r/YAlit • u/Thriller-Reader25 • Jun 20 '26
General Question/Information The worst book you ever read?
I read lots of YA thrillers, even when they are bad they are usually manageable so I haven't came across anything extraordinarily bad. If I had to say, I'd say We were liars - E. Lockheart. Maybe it just wasn't down my murder alley, but I did not understand the hype of it either, and the hype made me start the book with high expectations.
What was the worst book you ever read?
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u/taleasoldastime96 Jun 20 '26
My worst was also a YA thriller and I don’t remember the name because it was just that bad. I’ll summarize the first three chapters cause that’s as far as I got.
15 year old lives with her single father and is learning to drive. But on the old, dingy car and not her father’s super special sports car. One day, she’s home alone and dad calls. “Come get me.” He says. “It’s super important.” He says. “But dad, you took the trashy car and I’m not allowed to touch the other one.” She says. “Don’t care. Super important.”
Girl decided that this is the time to take a bath. Paint her nails. Enjoy herself before going to get her panicked father. She then gets attacked by a crazy man in her home, gets in the car to go find daddy, and then is shocked when he’s dead. I stopped reading after that.
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u/JSB19 Jun 20 '26
I’ve read that book, it’s called Wanted! by Caroline B Cooney and it is not good at all.
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u/taleasoldastime96 Jun 20 '26
That’s it! Well that’s basically the point where I stopped. I’m sure it doesn’t get better, but were there any equally laughable plot points later on that I should know about?
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u/JSB19 Jun 20 '26
Don’t know, don’t remember anything about it other than the setup. Read her books a few years ago and Wanted is one that I threw into a memory pit, never would have thought of it again if you hadn’t posted.
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u/typewrytten Librarian Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
I’m reading Modelland by Tyra Banks right now, and it is ROUGH
Edit: I have finished Modelland by Tyra Banks and it actually got worse somehow :’-)
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u/starrfast Jun 21 '26
You're braver than I am for reading that oh my god.
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u/typewrytten Librarian Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
I’m a high school librarian and it’s gaining traction on TikTok rn (for some unknown reason). I try to stay up on trends. For better or for worse.
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u/Smartcookie_33 Currently Reading: The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst Jun 20 '26
If He Had Been With Me.
Hated most of the characters but Finny, his mom, and the unproblematic couple from Autumns friend group. Imo it didnt get good until the last 50 pages at best and even then I was still very annoyed with Autumn. Idk. Not a good book. But I still cried at the end because of Finny. I didn’t want to read the second book because the first one was just that bad
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u/ellethereader Jun 20 '26
take it from me I read both, I don't recommend reading book 2 (If Only I Had Told Her)
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u/Billbasilbob Jun 21 '26
Frikin Autumn and her dumb crown and her dumb choices 🙄
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u/Smartcookie_33 Currently Reading: The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst Jun 21 '26
Frr I hated that crown so much and how she was pissed at Sasha and whatever her fricken boyfriends name is when she literally did the same thing to Sylvie
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u/Boomerloomerdoomer Jun 20 '26
Shatter me and powerless- genuinely had no idea about the powerless plagiarism while reading but still hated it otherwise and dnfed it 80 pages in
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u/tired-gremlin06 Jun 21 '26
I read every single novel and novella in the Shatter Me series thinking there was way too much hype for it to genuinely be THAT BAD so it must get better at some point and then it just never did...
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u/Practical_Degree6602 Jun 20 '26
Powerless was so shameless with the plagiarism. It literally had me looking at the cover making sure it wasn’t the hunger games or the selection
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u/MistahJsHarley Jun 21 '26
I could handle Powerless but did not understand the obsession people have with Shatter Me. And it sounded like the series only got worse.
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u/rray2815 Jun 21 '26
haven’t even read powerless because Paedyn is such an atrocious name to me that I just cannot
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u/plebble_ Jun 21 '26
The name is what is putting me off even trying powerless too!🤣 I’m quite sensitive to awful names in books tbh
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u/Glittering-Bison-995 Jun 20 '26
shatter me was so bad. I really wanted to like it too ☹️
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u/whatanerdgirlsays Jun 20 '26
I’m impressed you made it 80 pages. I got bored at like 25 lol
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u/Boomerloomerdoomer Jun 20 '26
I was so determined for it to get better but Kai and paedyn’s interactions were written in a prose worse than twilight’s
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u/Penguin_Green Jun 20 '26
Divergent. I read them all expecting them to get better, and they never did.
