I know we have pretty drastically different reading tastes (though I agree with you on Writing Retreat!), but I just have to say that I love this video concept! Reading is so personal and it's ok to have BookTubers we love even though we know our tastes don't align :)
Also THANK YOU for the roast on The Wishing Game, I DNF’ed at 60 pages and it was on soooo many peoples best of the year and I don’t understand!!!! The protagonist drove me absolutely nuts haha 😅
based on the description sara gave in the video, im guessing people loved the found family trope. everyone having rough backgrounds but finding “their people” is a trope that a lot of folks with similar backstories enjoy.
Thank you for including me in this bestie! I am actually working on my “reading book tubers favorites of 2023 video” and I chose a book off your list. Honestly, I think all the book tubers I picked should be afraid 👀
THANK YOU for expressing my exact thoughts on wishing game. i can NOT believe how many people loved that book, i found it so emotionally manipulative and that main character was insufferable. and the whole adoption plot was so offensive and problematic
I am so glad you liked hell bent. The author has said that it was originally planned to be 12 books but the research that goes into it makes the writing really slow and more difficult :( I personally needed the 12 books
I love this concept so much! Because not only this is such an original concept, but also it celebrates the different opinions about books! I truly enjoy watching opposite-taste booktubers because it is always so much fun to listen to what they liked a book I disliked or vice versa. It gives me perspective and makes me think about facets I didn't think about. Now, I am tempted to make a list myself and see if I'll find books I like in some of the worst books list.
For the Holocaust point in The Writing Retreat, my grandparents survived the Holocaust but they were young children when it happened. They moved to the US with my dad when my dad was 3. Then he had me in his thirties and now I'm 29! So totally possible as long as the grandparents were young children.
I zoned out a bit on your description of the synopsis of the Wishing Game and I legit thought you started talking about a different book 🤣 seems like there was a lot happening in that one book.
I'm sorry the pedophilia plotline resolving with the little girl jumping off a ferry and drowning is almost comically bad. That alone killed any interest I may have had.
The wishing game sounds so so contrived and convoluted I’m glad I stayed through the end of this video cause I just cannot read that book at all:/ I always hate tragic backstories when it comes to fictional characters new adult romance novels use that constantly as a poor excuse for the main female character to continue to support and love that broken guy anyway love this video😁👍
I enjoyed The Writing Retreat for its messy saphic drama and just... kind of skimmed the thriller parts because I caught on to some suspicious things very early on 😅 I don't think I've heard about The Wishing Game before but oh my, what even was that 😂 🧸🧸
Omg I had the Wishing Game on my tbr but after hearing your rant is it firmly in the bin 😥 also loooool at the at british accent, no one would speak that sentence in such a well spoken way and then say water like that😭😭
I actually couldnt believe the high praise from the wishing game while i was reading it. IT WAS AWFUL! I dnfed it at 95 % because i couldnt havent cared less.
The worst books I read in 2023: _Convenience Store Woman_ and _Lessons In Chemistry_ Truly cannot comprehend the popularity of these two books. Horrendous. ANYWAY have added Hellbent and tiloal to the tbr 🎉🎉 Love your videos 💚
You have eloquently removed The Wishing Game from my TBR. Very well said and very gross storyline. Like what is everyone who loves this book talking about???
I hated The Writing Retreat with a burning passion and felt strangely relieved when you decided you didn't like it after all! 😂 Idk, makes me feel better to know I'm not alone in liking or disliking something
I generally don't read thrillers. However, I picked up The Writing Retreat for the Literally Dead Book Club and I thought it was so fun and ridiculous that It is the highest rated thriller I have ever read. Which feels insane.
i love how we have completely different tastes in books cuz i definitely hated ALL these books with a passion especially fourth wing 😭😭😭 the only one i havent read is hellbent cuz i personally do not like leigh bardugo so cant see myself picking up any of their works 😅
My grandparents were in their teens during the holocaust and I’m 31. They were in their 40s when they had my dad and then he was in his 30s when he had me. Crazy that I’m not that far removed from it.
I am just at the start of your video but omg I Loved the Writing Retreat. I totally see how it might not be for some people but it is absolutely for me.
My absolute worst book of 2023 was Remember Love by Mary Balogh, partly because it was a terrible book by a usually reliable author and partly because I was in the mood to get back into historical romance and this crushed that mood. But a few other of my worsts included The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill, Out of the Blue by Jason June, and Steal My Magnolia by Karla Sorenson (which ruined the entire series for me). Also, I read and loved The Wishing Game, but I also know I can never go back to is because it won't withstand any critical thinking 😂 I knew that the pacing was terrible and I did not look too closely at the world of the book, but I just happened to pick it up at the right place/right time and had a perfect reading experience that I won't be able to recreate LOL
While I tend to DNF books when I'm not enjoying them the ones I did this year I DNFd because they were boring, not bad. But a book that I finished that was the worst was Enemies With Benefits by Roxie Noir. The characters are supposed to be in their early 30s but act like they are in their very early 20s at most. A lot of the plot beats were also stupid. Like at one point the FMC got fired because somebody else sent a nude of her to her boss. It was really stupid, there was also a miscommunication trope, which I hate.
