Disappointing Books of 2021 | Disappointing Reads 

You know what wasn't a disappointing book from my reads of 2021. Brightly Burning. After watching your channel for over a year now, I kept kicking myself in the butt for not reading any of your books. Part of the reason was I didn't have the time to read because I had a lot of college work, and another part was I am a mood reader and absolutely nothing was speaking to me. So I went to the library hoping that a deadline to read would help me get out of my slump, and boy did your book exceed any and all expectations I had for it. I loved it so so much and now I want to add it to my bookshelf so I can reread it again sometime in the future. I hope to someday publish a book of my own, and your videos have always given me inspiration. Thank you for being an awesome, honest, and enjoyable creator.

I liked the silent patient at first because it shocked me at the end, then the more time passed I got mad because I was like...wait...no...I couldn’t have figured it out because he didn’t give enough until the very end and now I’m salty about it

Always good to watch videos like this when my book isn't in the list! 😂 Hope you're having a great Christmas, Alexa, and here's wishing you and all of your viewers a wonderful 2022.

My two biggest wishes for traditional publishing. 1) Have a woman READ it. I hate when female characters are reduced to one dimensional love obsessed characters. Extra points if they are a woman who can use their boobs to sense the world around them (why do men think that our nipples feel emotions?). 2) We need more sensitivity readers or at minimum a therapist or someone with collegic backgrounds for mental health. It's really demoralizing to always have your mental health issue that you struggle to understand yourself and have to deal with the TRAUMA associated with that mental health issue, to then see yourself in entertainment constantly being depicted as a villain or bad guy. I'm so over mental illness being a motivation for the antagonist. Most people with mental health problems are victims of trauma not insane. Sigh. I will step off my soap box. Thanks so much Alexa. You are a beautiful soul!!!

For me, my most disappointing was [a book I've decided I actually don't wanna share the name of - sorry!]. I REALLY wanted to love it, because there's representation in there that's literally made for me (an LGBT character with my particular disability), and because the author writes from a place of knowledge, as they have also been diagnosed with the same chronic illness. But in the end, I found myself unsurprised by the twist, and I struggled a lot with the pacing of the denouement. Is it a bad book? No - I just went in SO determined to love it, and I found myself struggling with it despite that. Perhaps it was unfair of me that my expectation was that I was gonna ADORE it before I even opened the book, you know? Thanks for framing your disappointing books in this way. I like the honesty of saying what didn't work for you, without judgement towards those who do enjoy these books. :) Love it.

6.45: Hate that...book/film/show get hyped up so much, you get excited and then it fails. It just hurts. When something gets hyped up a lot, you know it is going to be bad.

I love that this wasn't just a bash fest. Well done!

Alexa, i recommend the book classroom of the elite. It's a school thriller about classes battling each other for the title of "Class A" through the "special exams" created by the school

Sounds like this year was mostly a good reading year! I still plan on reading The Silent Patient, but I've schooled my expectations, haha. I've unfortunately read more duds than wins this year, which I attribute to my habit of pulling a bunch of books at random from the library and seeing if they work for me. 😅 My biggest dud was definitely Plain Bad Heroines, which made me so sad because I've been yearning for a great gothic WLW novel. Alas, it was 600 pages of nothingburger. Hope you have a great reading year in 2022!!

have you read you'll be the death of me by karen mcmanus? I've just finished it and I'm dying to know your opinion!

Most disappointing read of the year for me was Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The action had no stakes and felt meaningless, and there was a particularly uncomfortable sexual scene with a minor near the end 🤔

This year I tried to read through all the Star Wars canon novels as a way to try and fight my reading slump. I had heard amazing things about Timothy Zahn and his Thrawn books. Unfortunately they failed to hook me. I might try his legends books but so far he’s on the bottom of my SW author list

100% agree with you on Michaelides. I wanted to like the novels, especially because I did like the twists themselves, to a degree, but once you get to the twist, you feel like the narrative before didn't make sense or was invalidated and I hate feeling like the actual journey to the twist was a waste of time.

Sounded like your cat opened a cold one

I love how you can articulate why the books didn't work for you! I wish I had that skill haha

Alexa- given what you liked about The Next Everest was; you might like a fiction YA book by Gordon Kormon. He did a fiction piece about kids going up Everest. It's an older book- I read it in Middle School- but an excellent read.

18:34 cat meows so cute

I kept looking below my desk expecting to see my cat playing with his circle roller, but he's sleeping. That was *your* cat(s). :) Me with my quality headphones. You with your quality videos. Everywhere, cats.

Merry Christmas

I haven't read The Maidens but I think that from what you said, (if you haven't read it yet) I think you might like The Secret History by Donna Tart. (Again sorry if you already read it) it was in my opinion great in Greek (kinda) stories weaved in? And it's dark academia and I think it had great tension. You know something is wrong, but don't know what that is. I hope this comment is easy to understand and I didn't ramble too much.

