Just read If We Were Villains by ML Rio and I’m so annoyed because it was so terrible. It was very pretentious and filled with Shakespeare quotes taken out of context. The characters would just randomly drop these quotes while talking about serious matters.
There was no real mystery. No real twist. I knew who the killer was from the beginning so the lacklustre reveal annoyed me. The main character had no personality, was an indecisive bisexual stereotype, and acted like a D-bag despite other characters referring to him as “nice”. (The author clearly wanted you to think he was good, and she even goes as far as to make him a sacrifical lamb even though there’s no legit reason for him to take the fall for James’s murder of Richard because there’s not much to love or even like about him.)
Also, don’t cancel me but a lot of the characters were white people with blue or green eyes and I constantly kept mixing them up because they were so two dimensional – except Meredith who was the designated sex object.
I’m going to go ahead and bring up the fact that this book is blatant rip off of The Secret History (an actually excellent book). Except this version is so, so boring and long, crammed with drivel.
From now on I’m going to avoid books that are popular on Booktok like the plague (except classics bc classics are popular on there I guess). I thought It Ends with Us being bad was a fluke. Now I’ll pass on ACOTAR, or Fourth Wing, or Lightlark.
by sweetreleaseof
3 Comments
Most of them aren’t even readers. I think some of them just look for a resume of the book online and pretend like they’ve read it. They are paid to promote books. It’s hard to find a good booktoker, I just don’t waste my time there anymore. I go to youtube or here for recommandations.
Book Tok has been wrong for me several times. I’m with you, I’m avoiding the recommendations now. Only red white & royal blue was a hit for me.
I feel this way as well re: Fourth Wing and Babel the disappointment was real. I now get most of my recommendations from Reddit.
Booktok feels like lots of people getting free advance copies and trying to hype them up to grow their following, meh, pass.