomb* Books. They were sold to me as a sweet romance, so their actual content was quite a slap in the face. I still might have come around to it if so many fans weren’t just awful about it. You get SO much hate and attacks if you protest, for example, a fan I saw recommending that you actively obscure the true plot of the book and focus on the (non existent) romantic relationship between the leads of the first two books.
The Secret History
Yeah, I didn’t think Piranesi was that good either and I am sort of surprised by all the love it gets here. But I also see books I just adored get a “meh” response from a lot of people. I don’t get upset about it. People have different tastes. I often enjoy reading the comments from people who disagree with me about a book because they had a perspective I didn’t consider. Personally, I roll my eyes when anyone recommends The Midnight Library because I really hated that book. I only finished it out of spite and because there is a lot of love for it on Reddit. But I have also read many, many comments from people who said it was an important and helpful book for them when they were in a dark place. Who am I to judge that? It wasn’t for me. I won’t recommend anyone read it. But other people’s love for it doesn’t bother me.
Normal People.
Honestly, the amount of praise for it even on the cover. Book of the year? Masterpiece? Like, what? Really? It was mediocre with a cute but kind of dull couple at the centre, and a meh ending. I’m baffled at the praise it’s received!
“Hate” seems strong, but I had a similar reaction with Harry Potter. Read the first 3 or 4 as they came out but fell off around middle school in favor of less “YA” focused material. By the time the last movies were coming out, I absolutely couldn’t stand the praise/hype/etc. I eventually reached the point where I’m not affected by other people enjoying things, but if anyone engages me on the topic I’m not shy to share my views.
Why waste time with hate? Just find a better book.
Well, any Dark romances that romanticizes sexual assault and abuse. Examples being Haunting/Hunting Adeline and a plethora of Colleen Hoover Books.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. It was a nice beach read, but the way people act like it was some complex tale of a tragic heroine that accurately reflected the struggles of the queer community in Hollywood in the 50s is laughable. I’m not even sure how much research the author did for the characters, especially since she’s a cishet white woman. The more i think about it, the more annoyed I get because the writing gets more questionable as I look back.
Nobody in the world would make fun of Mistborn fans if they didn’t include themselves in every single discussion about books.
“Oh, you want a great romance? Well, mistborn…”
“Oh, you like Magical realism? Well, mistborn…”
Piranesi was forgettable. The labyrinth being a literal place rather than a metaphor just kind of made the whole thing so much less interesting. I don’t understand the hype.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
OMG I really didn’t care about it, I read it once out of sheer curiosity (thank God for public libraries) and it was meh.
But I’m always hearing about how wonderful it is, they made a completely forgettable movie of it, and I just want to see it burn.
Where the Crawdads Sing
I wouldn’t say I hate it. Pretty nature descriptions, kind of interesting in the beginning when the protagonist is learning how to survive on her own, but otherwise really overhyped in my opinion. The love triangle and true crime aspect just didn’t do it for me.
Tender is the Flesh. It is shockingly mediocre, written by someone who clearly wanted to create an extreme metaphor but didn’t want to do much of that difficult crap like worldbuilding. I was ambivalent to it when I first read it, but seeing people CONSTANTLY praising it as the most disturbing thing they’ve ever read, makes me want to scream.
Ditto with The Library on Mount Char, though I don’t think I was ever lukewarm about that one because I think it’s genuinely badly written.