666 or heartbreaking works of staggering disappointment

6 months. 6 disappointments. 6 favorites

I’ve heard some feedback that I’ve been too positive? in this newsletter? Which I gotta say, I don’t hear very often about myself.¹ Far be it from me to disappoint the people so today I’m sharing some fiery rants about the books that have annoyed, irked, disgruntled, dissatisfied, flummoxed or otherwise let me down over the past 6 months. I originally toyed with the idea of tucking this safely behind a paywall, but I couldn’t be arsed to figure it out in time and also everyone needs this heads up so who am I to gate keep. Just don’t like share this with the authors. They can hire me if they want this sort of feedback on their work.

I’ve read over 65 books so far this year² and most of them are simply mediocre. A few have stood out and a few I’ve already forgotten. But these six in particular wounded me so personally, so deeply that I must process them because I had such high hopes as I opened to their crisp, clean first pages.³ Either they were by a beloved author or their subject matter seemed particularly ripe or they had a blurb from a writer whose opinion I respect(ed). But, ultimately these siren calls led me to my doom. And by “doom” I mean like a day or two of feeling confused, petulant and ornery while furiously writing half formed diatribes in my notes app.

Instead of staying down bad crying at the gym, I’m completing the stress response by letting out some of my angsty frustrations here as a warning to other readers. Obviously, I’m all for freedom, so read what you want. But don’t say I didn’t⁴ warn ya. No links included here because I do not recommend you read these books. If you do read them and have a different take⁵, feel free to leave a comment and we’ll discuss why you’re wrong.

To bring some balance to the force I included my 6 favorites of the year so far at the end.

NOTE: For the best footnote experience: click the title of the post when you open the email which will open in its own webpage thing and then just hover over the footnote number and it’ll pop up as a nice little box, easy to read. I just discovered this! Maybe you all already knew in which case, carry on.

spoilers and tirades ahead

In this sequel to The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy single, middle aged BFFs Twyla and Frank encounter a glittery conspiracy in Tanria, the magical realm of the Old Gods. As they investigate mysterious goings on, with the help of baby dragons (why), they come to realize they may actually want to be more than friends. That is kind of it.

Ok so I sincerely loved Hart and Mercy. It was a weird, sweet, sexy, dual POV story with major You’ve Got Mail⁶ energy. This is nowhere near as fun and only has Twyla’s POV. Wtf. The marketing will gaslight you and say its like “When Harry met Sally” and that is just not true.⁷ They have already been friends for years when we meet them so there isn’t any growth or tension in their relationship. Frank is about as interesting as a cardboard box ergo I do not care about him at all. Twyla is boring, kind of stupid and has a very basic arc. There is nary a hint of a whiff of sexiness, chemistry or attraction for over 80 pages and the same goes for plot. Sparse. There is barely any conflict, no real antagonist nor is there any juicy emotional turmoil to invest in. I never cared about the “mystery”, characters, romance and most definitely not the fucking baby dragons that like vomit glitter!? What is happening here!? SO much time is spent on these god damn baby dragons like they are adorable, lovable and fun when they are just idiotic and gross. Unlike in H and M, there isn’t any relational suspense. Nothing is keeping Frank and Twyla from pursuing a relationship. Duckers is back, but without a grump to play off of he is just annoying and useless. He adds nothing to the plot and just felt like filler to add more to the word count. Somehow, though these characters are older than H and M, they felt truly juvenile in their speech, decision making skills and emotional knowledge. Also, the characters names were included too many times in too many sentences which felt clunky and unnatural. Overall a dull and flimsy read. I like this author’s other books and I’m hoping this one is a fluke.

The mysterious, reclusive author of the Clock Island children’s series, Jack Masterson (ugh), has decided out of the blue to write one more book and instead of publishing it for all the little children of the world, he is only gonna make one copy. A Wonka wanna-be, he invites his most favorite fans (all adults now) to play a contest and the winner gets to have this one copy.⁸ Lucy, now in her mid-twenties, was a big fan of this series, grew up in a family of jerks and is now obsessed with adopting Christopher, the resident orphan in one of her classes. So she’s been saving money to do this, but doesn’t have enough yet (guess being a teacher’s aide doesn’t pay well?!). Everything is unfair and she won’t get another job that makes more money because then she can’t see Chris at school as much. Basically its a shitshow of a situation that can only be solved by Lucy winning this book and making a bajillion dollars so she can be his new mom before he is snapped up by another loving family, I guess? For some added “romance” we have Hugo, the Clock Island illustrator (who also had to win a contest to get this job!?) who has been stuck on this lonely island for reasons and really just wants to get his own life and leave. Let the games begin!

