highly rated books I hate
10+ of the unpopular opinions you asked for
What could be spookier than this?
A while back, I did a post on low-rated books I love. These are the fun kind of unpopular opinions, I said. The ones where you get to love a book and feel like you see the hidden truth that everyone else is blind to.
See, I try to be positive. I try to be nice and positive and saintly and angelic. I try, in other words, to rebrand.
But then you guys show up and drag me right back down.
These…are the original kind of unpopular opinions. The less fun kind for me, but (if every single one of my most popular Goodreads reviews as well as my most popular Instagram post have anything to say about it) the most fun kind for you.
These are the review comment sections I never check, the takes that have gotten me death threats, the books it feels like everyone loves, except me — building towards the highest-rated reads and the most unpopular opinions of all.
You asked for it. Again and again and again.
For the most part, beyond a few rant opportunities I couldn’t resist, this excludes romance and most YA because…well, because I need to narrow it down somehow.
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Average Rating 4.02 / My Rating 1.5
I have read everything TJR has ever written so I can imbue my written voice with authority when I say this is by far her worst.
It should be the one I like the most, because it’s about siblings and that’s my preferred topic for both media and my life, but unfortunately it’s straight up bad: poorly written, showy-not-telly, populated with insane descriptions and studded with chapter endings that are relentlessly bizarre and either saccharine or nonsensical or both. I liked Reid releases before this book and I liked them after, but this one…I imagine an early draft got published by accident and everyone just felt like they had to go with it.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Average Rating 4.05 / My Rating 2.0
Sorry to all the fig tree girlies out there (and I mean that sincerely – I genuinely think it’s cool that every year a bunch of young women discover that passage and feel like no one has ever read it before), but…this book is bizarrely racist and homophobic.
Excusing it for being old is insane when it was published the same year as the March on Washington took place, but if you want to disregard that reason, I also think this promotes selfishness and victimization and romanticizes mental illness and is mostly famous because of Plath’s tragic end. I loved this at 18 and couldn’t stand it by 25.
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by VE Schwab
Average Rating 4.17 / My Rating 1.5
I’d love to know what you all saw in this book. As it is, if there are any witches or demons or whatever who are just making devilish deals with whatever annoying girl shows up vaguely crying feminism, I’m interested. I wouldn’t curse my fate or have a boring storyline or dumb characters. I wouldn’t stay in Europe and meet lame dudes only to move to America to meet more lame dudes. In other words this was as disappointing as Addie’s use of a magical spell and I would’ve done both the book and the lifestyle differently.
