A hard-hitting, honest episode. Bravo. I haven't RED QUEEN, but I've heard so many great things about it - oddly, after your review, now I'm even more curious to at least check it out and see how it reads.
I also had a middle of the road opinion on this book. I liked the world it had and the set up the story gave. But I didn't like the characters too much and I was able to call out both of the major plot twists this book had. I've read a lot of Science Fiction before so (Like Reagan *disclaimer I'm sorry if I spelled her name wrong*) it all seemed very familiar to me. I put the book down half way for a while, and I only picked it up again when someone mentioned a feature about the end. The ending really picked itself back up and I will be reading the sequel. I feel like a big things with this, or any book is the characters. If you like them, you are going to get much more enjoyment out of this. I found myself enjoying the book a lot when my favorite character showed up, and he was only a side character. Anyways, the story has a good world and what I think is a good ending and some pretty dramatic moments. I can see why people love it so much, but for me. I'd only give it 3 stars.
I really enjoyed Res Queen and it was the first Ebook I ever purchased I was hooked straight away. I do agree there are some familiar elements but they were not overbearing for me and made me enjoy the story more. I loved it so much that the second I saw a physical version I bought that too :) try it out and I hope you like it :)
I actually really liked Red Queen. It did have its problems, but I felt like it was a fast paced read and a real pageturner. Also it's only the first book in the series, so the books will hopefully improve.
OMG, I'm not the only person who didn't love The Girl on the Train?! Finally, someone else out there. I didn't hate it either, like you, I just thought it was underwhelming and I thought all of the PoV characters were annoying. I'm excited for the movie though - they have an awesome cast, and I feel like this type of story will be more relatable on screen.
+Impression Blend Oh my gosh I'm so glad there's people who agree with me. The ending fell so flat for me and I really thought there was going to be some amazing reveal. But hey, I'm really excited to see how Emily Blunt will play Rachel.
+Impression Blend I love Emily Blunt, but i find it a bit ridiculous that she is playing Rachel who is described by everyone as fat. I wouldn't care if they change the way the characters looked if i wasn't important part of the plot! The whole point of her being that way was so that all the other characters felt superior to her and don't feel threatened by her. I don't see how this is possible with someone as beautiful as Emily blunt playing Rachel.
Mee Mee I mean, she may gain some weight for the role? Who knows. But also they usually prioritize character over looks, and she can definitely pull off the emotional/personality part.
I don't think I've seen you this heated up in your videos before and I loved it! We always hear about the books you like and why you like them so it was great to see the opposite for a change! to see the books you didn't like and why. Controversial videos are so much fun to watch lol
I loved the Duff movie and I haven't read the book but I've heard they're very different, and I love the movie too much so I don't think I'll read it haha. Plus I always take your opinion into consideration when picking books!
+Irish Reader They are really different, the main characters are pretty similar, but the plot is very very different. I personally liked the film and the book though
they are very different. the Duff movie is a comedy, while the book is a contemporary novel I guess. I loved both the book and the movie even though they are different
The movie got rid of a lot of the important issues the book deals with I think, the movie is a fun teen flick while the book dealt with more serious issues, like her father being an alcoholic. I personally like the book better, but the movie wasn't awful just different than the book.
I didn't hear any of the hype for Red Queen or Girl On the Train, I just saw them, read the back and thought this sounds awesome. It let me enjoy the books that way. The books.I read in 2015 that disappointed me were all of the Divergent series and the Death Cure.
I really liked The Girl On The Train! As a big fan of Gillian Flynn I knew that almost NOTHING could compare to her magnificient books so I read TGOTT as it was, a debut novel, and I really enjoyed it! We need to remember that Gone Girl is the third book of Flynn, and her first, Sharp Objects wasnt THAT good compared to Gone Girl! I just cant wait to Paula Hawkins grow as an author and to see her progress through the years :D
I agree on Red Queen, the premise sounded amazing and the first few chapters were really intriguing, but as the story progressed i found myself making myself finish and I didn't read the second book in the series.
I haven't read Gone Girl, so I kinda loved The Girl on The Train. I had so many disappointments this year! The Martian, Mara Dyer, Red Rising, Throne of Glass, Miss Peregrine's Home, We Were Liars, Vicious... I think the main problem was the high expectation I had because of the hype built around these books.
+Evandro Roberto i honestly loved miss peregrine lol, we were liars didn't feel that overhyped to me because i've only heard of it from one booktuber, and for mara dyer, i understand if you don't like it though i loved the first two books (the second book being the best) the last book was so bad lol
It's interesting how you found The DUFF disappointing because I loved it. For me, the disappointment was The Dumpling, as it had similar themes to The Duff, and I expected to be blown away. Being strongly connected to the main topic of these books myself, I felt the whole body image topic was tackled better in The DUFF. You mention the relationship between the two characters in DUFF being abusive, and maybe I'm biased (I like the bad boys to a fault), but I didn't see it. I saw it more like a defence mechanism from his part, or even denial but I feel like I have to reread it to be clear. Lovely video btw! I'm super duper happy I found your channel this year, you have changed my life (literally). I read so many books and most of them I got from you, The Name of the Wind is on top of my TBR right now. Thanks for being awesome!