I think for me the most, and by far the most, disappointing book was The Last Thing He Told Me. I was expecting a thriller, because that was the hype, but if one looks carefully you see it is also classified as "domestic literature." The only possible source of tension is that the husband who "disappears" is so effing perfect the reader should be totally invested in what happens to him. To accomplish this, almost every chapter begins with what amounts to a prologue-ish/flashback of the perfect courtship, the perfect trip, the perfect daughter, the perfect everything. I might as well just have read a Robyn Carr (another writer of the so called domestic literature genre). The author had written four or five previous books, non of which were mystery or thriller. I think this is the publishing world trying to turn their "literary" authors into mystery/thriller writers because the romance and mystery genres are the biggest money makers and and sale of those two genres support the prestige literary snob books which don't make nearly anywhere near as much money. I've noticed saeveral other authors who have also tried to make this crossover. But mystery writing is a whole different beast. You can't just take a sappy love story and try to make it into a thriller after the fact, but that's what TLTHTM seems like. Then the publisher promotes the heck out of it to sell it to an audience that wouldn't have read the author (I never had, and never will again) and boost the bottom line.

8,50: It costs somewhere between 36k to 138k to climb Everest, need to be fit, need to have health insurance, oxygen tanks, safety gear, be full fit, have doctor's medical certificate, need to have Everest Waver Forms, you need to be physically fit. It also depends on the height, weight and how many guides you have on your journey and not just your team (I have been researching this stuff).... You can do it once every 6 months....so for the team to go back and forth there, is going to be very costly.

18.36: The Last Resort reminds me of 'The game'' On Netflix. Bunch of strangers get invited to this run down cottage to play Truth or Dare. When they play, they take turns in choosing whatever, and thier results become real. At the end, as the clock stops at midnight, the game is over, everyone has forgotten about it and they go home for the evening. Even the ones they killed come back lol

11.09. Shiver sounds a lot like Three Weeks in Paris.

I enjoyed reading the silent patient enough for what it was without knowing the hype around it before, however, after hearing you talk about it I can see where you are coming from in being disappointed by it. It did seem like the whole part leading up to the twist didn’t add up, I think I enjoyed the book up until that point that the twist is uncovered.

Anyone spot her calling Holiday's book "The Last Holiday" as opposed to "The Last Resort?"

Girrrrl, you're hair is poppin'!

I did DNF The Silent Patient about 1/2 way through on audio. So never moved on to The Maidens though I was tempted as I was flying to Greece and thought it might be fun Most disappointing book was Things in Jars by Jess Kidd. Too silly a mystery. A ghost side kick that adds little to the plot. Looked like it tried to tread new ground and the mystery could have been great --missing child--by got too cute.

Totally agree on The Silent Patient!

I had 2 2-star reads this year and 1 3-star read that I need to put on the disappointing list. -- What I Did for a Duke by Julie Anne Long. The cover is very 1980s romance cover and I was really excited for a cheesy, '80s, romance. I'm not actually sure if it was written in the '80s, but the cover is definatly '80s. There were 2 things that made it disappointing: 1. the main character was a sh*t person. She is just a sh*t and if this was a male character he'd be the villian. Really, the "I'm going to "kiss"(they really did only kiss) this guy, but really I don't like him, I want the other guy." Just put me off. 2. About 1/2 way through it started telling and often times it was insight to a character who without directly being said is "simple." It was just very disappointing. --The Forbidden Duke by Darcy Burke was the other 2-star. I'll just repeat the beginning of my review on Goodreads "It's a pretty standard Regency love story. Nothing really different about it, different enough to make it new but not a lot of umpf. The rest of the review has spoilers. Lastly, and it wasn't fully disappointing. I gave it a 3-stars. Midnight for Charlie Bone. This may or may not be a spoiler review because it deals with the end of the book why it was so disappointing. so I'm going to space just in case you don't want to read the spoiler. Only 3 disappointing books out of 40 (38 if you don't count DNFs which I didn't realize until now counted) isn't that bad. For Midnight for Charlie Bone: It's kind of a "Magic School" setting, but the main character really isn't part of the final battle and you don't actually see the final battle only some of it's effects AND the aftermath of the battle. There's also another part where one of the characters just PFMed out of a situation.

16.10. I am sure the Cover on The Push could have been done better that's for sure.

I'm amazed you're doing this. Very dangerous to sh*t where you eat. Other authors could be pissed at you. But regardless this is great. Neg comments are more interesting to listen to and book recommendations are always welcome.

My most disappointing was Codename Villanelle. Nothing like the show- flat, boring and stereotypical characters with no conpelling motivation to do anything, man-writing-woman syndrome, rushed and dull plot, no atmosphere to speak of. Usually I keep the books I read but I gave that one away.

7.13: Yeah NOT a fan of Jim Davidson either.....his books are a bit heavy for me.

The worst books I read this year were: Spells Trouble by P.C. Cast and Influence by Sara Shepard (I think I had tempered and reasonable expectations going in but looks like not. I had issue with the voice, characters, and the sexism in Spells Trouble. Influence would have been simply disappointing were it not for the reveal, which I 100% could not buy into-- not because of who or why but bc it it's relation to the main character.

"Incredibly wealthy, white westerners dropping massive amounts of money on almost killing themselves to get to the top of a mountain." I know what kind of people you're talking about xD I find it pretty ridiculous but I guess it's their choice.

To you... but not to everyone. 😉 That's freedom of choice.