Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I will mention five popular books that I read in 2020 that I did not like very much. I know that this post is a little different from my usual book review posts, but I wanted to start a series of posts here where I get to mention books that I have read in the last 4-5 years before I started this blog. It is a lot of them, and there is no way that I’ll be able to post a review for each of them in the next few months. I am planning to once I read them again and they’re fresh in my mind. But that is something that I don’t see myself doing this year. This year I intend to read books that have been in my shelves for the last 2-3 years that I’ve been wanting to read since I got them and just haven’t because life got in the way.
Last year was crazy, we all know that. But despite the pandemic and the lockdowns all over the world, 2020 was my best reading year and it was the first year that I managed to finish my reading challenge on Goodreads. That was a big achievement for me, even though I reached my reading goal of 50 books very close to the New Year, so I barely made it…hehehe. But I made it, nonetheless.
Out of those 50 books that I read last year, there are five that are very popular in the book community that I did not like. It should be noted that I am in no way saying that these books are bad. They were simply just not for me, based entirely on my personal experience of reading them. All of them are popular for a reason and I do not seek to diminish their success or popularity in adding them to this list. Thus, without further ado, the five books that I read in 2020 that I did not like include:
1. Uprooted by Naomi Novik
I read Uprooted by Naomi Novik as my monthly book club pick for April 2020 and have since posted a full review for it here. The main reason why I did not like this book was because I didn’t like the protagonist, or care for her at all, and as I mention elsewhere, I have found that if you do not like the main character of a book, it is very likely that you will not like the book itself either. And this is what happened to me here. I gave this book an I Did Not Like It rating.
2. The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd Jones
Though very popular in the YA book community, the main reason why I didn’t like this book was its writing style. It was just too simple, and its simplicity made me start to get bored with the story the further along I got into it. That in itself deterred me from finishing the book altogether (though I did finish it) and I was very close to putting it on my DNF pile when I was three quarters into it. The only reason I finished it was because I was so close to the end by then. Read my full review here. I gave this book an I Didn’t Like It rating.
3. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
This is another book that I read where I did not like the main character. He is just insufferable, and I could not connect with him at all. I won’t deny, however, the impact and importance that this book has had since its publication in 2008 within fantasy literature, and I do not mean to say that you should not read it. Every person is different, and this book has gained a lot of love. I just couldn’t find it in me to love it as well. Kvothe was just not the man for me. Read my full review here. I gave this book an I Didn’t Like It At All rating.
4. Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
This book is probably the most popular book on my list of read books in 2020 on Goodreads. Unfortunately, it was also not a book for me. The reason why is that a lot of things that happened in the plot didn’t seem all that realistic to me, and it was hard for me to believe them. Also, I didn’t connect with the protagonist. There was nothing that made me like her or dislike her. I gave this book an I Didn’t Like It rating. My full review for this book is coming soon.
5. Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
This is also a widely popular book, but for some reason it just didn’t work for me. I wanted to love it but, as I was reading it, I disliked it more and more. True, it has an original concept, where the bands of mercenaries allude to musical bands of the 80s, and where each member of Saga represents a class of character in Dungeons and Dragons. For example, Clay is a fighter, Matrick a rogue, and Moog a wizard. Also, the fact that I had to read this book with an open copy of the newest edition of the Dungeons and Dragon’s Monster Manual was a first for me. But honestly, I ended up neither liking nor disliking any of the characters. Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up playing D&D, I don’t know. But the novelty of the book’s originality wore out pretty quickly for me and most of its comedic parts, another aspect of the book that people seem to love, weren’t all that funny to me.
The plot of the book was another thing that I wasn’t a big fan of. Or rather, the execution of it. Kings of the Wyld has a “rescue” plot, where one of the protagonists is looking for someone or something and he must go out into the world to find it and bring it back. In this case, Gabriel, Saga’s frontman, “lost” his daughter Rose when she and her own band of mercenaries went to defend a small town on the other side of the Wyld (a forest full of monsters) against a horde that is now besieging it. Gabriel sets out to rescue her by getting his old band of mercenaries back together. Like any parent, he would do anything to get his daughter back. Pretty much like Marlin from Disney’s Finding Nemo, who travels the length of the ocean to find Nemo and bring him back home. And this is commendable. I think that any parent would do what both Gabriel and Marlin did. However, I didn’t like the execution of the plot in this book and, at times, I got bored with the story. I do not know why. I gave this book an I Didn’t Like It rating. Needless to say, I will not be continuing with the series. My full review for this book is also coming soon.
Thank you for reading and I will see you soon.