I was so pumped to pick up All the Light We Cannot See, everybody who read it loved it. As I began, it was amazing. Anthony did a great job in describing everything. It makes you feel like you're going to a whole other world, I won't argue about it, his way of describing is breathtakingly beautiful. But then he went overboard with his descriptions. I felt like the plot was going nowhere. I just had no little excitement about it. I tried to continue reading after page 400 something but I just couldn't.
Cloud Atlas. Oh my gosh, Cloud Atlas. I had such high expectations and hopes for it. And I really disliked it. But David Mitchell is still such an amazing author, I can forgive him for that one dud ;) (even though I'm definitely in the minority with that opinion)
I felt the same way about The Girl on the Train! I loved Gone Girl and I picked up The Girl on the Train afterwards so that might have been a part as to why I was disappointed by it since I was expecting something just as good but the ending felt flat for me too.
i could see how people who have read gone girl would be disappointed by the girl on the train. i saw the gone girl movie, but I still really enjoyed the girl on the train. the first 100pgs were a little slow but after that i couldn't put it down! i agree that it wasn't exactly a mind blowing ending, but it still surprised me, since I don't read many thriller/mystery books. so I would say if you're new to that genre, it's a great read.
Great video! My biggest disappontment this year was The Strange and Beautuful Sorrows of Ava Lavander. I was hoping for a sad but hopeful and redeeming story, but all I got was sad...
I was so glad to find someone else who thought that Red Queen was disappointing! I work in a bookstore, and many of my coworkers talked this book up to me with extravagance and enthusiasm- when I finally read it, it was moderately interesting and frankly saddening, because I'd really wanted to like it. Thank you so much for agreeing- it was so nice to find someone else who felt a little let down.
I totally agree with you about Red Queen! I was so excited to get it, everyone was raving about it, but when I read it everything seemed so predictable, and it's like there aren't any surprises. Not sure if I will continue the series, but I'm glad to know that someone agrees with me.
I must say that I love your videos and I admire you so much because you always read historical fiction which is something that I would like to read soon but it scares me a little (because I hated history class when I was in high school) and I know everyone has different opinions but there is something that broke my heart when you said you didn't liked Point of Retreat and This Girl (which is my favorite trilogy ever thanks to Will Cooper) idk maybe is just that I haven't read a lot of different books but that trilogy is one of my favorites, anyhow I still love your videos
I read Red Queen early this year and i quite enjoyed it. But then I read Red Rising and it blew my mind away. It's so so good, i stop functioning for a while. The sequel: Golden Son is even crazier. So yeah, totally recommended that series. Help yourself, read it. Please.
I completely agree with your feelings toward The Wicked + The Divine. The art was stellar but the confusion was not needed and the plot ended up being lack luster.
Wow, I was honestly shocked that Red Queen wasn't one of your favorites this year. I personally loved it! But maybe that's just because I rarely ever read YA and it's new territory for me haha, but yeah. Love your videos! Can't wait for your next vlog.
Great video. I felt the EXACT same way about TW&TD which was really disappointing considering how excited I was about the premise.........blugh. Oh, and *P.S.* You should consider putting an image of each book in a corner of the screen -- I always really like that sort of thing. =c)
YES! Thank you for mentioning Red Queen! I was so excited for it when it came out, I had high expectations, but it definitely didn't live up...the "huge plot twist" everyone was freaking out about was not a twist at all, it was blatantly obvious through Mere's internal thoughts that she knew one of the boys would betray her, we just didn't know which one. A lot of similarities to The Hunger Games and others as well (her sweet sister who is highly regarded, meanwhile she sneaks away with her guy best friend to steal or whatever I forget, cough cough gale...) Just very unoriginal :/
While I still loved Point of Retreat, I do agree that it was a bit too cliche and not nearly as awesome as Slammed was. As for my disappointments this year, I was actually disappointed in The Bronze Horseman. It was so hyped and I expected to love it so much more than I did. You've gotta watch out for those hyped books! Great video :)
I was actually quite disappointed with The Book Theif. I LOVED the narrator and the story was good, but I don't know what it was, but I just don't love it as much as everyone else has.
GOOD! I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO FELT UNCOMFORTABLE WITH WESLEY AND BIANCA'S RELATIONSHIP! They were just them having sex. They weren't a good couple, they were just friends with benefits and I hated it. Wesley was (like you said) verbally abusive to her.
