the most disappointing books of 2023

aka my biggest 2023 heartbreaks :/

Vlogs and running stuff on tiktok: @chlojtok

It Starts With Us & It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover
Forever, Judy Bloom
The Crying of lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Guest, Emma Cline
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Brideshead revisited, Evylin Waugh
The Stranger, Albert Camus
The Testaments, Margret Atwood (Handmaid's Tale sequel)
Everything I know about love, Dolly Alderton
Lessons, Ian McEwan

787

[noahlazarides]

The message of the stranger is absolutely not the meaninglessness of life! It is very much a life-affirming book.

[Rubz]

Totally agree with you about Lessons- it was just so bloody dense and the paragraph lengths made me want to scream. I have The Guest on hold at the library and now I'm reconsidering haha.

[macee.]

Oh I loved the stranger! But I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that it was really the first absurdist book I read, I was so disturbed by the narrator

[SaqibMalla-ir]

I don't know where this video popped up from but your voice is mesmerizing

[thomasceneri]

Didion is famous for her WASP “emotionless” How can you write about your own grief w/out detachment? The McEwan book, The Pole, is short and devastating.

[ItsRoseForYou]

I read The Guest the other day because Jack Edwards was raving about it and I generally enjoy his recommendations. But it was so dull! All the main character did was drink, swim and be annoying. From the beginning I knew exactly what the ending was going to be, and the middle gave me nothing. Glad I'm not the only one who thought it was boring. I might still try The Girls though.

[Carlatalula-mhrw]

So so agree with the testaments, it was so bad and i felt really disappointed and confused as to why it got so many great reviews
Finally i feel seen :)

[AmandaInEly]

I can't be doing with Ian McEwan either. Glad you feel the same. The Testaments and The Handmaid's tale are over 30 years apart, so yeah, you could almost say a different author. By no means all of Attwood's books are good.

[ene]

I read The Cying of Lot 49 for a Uni seminar on conspiracy theories in literature. And talking about it there was really interesting but the reading experience? What an annoying book. According to my professor it was written like this on purpose but I completely agree with your opinion

[ms.official]

Tell me how i knew It ends with us would be here when i read the title 😂

[JungianHeights]

From this video, it seems that you are expecting the author to do all the work for you. Sometimes, the reader needs to open their mind to the puzzle.

[darbysnacks]

I saved my read of frankenstein for halloween and I think that enhanced my enjoyment a lot. I didn't enjoy The Girls that much and I'm hoping I like The Guest a lot more.

[thomasceneri]

You don’t like Frankenstein??? Nonsense!

[mildrumpus]

@abookolive sent me here! Happy Reading! 😎📚👍