heartbreaking works of staggering disappointment
from first half of 2025
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The time has now arrived for me to revisit the books that bummed me out so far this year. Would that the disappointments just lived in the real world, but alas they reside in literature as well. As with the previous installments of this series, these books aren’t necessarily ‘bad’, they just did not deliver exactly what I wanted, or fulfill all my dreams and expectations and instead grew to frustrate me more and more as I kept turning the pages.1 Though I do not especially enjoy getting annoyed at books, this is a good exercise in venting2 as my notes app starts to fill up with all sorts of questions, rants and other descriptions of displeasure and after that is done, I can let it alllll go and not feel bitter at all. Wish this worked for the real world disappointments too…
If you read any of these and have a take3 let me know in the comments! Also in the comments, feel free to let out all your own descriptions of displeasure at your most disappointing reads of the year so far. It’s cathartic!
Previous installments of this series
Get used to disappointment with these.
THE BRIAR BOOK OF THE DEAD by A.G. Slatter
Ellie is from a long line of Briar witches that sort of keep the town of Silverton running. Luckily they were given special permission from the Church4 to do this otherwise they’d be burned at the stake. Ellie is pretty bummed because she does not have any of the family magic herself until the family matriarch dies and suddenly she’s able to see dead people sixth sense style. Because she’s able to communicate with ancestors long deceased, she learns some deep, dark family secrets all while trying to stop the Church from changing their mind about the Briar witches.
I had hopes for this one because I enjoyed the author’s previous Gothic and usually enjoy a story of female power told through a ‘witch’ lens.5 Alas, I did not find this a “beautifully told Gothic fairy tale of ghosts, witches, deadly secrets and past sins” like the blurb promised. While the writing itself was skilled on a sentence level, it was VERY slow and I kept writing down the note “why do I care?”. There was so. much. exposition. without almost any mystery or emotion by page 188 that I honestly don’t know why I kept reading… I think I became more strict with quitting books after this6 which is why there are only 4 on this shelf unlike the last few disappointment shelves.
Ellie was an extremely passive character who doesn’t discover anything important on her own or put together the ‘twist’ herself— she is just constantly told information. Sometimes important scenes would be completely skipped over removing tension and clarity. Including the light “romance” element! Ellie makes eyes at a cute dude smash cut to waking up in bed the next morning what?! We don’t get any build up for sexy times at all!? The audacity of this choice baffled me. They have almost zero interaction before this apparent sexcapade and details aren’t filled in after the fact so I had no understanding or investment in this relationship. It was so out of the blue and also complete missed opportunity for SOMETHING juicy to happen. I yelled aloud at this book scaring my husband.7
There is also no suspense whatsoever and the dark events, like burning people alive, are recounted so matter-of-factly without any emotion that they held no weight for me as the reader. Also, if you want me to be scared of a villain, don’t have them be able to defeated instantly by a holly stick please. The magic system was murky at best, the rules weren’t consistently followed8, the odd asides and juvenile humor were irritating and wtf are Lord Leeches!? They were mentioned as important in the beginning and then nope, never explained who, what, when, where, why after that. Ellie needed way more agency and I needed way more emotional stakes, consistency, build-up for the romance, action and narrative tension and way fewer information dumps. A disappointment because the writing had merit and I could see many spots of potential, they just were completely bypassed in favor of much less interesting fare.9
JULIE CHAN IS DEAD by Liann Zhang
When Julie Chan finds her long, lost identical twin Chloe dead, she decides to assume her identity because being a rich, beautiful social media influencer is much more preferable than existing paycheck to paycheck while living with toxic relatives. At first living the high life is grand, but soon the impossible pressure of constant content generation and sisterly impersonation becomes too much for Julie. Especially when she starts to put together how Chloe ended up dead in the first place.