I SO AGREE WITH RED QUEEN totally agree with absolutely everything you said about it, it didn't live up to the hype for me awh the fade out sounds super cool, i'm sorry it was disappointing! i've heard some negative things about the slammed series but i think i might still give it a try oh god i hated the duff lol it was soo bad in my opinion loved this video! x
I felt similar about Red Queen. I enjoyed it, but it was so predictable. Everyone that raves about it always talks about the ~crazy twists and turns, but I saw everything coming, the foreshadowing was so painfully obvious.
I was so disappointed with The Girl on the Train... I also somehow guessed the plot twist. I literally just sat there and was like "I bet it was him. Yep"
I totally agree with you about Red Queen. The romance was lackluster and confusing. The premise was interesting, but oddly developed. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was disappointed.
Your review of Girl on the Train sounds like Night Film by Marisha Pessl. It has a great promise, starts out intriguing, but by the end spirals into bizarreness that's just too hard to believe. Books like that are so much more of a letdown when you really wanted to love them.
I was sooo excited to read Paper Towns but I was a little disappointed I didn't feel surprised in any way with it. I did LOVE the girl on the train though! :)
Your video convinced me to remove books from my wishlist which, by the way, has started to become insanely big. I'm still really interested in reading Red Queen, however for a few other books like the DUFF, I might consider not giving them anymore interest. Great video (just like always, duh)!
Very interesting list. I do hope I like Girl on the Train, we'll see. But I love these videos! Never stop making them :) It's great to see both sides of favorites and disappointments; it helps to be more well rounded. The books I was really really disappointed with were: The Last American Vampire, The Tiger's Wife, and very sadly, Dreams of Gods and Monsters...too convenient of an ending and a big let down :/
Hey, just discovered you and subscribed. :) Yeah, I agree with Girl On The Train, and I was really confused because most of my friends who have read it loved it so I thought.. "Oh I must be missing out on something." I mean it was okay, but don't think it really lived up to all the hype and at the ending I was a bit like ".....oh, was that it?". Plus I HATED Anna! She drove me mad I wanted to punch the pages of her chapters! lol Anyway Happy New Year to you. x
I'm reading The Girl on the Train right now and I'm starting to be a bit intrigued, but so far I have most of the same issues that you brought up. Rachel as a character makes me pity her and annoyed by her at the same time. it's like get your act together already!
I started Red Queen, but it didn't seem to catch my attention like I thought it would. I like books that can grab my attention from the get go. Thanks for sharing your list with us. Have a Happy New Year.
I COMPLETELY AGREE ABOUT RED QUEEN!!! It was so much like every YA book mixed into one! I love this and all your videos! You're my spirit animal for reading
my least favourite books were probably a court of thorns and roses or throne of glass, everyone loves SJM so much and i couldn't even get past 100 pages of ACOTAR, TOG was better but still so clichéd and whiny.
I agree with your review of the wicked and divine: the Faust act. I felt that the twist at the end confusing considering how the rules of the world seemed to be disregarded. I also agree with the girl on the train. I didn't read gone girl, but I had read an awesome mystery/thriller before this called burnt paper sky, although it was called something else in the states. The girl on the train just didn't wow me.
I was actually pleasantly surprised by The DUFF. I thought the movie was so stupidly simple, but the book was so much more complex (and actually sex positive, kind of a shock).
Ugh, The Girl on the Train was such a let down. I was in a class in college early this year where we read ultra-contemporary novels. The Girl on the Train was the first one we read. We had to have it pre-ordered so that we'd get it on the day it came out. It was pretty entertaining for the most part, but that ending (the last 50-70 pages) was horrible. It's just like watching a Lifetime movie. The reveal, the dialogue, the final bits of action. My entire class of creative writing majors unanimously hated it.
I 100% agree with you about The DUFF and am SO GLAD you shared your thoughts. There are so many things that made me uncomfortable and downright angry about that book.
I never really heard any hype for Red Queen actually. Most book tubers I saw talk about it that it was so bad, but when I went to Barnes & Noble and grabbed it out of curiosity I immediately bought it sat down and read it and I absolutely loved it. I'm now starting to realize that it is an unpopular opinion. D:
Can someone please tell me if Gone Girl is worth carrying on with?!?! According to my kindle I'm like 60% of the way through but I just hated reading it! I know the ending is probably what makes it but the story felt so slow paced and I just really didn't like any of the characters. Everyone says how brilliant it is but I just wasn't motivated to get to the end. Is it really worth reading?!
I haven't read _Gone Girl_. I saw the movie without realizing it was based on a novel. Plus, it was directed by David Fincher--he directed two of my favorite movies (_Fight Club and _Se7en_). The movie was fantastic and has piqued my interest when it comes to reading the novel. However, seeing this comments are raising questions for me. Could this be a rare case where the movie is better than the book?