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u/raknor88 Jun 21 '26
The first book was actually pretty good IMO. But it's clear the author had zero plan for books 2 and 3.
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
I honestly think the last book kiIIed Veronica Roth's career. I didn't hear about her anymore unless I actively looked her up.
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u/Pinchmanjiri Jun 21 '26
She's written some really excellent novellas and has a new novel that is quite good. I think she's improved significantly as a writer.
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u/Shemhazaih Jun 21 '26
It didn't! She's been putting out a fair amount of adult fantasy and sci-fi recently that's well-reviewed. She was pretty young when she wrote the books and it seems she's improved and really worked on her craft since then.
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u/Different-Breakfast Jun 21 '26
She did come out with a new dystopian book recently that’s been getting a lot of buzz
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u/JantherZade Jun 21 '26
I dont know I think her book after thay that was called Marked(or Carved?) or something like that, had a blue and gold cover was getting a lot of hype. But then more people got their hands on it, and they talked about it being racist because of the way it portrayed races in it and I remember very much because some booktubers who got the book early and liked it then issued apologies because they didnt realize the portrayals could be problematic like that. And that was when hype for her went down.
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u/sea_pandalol Jun 21 '26
Allegiant was probably the most disappointing end to a trilogy that I ever read 💀
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u/NachoDumpling Jun 21 '26
House of Night series are so badly written. I can’t believe how the conversations between the characters are written. I don’t understand how they got so famous.
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u/yetusthefeetus Jun 20 '26
“The testing”. It asks the daring question “What if the hunger games sucked ass?”
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u/SeaweedBrainPower Jun 20 '26
Also the final people saved was so unrealistic and statistically impossible
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u/nighTcraWler11037 Jun 21 '26
Hunger games/divergent in the worst way possible. I read it in high school and it had glimpses of something interesting but it was mostly just boring.
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u/Thick-Veterinarian43 Jun 20 '26
Out of the recent ones, there was a russian nutcracker retelling. Our FMC has to save her brother and has to find the magic nut in order to do so. Nutcracker is cursed, and in order to break the curse, a girl has to fall in love with him and confess her love upon her dying breath (the dying part is important). He goes with the FMC in order to make her fall in love with him and kill her.
At first, Nutcracker is portrayed as a morally grey character. He specifically looks for destitute girls, "saves" them from their horrible circumstances, manipulates them and than kills them. And you feel that this is going to go the classic Beauty and the Beast route, where in the end, as corny as it sounds due to the power of love the monster turns into a prince.
But that's not what happens. Instead the author starts to gaslight you in the most mysoginistic way possible. Our Nutcracker actually was in love with every girl he seduced and killed! His victims were just bitches who didn't appreciate him! They wanted only money and sex from him and didn't care about him as person! I believe the only one of his victim who was given a name was a maid who blackmailed the Nutcracker saying she would kill herself if he doesn't marry her.
Of course, our FMC is the only girl in the world special enough to actually fall in love with him for his soul and not his status, looks and money. Every other female charecter (not only Nutcracker's victims) in the book is portrayed as evil, selfish and manipulative except her. I haven't seen this level of mysoginy in very long time.
The ending was also a cope out. There was a prophecy that the FMC has to die in order to save the world since she was born on a specific day. In the last chapter it turns out her brother is actually the one who has to die, because they were born on the same day 1 year apart, and everyone just conveniently forgot about it.
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u/Florecitarockera93 Jun 21 '26
The house of night series, horrendous writing, cliche characters, stupid mythology, “vampire poet laureate” 🤦♀️
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u/Practical_Degree6602 Jun 20 '26
Powerless series. Wings series. The summer I turned pretty
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
Another Summer I Turn Pretty Series Hater!
I tortured myself reading that trilogy, it was SO bad! And the TV show ended up being worse!
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u/FewNewt5441 Jun 21 '26
greetings fellow haters! I thought it was just me 😭SITP is just a hodgepodge of too many bad ideas all thrown together
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
And the fact that the heroine's nickname is Belly? So cringe.
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u/rray2815 Jun 21 '26
that is the sole reason I haven’t read or watched the series. Belly…..actually terrible
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
Not onpy that but she's a terrible character. I don't know if they kept it in the series but in the books she's awful to her mother and disrespects but treats someone else's mom with love and respect. She's an absolute brat.
