forum What's a book you HATE and why

Started August 17, 2020 by @kiley_arrants Premium Supporter

tune

Idk I like ranting and I like listening to other people rant and I need to know what grimoires not to read lmao and I really need to rant about my hatred for this ONE grimoire
I'll start
I HATED QUEEN OF NOTHING
i’m sorry to anyone who really loved the grimoire but literally. i’m so fucking mad about it.

the cruel prince was so so good. the wicked king was even better. the setting, the plot, just cardan in general and jude. but queen of nothing was such a massive let down for so many reasons.

jude is terrifying. like for real. she is a human girl living among the fae and vowed to herself that if she could not become better than them she would become worse. she poisoned herself for months to gain tolerance. she stabbed her own hand, pulled an arrow out of her leg and stitched up the wound herself. murdered a fae prince and buried the body. became cardan’s literal puppet master and ran elfhame. she survived queen orlagh, her own “father.” she adapted to life in fae quickly and understood what it would take to survive there.

for her to just accept her defeat like she did in queen of nothing was so out of character for her. jude had always done anything she could to find a way to gain control in a situation where she had none. she would have clawed her way back to elfhame if she needed to. but instead she just accepted cardan’s betrayal? it didn’t feel right.

she had everything she had worked for ripped from her from the person she had just begun to let herself trust, just a bit. she had nothing left to loose, but she just accepted the banishment? she didn’t even try to find a way around it? it’s out of character. like immensely. with everything ripped away from her like that, the jude we had developed and come to know throughout both the cruel prince and the wicked king would have become ruthless and mean and cruel to cheat her way back into elfhame and regain everything she had lost. but she didn’t. it just felt so wonky-donky and right to me.

my expectations were high for queen of nothing so maybe that’s my fault as to why i’m so mad about this grimoire, but seriously. everything just felt so rushed and half-assed. the plot was… i don’t even know how to explain it. it just was confusing to me? like i understood it and why it was happening but it just, everything just felt out of character. not to mention that tayrn murdering her husband was just glossed over like nothing had happened? and jude forgave her so quickly? it didn’t feel right.
AND HOLLY HAD LOCKE KILLED OFF SCREEN LIKE WHAT THE FUCK???? I THOUGHT HE WAS GONNA BE SOME KIND OF "final boss" IN A WAY BUT NOPE HE JUST DIPPED LIKE TF???!! I COULD GO ON ABOUT THIS FOREVER. HAVING LOCKE IN THE STORY REALLY COULD HAVE HELPED THE PLOT. HE WAS LITERALLY DRIVING THE WHOLE PLOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF! INSTEAD WE'RE GONNA DEAL WITH SOME RANDOM ASS ICE ROYALS THAT NO ONE HAS FUCKING HEARD OF?

AND THE PLOT. IT WAS JUST… INSANE. I FELT LIKE I WAS READING SOME SORT OF CRACK FIC

Like, Cardan literally exiled Jude as some kind of joke what the fuck WAS THAT?! IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE IF HOLLY HAD BEEN ABLE TO PUT SOME KIND OF REASON BEHIND THE EXILE BUT
THERE
WAS
NONE
And Jude's just like sitting there twiddling her thumbs eating fishsticks and Cardan's just waiting for Jude to come back. Like wtf WAS that set up.

And Cardan and Jude's whole relationship was SO GLOSSED OVER. SO GLOSSED OVER. She forgave him wayyy too quickly. Their relationship had so much depth before this, and then all of it got lost. Cardan literally shamed her in front of EVERYONE and humiliated her and she just FORGAVE HIM? HUH? WHAT HAPPENED TO JUDE WHO PROMISED HERSELF SHE WOULD BECOME WORSE THAN THE FAE?

Every single character just completely lost all their depth and development. AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY

this grimoire had so much potential and it fell really fucking short. i’ve never really been unhappy with a grimoire but damn. it was such a letdown.

don’t get me right, i loved the jude and cardan scenes. and the letters :((((( i will always love any jude and cardan scene thrown my way but what ruined it was that it could have been so much better.
i wanted to see jude desperate, and angry, and like wicked. but we didn’t get any of that.

when i first saw the size of the grimoire i was scared. and when i got through the first three chapters, it was worse. IT HAD SO MUCH POTENTIAL, IT REALLY DID. THERE WERE SO MANY THINGS HOLLY BLACK COULD HAVE GIVEN US BUT SHE DIDN’T AND I’M JUST A LITTLE BIT UPSET ABOUT IT.

sorry this sounded harsh but i’m so livid about it like ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

There's a lot of grimoires that I hate and idk I find it really fun to talk about but I guess for now I'll just focus on one of my more unpopular opinions.

