Top Ten Tuesday

Welcome to this weeks Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This weeks prompt was suggested by Book Lovers Pizza and is “The Last Ten Books I Abandoned”. So off to goodreads where I store all my book related information!

The majority of books I would like to abandon tend to be arc commitments, so rather than DNF I tend to skim read and jump ahead to the end. Whilst technically this isn’t ‘abandoned’, the books would have been had I not had that commitment to review.

1 Lock by Kimberly Knight

I just didn’t click with the authors voice on this one. I found the writing style felt, for want of a better word, basic. I didn’t feel the emotions, it was a case of being told not shown.

2 RIP Parts 1&2 by Charity B

This is a book that I will give a second chance to. It’s quite a dark, twisted read and sometimes my enjoyment of these is affected by my mood/state of mind. It ticked all my boxes and should have rung all my bells, so it is still on my TBR list for some time in the future.

3 Insolent by Cynthia A Rodriguez

Another where the writing style just wasn’t my cup of tea. I gave this the old college try but just had NO idea of what was happening or where the plot was going.

4 Innocence by Lee Savino and Stasia Black

From inconsistent time lines to a pacing so slow even skim reading didn’t help, this felt like one story stretched over three books. I didn’t even reach the end of book 1. It wasn’t really dark, it was so far removed from reality it needed to be fantasy and it just plain irritated me. I’m not sure if it’s a US/UK thing but in England insure means to pay money to safeguard an item, the word for to make sure something happens in ENSURE (yep it was that level of annoying.)

5 Irrepairable by LeTeisha Newton

A dark romance by two authors I love should have been an automatic shoe in to my ‘best book ever’ list. Sigh. I couldn’t even finish it because it hit several of my triggers. And I’m not talking about rape/abuse/violence triggers, I don’t have those. No I’m talking about “let’s have the plot revolve around a secret and then keep it a secret for the entire book”. That is NOT a story, it’s not even a plot, it’s lazy writing.
Not to mention that this is a reverse harem where it was virtually impossible to separate the men, particularly as they were only ever referred to by their nicknames – Love. Faith. Honor. Trust. Devotion – I kid you not. Love had a personality, and then there were the other 4. The men were constantly vile to her (and had her beaten to a pulp) but somehow she still fell madly in love with them. Because they were so hot. I love a redeemed anti-hero as much as the next dark romance lover, the key word being REDEEMED!

6 The Body Painter by Pepper Winters

I came to this after reading The Ribbon Duet, by the same author. That still lives with me today. I don’t think it will ever leave my heart and soul. So maybe I had too many expectations for this book, but lord above it was frustrating. This is a quote, from Serilin on Goodreads, that perfectly sums up the issues I had.

“If our heroine was shocked by a behavior, Winters provided us with fifty-two different phrases to express that shock. It was so tedious, like others, I ended up skipping page after page.“

Then there was the complete disregard for researching the English education system, instead writing about it as though it were American.

7 Twisted Doms by Felicity Brandon

In contrast to all the rest of the books, it wasn’t the writing that was the issue here. Instead I could not bring myself to like or respect the “hero”, and I use that term loosely since this man was prepared to murder his twin brother for no other reason than when they had both been adopted his twin had gone to a nicer home. The “hero’s” brother didn’t even know he HAD a twin, so in now way could be held to account for anything the hero experienced. I’m not sure how I was meant to want this guy to get the girl because at no point did he atone for his behaviour.

8 Sorrow’s Queen by Ashleigh Giannoccaro

This just felt as though many events were written purely for the shock value, rather than to progress the plot. I also couldn’t understand why the author made the female protagonist underage at the start of the book.
The kidnapping of a girl who wasn’t even 18, to hand her off to the man she has been promised to, didn’t ‘gel’ with the rest of the series either. The hero of each book may have been an assassin, a gun for hire, but they did seem to have some basic morals at the very least.

9 Wicked Games by Vivian Wood

A little too predictable, a little too generic, a lot too bland. Whilst the writing voice was easy enough to read, the characters just didn’t draw me in, I felt no connection to them, didn’t care and just felt very *meh* about the book.

10 The Black Door by J.L. Massey

I loved The Red Door, which was the previous book in this series, but this triggered my “don’t go there” button when it had characters calling the heroine a bitch because she didn’t put her wellbeing after everyone else. This girl had been sex trafficked, she had been abused and raped and what did the supposed hero do? He lied to her repeatedly. Nor did he stick up for her when another characters was persistently abusive because she had faked her own death. OK this wasn’t the best move BUT sex trafficking victim…