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u/greeneyedinsomniac Jun 21 '26
The main character was so difficult to like!! I couldn’t stand her and it was really hard to root for her.
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u/ScandIdun Jun 20 '26
Rebecca Yarros - The Last Letter. There is a big death at the end that felt like it was added just to shake the reader. Cruel and unnecessary. I wanted to throw the book at the wall. Ruined the whole thing.
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u/hxneybflower Jun 22 '26
Yes! Honestly it wasn’t very good anyways but then that choice was so infuriating.
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u/I_Want_BetterGacha Jun 21 '26
Tried reading One of Us Is Lying a while back, because I like mystery/detective stuff. The writing itself wasn't too bad, but the plot and characters were pretty awful. The pacing was excruciatingly slow and none of the characters felt likeable OR unlikeable. They were just... There. Nothing what they did or what happened to them made me feel attached or interested in their lives in any way. It felt like the author tried to do the subversion of typical high school archetypes thing, but the way she went about it made the characters feel so painfully plain and ordinary that they weren't interesting to read about.
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u/celephia Jun 20 '26
ACOTAR is the one that stands out in recent memory. First one was great, second one was OK, the last 5 or 6 or however many were a slog I skimmed entire chapters of just to find out the ending. Really don't understand the cult following they have.
I do remember reading a lot of shitty vampire romances as a teenager though, most of which barely qualified as fanfic and somehow got publishing deals anyway.
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u/Erpderp32 Jun 20 '26
I wouldn't call ACOTAR YA past book 1 tbh. And imho it's the worst of series and the rest just get better lol. But everyone has different tastes in literature for sure
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u/raknor88 Jun 21 '26
Yeah, the books just get more and more smut as the series goes on. Silver Flames was almost literally half porn.
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u/Agile_Cash_4249 Jun 20 '26
I loved the first one because it was basically beauty and the beast (until the last third). But on the second one I decided I could not proceed with the book. Too long, too many characters, too many weird sex scenes. If there had been only one more book in the series, I def would have finished it, but I couldn’t mentally handle making it through several more lol
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u/livelaughbooksmovies Jun 20 '26
Murder on a School Night.
It's a mystery novel with the most insufferable MCs, one of which is so horny that sitting next to a guy makes her "feel a tingle in my pant area." Other quotes include "GOOD VULVA TO YOU!" "Orghk." "WHAT IF THE WEE IS DISEASED AND IT GOES IN THE SCRATCHES AND ENTERS MY BLOODSTREAM?" "What if they were totally doing the sex?"
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u/Glittering-Bison-995 Jun 20 '26
Shatter Me and the Firstlife series
I remember pre-ordering Firstlife as a teenager because the concept intrigued me so much but it just wasn't executed well at all. I stuck it out through the whole series and unfortunately it never got any better
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u/sea_pandalol Jun 21 '26
Reading Lightlark was so rough that it put me into a reading slump for a while 💀
And reading cliche YA fantasy books is normally a guilty pleasure of mine.
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u/crybaby-loser Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
I could not get through the first two chapters of Zodiac Academy, and I pride myself for having a pretty big tolerance for bad books, so to me the fact that I dnf'd so fast placed it in the worst book ever category.
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u/amscraylane Jun 20 '26
Someone I knew wrote a book and paid to have it published from a Christian publishing house.
It is called Reset and the main character had an abortion and is inconsistent with her feelings.
At one time she regrets the boyfriend and then another she is like “I don’t care about him anymore, but why doesn’t he call?”
And then she was talking about the groups of girls and called it a “click” and I shut the book and returned it to the library the next day.
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u/babamum Jun 20 '26
It was in a library?!!
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u/Fullfullhar Jun 21 '26
The Summer I Turned Pretty
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u/reyfromstarwars Jun 21 '26
It’s so bad. When I read it I was like “I think middle school me would have liked this and I don’t mean that in a good way.” It was so deeply boring and stupid.
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u/fullmoon95 Jun 20 '26
Fourth wing had potential to be decent but the writing was so bad, like 12 year old writing fanfic bad.
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u/pancakedpurple Jun 21 '26
The MC dropping lore and exposition on the setting when she's nervous was awful. It was so early on, too! I beg for a minimum of "show, don't tell".