I blame VE Schwab for this as her blurb lured me in. After finishing it I kept getting crankier and crankier because I couldn’t stop thinking about how bad it was for like three days. I found it so lacking in any sort of sense, magic, subtlety, logic, fun, mystery, human emotion or compelling plot. I didn’t believe anyone would act the way these characters acted and there was so much lost potential from the game, the mystery and the tension between characters. I assumed it would have a fun, whimsical voice to create a magical, child-like wonderful world but I found the voice to be bland, flat and exceptionally simplistic with a lot of telling and not showing. I don’t mind a semi-magical premise but it needs to be strongly reinforced so I can embrace it. I need to be enchanted and convinced. Reader, I was not.

I had so many questions that I actually got tired of asking them. Why is wishing a thing at all? Who and why is this author? Because we get practically negative information about his backstory. Hugo, who for some reason stayed on this island for no real reason and really wants to leave, now has a girlfriend and so just does a 180 and decides to stay after all!? Why is this contest so insanely lame and lacking in any whimsy or creativity!? Do not even get me started on the “logic” our main character has in relation to this kid and the beyond inappropriate and illogical ways she leads him on to hope for an extremely unlikely future. Pacing was all over the place and the dialogue was laughably dopey. This felt like a book length Hallmark card that required readers to rely on their own nostalgia to keep them interested instead of the plot, world, characters or voice. The “found family” aspect never felt earned. It was more like, ‘you are cute and need a home, so its fate that I am now your new parent!’ Not nearly enough for me, sorry not sorry. Also the ending is basically: everything wrong in life can be fixed with enough money yay! I don’t want to read that sort of story, do you!?

This is very loosely inspired by the fairy tale The Goose Girl. Cordelia’s mother is a dark sorceress who is abusive and demanding, often spelling her to obedience, making her do chores and stealing her friends. Classic fairy tale stuff. When her mother sets her sights upon a rich merchant to marry because they need money, Cordelia is forced into many a stressful encounter with the merchant’s family, including his clever(ish) spinster sister Hester. Once a bunch of supporting characters finally accept that an evil sorceress is in their midst, they research and generally flail about until eventually defeating her. Then, Cordelia gets a new family and Hester gets laid.

This one was a true bummer because I love many of Kingfisher’s books, even highlighting them in this newsletter a few times, but I truly did not enjoy this at all. It had none of the quick witted, adventureous vibes of her other books and the characters were all sort of lame. I was often bored because it was over 330 pages and felt wayyyy too long and drawn out. Kingfisher is usually sprightly in her storytelling, completely engaging me in under 250 pages in her other books so I was baffled at the length here. There were some creepy elements that never felt truly scary because they were delivered matter of factly then moved on from quickly so there wasn’t enough weight for me to really feel them. I found a few of the supporting characters more compelling than Hester and Cordelia and the final climax was wrapped up way too conveniently. Like: we need this information so good thing there is a random ghost who shows up to tell us what we need to know right when we need it and wow! We’ve got all the random shit we need for this “defeat the sorceress” spell right here!? type stuff. This held none of the joy, creativity, energy, suspense or quirkiness of her other books which left me glum and confused. Come back T!

A memoir sharing the author’s life coming to terms with her bipolar disorder within her evangelical upbringing.

I’m always looking for ‘breaking down religious baggage’ themed books because I’m very interested in this topic and these women’s stories due to my own conservative Christian childhood. I’m sure Gazmarian’s personal story is compelling, but the way this was presented was amateurish and juvenile in format and sentence structure with no artistry or nuance. This is short, under 200 pages, but way too much of that page count was recounting Bible stories in too much detail. She tells, recounts and reports information without creativity, distinctive prose or storytelling skill. Just lists story beats. Repetitive and lacking in insight, there were often bizarre out of place details that led nowhere or a scene would start way before the action so was lagging in energy and interest. Things would be mentioned without proper seeding beforehand which removed their weight and tension. I had so many lingering questions because plot elements would be mentioned in passing without context, timing, setting and details to piece together a coherent picture. Why does she keep mentioning this ex boyfriend story but never shares what actually went down? Why is God/Christianity still important to her through all of this? She doesn’t succeed in connecting the dots of her life coherently nor connecting readers to her life with enough details to grasp events emotionally.

