Any bookworm worth their salt will be able to pinpoint books that just aren’𒆙t for them, for one reason or another. Whether those books are set in locations that don’t interest them or in a genre that doesn’t float their boat, not every book can please every reader. However, some books are widely hated more than others, and for good reason.
I’m talking about those books that instantly spring to mind as something you should never recommend to anyone looking for something to read. Books that, sure, stick with yo🍬u, but for all the wrong reasons. Whether it’s terrible writing, a plot that borders and sometimes crosses over into nonsensical, or simply a focus on something terrible. These books are at the bottom of the reading pile for a lot of people.
Over the years, I’ve read (or started to read and failed to finish🔯) a lot of frankly terrible books. Here are 10 of the worst I’ve ever experienced, and one or two might be co💞ntroversial.
10. Dune by Frank Herbert
Now listen, I know that the original Dune novel has spawned an entire 🍰franchise that is beloved by fans worldwide. I know that the world Herbert created is expansive and filled with elements that serve as inspiration for fantasy and apocalypse writers to this day. However, that doesn’t prevent the original novel from just being bad.
I’m not sure what it is about Dune that makes it such a bore for me. It could be the repetitive writing or the fact that even the most interesting setting still somehow manages to seem bland and lackluster at times. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s all so infuriatingly straightforward and predictable. Whatever it is, I suffered through Dune onc🌌e, and I’m glad I did, but it’s not something I’d recommend anyone do.
Watch the movie; it’s just better.
9. Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
This might be controversial because Flowers in the Attic is act⛎ually infuriatingly well-written and will absolutely pull you in, but the content within is what makes it one of the worst books I’ve read. The plot is darker than obsidian, filled wit𓄧h parental abuse, incest, and even murder, but it’s written in such an explicit way that you end up wondering what the hell was wrong with V.C. Andrews and who hurt her.
This is one of the only books that I’ve finished reading and felt physically sick, and I’ve read some pretty horrifying books. I spent hours wondering what I just read and if simply reading it made me complicit in the crimesꦡ within. I felt guilty for actually finishing it, and then I was horrified to learn that it’s the first in a series?! I haven’t read the rest of the series, the first 🐎one was enough to leave me scarred for life.
8. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
There’s a reason that Wuthering Heights is the only novel by Brontë that ever managed to be published, and while it’s widely considered to be an “English classic,” I can’t help but disagree. The characters are utterly one-dimensional and selfish, and they spend their entire 💦lives trying to belittle and hurt each other in a variety of ways. Even for the time period in which it is set, Wuthering Heights fails to be believable ♛in any way.
The themes have certainly carried forward and been done far better a million times over since the publication of Wuthering Heights. If you want the same story with more likable characters, there are plenty of options out there, but I can’t recommend putting yourself through the hardship of reading Wuthering Heights.
7. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
The fact that Seth Grahame-Smith had the utter cheek to name Jane Austen as his co-author on this nonsense is a travesty, and if a zombie plague ever does come about, it wouldn’t surprise me if she rose from the ground and tracked him down for his decision. That’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this horrifyingly bad parody novel. Honestly? I was mildly excited when I first heard about the concept, but my low expectations failed to be met, and I was somehow left disappointed de🐠spite not expecting much.
The idea for this came from a publisher comparing classic novels and lists of “fanboy characters” like ninjas, pirates, and, in this case, zombies. Grahame-Smith then started writing this drivel by taking the original Pride and Prejudice and simply shoving zombies in where they were never supposed to be. This haphazard and clumsy approach is plain to see in the ev🥀entually released novel, and the senseless violence is overdone to a degree that would feel like too much in a fresh, well-written zombie tale.
6. Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Earnshaw
Of all the books on this list, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen is the one that left me feeling the most disappointed. I was truly excited to read about the love story between Jack and Sally and how she copes in the aftermath of the original movie’s events. Then I started reading, having chosen this as my only entertainment on an eight-hour plane trip, and if I could have opened the window and thrown it out, I would.
Bland, uninspired, overly simplistic, and ultimately completely forgettable. Not only does Earnshaw completely fail to grasp the concept of th🎃e source material even though she claims she watched the movie so much that her VHS copy was ruined (a lie, I’m convinced)🌳, but she completely throws established facts out the window by providing Sally with long lost parents.
5. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
There are some books that are bad, but you love them because they feel like a guilty pleasure. They’re still bad, but you love them anyway. Then there are books like Twilight that feel like they should be a guilty pleasure, but they end up being so bad that you’re horrified you even put the time into reading them in the first place and lament the other more useful things you c𓃲ould have done with that time, like staring up at the ceiling💞 or picking lint off the carpet by hand.
It has so much promise before you go into reading it. There are vampires and werewolves; that must be good, right? Wrong. The vampires sparkle in the sun, the werewolves might be the worst example of the species in the history of fantasy writing, and the main character might as well be an empty husk for all of the emotions she is incapable of expressing. But hey, I felt pretty empty after reading Twilight, too, so I can’t really blame her.
4. Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody by Michael Gerber
You know when someone tells a joke, and nobody laughs, so they keep telling the joke because obviously, if you’ve heard it 10 times, then it will somehow become funnier than the first time you hear it? That’s the experience of reading this complete mess of a book. And worse, it’s the start of a series because the jokes were obv🔴iously too funny f💜or Gerber to confine them to one slab of eventual campfire kindling.
Gerber seems to be the only fan of his own jokes because this series ♓flopped hard and has since faded into obscurity for most. Sadly, it’s embedded in my mind as one of the worst attempts at humor I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. It’s unimaginative in the worst ways, repetitive in somehow even worse ways, and only serves to prove that Gerber needs to find a new career.
3. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by John Tiffany and Jack Thorne
Speaking of terrible takes on the world of Harry Potter, I can’t write this list without including this complete disaster. It’s written by John Tiffany and Jack Thorne, who, for some inexplicable reason, decided to take established canon and throw it out of the window in favor of convoluted plot points and things that make no sense. The Cursed Child feels like terrible FanFiction, written by someone who has never read the books or done an ounce of research, and her approval of it serves only as proof of Rowling’s lack 🌊of care about her own stor﷽y.
From the trolley lady on the Hogwarts Express secretly being an eldritch horror with massive swords for hands whose only purpose is to prevent the escape of children between King’s Cross and Hogwarts to the fac🧸t that Bellatrix and Voldemort somehow managed to have a tawdry affair that resulted in a magical parseltongue child, and not forgetting the magical blanket that Aunt Petunia kept as a keepsake for the child that she hated.
There is nothing redeeming about the Cursed Child. It’s so bad that most of the Harry Potter fanbase don’t even count it as canon, despite theꩵ fact that it was approved by the original author.
2. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Let me preface this by saying I haven’t seen the stage show of Wicked. I’ve heard that it’s very good, and it had been on my list of things to watch at some point, but I hadn’t got around to it. In the meantime, I decided to r🐼ead the source material of the stage show, and I no longer have any desire to see the stage play or even look at this book🙈 again as long as I live.
I could tell you that this is badly written and filled with needless words that serve only to suggest that Maguire was being paid by the word and, therefore, had to use as many as possible. I could tell you that the pacing is brutally slow, and you’ll be halfway through the book before the first remotely interesting thing happens, aside from Elphaba biting oꦏff a woman’s finger seconds after her birth.
Or I could tell you tha♐t, at one point in the book, an orgy occurs between humans and animals that doesn’t only hint at bestiality but rather shoves it down your throat. And that’s far past where I draw the line and where I finally gave up and stopped reading.
1. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
We’ve discussed books that feel like FanFiction, but how about this terribly written, stomach-churning, and gross example of actual FanFiction that somehow ended up being published and loved by middle-aged women with no imagination? E.L. James has been very open about the fact that Fifty Shades is heavily inspired🌸 by Twilight and actually started out as a FanFiction about sparkly vampires and boring werewolves, but that’s not what makes it bad.
The worst part of this is the fact that, judging from her wildly repetitive and grossly explicit sex scenes, E.L. James is deeply deprived of any form of human intimacy. It’s tacky, and although it’s somehow managed to be depicted as a🎃 BDSM love story, it’s actually just badly executed and utterly unbelievable pornography. As if the original attempt at literature wasn’t bad enough, she then wrote the entire story again from the point of view of Christian. Obviously, Ana’s POV wasn’t enough for her to get her kicks.
Published: Jan 25, 2025 08:41 am