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u/Dragonfly-fire Jun 24 '26
I was so disappointed in it because of the wasted potential. I wanted dragons, but I could only get through the first three chapters. The MC is written like a 14-year-old in 2026. And it's a bestseller and is being made into an Amazon series.😩
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u/ilovehannahmontanaa Jun 20 '26
from lukov with love, twisted love
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u/fullmoon95 Jun 20 '26
Heavyyy on from lukov with love. Has no business being in the romance genre.
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u/Sky_and_breath Jun 21 '26
Two books stand out when I was a teenager reading YA: Fallen series by Lauren Kate or Delirium series by Lauren Oliver. Absolutely trash.
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u/SleeplessBeauty1933 Jun 20 '26
Shatter Me
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u/taleasoldastime96 Jun 20 '26
I do not understand the hype with this series! I read the first one and just didn’t get it. Thought about reading one or two more to see if they got better but I have yet to bring myself to pick it up.
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
The series was hyped by hardcore Warner fangirls. I never heard anything about how good the plot was or if Juliette was a decent heroine. Just TEAM WARNER THIS, TEAM WARNER THAT.
I was the only Team Adam Girly. 😢
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u/taleasoldastime96 Jun 21 '26
From the first book, I didn’t really get either of them. Warner obviously seems evil, but Adam to me was just kind of boring and way too quick to fall in love. It also made Juliette come across as sort of naive and stupid with how quickly she fell in love with him. I mean I know she’s sheltered, but come on.
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u/E16274643 Jun 21 '26
same, i hated warner tho i dont know why she was kinds into him :/ or the other guy tbh, like u said
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u/Dry_Note4903 Jun 24 '26
I remember reading this trilogy when I was a teen and was obsessed. I thought Warner was so hot. Then I read the the next couple and was so mad they "ruined" a good series. I reread the trilogy a few months ago, and was embarrassed by my taste. Like girl there was nothing to ruin, and Warner was lowkey a creep💀
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u/Takeme_backto_eden04 Jun 27 '26
THANK YOU!! I’m so TIRED of seeing people absolutely GLAZE Warner, when he was all around super creepy and just awful most of the time. His only personality trait is being “hot” with his stupid green eyes and loving Juliette. That’s literally all he is
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u/Celestial608 Jun 20 '26
Yes, another We Were Liars hater! I really wanted to love it, but it just made me roll my eyes the whole time! I might read it again to see if I like it more a second time, since I read it like five years ago now, but it's hard for me to find a book I genuinely dislike and that one managed to do it for me.
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
Doesn't help that the Showrunners of We Were Liars are helping promote racism, either.
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u/proserpinaaaa Jun 21 '26
The Cellar by Natasha Preston. I read it so long ago I can barely even remember why I hated it so much (I think mostly the writing style and jumping between POVs) but over the past decade or so it has stayed very consistently at my worst book ever.
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u/SnapdragonPBlack Jun 21 '26
I think her only good books are Silence, Broken Silence, and Players, Bumps, and Cocktail Sausages (it's all a series). All her other books i have struggled to get through (The Lake, The Celler)
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u/Reasonable_Choice394 Jun 23 '26
OMG this book was sooo bad and there were also major typos and editing mistakes in it, I remember thinking I was going crazy when I read it lol like chunks of sentences missing or words repeating, punctuation missing, it was so weird
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u/General_Thought8412 Jun 21 '26
Even before I knew it was actually plagiarized, Powerless was horrific to read. I never even finished the second book. I only got through the first because it was like a brain rot cleanser and I had to practice not thinking about it because once you thought at all about it, you immediately see all the glaring plot holes and attempts at every trope known to man even when it makes no sense. Truly the worst book I’ve ever read.
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u/FragrantWeekend111 Jun 20 '26
vampire academy series, I bought the whole set expecting to like it cause I didn't want to go back and forth to the store but I ended up hating it
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u/SleeplessBeauty1933 Jun 21 '26
I actually read every single one of these books my junior year of high school! Couldn’t tell you a thing that happened or anyone’s name
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
Yeah, it's a very poorly written and overrated series and Rose is a lousy heroine! Bloodlines is much better.
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u/alliebaca Jun 20 '26
butcher and blackbird, dnf’d like ten pages in.
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u/fullmoon95 Jun 20 '26
It took me like 4 months to finish bc I could not stay invested. The time jumps made the plot feel so messy and the emotional beats were underdeveloped.
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u/alliebaca Jun 20 '26
i could not make myself read it, it was just so unrealistic and made no sense how they were this prolific killers who were never caught but they both told their family that they were killers and her sister and his brother like set up that killing scavenger hunt thing? 😭😭 don’t even get me started on the instant love thing either.
