BLOGMAS #10: My Least Favourite Books of 2018

Following on from yesterday's Blogmas post, I thought it would only be fair to talk about my least favourite books I read in 2018 as well! Luckily, there aren't actually that many books that I read this year that I disliked.

I know lots of people say 'life is too short' to finish reading a book you're not enjoying, but I like to finish them for multiple reasons...

1. If I put a lot of time and effort into a book, and have read past halfway, you can be sure I'm going to stick it out to the end and finish that thing.
2. I need to reach my Goodreads goal, damn it.
3. Reading a book that you didn't particularly like always provides good conversation topics (and blog posts!)

So, without further a do, here are my least favourite books of 2018!

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

Oh, boy.

When the Moon Was Ours had been on my TBR for a very long time. If I'm honest, the only thing that made me want to read it was the cover, and the blurb wasn't particularly appealing to me. So I was happy with never getting round to reading it.

That was true until I moved abroad and ran out of English books to keep me occupied, so my mum asked me which books I wanted her to post to me. So, I thought 'why not?' and asked for this one.

Before I completely roast this book, I will say that I am very impressed one of the main characters is trans. I have never read a book with a trans character before, so I was pleased it was getting the attention it deserves.

HOWEVER...

This book was a huge disappointment. McLemore tried way too hard to be fancy and poignant with the language she used, so much so that it was detrimental to the plot itself. The writing is confusing, clunky and obviously badly edited. 

Also, once I got to the end of this almost-300-pages-long book, I realised it had absolutely no plot development. I couldn't summarise the plot in one sentence even if I tried. 

I go into a lot more detail about why I didn't like this book in a previous blog post. I went IN on McLemore, so be prepared for some serious roasting. 

The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling

Please, hear me out.

I tried with this series. I really did.

I started it at the end of 2017, and even made one of my 2018 resolutions to finish this series. Alas, I did not.

I got up to the Prisoner of Azkaban and just got too bored to carry on. If you read my first impressions of Harry Potter blog post, which I wrote after reading the first two books in the series, you will see that I was actually semi-enjoying it and was quite excited to carry on reading. I loved the world building in the first book and the plot development in the second.

I was told that Prisoner of Azkaban would be the best one because it gets darker and more interesting for older readers. Unfortunately, this just wasn't the case for me.

It took me 5 MONTHS to finish this book. I started in February and didn't get it finished until July. I got so bored in the middle of reading it that I read The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil, How to Stop Time, and The Children of Blood and Bone in the mean time. 

I don't have much of a reason why other than it just didn't suck me in like it did with other people. I couldn't understand how other people my age enjoy reading these books written for children - the writing style and characters just got too annoying for me. I have no desire to carry on reading the rest of the series.

#sorrynotsorry

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What were your least favourite reads of 2018?