Top Ten Books I’m Not Sure I Want To Read

Posted August 12, 2014 by Debby in Uncategorized

This is a meme from The Broke and the Bookish. For info about the topics and how to participate, click here.

For this topic, I decided to focus on books that I don’t own already but I’m sort of debating purchasing. So, if you play your cards right, your comments on this post could potentially incite some book buying. Ain’t nothing better, right? Good luck.

landry park Manor of Secrets Dissonance

1. Landry Park by Bethany Hagen
This one sounds like it could be really good OR a train wreck. The comparison to The Selection is what worries me. I don’t want a dystopia just to be a backdrop for #firstworldproblems. But I do like “elite” societies, debutantes, balls, etc. Also I don’t want instalove. So. Opinions?

2. Manor of Secrets by Katherine Longshore
I really loved Longshore’s Gilt and I’m in love with Downton Abbey, so this should have been an instant buy for me. But only a couple of my friends have read this, and it’s predominantly getting pretty low ratings. SAD. WHAT TO DO.

3. Dissonance by Erica O’Rourke
I was soooo intrigued by this because parallel universes? SIGN ME UP. But I dunno, I haven’t heard much about it in the blogosphere, and I mostly see three star ratings. Would I like it anyway? =/

Alienated Tandem Antigoddess

4. Alienated by Melissa Landers
I’m all for sci-fi, all day erry day, but I don’t really like it when a bad romance dominates the plot. I haven’t heard the best things about this one, but also not the worst. Is it fun? Could I ship it?

5. Tandem by Anna Jarzab
Again with the parallel universes! This one also doesn’t have the best ratings though – there’s like a split and I don’t know if I’d be on the side of people who love it. Also: that cover is so unfortunate. Were it prettier, I would have bought it already a long time ago. #shallowbutidontcare

6. Antigoddess by Kendare Blake
Opinions about this seem to be on the positive side, and I desperately love Greek mythology but… I haven’t picked this up. Why not? CONVINCE ME I NEED THIS.

Broken Hearts Fences and Other Things To Mend THE QUEEN OF TEARLING Half Bad The Iron King

7. Broken Hearts, Fences, and Other Things to Mend by Katie Finn
I was so excited for this because it looked like such a great, fun summer read – but the most common rating among my friends is 2 stars! o_O Did I miss something? Should I pass on this then?

8. The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
Some people looooooooove this, and I’m all for fantasy usually. Plus, movie adaptation with Emma Watson? Color me intrigued. But some of my closer bookish friends have also been completely bored by this one. 🙁 What to dooooo…

9. Half Bad by Sally Green
This was pretty hyped up, so I ended up kind of avoiding all mentions of it because it was getting to be too much for me. I haven’t had much luck with witches in the past couple years… is this one good? The cover is very pretty…

10. The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
I’ve never read a Julie Kagawa book, to be honest, and people are freaking intense about her! I don’t often do paranormal romance, and I’m not that sure about faeries (but I sure as hell am not reading about vampires so forget that)… and I’ve heard the love triangle here is pretty annoying. But. I dunnoooo.

That’s it. Which of these should I pick up?

EDIT: I’m making this A GAME, and YOUR COMMENTS will decide which top 1 or 2 books from this list I will actually go and buy. For updates, stalk me on Twitter.

EDIT 2: Your comments have determined that I should buy Alienated! Thanks for all your input!

2014-08-13 20_49_33-Microsoft Excel - Book1 (version 1) [Autosaved]

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26 responses to “Top Ten Books I’m Not Sure I Want To Read

  1. Every time I see the cover for Alienated, I snort with laughter. I remember seeing some fairly positive reviews, but I just don’t think that I could ever pick it up because it looks so ridiculous!

    Personally (and I know I’m in the minority), I find Julie Kagawa to be a bit overrated. I read the entire Iron Fey series and, for some reason that I still can’t understand, am not sure why I continued to read. I liked the first one enough, but it annoyed the heck out of my for about half the book. The same thing happened in all of the subsequent books, but I think I was just determined to check a series off my TBR list and kept reading even though I wasn’t enjoying them. So I don’t think you’re missing too much with those books.

