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Popular Books I Wanted to Like More.. But Didn’t

Not every book is right for every reader.. here are a few that weren’t right for me.

Welcome!

We’ve all had those literary hopefuls that just didn’t work out. The books we look forward to, get excited about, and crack open with an anxious sort of thrill.. sure that this will be an adventure you’ll never forget. We build up expectations and, sometimes, we’re left disappointed.

Today I’ll be sharing some of the books I’ve either read and failed to enjoy or tried and could not finish.
The list only includes books I’ve picked up and reviewed for this blog, it in no way covers them all.

I admit, I’m curious to hear what you’ve thought of them.

Enjoy!

(Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Any purchases made through my links may earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you.)

All These Bodies by Kendare Blake

Summer 1958. A gruesome killer plagues the Midwest, leaving behind a trail of bodies completely drained of blood. 

Michael Jensen, an aspiring journalist whose father happens to be the town sheriff, never imagined that the Bloodless Murders would come to his backyard. Not until the night the Carlson family was found murdered in their home. Marie Catherine Hale, a diminutive fifteen-year-old, was discovered at the scene—covered in blood. She is the sole suspect in custody.

Michael didn’t think that he would be part of the investigation, but he is pulled in when Marie decides that he is the only one she will confess to. As Marie recounts her version of the story, it falls to Michael to find the truth: What really happened the night that the Carlsons were killed? And how did one girl wind up in the middle of all these bodies?

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
DNFx6

Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester.

But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder. 

The two interwoven mysteries of this first book in the Truly Devious series dovetail brilliantly, and Stevie Bell will continue her relentless quest for the murderers in books two and three.

Her Name is Knight by Yasmin Angoe
DNF

Stolen from her Ghanaian village as a child, Nena Knight has plenty of motives to kill. Now an elite assassin for a powerful business syndicate called the Tribe, she gets plenty of chances.

But while on assignment in Miami, Nena ends up saving a life, not taking one. She emerges from the experience a changed woman, finally hopeful for a life beyond rage and revenge. Tasked with killing a man she’s come to respect, Nena struggles to reconcile her loyalty to the Tribe with her new purpose.

Meanwhile, she learns a new Tribe council member is the same man who razed her village, murdered her family, and sold her into captivity. Nena can’t resist the temptation of vengeance—and she doesn’t want to. Before she can reclaim her life, she must leverage everything she was and everything she is to take him down and end the cycle of bloodshed for good.

Trust Me, I’m Lying by Mary Elizabeth Summers

NEVER JUDGE A CROOK BY HER COVER.

Julep Dupree tells lies. A lot of them. She’s a con artist, a master of disguise, and a sophomore at Chicago’s swanky St. Agatha High, where her father, an old-school grifter with a weakness for the ponies, sends her so she can learn to mingle with the upper crust. For extra spending money, Julep runs petty scams for her classmates while dodging the dean of students and maintaining an A+ (okay, A-) average. She’s a fixer, and she’s good at it. But it’s not what she wants. And soon, she’ll hang up her grifter skills for good.

But when she comes home one day to a ransacked apartment and her father missing, Julep’s carefully laid plans for going straight start to unravel. Even with help from St. Agatha’s resident Prince Charming, Tyler Richland, and her loyal hacker, Sam, Julep struggles to trace her dad’s trail of clues through a maze of creepy stalkers, hit attempts, family secrets, and worse, the threat of foster care. With her literal life at stake, Julep will need to use every grift in the book to find and save her dad before his mark finds–and eliminates–her.

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
Survive the Night by Riley Sager
DNFx4

In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?

It’s November 1991. Nirvana’s in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer.

The Girl in Red by Christina Henry

It’s not safe for anyone  alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn’t look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.

There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there’s something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined.

Red doesn’t like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn’t about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods….