I love a good doppelganger tale and this plot had potential for some juicy commentary on modern internet life and I thought it would do a deep dive into the kind of unhinged mind that would go to these intense levels of personal duplicity. However this was unfocused and simplistic. I was hoping for an opportunistic, diabolical anti-heroine with psychological depth but what I got was a woefully underdeveloped, reactionary, flat brat who was just sort of dumb. (spoiler10) I didn’t understand why any one acted the way they did. The characters never felt realistic or understandable, there were odd tonal shifts, a bizarre scenario at the climax and bewildering plot leaps without the necessary earned action. This felt like two completely different books smushed together and while I loved the cover, this basically just delivered attempted shock value instead of clever cultural commentary and a deep character study. I never felt like I had an understanding of Julie as a character and her decision and action in regards to the rest of the influencer girls at the end was exceptionally out of left field. Why not beat them at their own game instead of (spoiler11)!? Where is the sense of poetic justice!?!? What was the use of writing this particular story around this specific subset of characters if that was gonna be the ending!?!
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MADWOMAN by Chelsea Bieker
Clove lives safe and sound with her husband, two children and a pantry full of supplements in Portland, Oregon. But she grew up with a different name in a different place. When her long buried past threatens the life she’s built she kind of (?) goes nuts. But not in a psychologically thrilling way. More like a “huh?” way.
Readers of this newsletter know that ‘descent into madness’ is one of my favorite things to read about so forgive me for assuming that a book titled “Madwoman” would deliver this. I was hoping for a mysterious, eerie gothic and what I got was a banal domestic ‘thriller’ whose ‘twist’ I guessed from the synopsis. You probably would too since you’ve most likely read a book before. Almost the entire thing is written as story to her mother, so she addresses ‘you’ constantly, which got old very quickly. This read like it was hoping to become a TV movie with laughably stupid dialogue, plot jumps galore and fuzzy detail work. It did go down very quickly though. I think I read it in a day and I wouldn’t have stuck with it if it took much longer.
I liked some of the ideas like having Clove be obsessed with heath/wellness to an insane degree as a way of processing her trauma but it reached self-parody levels of granular detail with all the supplements and hippie food. Plus it didn’t cleverly explore this tendency of Clove’s, it just named it constantly. Her character was also written spastically. She’ll sometimes speak very sassily and short but her internal monologue building up to that retort didn’t have that voice so it always felt jarring. The ‘reveals’ and ‘twists’ and ‘suspense’ were so basic that I pretty much had to keep reading because… I guess I believed there had to be more to it than the obvious. NoPe. If you suspect that xyz happened than yeah it did and just the way you think it does too. No surprise, no red herrings, no suspense or real mystery.
Clove's maternal anxiety I can totally get and I wanted to see that play out in a more thoughtful descent into madness way but she never really seemed to care about her husband or kids, more the performance and domestic bliss aspect of family life. I also had many questions about why characters never behaved like actual human beings—why certain things would have been hidden or lied about to other characters who had no stakes in the story which really took me out of it. I don’t really want to continually roll my eyes while reading a book you know? Also the dialogue was really quite egregious. The conversations between Clove and her ‘new friend’ are spacey and hard to follow because of the lack of realism. And when her kids go missing her husband just yells “MISSING!” at her like 25 times. What? That’s all you have to say? Just “MISSING”? Then they drive 11 hours to find them without having one conversation on the road even though he just found out an encyclopedia’s worth of information before they got in the car. No questioning, no probing, no berating, no incredulous freak outs. Just “MISSING!” Also the line at the end ‘the cycle ended with me’ felt like a blatant ‘It Ends with Us’ rip off.
-_-.
WEYWARD by Emilia Hart
Three women across history encounter oppression, misogyny and violence before realizing that they may have some power and agency after all.
The Weyward Sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land, Thus do go, about, about, Thrice to thine, thrice to mine, And thrice again to make up nine.
Peace, the charm's wound up.
—Macbeth
Weyward is used in the First Folio edition of Macbeth. In later versions, Weyward was replaced by Weird.