The most egregious issue to me is that she is a poet and mentions that poetry was a huge part of her connection to church and spirituality and life. Why the HELL isn’t even one of her poems included in this!? Why isn’t it a framework tying it all together? How can we be expected to know her at all if she just tells us she is a poet without showing us her passion and skill at all!? A massive point of lost potential. As a development editor I was aghast at this omission because it was such a no brainer to include and would have enhanced the reader’s connection and understanding of the author. I cannot fathom a reason why none of her poems found their way into these pages. Unless her poetry is worse than her prose.

A sort of pop culture/literary criticism amalgamation, The Darcy Myth endeavors to argue that women get into toxic relationships because good ol’ Fitzwilliam trained us to love and accept monstrous men. Now, I love classic literature and digging into the text, characters, plots, settings, tropes alllll of that. I wrote one of my senior papers on the Cinderella archetype in Austen novels ok? Which is why I thought this would be fun and interesting. Nope.

The language here is childish, silly and simplistic which I felt was insulting and desperate for Gen Z attention. Perhaps if this wasn’t so fixated on Darcy as a monster, and instead focused more on Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester⁹ I could have been more on board but Darcy is chill compared to those guys! He has his flaws but he has an arc which she seems to not really account for. He is not a rake, he is not a “bad boy” or womanizer, he isn’t already married. Yes, he is a total snob who is a jerk at first but we eventually learn that he is charming, awkward, shy and kind with a bit of a savior complex. Elizabeth doesn’t alter her behavior to win or change him, but over the course of the book learns her own shortcomings and comes to realize that he contains multitudes. She only accepts him after witnessing a character evolution and isn’t in the market of “saving” or “winning” him. Elizabeth actually defies convenience, convention and comfort when she rejects Darcy when she sees him as a complete ass. In fact I believe she says (checks notes) “I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry." She only accepts Darcy’s proposal after learning more about him, getting over her initial prejudice and witnessing his layered, evolved character. The author keeps warning women not to try to “fix” a partner like Pride and Prejudice taught them, but I do not read this action into Elizabeth Bennet/P and P at all so I find this a bewildering argument. Also the real cad of P and P is Wickham, who Elizabeth initially flirts with but wants nothing to do with once his real monster nature is revealed.

The thesis seems to be that because women tend to love these “monstrous” romance heroes they are set up for terrible relationships and its these book’s fault as if women cannot discern the difference between reality and fiction and agency does not exist. Insulting. Women are defended as a whole but rarely acknowledged as having their own individual, responsive behavior. Also they can enjoy books and characters and not want to marry that person in real life!

There are also these stupid interludes between chapters (I guess to appeal to the youth?) that felt condescending and silly. In an odd choice this author uses All Too Well as an example of a Taylor Swift song that highlights rakish men when Foolish One, Girl at Home, I Knew You Were Trouble, Babe etc etc etc are right there. I wanted the opportunity to take a sort of literature class to dive into troubled heroes and how they affect their heroines and can, in turn, us as readers. This was not it due to its childish tone, elementary approach and wrong choice of character to highlight.

Also, if I were looking for something to blame for women thinking “I can change him(no really I can)” I would place some of it at the feet of purity culture which espoused that women are responsible for men’s thoughts and actions. But that is for another newsletter.

Sigh. Finally we come to the last and least.

Even though this has a five IN ITS TITLE, it really follows six characters who become an unlikely team of untrustworthy assassins that have to kill the King who is the most unkillable guy ever and lives in the most secure place ever and blah blah blah you get it.

I thought this would be a sort of Adult Six of Crows since YA was mentioned nowhere in its marketing material. Ugh, taken in again! This read more YA than most of the YA I’ve read. Each chapter is the first person and alternates between six POVs. It started ok with each narrator distinct in their language and motivations but went downhill so fast it might as well as been on a sled. I should have stopped reading when my senses told me to after a couple chapters but! Rebecca Roanhorse had a glowing review of it on Goodreads and because I enjoy her writing¹⁰ I trusted her and kept at it. I didn’t think I could get more cynical but I think I am after reading this.

A condensed list of thoughts I had while reading

• I don’t like idiosyncratic words in my fantasy worlds; OK?

• Why are there toilets and “takeaway” food in this feudal medieval society? What is this world?