The Project by Courtney Summers
DNF

BELIEVE HIM, BETRAY HER

1998: Six-year-old Bea doesn’t want a sister but everything changes when Lo is born early. Small and frail, Lo needs someone to look out for her. Having a sister is a promise, Mom says—one Bea’s determined not to break.

2011: A car wreck, their parents dead. Lo would’ve died too if not for Lev Warren, the charismatic leader of The Unity Project. He’s going to change the world and after he saves Lo’s life, Bea wants to commit to his extraordinary calling. Lev promises a place for the girls in the project, where no harm will ever come to them again . . . if Bea proves herself to him first.

2017: Lo doesn’t know why Bea abandoned her for The Unity Project after the accident, but she never forgot what Bea said the last time they spoke: We’ll see each other again. Six years later, Lo is invited to witness the group’s workings, meet with Lev, and—she hopes—finally reconnect with her sister. But Bea is long gone, and the only one who seems to understand the depths of this betrayal is Lev. If it’s family Lo wants, he can make her a new promise . . . if she proves herself to him first.

You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle
DNF

Naomi Westfield has the perfect fiancé: Nicholas Rose holds doors open for her, remembers her restaurant orders, and comes from the kind of upstanding society family any bride would love to be a part of. They never fight. They’re preparing for their lavish wedding that’s three months away. And she is miserably and utterly sick of him.

Naomi wants out, but there’s a catch: whoever ends the engagement will have to foot the nonrefundable wedding bill. When Naomi discovers that Nicholas, too, has been feigning contentment, the two of them go head-to-head in a battle of pranks, sabotage, and all-out emotional warfare.

But with the countdown looming to the wedding that may or may not come to pass, Naomi finds her resolve slipping. Because now that they have nothing to lose, they’re finally being themselves—and having fun with the last person they expect: each other.

And that’s that for now..
Thank you so much for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed my post!

I’d love to know what you think.
Have you read any of these books? Did they excite or disappoint you?

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This Post Has 10 Comments

  1. Leah's Books

    The only ones from this list that I have read are All These Bodies and The Cruel Prince, but I loved them! Although I’m also known for disliking popular books 😬

    1. Sheri Dye

      Heh.. my bad? I think I ended up expecting too much from All These Bodies but The Cruel Prince was just.. not for me.
      And I don’t know what it is about popular book but they’re rarely as exciting as they’re made out to be.

      1. Leah's Books

        Sometimes that happens to me too. Everyone made such a fuss about Addie LaRue and I just wasn’t feeling it at all. But the world would be so boring if we all loved the same books!

        1. Sheri Dye

          I’m sure it happens to us all at some point. And I have yet to pick up Addie LaRue.. it sounds a lot like a gender swap of The Picture of Dorian Grey and I don’t think that’s for me.
          And it really would! At least this way we can discuss and debate the best and the worst of them.

          1. Leah's Books

            My thoughts exactly! If it’s a gender swap of Dorian Grey, no wonder I hated it – I had to read that one for school and I vividly remember despising that book so much I couldn’t even hate read it, I had to DNF it.

          2. Sheri Dye

            Yikes.. I didn’t dislike it that much but it was one of those stories where I prefered the movie more. 😅

  2. Becky's Book Blog

    Great post! I tried a Christina Henry book (can’t remember the title) and really struggled with her writing style, so she’s definitely not one for me. I enjoyed The Cruel Prince, but I didn’t love it like everyone else seemed too.

    1. Sheri Dye

      Thank you! I still have a few of hers I want to check out but sadly.. I’ll probably go in with lower expectations.
      Ahh, The Cruel Prince, my nemisis. My issue was mostly with the main character.. she irked me.

      1. Becky's Book Blog

        Sometimes going in with lower expectations is the perfect thing because you actually enjoy the book more. Keeping my fingers crossed for you 😀

        1. Sheri Dye

          That really is true. I think I just like the older ones (5+ years at least) because they’re more about the story.. now it’s all about pushing one agenda or another.
          Thank you and happy reading!

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