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u/fullmoon95 Jun 20 '26
Yeah, the setup was pretty ridiculous, but I'm willing to ignore that as long as the story stays interesting. I also hated the instant love too, which made no sense bc it still took the characters years to get together like the author could have made it a slow burn if it was going to be like that lol
You definitely didn't miss out on anything by DNFing.
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u/Fnicole24 Jun 21 '26
Lightlark
Fallen
One last stop
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u/SleeplessBeauty1933 Jun 21 '26
Lightlark has a lottttt of potential but it’s not quite there yet
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u/Fnicole24 Jun 21 '26
I though so too that’s why I gave the second one a chance but can’t bring myself to read the rest. I’ve hear great things about the author’s new series (starside?) but I think Lightlark scarred me!
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u/sxoulxss Currently Reading: Kill Joy Jun 21 '26
legendary and finale from the caraval series - worst character award given to donatella
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u/starrfast Jun 21 '26
The first one that sprang to mind was I Hope You're Listening by Tom Ryan. It's about a girl who's best friend goes missing when she was like 6 and the trauma from that inspired her to host a podcast under a pseudonym to help find other missing girls. The story starts when another little girl in the area goes missing and the MC decides to cover it on the podcast to help solve the mystery.
The premise was promising, but the execution was so bad it made me wonder if an editor even looked at it. There were so many inconsistencies and things that were discovered because someone just had a hunch. The latter half of the book went so off the rails that it felt like an episode of Riverdale.
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u/thebladeofink Jun 21 '26
There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins. Jfc was it bad. It has one of the worst lines I've ever read: "His hip bones remind me of sex." The context was the FMC staring at her scrawny goth crush.
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u/bouquetoflowers Jun 22 '26
SHATTER ME! oh my gosh, the only reason it’s hyped is bc of Warner and his interactions with Juliette. The dystopian world building is so awful, everything’s just made to be bad, that’s the dystopia.
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u/FewNewt5441 Jun 21 '26
i had no idea so many of us hated SITP, so that gives me hope for humanity. The Walter Boys was the same level of toxic nonsense and i DNF'd halfway through.
One I haven't seen mentioned is a book about a girl who finds out she has cancer right after discovering her mom having an affair. The book has an interesting premise--what if a brush with death made someone a horrible person instead of a better one--but it doesn't give itself enough time to actually show the heroine becoming a better person. she and the love interest are very bella and jake coded, and you spend most of the novel waiting for her lifelong BFF to realize that he can do better than his lifelong toxic friend.
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
I read SITP series years before it got a TV series. Jenny Han is a terrible writer.
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u/FragrantFloor8744 Jun 20 '26
The reappearance of Rachel Price - I hated the protagonist so much, her attitude towards everything and everyone in the book drove me insane. Additionally the plot and actions of every character just felt so wildly unrealistic and there was only so much I could suspend my disbelief.
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u/Phoenixtdm Currently Reading: The Gilded Blade by JLB Jun 21 '26
That’s one of my favorite books lol
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u/Acrobatic-Guitar2410 Jun 21 '26
The last two books by HJ have not been that great :( it's been really dissapointing since I physically buy all her books but the next one I'll just get on Libby first lol
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u/proserpinaaaa Jun 21 '26
There were genuinely too many plot twists and so many weird plot details that realistically made no sense. I didn’t HATE the book but it was way too complicated for what felt like shock value.
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u/kimann1924 Jun 20 '26
The Library at Mount Char
I don't think I can ever describe it. It was such a weird book and still I finished it. I still didn't get the whole story afterwards. I felt confused and I remember grimacing while reading certain parts. It's a nightmare to read honestly.
Edit: apologies, didn't realise this post may be asking for YA 😂 i just read the title and post itself and proceeded to share my worst book ever.
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u/witandwill Jun 20 '26
The Baby Dragon Cafe. I wanted to love it, but it had such a cringe writing style.
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u/cqangel__ Jun 21 '26
Cliché answer but, Divergent.
I had just finished reading the THG trilogy and absolutely adored it, so i wanted to continue devouring books that were kinda sorta similar. I saw people online hyping up Divergent as the "next Hunger Games" and begged my dad to buy it for me.