  2. You have to get The Iron King! It’s one of my favorite series ever; the first book is good, but it gets better with each installment. I would be really interested in seeing your thoughts on it. They’re pretty popular as well.

    Half Bad was okay. Honestly I had really high expectations for it that kind of fell through. Yes second person narration that felt odd and the pacing isn’t great. Overall though it was interesting enough. I’m not crazy excited for the sequel but I’ll definitely read it.

    I really want to read Alienated, so a review on it would be nice. I’ve read almost nothing but negative reviews for The Queen of the Tearling so that kind of made me undecided on it as well. The other books I feel pretty neutral about.

  3. Morgan

    Landry Park was a DNF for me, I read half… I love all those things that you mentioned and still couldn’t muster the energy to care. It could have been my mood but I haven’t felt any urge to pick it back up. Manor of Secrets is cute but nowhere near as good as her Tudor series. It’s very fluffy and predictable. Not terrible but Gilt was much better. I have Tandem and Queen of the Tearling on my shelf, will get to the eventually I suppose!

  4. I really loved Queen of the Tearling, it made my heart happy with all it’s awesomeness. No boredome whatsoever for me 😉
    I had issues with Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things To Mend, it was a fun story, but I’m really annoyed at the ending cause UGH (yes, I’m feeling very eloquent this morning) (and also I don’t want to spoil anything if you do decide to read it), just no.
    I haven’t read Manor of Secrets yet, but I’m betting it’s awesome. I loved both Gilt and Tarnish, I really like the author’s writing style.

  5. I feel the same way about Queen of the Tearling, Dissonance, Half Bad, Antigoddess, and Landry Park. They are all books I’m just gonna wait to see how the sequels do; I’m not in any rush. The only book I’ve read on this list is Alienated, which I liked but didn’t love. It’s an enjoyable, easy read though, so I don’t think if you read it you’d feel like you wasted your time or would end up annoyed.

  6. I really enjoyed Half Bad. It can get a bit slow in places, and I definitely think there is a lot of set up for the future. But the quality of writing was great and I thought it was something new. A lot of people have compared it unfavorably to Harry Potter which I don’t really get, because it was nothing like HP to me.

    I’m wary of Queen of the Tearling too!

  7. I’ve heard such bad things about The Iron King – I was considering it for a while and was majorly put off! Dissonance and Alienated are on my Wishlist too though.

  8. MJ

    Manor of Secrets was a meh for me. Not terrible, but obviously was only written to ride Downton’s coattails.

    Dissonance: Stay. Away. A big DNF from me. There are no likable characters whatsoever in that book which is a shame because the concept was fairly cool.

    Alienated: LOL. I’d recommend library-ing it. It has some moments, but overall pretty bland.

    Antigoddess: Decent enough, but it’s been about a year since I read it so my memories are sort of fuzzy.

  9. Half Bad was such a HUGE HUGE HUGE disappointment. It was very poorly written, the main character is a huge dickhead and the plot was just… MEH. It was somewhat original but since I didn’t care at all about the main character I just had to force myself to finish this. Did I mention it was VERY poorly written? 😛

  10. I really enjoyed Alienated, and I shipped the romance so hard. It actually helps if you think of it as a contemporary with spaceships – it reads like that until the very end when the sci-fi stuff really comes out.

  11. I really liked The queen of the Tearling. The world-building is a bit bizarre and could definitely use some more information (but I believe this is supposed to be a series with 7 books, so time enough), but I liked the idea. Kelsea was a good character despite one annoying flaw and the introduction from magic made me interested enough for the sequel.

    I’m more in love with the Blood of Eden series, but I found The Iron Fey series very entertaining. It’s light and you shouldn’t give too much thoughts, but I would say it’s fluffy paranormal.

  12. I loved Alienated. I was such a fun read and did actually make me cry. It made me put off tons of homework to read it. I read it early through netgalley and I have been dying for the sequel ever since! I ship it!