Thirteen Reasons Why is the one that came to mind as soon as I saw this. I forgot when I was published but I read it early this year and I sped through it but felt like I had read so many things similar. Even though I completely agree with you, I enjoyed Red Queen. I think i just missed young adult fiction. It was the first YA novel I had read in about a year and a half and it was refreshing to read something that wasn't loaded with symbolism and required for one of my creative writing classes.
FINALLY someone shares my opinion on Red Queen. I was SO excited to read it because it got SO much hype. I kept waiting for it to get better but instead, it just got more and more cliche. You always give such on point reviews Regan!
I totally agree on your thoughts for the Girl On the Train! I thought it was going to be totally different, and I was very disappointed in how it ended.
I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am about the fact you didn't like the girl on the train. every single one of my friends loved it to me it literally read like a gritty episode of Scooby-Doo
The book that I was most disappointed by this year was Illuminae by Jay Kristoff and Amy Kaufman. Though I loved the way the story was told (through diagrams and emails and other cool stuff) I just didn't care about the plot at all and I found the characters to be extremely annoying
I'm so glad I'm not the only one that feels that way about Girl on the train!!!! I couldnt understand why everyone was raving about it the way that they were. I enjoyed it up until the ending. It felt like it was written by a completely different author who had no idea what was going on!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one that feels that way about Girl on the train!!!! I couldnt understand why everyone was raving about it the way that they were. I enjoyed it up until the ending. It felt like it was written by a completely different author who had no idea what was going on!
The two books I read this year that just absolutely disappointed me to the ends of the Earth were A Court of Thorns and Roses and The Winner's Crime. I'm not going to rant about either of those, but the hype!! The hype for those two was so extensive!! And i was SOOO disappointed. Truly tragic.
I think regarding the Graphic Novels the real problem is really the format, both those volumes are really collections of chapters of an ongoing monthly story, there really isn't a sense of synthesis by the end of the volume, this sense comes in short bursts chapter by chapter, the beats are really not like those of novels in a series of books or even like seasons in a tv series for example, it's actually really different, I wonder if you'd feel differently about them by reading them monthly.
I love WicDiv!!!! Of course I'm a total Gillan and McKelvie fangirl (two different people). I do agree with you about The Girl on the Train though... I haven't even finished it. I just couldn't get into it. I thought it dragged in a lot of places, so even when I was interested in the action I had to struggle through the boring parts to get back into rhythm. Ultimately, I just didn't pick it back up.
I totally felt the same about Red Queen, in addition to what you said about it I felt that the protagonist was very unrelatable and it didn't help that the names were super difficult to pronounce/ are so unconventional that they didn't make sense. It does still have room to improve and if there had not been so much hype then I might have liked it better but it just missed the mark.
I was most disappointing by the Rose Society I think. I really, really wanted to love it as I did the first one, but I felt myself pushing through it and that made me very sad. I'm content with the ending, and I'm not sure if she's coming out with a third one but I don't think I'll be picking it up if she does.
I hated The Girl on the Train. I thought the author used a template for each chapter and just plugged into the formula it was so repetative to keep hearing 'I am not going to drink tonight' 'I deserve a drink it was a rough day' 'He cheated on her but he would never cheat on me.' and so on. I like unlikeable and unreliable narrators but this book didn't have one single likeable character. I didn't even pity the characters because it got to the point where they were all doing the same things over and over again and expecting something to change.
Magonia, Hex Hall, and Gone Girl were all disappointing in my personal opinion. For Hex Hall, I had read Rebel Belle by her and loved it but I just wasn't impressed by Hex Hall. I found it to be bland and I didn't really care a lot about like the characters or the plot. I did give it a 3.5/5 stars but i don't want to continue. For Gone Girl, okay don't hate me but I just felt like I was constantly waiting throughout the whole book for the "psychologically thrilling" parts to start happening and for it to be just a page-turner but it didn't feel that way to me. It was good. I gave it like 4/5 stars (I'm quite generous with my rating system) but It just didn't make me feel how I wanted it to make me feel. And then for Magonia, I just had relatively high expectations because of the premise and because of authors who blurbed it but to me it just fell flat. Like the plot just felt so rushed and confusing and I just didn't like it that much although I did give it 3.5/5 stars.
Gone Girl had so much hype around it, everyone put it on such a pedestal that it was just hard to accept that ultimately the book wasn't as great as everyone made it out to be.
Finally someone who was also disappointed by The Girl On The Train! I just found that 80% of the book nothing was really happening and it all lead up to something I found predictable anyway! For me, like you, just fell flat, disappointingly! Loved the video X
You didn't like The Wicked + The Divine? I am shocked. I guess not that shocked. A lot of people have found it to be lukewarm. Guess it's just me then.
