the 7 worst books I read last year [CC]

Everything devolves from there because this book does all of that great set up work to then abandon it and focus on the relationship between Matthew and Diana. It turns into a very generic story about an alpha male and the woman who we are told over and over again is a strong woman who lacks any kind of backbone because she lets the alpha male do whatever he wants and make all of her decisions.

I thought it was fine. It was a solid YA mystery but then I reread it in order to continue with the series, and I was like this isn't as good as I remember. Actually I think I don't like it.

I already have a video up on this channel that talks about the most pernicious aspect of AFTER and that is how it romanticizes abuse. I have thousands of words dedicated to more fully and eloquently explaining why this is a dumpster fire but I didn't want to leave it completely off this list because any year in which I read any amount of words written by Anna Todd they are most definitely the worst words I've read.

I didn't enjoy the writing here. I know that some people enjoyed Bardugo's like descriptive writing, but I personally did not. I found that it was descriptive in a way that really didn't add much to the story.

So, I ended up not liking this on two different fronts. First is as a self-contained story. It used a lot of devices that I personally don't like.

Again the story just felt like cleaved in two and neither part was particularly good.

It made a mediocre reading experience worse, and bad enough that it landed in my least favorites of the year.

I read THE LAST OF AUGUST and I hated it. Jamie's pettiness and his possessiveness and his jealousy is like on full display in the second book.

In this super grim story, I feel like it didn't have a single entry point. People were dying and something about a murderer but I didn't care because I didn't care about any of the characters.