  13. -I enjoyed Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend, but it’s not for everyone. I loved that it was a summery read, but it was also very drama filled. Exactly what I needed at the time, but it’s not without it’s issues.

    -I just got The Queen of the Tearling from the library last week, but I haven’t started it yet. I’ve heard so many mixed things that I’m a little anxious.

  14. 1. I liked it. Not amazing, but entertaining enough to be a good read. I think the ship was okay, but obviously not that memorable.

    3. ABOUT TO READ. I WILL REPORT BACK.

    4. I think I gave it a 3.5? It had good things and bad things. It did have a cute kissy scene so that was good. I guess I liked it more than Okayed it.

    6. For me, it was more of a YES, but it was more of a creepy/world building yes. Not really a shippy book, so for you I don’t know.

    8. DNF. Didn’t care about anything AT ALL. I guess Meh for a rating, because I couldn’t be bothered to finish.

    9. DNF, but more of a NO, because wtf second person get away from me and I read a scene further ahead and GROSS YUCK.

    10. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. All the no. Book one’s kind of okay, but the ship is TERRIBLE. And this is one of those books where the heroine is super powerful but needs to be saved. Just no. No no no no no.

  15. I’ve only read four of these, but here are my not-so-reliable-because-I’m-an-unpredictable-black-sheep opinions:

    Alienated = YES. It’s cheesy and sweet and pretty funny at times, such as when Aelyx discovers pizza. I loooooove the romance, which is really saying something. 😉 It gets serious at times, but it’s mostly adorbs until you get to the end and all the dramatic stuff.

    Broken Hearts = no. It starts out well enough, but after the first five or six chapters, it gets annoying and super predictable. The big twist is practically staring you in the face and because Gemma is as blind as a bat, you’re expected to be the same way. You need a LOT of suspension of disbelief for this book to work. Like, sci-fi dystopian levels.

    Half-Bad = I don’t even know. I DNFed it like Christina did because I didn’t like how it was written. The first part being in second-person while the rest in first-person annoyed me and I just didn’t care about the story.

    The Iron King = meh. It’s super creative and I loved that part, but it’s really about the romance and I was no fan of either guy.

  16. Here are my thoughts:

    Dissonance: Cool story, but too long and kind of confusing. I think I gave it like 2 or 3 stars.
    Tandem: I really liked this book! I think I gave it four stars.
    Antigoddess: I WANTED to like this so much, and I thought I would.. but I never finished it. It was so boring and I felt nothing for it. :/
    Queen of the Tearling: ADOOOORED! I kind of hated some of the unexplained world building (I assume it will be explained later), but other than that I thought this book was fabulous. Great MC—very likeable.
    The Iron King: I kind of hated this. It just felt very childish/middle grade to me (which I’m not into) and it was annoyingly instalovey. It felt kind of Alice in Wonderlandy (childish, a bit ridiculous, weird). I thought the MC was insanely annoying.

  17. The only ones from your list I’ve read are Manor of Secrets and The Iron King, neither of which inspired much enthusiasm. I liked The Iron King up to a certain point, though, whereas Manor of Secrets was really, REALLY bad (or at least my ARC was).

  18. I really liked Antigoddess! I think you would at least enjoy it somewhat – it’s not nearly as funny as the Percy Jackson books, but the reimagines of some of the gods as teenagers were interesting, especially since the author didn’t try u water them down and make them seem too human-like. If you liked Kendare Blake’s Anna duology then that’s a pretty decent sign that you’ll enjoy this new series (hopefully!).

  19. For me the Broken Hearts book wasn’t super, it was between 2-3 stars for me. HalfBad is worth it. And all of Julie Kagawa’s books are amazing!

  20. I am pondering whether to buy/read most of the books from your list. I only read The Iron King and it was… Meh? World was wonderful, I loved how gruesome fae were and a lot of side characters were good. But the main characters and romance… so clichéd your eyes will be rolling all the time.
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