What Moves the Dead is one of the two T Kingfisher books that I didn't like at all. The other one was The Seventh Bride. Still a fan, so hoping I have better luck next time. Edit: I feel like I got better about DNFing books that I wasn't enjoying. Wrong Place Wrong Time and Just the Nicest Couple were at the top of my worst list, but the WORST, the one that actually made me angry, was The Artist by Catherine Grant. I haven't hated a main character like that since The Cabin by Natasha Preston, but for completely different reasons. And the ending was awful.
My worst read of 2023 was That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming. This was supposed to be a cozy, funny, romantic fantasy. It was not cozy, it was not funny, the plot was stupid and the romance was meh. There goes another tik tok bait.
So happy to finally see someone else dislike “The Wriring Retreat.” I DNFed it and thought it was truly awful, then RU-vidrs started giving it rave reviews and I was like wha???? Huh?????
For a book to be my least fave, it has to be offensively bad. Hidden Pictures (transphobic) was probably my least favorite read of last year. I read it bc it was a goodreads pick and EXCUSE ME?? Tying for last place were Thinner (problematic due to fatphobia and the “g slur curse”) and Tender is the Flesh (not bc it was offensive but bc it was offensively boring for a cannibalism book) I did not think How to Sell a haunted house was that bad, it just wasn’t that good. It would have been better as a novella.
Don’t hate me, but Fourth Wing was definitely my worst of the year! 😂😂😂 Closely followed by a Court of Silver Flames, I DNFed both because they were actively pissing me off to read them!! Lol
The worst book I read in 2023 was The Fifth Sorceress. I watched James Tullos's video on it and got curious. Bad idea. Bad, BAD idea. I am now scarred for life.
I dnf'd the wishing game 😭 as someone who worked as an Instructional aide, I got major ICK from her wanting to adopt a student. Like, the level of inappropriateness was wild for a professional setting 😭😭 I could not get past that. I'm so happy I didn't continue after your rant. Saved my time for real.
I gotta say I immediately skipped to The Invisible life of Addie la Rue because I absolutely hate this book, and to be fair most people are like you - loving the prose. I had people recommending this for the love triangle and I was like yeah, ok, sounds interesting, and I expected to ship either this or that. What I was absolutely not prepared was the writing, which to me was just unreadable. I felt like I'm in an art gallery and people are gushing about this art piece that it's giving emotions and aesthetic and message and I'm just standing there, like 'What do you mean? It's a trash bag with a pink bow." To say I didn't get it is an understatement lmao
Oh also did you hear about how the wishing game was originally on the best debut category for the GR choice awards? But it was taken down for the final round because the author has actually written an erotica series under another name 😭
it wasn't technically a debut. I follow the author on both accounts so I knew of her previous works, I just thought it'd count as debut since she's writing in a different genre than what she's used to.
With your review for The Writing Retreat: I’ve never heard a book reviewer so perfectly describe what happens to me with books. While I’m reading and directly after i finish reading is when i hold a book to its highest opinion but over time the parts i didn’t like stand out and color my perception of the story, resulting in my ratings left after a finish becoming inaccurate to how i feel about them later on.
Basically off topic, but as a girlie who rewatches Secret Life of an American Teenager every year, I recommend everyone watch it. It’s the worst show ever I’m obsessed.
nothing more terrifying than seeing one of your favourite books + literal favourite author be in the initial list - so glad you liked addie larue!!! i’m obsessed with ve schwab i would absolutely recommend vicious it was my favourite ever book!! (and adsom is not as good as those ones so don’t worry)
also i went to see her on tour and it was actually magical - and she said she had addie in her mind for over a decade and once the book was published she felt like she was mourning her friend who wasn’t their anymore, also definitely won’t be a sequel she seemed very adamant about that, which i think is probably for the best because how could you live up to that
It was wild to find out that Meg Shaffer is actually a pen name for Tiffany Reisz. which also means...The Wishing Game is not actually a debut, which is kind of sad considering how amateur the books sounds from your description!
Hell bent was one of my favorite books of 2023 so love this for you. And wow the wishing game sounds really bad. My worst book of the year was PenPal by J.T. Geissinger. Which is hilarious cause it’s also one the highest rated books I read last year 🧸
French is my native language and I giggled at je m'appelle Sarah. New sub here. I really liked this video. 💜 I loved Addie Larue even though it was kinda slow. Sometimes you gotta enjoy a slower style in a world where everything happens so fast. Edit : sara sans h * 😅
me seeing this in my feed and getting excited to see if we're going to end up with another Book of Night situation 😂😂😂 annnnnnnnnd........we did LMAOOOO
Your feelings about The Writing Retreat were just how I felt. I was having a good time, and the I became ugh, just blah. Surprisingly I liked the dream type sequences, I usually don’t like that, but it gave it a bit of lore, but it also didn’t really work with the story. If I was a booktuber it would’ve been on my worst books of the year too (so sorry to the author!)
I'm so glad I'm not the only The Wishing Game hater 😭 that entire book was so messy and incoherent... and it somehow has RAVE reviews on goodreads?? I couldn't wait for it to be over. The audiobook was a CRIME
