Bad Books

Review: Siri, Who Am I? by Sam Tschida

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My Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Alright, let’s just get it over with… I didn’t enjoy this book at all! If you liked it, maybe don’t read this review.

To start with, the entire premise wound up not making any sense because the first thing that happens is this hospital where she wakes up just like sends her home a couple days later like she didn’t just suffer a mysterious head trauma and lose her memories. No one offered to call the police for her to file a report, she wasn’t assigned a caseworker, they didn’t even ensure she had someone to pick her up or someplace to go. Just: “Oh you don’t know who you are? K, bye!” and off she wanders in her blood stained dress.

And add to that the fact that this girl is obviously stupid or crazy because despite having all her knowledge of the world intact (just not her personal memories), she assumes that every man she meets is her boyfriend and every object she lays eyes on must belong to her even when everything and everyone around her is directly contradicting that.

So, she wanders around for days – in that same dress – pretending she is rich and for some reason refusing to tell anyone in her life that she has had a traumatic injury resulting in memory loss. And all while being incredibly insufferable about…everything, actually.

Honestly, at no point in this whole story does anyone do anything that makes any sense or that an actual person might do! When she finds the location of her accident (a public business) and goes to the police about her assault (but only because she wants access to her empty bank account), they don’t even ask the business for the security footage from that night. No, instead they decide she should be arrested for kiting checks and the only way out is to help them catch a meth kingpin. Of course!

I could go on, because there’s way more, but I’m really just hoping I’ll get amnesia about this whole book and never have to think about it again!

Abandoned (Again): The Host by Stephenie Meyer

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Dear Future Self,

Do not ever pick up this book again. I know everything that you think and have formulated a list of rebuttals below:

“I didn’t hate the movie…”
Yes you did, you only watched it because Saoirse Ronan was in it, do not lie to yourself.

“Well if I can stand to read Twilight, I can stand to read this…”
False. You have tried to read it twice now, and both times you hated every second of it.

“Maybe an audiobook…”
You just tried that and you got 2/3 of the way through, saw how much longer it was going to go on, and gave up because it wasn’t worth it.

“Yeah, but so-and-so loves it…”
So-and-so obviously has infinite patience, but you don’t. Move on.

“But-“
No seriously think of one thing you liked about this book. Go on. One little thing.

Exactly. Now go read something good.

Best Wishes,
Your Past Self

Review: Need by Carrie Jones

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Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆ – did not like it

So first thing to say is that this book feels like a pretty blatant Twilight rip-off. I could list all the direct parallels (characterizations, plot points, etc.), but this review would wind up a mile long. And it’s not just a copy of Twilight, it’s a badly written one, in my opinion.

The protagonist appears pretty dense and the magical creature reveal is just so badly done I don’t even know how to explain it. The writing alternates between sluggish and rushed throughout the whole book, which can make it feel quite awkward. Presumably someone edited this novel, but you can’t really tell.

Then there’s the plot: that of pale, plain girl somehow desired by everyone (almost including her own father, but at least Jones manages to side-step that one) and oh look, they’re all secret supernatural creatures and the small, cold town just somehow magically doesn’t notice. Obviously we’ve been there, done that. The worst part is, the summary of the book makes it sound so interesting. Girl moves to a new town and realizes she has a preternaturally creepy stalker and the disappearances in town might be related? Fascinating premise! But the reality just falls so short of that.

If you liked Twilight, you might like this book, but honestly there are so many better books to read.

Abandoned: I Don’t Know What You Know Me From by Judy Greer

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I Don’t Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star by Judy Greer

I just couldn’t make myself keep reading. This book is like having a stranger’s grandmother tell you stories about them, only they only want to tell the mundane stories like “one time they stole a cookie and I told them to put it back”. I really wanted to enjoy it, and the prologue seems really promising, but it’s just boring.

I won’t rate this one because I only made it about 40 pages before I gave up; I’ll just say: There are way better celebrity memoirs out there. I wouldn’t bother with this one if I were you.

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Review: Undiscovered Gyrl by Allison Burnett

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A compulsively-promiscuous, troubled teen blogs about her interpersonal relationships throughout the year off between high school and university.