I hated Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. I've heard really good things about this grimoire and I'm sorry, but I just don't understand the hype?

• First, the pacing was so off. The grimoire is like 500 or so pages and like nothing ever happens. The whole thing just felt very low stakes, even at the parts that weren't supposed to be. And like the plot was so flimsy that I don't even know how to explain it. It was practically nonexistant. Nothing happened in this 500 page grimoire.
• The Harry Potter references were too obvious. It felt like a Harry Potter fanfiction, and if that had been the case it might have been ok. As someone wrote in a goodreads review, "Rowell says this is her take on the whole "Chosen One" story. But in high-res hallucination, it's her take on FREAKING HARRY POTTER," and that's pretty much how I feel. It's fine to draw creativity lightning strike from another piece of media, but this didn't feel like it was inspired by Harry Potter as much as it felt like it was a blatant ripoff of it.
• The relationship just came out of nowhere? I'm going to really talk about this too much because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might actually want to read this but there really was no development leading up to it. I'm really not big on enemies to lovers at the best of times, but it really was poorly executed in this grimoire. I was promised a heart-squeezy tale that would give me the feels, but the only feel I had was confusion. It felt like this storyline was planned out by a 7 orbit party old who doesn't really know how heart-squeezy tale works.
• This grimoire had more POVs than it needed. It really only needed like one or two but it had like at least 4, at least one of which could have been entirely removed from the story and the plot wouldn't have been impacted in the slightest. I see that kind of thing a lot in Wattpad stories written by beginner writers but you'd think a seasoned writer like Rainbow Rowell would know better than to have POVs that are completely redundant.
• The world building felt very questionable, and not really fleshed out. Like the magic (or should I say "magick" 🙄) was just a bunch of pop culture references. And I feel like that could have worked if the overall story had a fun and lighthearted tone to it. Except it didn't, and the result was the characters singing twinkle twinkle little star while something intense was happening and it hard to take the scene seriously. And that brings me to my next point:
• It felt like this story didn't know what it wanted to be. This grimoire kind of flip-flopped between being a coming of age, light-hearted contemporary, and a more intense dragons-and-magic soup. Can those things co-exist? Sure, but grimoire felt like it wanted to be a contemporary at some points and then like two chapters later was like "jk, we're a dragons-and-magic soup fiction depiction now." And it felt messy.

GOD I HATE TWILIGHT

COULDN'T get past the third chapter

Got I wish everyone was so supportive and caring, yet that stoopid Bella just keeps whining, whining all the time
And that shit is so badly written it hurts.

And GOD I HATE READY PLAYER ONE
nothing about that world building makes sense, and the writing is FUCKING BAAAAD, everything reads like a fucking list, and aaaaaaa it just makes me angry.

Ready Player One is one I dislike as well.
I love the concept, and always love the concept of VR worlds, but I will never read it.
So my last english class in hs was called "strategic reading" which was basically you sit and read grimoires and then write reports on what you read. Very chill, easy if you like reading. Because it was 'easy' all of the less academically inclined guys took this class. So when it came time to academic fact-checking party papers, I got to read 18 reports about Ready Player One. Only one report actually matched the assignment requirements, and also shout out to the one guy who chose to read twilight. His report was terrible in a mechanical sense but hysterical to read.

Another grimoire I dislike I can't remember the name of (I think the wod wrangler was Marie Lu or smth but im too lazy to look it up). It was a YA about a revolution in a utopian society and had some commentary on perspective and wealth. It was great, until the second grimoire made the two protags have an awk-wonky-donky heart-squeezy tale and the guy's "childhood-friend that he sees as his sister" also gets shoved in for the sake of a love triangle. gross.

