Now that we went through my top books of 2024, we can go through my bottom books of 2024. This will only consist of 5 books, compared to the ten from my top books list, but these are the ones that I just really didn’t like. If I did 10, some of them were okay, so I’m sticking to the ones I really didn’t like. I also decided to not include any of the comics I read from Free Comic Book Day. I didn’t love any of them, and if I included them they would be on this list, but I didn’t think it was fair to do that when they are so short, and some were only samples, so this list excludes them, even if I did count them for my books read.

5. At number 5, we have We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han. This is book 3 in the Summer I Turned Pretty Series. I really didn’t like this series. I read the first book in 2023 and didn’t like it, but I kept the series in my mind as a potential read to see if it got better. Clearly, it didn’t. This is a series following Belly, a teen girl stuck in a love triangle between two brothers. It takes place at a beach house during summer and shows her relationships with her family and the brothers and their mom. I don’t think I can really say anything good about this book. I don’t like Belly as a main character and could not get into the story. I think it was a bit immature and boring. I listened to this as an audiobook, and while I usually don’t like to do that, I don’t think my opinion would be different if I read it physically.
6. Going along with my #5, we have It’s Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han. Honestly, I barely remember these books so I couldn’t even say what I liked better or what parts were less bad. I just know I didn’t enjoy the story or the characters which is a shame since I really enjoyed To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before back in 2017. I also listened to this via audio.
7. Next we have The War Widow by Tara Moss. I had seen this a few years ago and was interested, but decided to not to pick it up until I got it from my local library as a prize for summer reading. This book suffered from overly describing everything. Everything was described, and multiple times at that. The amount of times her lipstick shade was mentioned (Fighting Red, if you were wondering) would make you think the main part of this story was her solving the mystery of where to buy it once it gets discontinued. This is about a P.I. named Billy Walker who gets hired to find a missing person. My biggest complaint about this one, other than the descriptions, was that I was just bored. The idea of a 1940s female private investigator was interesting, but the execution was not. The end did pick up with more action, but so many storylines were converging in this ending that it also made it seem like too much was wrapping up for a story that was slow for the other 85%. This book kind of reminds me of an old movie in some way, but overall was a miss for me.
8. These last two books were DNFs for me, the first being Just a Friend by Deb Goodman. I tried reading this in May and I made it maybe 70 pages in. Goodreads says this book is only 250 pages, so it says a lot if I couldn’t even finish it. The biggest flaw I saw within this book was the characters and the way they were written. It is mentioned that our protagonist and her love interest are in their thirties, but they came across as younger and immature. I think the story could have been much more effective if the author aged them down to somewhere between late teens and mid-twenties, or just made them seem more mature. I really liked that the main character owned a mobile library and that the two of them met up for milkshakes on the same day every year, but I did not connect with the writing or the characters and had to put the book down.
9. Last but not least, we have my least favorite, and one of my most disappointing books of the year. That book is The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert. I mentioned it before, but I love this author’s book Our Crooked Hearts. It is a dual timeline, dual perspective mystery/thriller with dark magic. It was interesting, engaging, and had me on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next. The Bad Ones gave me none of that. It is a story about four people that go missing from this town, one of which is the best friend of Nora, our main character. Becca, the best friend, leaves Nora clues as to what happened and it has to do with a game they played as kids about goddesses. I didn’t really like anything about this story. To start, I didn’t like the characters. Nora was unlikable and was shown to be a compulsive liar from what I could gather. This felt like it was just sprinkled throughout so no one would believe her. The story also just did not grab my attention. The idea of it was interesting, but the way it was executed made me uninterested. The writing was also not my favorite. We go back and forth between the current story, flashbacks, and other scenes so many times that I couldn’t get attached to the main story. I really wanted to like this one but couldn’t find myself invested.

There will always be a few flops in a reading year, so I wanted to share some of mine. I would love to hear some of your own and why, or if you read any of these and your opinions.

xoxo,

Just another reader