Day 2 of my year in review, and today I am going to be talking about my most disappointing books of 2022. Yesterday I covered my most disliked books, and it was a surprisingly short list given how many books I rated lowly this year. There is a reason for that though, and it is because many of those titles ended up on this list.
There were a lot of books I read that, sadly, did not live up to the expectations I had for them. That does not mean they were bad per se, it just means that they, at the least, weren't as good as I was expecting them to be.
So, without further ado, here are my most disappointing books of 2022.
Starting off this list with a bit of a doozy. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike this book, but it also didn't wow me. R.F. Kuang is a fantastic author, and this particular piece of work brought forth a lot of difficult but important conversations, there is no doubt about that. Again though, I didn't enjoy the story as much as I was expecting to given the reviews. I also had no idea what this book was about which impacted my reading experience negatively.
Pretty much any book whose adaptation I love would end up on this list. Trying to read the source material of something you adore just never turns out well because nothing but disappointment awaits me. And yet, I still give it a shot anyway. For this list, I chose to include Howl's Moving Castle. We are talking about Ghibli magic here, and nothing can compare to that, not even the original story. The book ended up being a bit different from the movie, which would be fine if scenes I love in the movie were in it, but they aren't. Also, we have the huge issue that is the characters, because Grandma Sophie should have been pushed out of the castle because of how grumpy she was.
Oh Blake Crouch, how you have failed me. Dark Matter and Recursion are such unique books and my experience of reading them was absolutely wild. So, needless to say, I was expecting another mind-bending journey with this one, but it let me down. This just did not deliver the sci-fi thriller that I wanted, and instead, I got what was Jason Bourne on different drugs. I like a good action story, but not in this case.
I considered The Bone Houses to be an underrated gem, so when I saw that the author was coming out with another book this year I was ecstatic. That feeling didn't last too long because, well, I didn't like this. I will take part of the blame for that though because I picked this up without reading the synopsis, so I had no idea this was about a heist...and I don't like heist stories. I wouldn't say I hated it, but it gave me nothing, especially given that this was supposed to be set in the same world as The Bone Houses but does not have the same vibes at all.
Oh boy, this is a big one. This is a hugely popular series and one that stands out from most manga series because it goes against the tropes commonly used in them. I didn't really have an idea as to what to expect from this series, but when I came out from the other side, I can't say I enjoyed reading it. I wasn't too into the story, and I couldn't get past Denji's motivations as a character despite it being logical considering his upbringing. I only liked a couple of the characters and that is pretty much it. Here's hoping though that the next part will turn out better for me.
My review for this was summed up as "Finlay Donovan is killing it...except, she's really not." Going into this, I was expecting it to be exactly as it was marketed; a funny but twisty mystery thriller novel. This is also rated extremely well, so you can imagine my befuddlement when I read it and I did not get why it was. Finlay was just not a great character to follow, and the only thing she killed was my patience.
Here we have another example as to why popularity or hype does not always equate to quality. This book blew up on social media, so naturally, I got curious and decided to pick it up (especially because it was dark academia). This book gave me nothing, absolutely nothing. This could have had so much more potential because the plot is actually rather intriguing, but the execution of it was incredibly lacklustre. Barely anything of substance happened in this as we mainly just follow the cast of characters working on their studies.
A disappointment of colossal proportions.SJM isn't for everyone, but she is for me. I have liked pretty much all of her books thus far, so of course, I was highly anticipating this. Sped through it in a couple of days and... it wasn't great. It wasn't bad, but it the plot wasn't of the quality I expected from SJM. The only thing the story had going for it was the addition of the demons as well as the ending.
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