• Relational issues keep resolving immediately which removes almost all tension and suspense which is boring

• Not nearly enough rivalry, enmity or angst when all these ne'er do wells finally meet up. Wouldn’t some instant malice up the ante and keep me interested in how things will resolve? Why is this tension alleviated immediately?!

• Why is everyone the most beautiful person ever?

• Why doesn’t Euyn get recognized at any point or even worry about it when thats all he’s been scared about happening for years?

• Ugh, why is the dialogue so childish?

• Why is this bunch of liars all noble, friendly and chill without anything really dividing them?

• Why am I told time and again how impossible this situation is and how they’ll never get out alive and then with minimal suspense, action or tension everything is fine because… it just is?!

• Who in the actual fuck is driving this carriage that they are all hanging around inside of!? They stop, start, hide, flee etc without any mention of who is driving because they are all inside of it, lounging on couches. Don’t they need a driver? Wouldn’t they need to threaten or bribe this driver not to turn them in? Couldn’t this be a fun point of suspense?

• So Tiyung had to hunt down Sora when she escaped because his Dad was like “if you love her you’ll bring her back” but he also lived his entire life being horrible to hide his love for her so no one would find out? So did Dad know or not about his feelings? And why is bringing her back to this hellhole an act of love!?

• Oh PUHlease Mikail has been carting around a royal outfit for Euyn for weeks, through monster attacks, cave sleeps and mob fights for this one random dinner? Like, why though?

• Why is Mikail, the 23 year old ROYAL SPYMASTER, allowed to just peace out of work for months? What is this vacation policy?

• These setting descriptions are less than half assed, they are a quarter assed.

• Sora is immediately into her mortal enemy because 1) he is in love with her and 2) she got one iota of context?

• I wish I also wanted this King dead so I could be on board with the mission but I know nothing about his whole deal.

• Why can’t we get any details about this lover of Sora’s that was killed at some point? Is this Sunye whose name is mentioned one time in passing about 400 pages in?

• The betrayal “twist” was so poorly set up, I assumed it was because the author just forgot to give Aeri any backstory which seemed in line with the quality so far.

• All of these accommodations they stay in are posh and comfortable, removing an entire area of tension and space for character development. There is always enough money to get over and above what they need. yawn.

• I thought this assassination attempt was supposed to be the most impossible thing ever to even think about attempting and all they needed was a valet uniform and a hot chick. So they just needed like, costumes? Also everything goes according to plan so there is no suspense or tension at any point. A few people are just mildly nervous which does not make for an engaging scene.

• Much of it is a road trip story but with none of the typical issues that arise in that genre. No breakdowns, no getting lost, no weather, no having to be on the run and camp out, no taking turns driving, WHO IS DRIVING!? They also seem to all have unlimited funds even though some of them are only in this mission to get money…

• There is no romance just random out of the blue attraction. Mikail and Euyn get back together right away removing all the fun ‘will they won’t they’ angsty tension! Why!?

• Why are there six POVs if it’s called 5 blades? Why does Tiyung have a POV at all? Is it just thrown in there to give Sora a romantic partner? We “learned” most of his information though Sora so his POV is almost entirely superfluous. It would have been much more of an emotional punch to get the reveal of his true love/motivations through Sora’s viewpoint which would make us not know whether to trust him or not and have to piece his character together by what is shown keeping the reader guessing instead of just telling us how secretly noble he is inside his POV. Boring and yet another missed tension opportunity to add to a growing list.

Ok so you get it and I’ll stop there for all our sakes. This was an appallingly simplistic, minimally shown and stupidly told “romantasy” within a lackluster world containing childish characters and a bunch of half formed tropes thrown together without any narrative or emotional sense. I’m still cranky about how much time I gave this¹¹ and now I’m just that much more untrusting of blurbs and reviews from authors.

As promised because if you’re still here you’ve earned it:

MY FAVORITES of 2024 so far

I already included 4 of these in past newsletters and the others will appear in the future so look back and stay tuned.

what are your most disappointing reads this year? what are your favorites so far?

1. i get the opposite feedback when talking about anything other than books

2. i keep track of them here

3. sweet, naive abby

4. say I didn’t

5. I’m not going to lie and say it is a safe space but, be brave

6. the best rom com as we all know

7. you want a modern when harry met sally? i already told you about You, Again in this post

8. this actually sounds like a great horror novel pitch. picture this: the island is haunted by the ghosts of characters past who are really murdered children out for revenge! i dunno, i’m a reader not a writer

9. hot

10. her book appears in this newsletter post: powerful pupils

11. 1 day