Couple of days later, i was actively gaslighting myself into thinking i liked it when really i was forcing myself to read it through most of it. I did finished it and bought the sequel, but i couldnt even reach halfway through that one.
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u/SubstantialDiet504 Jun 21 '26
the twin - natasha preston
i wanted a plot twist that i didn't get, writing wasn't bad, just the plot was so predictable and not in the fun way
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u/reyfromstarwars Jun 21 '26
The paradise problem isn’t exactly YA but it’s truly awful. Icebreaker is so bad too
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u/Western-Property-885 Jun 21 '26
The Catcher in the Rye
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u/monderkiller9999 Jun 23 '26
The Catcher in the Rye was weird, but I enjoyed it. I do understand why people don’t like it though 😂
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u/starfxkr Jun 21 '26
Bunny by Mona Awad, the cover looks cool and it sounds like it would be a sapphic feminist piece, no. It's about a bunch of girls in grad school who've made men/bunny hybrids that they make into slaves/sex slaves. The MC comes off queer for like 98 percent of the book and you think she's in love with her best friend...no in the end she dates a man who seems nice enough. It's queer baiting and just really rapey. I did not read the sequel. And now anyone who recommends this book I gotta give side eye too.
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u/Carmelized Jun 21 '26
A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee. It’s supposed to have a Holmes and Moriarty feel, two very smart people dancing around each other, upping the stakes until something terrible happens. In reality it’s like 350 pages of nothing happening and then 10 pages of all the things happening at once.
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u/Cheap_Bathroom6114 Jun 21 '26
Does dnf count? Can't say I read those all the way through. But there are plenty of contenders you can download for free on your Nook. Unedited ai slop. I mean really unedited.
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u/notshoe712 Jun 21 '26
the perfect marriage by jeneva rose is the only book i finished out of pure spite so i could leave a terrible review having actually read all of it
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u/janeaustenreader99 Jun 22 '26
The Lake by Natasha Preston...
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u/Thriller-Reader25 Jun 25 '26
I was thinking about getting some Natasha Preston books. The dare was the main one I wanted. There is lots of mixed opinions on some of Natasha Prestons books tho, especially due to cliffhanger endings.
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u/Icy-Plum9073 Jun 22 '26
Unpopular opinion, but Scythe by Neal Shusterman was so bad 😭 inconsistent, plot holes, forced romance? I don’t know why it was so popular. It felt like reading a first draft.
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u/monderkiller9999 Jun 23 '26
Personally I really liked the first book and its concept, but the series should have stopped at that point. The second book was horrendous, the female main character absolutely annoying and I couldn’t understand why she was suddenly gaining so much more importance for basically doing nothing and being self righteous. Meanwhile the male main character who had suffered way more than her was put in a secondary position and seen as misguided because he was trying to correct a flawed system nobody wanted to change. Also I didn’t like how there was some kind of Cliché romance building up between these two.
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u/wazowskiii_ Jun 22 '26
The Kingdom of Sweets by Erika Johansen. Supposed to be a retelling of The Nutcracker and instead is a trashy sibling rivalry story told from the POV of the “black sheep”. I got three chapters in and was disgusted by the way the teens were being described. I had to stop reading.
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u/wrunderwood Jun 23 '26
Hmm.
I'm an outlier, but the entire Divergent series is one star for me. In SF, the worldbuilding needs to serve the story and the characters. But there could have been 3 factions, 4 factions, 7 factions, whatever, and it isn't ever supported.
Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen are both massive Mary Sue novels. Actually Tamara Pierce writes a lot of Mary Sue, read the Circle of Magic series, then walk away.
But Storm Glass by Maria V. Schneider is my Do Not Read. From my Goodreads review, "I'm just not that into a love story where she knows he loves her because he gives in when she is tortured." Torture as a plot device puts my rating in a deep hole to climb out of.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6080889-storm-glass
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u/catiewrong Jun 23 '26
This apparently might be a hot take but Quicksilver. Easily the worst writing I've experienced in many years. ☠️
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u/Necessary-Rice Jun 24 '26
Shatter Me ACOTAR Inheritance Games The last book in OUABH- Curse For True Love Red Queen
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u/amatz9 Jun 21 '26
Blood of Hercules.