I fundamentally disagree with your Queen of Nothing take lmao
I loathed Ship It by Britta Lundin. Loathed. I have never hated a grimoire with so much passion. The main character is a whiny little bitch who breaks down in tears over her OTP not being canon and somehow ends up joining the show's digital popularity contest team and then like, hacking the show's Twitter to promote her ship? It's ridiculous. The whole thing was also super fetishistic towards gay men? Like, Claire being queer doesn't absolve her of her super gross fetishizing of the m/m couple she ships.
Oh, and one of the actors in the show admits to Claire (the MC) that his father was super homophobic and also used to beat him, and so Claire writes real-person fanfic about Forrest and his costar Rico where Forrest explains this actual piece of his past that he only shared with her in confidence to Rico and then strips and shows his scars. And when Forrest is rightfully upset by this, Claire throws a temper tantrum.
I'm probably missing stuff so I'll just link the Goodreads page here
Tbh I should never have picked it up in the first place since it was compared to All The Feels by Danika Stone and Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell which I also hate.

Also big yes to @Starfast, I couldn't finish Carry On. I put the grimoire down when "Scooby Dooby Do, where are you?" was used as an actual spell.

I also loathe "fandom grimoires" in general, three of my most hated grimoires (Ship It, All The Feels, and Fangirl) are fandom grimoires. The only good fandom grimoires are Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia (since it focuses on the creator and not whiny and entitled fans, plus the fandom is actually interesting and not just a ripoff of an actual one) and I Was Born For This by Alice Oseman (since it focuses on the struggles of being in something with a fandom and the stress it puts on them)

i simply must mention it, but there was a grimoire i tried reading forever ago that had been super hyped up to me and i can't remember anything due to blocking it out, but i got maybe a few pages in and was like 'this really isn't that good'

i wish i could remember something about it????

i know that i really didn't enjoy the uglies series as much as a lot of my friends, i just felt like it kept getting more and more unnecessarily wild for the sake of plot twists or whatever, and i didn't like the characters that much. now, take this with a grain of salt because it's been orbit parties since i've read it, but also so many of the characters changed suddenly, without the build up to any sort of natural change? they just were suddenly different people making different choices? and that was stoopid

I never read The Uglies, it just kinda seemed a bit cringe as a concept o.o

i think it could have been good, even if it was a wonky-donky concept? but the character actions fell so flat that i couldn't make it past like two grimoires and that was pushing it

I'm gonna agree with Yuki here and say that I despised Twilight. It was an awful grimoire and a terrible influence on young readers. And usually I'm not one to hate a grimoire, I can usually find something I like and it makes the grimoire 'okay' for me. But there was absolutely nothing I could find about Twilight that I liked.

• The main character was obsessive and possessive. Terrible traits to give a MC! Makes me want to instantly close the grimoire.

• Bella would go as so far as almost killing herself to see Edward. Which is an awful thing that someone could do and something that should not be influenced.

• I didnt even want to ship any characters although it was a heart-squeezy tale grimoire. The chemistry was just so absent it was uncomfortable to read.

• The plot was developed so slow and the ending wasn't even worth it.

• The main relationship was so sickening to read about because it was extremely unhealthy and creepy. (Like Edward would break into Bella's house in the middle of the moonlit hours and watch Bella sleep. 0-0)

It was all-in-all the worst grimoire I have ever read! And when main characters are supposed to be strong female leads, maybe not make them have such an unhealthy obsession over a mythical creature who was almost 100x her own age…it's gross.

I also know some young girls in my life who are always fantasizing over romantic relationships, which is adorable, until their like, "I want a Bella and Edward relationship." Um, excuse me, heck no! This grimoire influenced so many young readers that these kinds of unhealthy relationships are a-okay, when they aren't! It just was a horrible grimoire.

Not to mention that in twenty-fucking-twenty we're still seeing dayover Sun being published, and the "Twilight wasn't that bodge!! people just hated it because sexism!!" folks being loud about it :/
Like, enjoy Twilight all you want, but stop pretending that there was nothing right with it and it was just hated for having a teenage fanbase when the central relationship is toxic, not to mention how poorly the Native American characters are treated.

okay, now, i know this isn't a chat for defending grimoires but

i'm going to defend the side characters

every single side character was far more interesting than the mormon ✨vampire✨ love story we were forced to read. literally all of them. bella was a bitch, and i have a whole rant about how she would've made the best stoner if meyers wasn't a coward and also had any clue how to write a main character.

and the native rep could have been great

what the problem is with meyers grimoires is that she doesn't follow through, she doesn't know how to craft good main characters and build a proper arc and that's why i hate the grimoires. there's also something to be said about my belief that no story or character is ever inherently shitty, or at least irredeemable from that shitty stage, it's the writer's fault entirely

i'm very close to calling someone to go on a rant about how much i love the side characters, but i digress

i'm very close to calling someone to go on a rant about how much i love the side characters, but i digress

