Books I Liked Less the More I Thought About Them

[@Krisandmads]

This is such a validating concept 😅 the way I feel like I have to rerate everything the more I read. Loved this vid brother!

[@KistReadsBooks]

Thank you! And yeah that's a part of it too, the more you read, the more you encounter similar concepts and you have a better feel for where the execution lands on your scale.

[@ChrisSenM]

I loved Recursion from Blake Crouch so much, and then Dark Matter and Upgrade got 3 stars from me. 3 means I was not happy lol. So I agree with you. After 2 duds from him, I'm less excited about spending time on new books he writes. I have gone back and lowered or raised my rating if a book sticks in my mind for some reason.

[@granthoffman315]

I haven't read Upgrade yet, and I honestly probably won't. The last 20% of both Dark Matter and Recursion tainted the first 80% for me. Crouch just whiffs on his endings.

[@zacTFC]

Oh man, I can’t believe you did Dark Matter dirty. I read it when it first came out and it got me back into reading. After watching the show I thought about the book again, and I still find it, for me, a top tier book in its genre. Regardless, I get your gripes.

[@maypasifiki9360]

Not a book or 2 but the whole ACOTAR series by Sarah J Maas...

[@gentledragons6170]

Same here. I felt a bit pressured by the hype around these books to say I enjoyed them, when in reality, I thought they were just average.

[@crose9613]

For Priory, I was told it was epic fantasy similar to Wheel of Time. I didn't get enough action or feel the looming threat that I really cared about the politics that were happening. However, it was done well and I would've enjoyed it more knowing a tad more about it. 3/5 stars

[@FrazCrowe]

I haven't read Dark Matter, but now I am doing wordle in my head, trying to figure out what happens that starts with L 😅

[@SeanScottPlus]

Dark Matter fell apart for me at the ending too. Hoped the show might’ve tried to correct it somehow, but nope.

[@michelleizoco]

Ok, I AM SO with you on Priory!!!! I had to really push through it to finish it and at first, I though it was great. And then I realized - I quickly forgot about it. And that large parts of the book dragged. And that the plot resolution was .... ok. Not bad, simply... meh. I agree with you about how the majority of the characters are very flat and were therefore forgettable. I own the prequel - and I am unlikely to read it because it's equally lengthy. If I fix my rating I'd have it be.a 3.75

[@TheEmmaLucille]

Never understood the hype about the Priory... still a mystery to this day. 😅

[@gentledragons6170]

I know this might sound blasphemous to fans of the author, but for me it was the entire ACOTAR series. I struggled to even get through most of the books but I rated the series a 4/5 anyway. They are so popular and all of my friends LOVED the series. I didn’t want to stand out and be the only voice in opposition. To be clear, I don’t think they are bad books. I think if I had to rate them all today I would give the series as a whole a 3/5. In my opinion they are all much longer than they need to be and the only one that I actually really enjoyed reading was ACOWAR. I did recently change my StoryGraph rating on the books in this series to reflect how I feel now. 😅

[@KistReadsBooks]

I was supposed to buddy read it with my sister and DNF'd book 1 at the pool of starlite

[@stevegilhool8526]

So glad to hear you mention A Short Stay in Hell. It's one of my favorite books and for exactly the reason that it has stuck with me and grown in my mind over the years.

[@KistReadsBooks]

It's not known nearly well enough, so darn good

[@daniellebrown1779]

Have you read A Day of Fallen Night? I feel like Samantha Shannon improves on a lot of the issues you mentioned. The characters feel more fleshed out and the pacing to me felt better than priory. I felt like priory started at a snails pace. I rated priory 4 stars and ADOFN 5 stars.

[@KistReadsBooks]

I've got it but haven't yet. That's good to hear!

[@kristofferrosvall8709]

I agree with your points on Priory but the problems are more significant for me. I rated it 2 out of 5. Ead is a great character in a cool world. But in my opinion there is no other good character and the plot just don't hold together. Besides the incredibly rushed ending several of the revelations and "twists" are poorly foreshadowed and it feels like Shannon explains them to us after they happen. There is so much potential in the book thay I still two years later feel a bit disapointed that the book is not better (in my opinion). It feels like the story told needed more room the breathe so as a duology or a trilogy it could have worked way better.

[@jackpgrimme]

Glad you brought up the women in Dark Matter. Was like nails on a chalkboard for me I cringed my way through every interaction between the protagonist and a woman.

[@Jamz241189]

I DNF'd Dark Matter three times, reading, audible and the TV show... I just kept wanting like it because of book tube

[@imperfected6513]

I DNF'd Black Matter 30% in. I'm glad it seems I didn't miss anything!

[@senzubean31]

I’ve done this with The Book Thief, which I’ve read 3 times now (I’m an English teacher). I’ve settled on the film actually being better.

[@saca653]

I was completely hooked by the way The Book Thief begins - the writing was so captivating, almost poetic, drawing me into its world effortlessly. But as the story progressed, I felt it started to drift away from the literary brilliance it opened with, losing a lot of that initial magic

[@senzubean31]

@@saca653 agreed. I've felt it needed a stronger editor to cut a lot of the fat out of it; there's a number of sections I skip now when I teach it. But that's what I think the film version did well while still retaining the essence of the story.

[@ItsNickster]

the midnight library lowkey

[@demoats]

I would say the red rising trilogy. After being in the main characters' head for three books, he became unlikable.