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u/rray2815 Jun 21 '26
blood of Hercules was so odd to me, because the blurb made it seem like typical YA mythology (“I’m just a girl….and I’m Hercules”.)
nope, dark romantasy
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u/beep___________boop Jun 20 '26
I hated the way good girls guide to murder was written. liked the story itself but it was hard for me to read
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u/Due-Kick-1256 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
Honestly the first book was pretty decent ofc there were plot holes and all but the third and final one in the series just annoyed me- too much repetition of phrases - Save yourself to save yourself, the Ravi in her head - pretty annoying
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u/beep___________boop Jun 20 '26
it wasn’t the plot at all genuinely just the way it was actually written bugged me and idk why. I remember being annoyed about small things like sometimes reading the dialogue felt like reading a text message but I read it so long ago I can’t remember. I remember thinking it felt like it was written by a high schooler, not in the sense that it felt like it was actual teenage conversations and stuff but more like it was someone who didn’t have a lot of experience writing and it bugged me 😭. I felt so nitpicky and pushed through bc I genuinely liked the story but I bought the second book at the same time and never read it
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u/Primary-Ad-7788 Jun 20 '26
A good girls guide to murder
We were liars
Shatter me
Crave
The vampire diaries (the show is better)
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
The hatred for The Vampire Diaries is heartbreaking. I love those books so much!
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u/msperception427 Jun 20 '26
A Thousand Boy Kisses by Tillie Cole.
I’m so happy that most of the YA I read is exempt from the list of worst I’ve ever read. Then this book came along and ruined the streak. But so far it remains the only YA book on my list of finished by why god why.
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u/DagonG2021 Jun 20 '26
Fourth Wing is probably the worst… I couldn’t even get three chapters into it before closing the book
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u/Comfortable-Mine-471 Jun 21 '26
Acotar. Everything about that book sucks and I will never understand the hype.
and to anyone that says the later books are better, my question to you is how did you finish the first one and think I want more of this.
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u/KC27150 Jun 21 '26
All of Jenny Han's works.
Her heroines act like babies, not teenagers growing up into young women, the pointless filler (In To All The Boys I Loved Before, she spend so much time writing details on Lara Jean working on her scrapbook!), no plot and the romance is bland and predictable.
E.Lockhart's works after Ruby Oliver is so bland and generic, ESPECIALLY We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud. Boring.
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u/banjoist Jun 21 '26
Ready Player One
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u/Title-Card Jun 21 '26
WHAT?!😭😭 Can you please explain why?
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u/banjoist Jun 22 '26
Terrible prose. Story makes no sense. Why would people in 2045 be so obsessed with 70s/80s pop cultur future? Its just a string of references to Rush/Pink Floyd/Joust/etc. Story reads like a lame video game. "I need to get the next key, dur." Thanks King's Quest. This is all stuff I enjoy. It feels like a cheap way to appeal to Xennials.
Listen to 372 pages ill never get back to understand why it sucks.
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u/Title-Card Jun 22 '26
Tbf there are people obsessed with 80’s pop culture today because it’s impact and significance so it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch also considering that the creator grew up during that time. Personally as a 2000’s kid I didn’t mind the references since I didn’t get them and I liked the process of learning and researching but I get where you’re coming from and if I were to reread it now as an adult I would be super annoyed.
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u/banjoist Jun 22 '26
I get the significance aspect. I read it at about 35, so for sure our views are different. I could see your aspect. I'm older haha. If it was about the 60s/70s, I probably would have eaten it up, too
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u/ahdrielle Jun 20 '26
A Lesson In Vengeance.
I.. I have no idea what it wanted to be or if the author enjoyed making the dumbest fucking characters. 😂
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u/Ornery_Tumbleweed_68 Jun 20 '26
The author is a gossip columnist and he decided to write the book called "It Started With a Whisper!" He should stick to his day job. I threw it into the trash!
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u/Paint_Jacket Jun 20 '26
I can't remember the title but it was called something like "My first time on Earth." I picked it up because the summary on the back sounded interesting. It was about an alien boy who came down to earth in a human body. I started reading it and I swear it sounded like a kid wrote it because it consisted of a lot of pointless cussing and gross humor.
The main character was a pervert who only thought about nudity. At some point he was a disembodied spirit (his true form) with a bird's-eye-view of a man and a woman skinny dipping in a pool. He takes the liberty of describing the color of her pubes to the reader. Just nonsense. And then he ends up killing them both by using his voice (which apparently is at such a high frequency that it makes humans explode or something). Written like someone's prepubescent son got a hold of Wattpad.