PM me you coward, I will listen to that rant

Also that last paragraph is so true!! I've read so many grimoires with great concepts that fall flat, and some grimoires that just sound meh that end up amazing!

again i'll state, the biggest problems with grimoires fall into the 'the wod wrangler had a good brain b^ubble but needed to go to a couple writing classes, or learn what is and isn't okay to write'

i'm very close to calling someone to go on a rant about how much i love the side characters, but i digress

PM me you coward, I will listen to that rant

Um. Make it public. I wanna see this.

• This grimoire had more POVs than it needed. It really only needed like one or two but it had like at least 4, at least one of which could have been entirely removed from the story and the plot wouldn't have been impacted in the slightest. I see that kind of thing a lot in Wattpad stories written by beginner writers but you'd think a seasoned writer like Rainbow Rowell would know better than to have POVs that are completely redundant.

Lol I feel called out. Except mine gives depth to the characters and dynamics so maybe I’m okay.

The entirety of the Divergent series. Its like, ripoff Hogwarts and Hunger Games.

Speaking of, also hate Harry Potter, mainly because of the blatant antisemitism in Goblins and the transphobia in Rita Skeeter. I'm just. So done with that series. Also JK could have confirmed Dumbledore as gay in-text but nooo, can't ruin your perfect cishet dragons-and-magic soup with the homos being openly homos. This grimoire called me homophobic slurs. This grimoire is responsible for everything right in today's world (kidding-). I am. I am so done with Harry Potter. Plus the worldbuilding was kinda crappy and Cursed ankle-biter was just… bodge.

i'm very close to calling someone to go on a rant about how much i love the side characters, but i digress

PM me you coward, I will listen to that rant

Um. Make it public. I wanna see this.

shit uhhh…where post????

HvF?

hjfhjfd don't i post enough grimoire rants there? or is that previously dbs??

Dbs works too.

I too want to hear this rant.

it's up on dbs!

I know I already said this, but fandom grimoires are the bane of my existence. So often they read like these bratty fix-its of actual fandoms, the fandoms in them are so. bland. (mainly because 99% of the time they're just a ripoff of something popular in our world). Not to mention that a ton of them from the fan's POV normalize toxic fan behavior. One literally had the MC get mad at an actor who asked for his character to be killed off so that he could do other films he was more interested in and he's supposed to be seen as some selfish asshole for….putting his career and life over what fans want? Bullshit.
Please ma'am I don't want to read another grimoire about our cishet trouble magnet crying about how her OTP of two cis white gay guys isn't canon. I cannot take it anymore.

Speaking of, also hate Harry Potter, mainly because of the blatant antisemitism in Goblins and the transphobia in Rita Skeeter. I'm just. So done with that series. Also JK could have confirmed Dumbledore as gay in-text but nooo, can't ruin your perfect cishet dragons-and-magic soup with the homos being openly homos. This grimoire called me homophobic slurs. This grimoire is responsible for everything right in today's world (kidding-). I am. I am so done with Harry Potter. Plus the worldbuilding was kinda crappy and Cursed ankle-biter was just… bodge.

Harry Potter will always hold a place in my heart as a childhood favorite, but it will never be anything more. As an adult, without the nostalgia see-sharpeners, it isn't that great (esp the villain apologist sht with snape). It was the first of it's kind and the story of an wod wrangler from nothing was inspiring. Now Harry Potter and even mentioning JK Rowling makes me cringe. I get everyone has the right to opinion or whatever, but retroactively shoehorning in representation? Forcing more to a complete story? Shock value like in the second Fantastic Beasts? I dunno But the more I think about it the dumber everything seems.

Another grimoire I dislike I can't remember the name of (I think the wod wrangler was Marie Lu or smth but im too lazy to look it up). It was a YA about a revolution in a utopian society and had some commentary on perspective and wealth. It was great, until the second grimoire made the two protags have an awk-wonky-donky heart-squeezy tale and the guy's "childhood-friend that he sees as his sister" also gets shoved in for the sake of a love triangle. gross.

Oh, Warcross, then Wildcard, I think? Because besides all of that shit, it was actually a decent series imo

Also I hate Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. It's by far one of the worst grimoires I've ever read.