I do not usually go for stories that ‘span centuries’ as I often feel too emotionally removed from the characters and the various plot lines. But! This was recommended to me multiple times over the last few years by a few trusted sources and lists and I’m very into witchy vibes lately. Unfortunately, while this had potential and at first I was intrigued by each story, I did not end up enjoying this at all and by the end was writing ALL CAPS complaints in my notes app.
Though it gave some cottage core vibes and was middlingly atmospheric, I was never invested any of the three storylines nor transported to their settings. Each narrator’s voice, though in completely different tenses and taking place at different historical periods, ended up sounding exactly alike. Their problems were exactly the same (bad men being bad to them), their naive dispositions and subpar intelligence levels were all too simliar and the writing voice felt detached and observational so I was rarely invested in their outcomes. I wished each woman had a more distinct personality and tone. The characters were all one note with little to no depth or nuance and omg, too many things fall on the ground resulting in Very Important Discoveries! This is only allowed to happen once per book,12 not once per narrator.
It sort of felt like a poor man’s The Once and Future Witches but without any of the rich characterization or compelling plot. Every single man, except maybe one?, were cartoonishly villainous and in the same predictable ways so they weren’t ever interesting, truly scary or surprising. This also had a way too conveniently detailed confessional journal and I do not believe it would have survived just chilling in a random drawer for FOUR HUNDRED YEARS. Almost every single major female character is raped in this which felt excessive13 and sometimes they acted VERY DUMB! Consider actions like: not asking for help when bad guys are after you and people have offered to help, bringing a large ladder inside your house to hide in the attic and then just leaving the ladder there under the trapdoor hoping no one notices it14, reading by candlelight while a stalker prowls for you in the next room etc. There was very little sense behind some of the reasoning, dialogue and choices from all the characters and the last 40 pages took foreverrrrrrr. Also the magic system had very little explanation and even less consistency15 and the ‘twists’ held little water to me.
Each woman’s story focused on abuse at the hands of men and so this didn’t merit three different POVs to me. It lacked suspense and the Hallmark-ey, flat, banal characters whose only purpose seemed to be sexually assaulted and/or get pregnant was pretty depressing and never dove satisfyingly into a ‘female rage/revenge/power grab’ story. I wanted to witness a deeper exploration of varied female focused themes, more creativity, more layers, more sense and a stronger message than “live alone off the land, birth a daughter and don’t trust men.”
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have you read any of these?
what did you think?
what were your most disappointing reads so far this year?
this part is on me
which is fun and a helpful release
be it the same or different! i don’t bite, just judge
huh?
see my toil and trouble shelf
i think this was like my 2nd book of the year
you’d think he’d be used to this.
blood is integral to the magic system. except somehow a ghost (which has no blood as is established in the narrative) is able to tap into magic to help Ellie… uh no. you make the rules you gotta stick to them OR provide very good reasons why they are able to be broken.
basically it needed better editing. Hey! I’m a development editor! they didn’t hire me but maybe another writer reading this would?
at one point she says “I’m literally about to murder seven people. What the fuck?” ugh. that is it? come onnnn.
drugging them then burning them alive!?!
if at all!
i counted it happening to 4 separate characters. come on, this isn’t game of thrones. can we be more creative and less predictable with our female trauma please?
which buys her like a second?
since when can this character see through crow’s eyes? before they could only chitchat now she is inside its head?
I love the title of this post! haha Love a got literary allusion, obvs.
I haven't read any of these books, and shall not!
I haven't read any of these, but your criticisms are the kind of things that would bother me. So I'll be skipping them!
My biggest recent disappointment was A CROWN OF IVY AND GLASS by Claire Legrand. I had a lot of issues with it; here are a few:
- It's supposed to be an adult novel, but reads very YA. The main character, who's 20, acted more like 15.
- The main character was a selfish, shallow brat. She knew this, and sometimes even felt bad about it, but not bad enough to change it.
- Her relationship with her (also unlikable) love interest went from purely physical attraction to "I love you" instantly.
- There were too many plot lines introduced, so a lot of them ended up feeling underbaked, despite the book being 600 pages long.
I really like Legrand's Empirium trilogy, but I won't be continuing with this series.