Least Favorite Books of the Summer 2017 Challenge

[Dlmrose, Moderator Emeritus]

What were your least favorite books of the Summer 2017 Challenge? Which books didn't meet your expectations?

[Nicola]

I didn't have any bad books this challenge (not yet anyway). I probably enjoyed Seize the Day the least because I don't like those sort of depressing subjects. It certainly wasn't a 'bad' book though.

[Cait S]

Least favorite book was definitely This Is Where It Ends. It was a cliche, tacky, disrespectful take on school shootings by an author who patted themselves very hard on the back for being SO THOUGHTFUL in including people of color and members of the LGBT+ community. And made sure you knew how special they thought that was.

[Ceelee]

For me, the book Sarah' s Key was my least favorite. The writing was terrible and the Jewish characters were flat stereotypes while Julia, the modern journalist researching the story of the Vel 'd' Hiv was a self centered woman who was shallow and silly and I don't know who was worse Julia or her vain and self absorbed husband. I was so disappointed in the book!

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

Wow, I really liked "Sarah's Key".
For me, it was Into the Water

[Marie (UK)]

The Girl Who Watched Over Dreams was probably the most annoying the basic premise of ventilating and sedating patients playing them happy memory recordings as a means of dealing with pain was not only not tenable just plain stupid. It made my blood boil all the way through - and yes i know its faction but there has to be some believability behind fiction.

and She's Come Undone This is another of those supposed highly rated masterpieces that i just didn't get
requested this from the library, I waited months for my turn and for what? This is the biggest load of rubbish i have read in a long time. Dolores lurches from one catastrophe to another without ever gaining the reader's compassion. The book is a series of events that i could care less about rather than an integrated whole. I would love to know how a book like this gets a rating approaching 4 when all the reviews i see are of 1.

I dislike the fact that a book cannot be rated 0 stars to account for drivel like this (less)

I have to admit though to be the only SRC member who did not like Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. I just finished this on Tuesday again having waited in a long line for the book from the library and i thought it was repetitive, padded out with photos and the writing stilted.

[Trish]

I had a fairly unusual DNF for one book I tried to read this challenge: Too Like the Lightning - I thought it was pretentious and confusing.

Of the ones I finished and gave one star to, I really didn't like The Underground Railroad and The White Rose Murders where I disliked the POV character intently.

[Dee]

I DNF'd several books this season - by authors I've previous enjoyed - Keep Quiet - after she said a cop carrying an AK-47 (Russian made machine gun...and I asked some friends who were cops in the state that book was set)

I also gave The Princess Diarist - 1 star...I wasn't sure where I was going to fit this in, but disappointed

[Diana]

A couple that I really didn't care for included:

Today Will Be Different It got on my TBR list because of a review I'd read but I found the protagonist to be pretty unlikable and the story didn't flow well.

The Lady and the Unicorn I had high hopes for this one because I love historical fiction and I love to see tapestries. One of my favorite travel memories was visiting the Manufacture des Gobelins in Paris where they made and still make tapestries. While the parts of the book that described the process were interesting the characters were not.

[Siobhan]

I wouldn't say I hated anything this season, but there were a few things that I ended up rolling my eyes quite heavily over and barely finishing.

Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother's Ruin Became the Spirit of London because the author apparently doesn't believe in doing research. FOR A HISTORY BOOK.

The End of the World Running Club was beautifully written, but basically impossible to get into.

Burn for Me was likewise very hard to get into, with a heroine that I kept gritting my teeth over pretty much non-stop.

The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories started off promising, but then just kept going in the same endlessly repetitive strain until I was basically crying with boredom.

The Game and the Governess was so relentlessly quirky and full of embarrassment!comedy (Look at this fish out of water! Look at his endless mistakes! Tee hee!) that it very quickly turned me off.