*** Trigger Warnings:  Child Sex Abuse, Rape, Domestic Abuse ***

Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆ – did not like it
Genre:  young adult fiction, ya contemporary
Pros:  none
Cons:  racism, annoying main character

If you enjoy reading books about characters who are racist, ignorant, self-centered, and downright annoying, then you will love this book. If you prefer to actually like the characters you read about, don’t even bother with this one.

For those who have seen the film, whether you liked it or not, this is one of those rare times where the book is worse than its film adaptation. When making the film they cut out about 90% of Katie’s racism and internalized misogyny, which greatly improved her personality. The character in the film tends to come across more naive and damaged than anything else, but this is not the case in the novel.

Even the very brief mystery at the end wasn’t interesting enough to save this book, in my opinion.

Another thing that explains some of the problems I had with this book about a young girl and her issues: it was written by a man and it shows.

Honestly, there are so many other, better books out there about teen girls with issues, read those, don’t waste your time on this one.

 

Mini Review: Life and Death by Stephenie Meyer

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So Meyer set out to make a gender-swap Twilight to disprove the allegations of sexism, but all she managed to do was emphasis the sexism and add some new different sexism. So that was… unenjoyable.

This book was actually really boring, so on that front the original is better; although, I still haven’t managed to put my finger on what it is that makes it so much more boring. It was actually hard to read though; I couldn’t keep my attention on it.

I will say, the ending is much better. Maybe just because it, you know, ends. Instead of dragging on for three more cringe-inducing novels. But I remember thinking all of that crap was so unnecessary when I read the original saga, so it’s nice to see the fat trimmed and the story summed up in a more efficient manner. Besides, Vampire!Bella was the only vaguely tolerable Bella. Vampire!Beau is still pretty boring, but at least it was done instead of three-and-a-half novels of “will they or won’t they” to read.

All in all, a pretty superfluous addition to an already not-good series, but not quite as bad as it could have been.

Abandoned: Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson

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Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

College freshman and psychology major, Leigh Nolan, finds her problem-solving skills woefully inadequate when it comes to her increasingly tangled and complicated romantic relationships.

I don’t always rate abandoned books, and certainly don’t review them, because often I feel like I don’t have a right, having not read hardly any of it. However, with this book, I disliked it by page 28 and couldn’t find a single reason to keep reading, so I’m including a 1 star (did not like it) rating and a brief review.

I found the main character’s personality grating. She complained a lot, but actively chose to ignore her problems or any ways of fixing them, instead choosing to….you guessed it, complain some more! With all the complaints about herself and her life she had, she still somehow managed to talk about herself as if she thought she was super special, even to the extent of denigrating others to show how special she was. I’m aware that some character progression would probably be made later in the book, but when I tried to imagine forcing my way through this book long enough to get to that, I wanted to jump off a balcony…

The boyfriend was an asshole, which is more of a personal annoyance, not a flaw in the novel. It’s perfectly normal to have a character the audience isn’t supposed to like, but when it’s a book where I personally can’t even like the main character, it’s hard to deal with the annoying characters, too.

Actually all the side characters felt fairly…..not even just unrealistic, but affected and fake-interesting.

Basically the whole thing felt like the author was trying too hard to create uniqueness.

In an attempt to discover if the book would improve, I took to Goodreads reviews (which I didn’t bother with before reading because someone recommended this one to me personally, a choice which I regret) and discovered people to be pretty divided. A love it or hate it sort of thing.
But what settled the matter of keep slogging through or give up, was a review by Maggie whose resolve I applaud (they actually managed to finish the book). Their review covered a part of the book that got pretty racist. Not having made it this far into the book myself, I recommend you read their review for yourself here.

After reading about it, I realized I wasn’t willing to force my way through a book I didn’t like just to have to read a scene like that!

I will point out that someone in the comments of Maggie’s review says Alicia Thompson has admitted this scene was wrong and claimed to learn from it, but since I couldn’t find any proof of this anywhere, I’d take that with a grain of salt. If true, I’m glad, if not, I’m not surprised, and either way it doesn’t excuse anything or make me willing to finish this book.

View all my ratings and reviews on Goodreads