Most Disappointing Books of 2021

I only have four books that I read and didn’t really enjoy this year. I feel like I did a really great job of realizing pretty quickly when a book isn’t going to work for me and just putting it aside. Maybe I’ll get even better at it next year and I won’t have any disappointing reads. A girl can hope right!

My thoughts: This might be a bit of a cheat since I’m only 60% through it but this is probably my biggest disappointment of the year. I’m confused at how this is considered a novel since it is really just a collection of short stories about characters aboard the Wayfarer. I would consider this sci-fi light because it is a sci-fi world but it is not as complex as some of the hard sci-fi I have read. Another thing I find slightly annoying is that all the main characters are cinnamon roll characters, minus one grump who is hardly featured (so far), and I guess I just prefer the juxtaposition of different types of characters. This book is so widely loved that I am definitely in the minority with my feelings. Perhaps the hype made me go into this book with too high of expectations.

Synopsis:

Follow a motley crew on an exciting journey through space—and one adventurous young explorer who discovers the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe—in this light-hearted debut space opera from a rising sci-fi star.

Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.

My thoughts: This is a YA mystery/thriller that just didn’t work for me. It wasn’t very well written or plotted out.

Synopsis:

What if your best friend and roommate killed a teacher at your prep school? Or what if he didn’t do it, but he’s being framed, and you’re the only person who can save him?

Luke Chase didn’t mean to get caught up solving the mystery of Mrs. Heckler’s murder. He just wanted to spend alone time with the new British girl at their boarding school.

But little did he know someone would end up dead right next to their rendezvous spot in the woods, and his best friend and roommate Oscar Weymouth would be the one to take the blame. With suspects aplenty and a past that’s anything but innocent, Luke Chase reluctantly calls on his famous survival skills to solve the mystery and find the true killer.

My thoughts: I was completely enthralled with this book for 75-80% and then the book ended. Or so I thought. And then I was like ok this stuff could have happened in the second book but here we are. And then again something big happened that I thought would be the end but no it continued on for another chapter. Everything that happened after I thought the story had a natural ending was so rushed that it lost the impact that it should have had.

Synopsis:

Death is her destiny.

Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami, Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries. Expected to obey the harsh hierarchy of the Reapers who despise her, Ren conceals her emotions and avoids her tormentors as best she can.

When her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she’s never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Accompanied by her younger brother, the only being on earth to care for her, Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death… only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy. Determined to earn respect, Ren accepts an impossible task—find and eliminate three dangerous Yokai demons—and learns how far she’ll go to claim her place at Death’s side.

My thoughts: This book was just badly marketed and I never would have picked it up if I had known what it really was. It is marketed as a thriller but it is really an adult contemporary with some suspense elements, particularly with the ending.

Synopsis:

Rachel and Noah have been friends since they met at university. While they once thought that they might be something more, now, twenty years later, they are each happily married to other people, Jack and Paige respectively. Jack’s brother Will is getting married, to the dazzling, impulsive Ali, and the group of six travel to Portugal for their destination weekend.

Three couples.
As they arrive at a gorgeous villa perched on a cliff-edge, overlooking towering waves that crash on the famous surfing beaches below at Nazaré, they try to settle into a weekend of fun. While Rachel is looking forward to getting to know her future sister-in-law Ali better, Ali can’t help but rub many of the group up the wrong way: Rachel’s best friend Paige thinks Ali is attention-seeking and childish, and while Jack is trying to support his brother Will’s choice of wife, he is also finding plenty to disagree with Noah about.

One fatal misunderstanding . . .
But when Rachel discovers something about Ali that she can hardly believe, everything changes. As the wedding weekend unfolds, the secrets each of them hold begin to spill, and friendships and marriages threaten to unravel. Soon, jumping to conclusions becomes the difference between life and death.

~Cassie