Weekly Question - Mar 5 - Overhyped?

[Bec]

Robin P wrote: "I'll start since I have OPINIONS on this!
Where the Crawdads Sing - I couldn't buy the premise of a child growing up alone like that. She never got sick or had a serious injury an..."
I agree with this one. I couldn't finish. Interestingly enough I just watched the movie on Prime and quite enjoyed it, despite not being able to push through with the book.

Rachel wrote: "I'm sure I'll get flak for this, but I really struggled to get into The Underground Railroad. I just felt so detached from the character and found it a slog to get through, even tho..."
Another one I didn't finish...just didn't do anything for me.

[Bea]

Robin P wrote: "My reaction to The Great Gatsby was "meh". I didn't dislike it, but there was barely anything to it, in my opinion."

I had the same reaction to that book. Nothing outstanding.

[Bea]

Bec wrote: "Rachel wrote: "I'm sure I'll get flak for this, but I really struggled to get into The Underground Railroad. I just felt so detached from the character and found it a slog to get through, even tho..."
Another one I didn't finish...just didn't do anything for me."

Again, a book that I gave 3*, as it was a bit slow and not fully engaging to me.

[Chelsea]

For me, it was The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

I don't know if it was the fact that I listened to the audiobook, but I just could not find it in me to care about the story at all. Every character annoyed me, the plot seemed to drag, it just wasn't a great book.

[Sophia]

This is such a great topic since people have mentioned books in here that I adored (Harrow the Ninth, which I read 3 times in a year!) and also books I didn't love (The House in the Cerulean Sea, which my entire book club loved except me) so naturally I'm trying to find patterns in why I like some popular things but not others.

My two big ones are The Fifth Season, which just left me cold - a bunch of disparate storylines that don't come together enough to form a complete world plus a lot of timeline-jumping that felt like trying to read a book one jigsaw puzzle piece at a time and never being sure that all the pieces were even there. The other is the Bridgerton series - I started it after the first season of the Netflix show came out and I got through the first 3 books before I finally accepted that I was going to be a person who just watches the show.

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

Sophia wrote: "This is such a great topic since people have mentioned books in here that I adored (Harrow the Ninth, which I read 3 times in a year!) and also books I didn't love ([book:The House ..."

I also didn't care for The Fifth Season, it seemed quite depressing to me.

[Hannah]

Oh, I agree with The Fifth Season. I really wanted to love it, as I found the idea so cool, but I have this problem with books featuring emotionally numb/traumatized characters — I understand that it's probably quite realistic to write character who have suffered horrible things in this very "flat" way, but I just really have trouble reading books like this. I have the same problem with all of Octavia Butler's work, plus a few other random things I've read recently (The Garden of Evening Mists, Migrations, etc.)

[♞ Pat]

Jennifer W wrote: "Life After Life. Ugh! This book makes me angry just thinking about the time I spent reading it hoping for something to come from it! It just dragged on and on and on. The gimmick of..."

That's the first book I thought of when I saw this question. I don't know why I bothered finishing it ...

[Karolina]

Educated
I couldn't believe a word she said, especially since she mentioned multiple times that she might not be remembering things correctly or that her brothers remember the same events differently.

Honor
Everyone in my book club loved it but the first half of the book was so sad and thoughtful and then they ended it with a nonsense Bollywood ending that ruined the whole book for me.