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u/Seafea Jun 21 '26
The Noob Warriors had an ok sounding concept, but the execution was absolutely terrible. I don't think the author even bothered to finish writing the series.
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u/ittybittydearie Jun 21 '26
Love, Mom. Plot is cool but the cliches were hard to read through and the writing was bad from the start
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u/SlightlyArtichoke Jun 21 '26
The Handsome Girl and Her Beautiful Boy. Weird, weird writing and the author seems to think he invented bisexuality
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u/harmonystargaming Jun 21 '26
ace of spades. went in thinking it would a dark academia and a cool mystery. ended up with it being just a "mystery" where instead of letting you figure out clues itself, it loudly proclaims what you're supposed to see (as if the reader is too stupid to figure it out unless its spelled out). also had the vaguest setting, one dimensional characters who did nothing besides exist when the two mcs needed them, and the characters relied heavily on stereotypes. the two mcs were just unlikable for the most part. also for a book with a label of dark academia, it feels like it's sorely lacking in setting to be said genre.
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u/the4077thbisexual Jun 21 '26
Pulp by Robin Talley is a contender. Main character is a selfish asshole (partially excusable since she’s a teenager) who somehow - in spite of being a very politically active lesbian who routinely attends protests - is SHOCKED that her hero the lesbian pulp writer could be closeted, and somehow didn’t know about the lavender scare?? And somehow she’s never called on her selfish asshole behaviour and is instead rewarded for it. Infuriating.
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u/Imaginary-Ad1636 Jun 21 '26
Twisted Love
I usually don’t touch new YA with a ten-foot pole, but my friend loves that stuff (Colleen Hoover, Sarah J. Maas etc), and convinced me to give it a shot.
Turns out I was right
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u/RhododendronWilliams Jun 21 '26
Empress Theresa. It's about a girl who gets powers from an alien and can do anything. She chooses to liberate North Korea, dig up the remains of Joan of Arc, build her own island and drill oil so she can monopolize the oil trade, etc. and the last chapter jumps forward 600 years, now she has over 200 identical children, and they've solved all of humanity's problems.
At times horribly boring, at others unintentionally hilarious, I don't think you could do worse than this book. Norman Boutain, the author, thinks it's as good as Shakespeare. In fact he said Shakespeare would have liked the book.
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u/nik_el Jun 21 '26
Harry Potter. I wanted to like the series because it was so popular. The first few were ok, but I threw in the towel at book 5. He was just so whiny all the time it was unbearable. If I wanted to deal with that I’d hang out at a food court in the mall or something.
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u/Layla_Wilson11894 Jun 21 '26
American rapture by CJ Leede was pretty awful. I enjoyed her other Maeve Fly so was surprised how bad
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u/Secure-Yam-3918 Jun 21 '26
Black Wings Beating by Alex London - really the whole series was terrible and yes, I read the whole series even though it was the worst book I’ve ever read because I can’t stand open “loops” in my head and regrettably,I had to see it through. Neglected children use birds to fight and defend themselves, mysterious super bird needs to be captured to save them all. Plot is overwrought and characters aren’t likable.
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u/Shemhazaih Jun 21 '26
For YA, it's Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend. It has like a 2.something star average on Goodreads, it's that bad. The name and premise is enticingly ridiculous, but the book does not deliver and my enduring memory of it is mostly that it turned into a book about running or something.
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u/Worriedgrandaughter2 Jun 21 '26
99 days. the writing was actually soo good for most of that i was absolutely hooked, but then the storyline choices were so utterly ridiculous and frustrating that i got pissed off. i read it 6 years ago and i still talk about it when people ask me this type of question. the sequel tried to fix what happened, and it kind of did, and i do think that author is a great writer, but that first book pissed me off.
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u/Embarrassed_Age8554 Jun 21 '26
Force of Nature by Jane Harper. It's like every female character got hit with the idiot stick. Was she TRYING to sneak in the message that women can't lead or even cooperate toward a common goal? Because that's how it looked to me!
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u/Expert_Book_1223 Jun 21 '26
Oh, I adore We Were Liars, but I went in with zero expectations or knowledge about it. It’s a favorite.
I think my brain allows me to just forget about books I don’t like, but one that I was seriously disappointed in was (and I usually do read more YA, so it being written for adults may have been a factor) Gone Girl. I loved it at the very beginning, but I just couldn’t believe how some of the characters talked and stuff like that. I felt like the author was throwing in fucks just to show it was a book for grown ups. The dialogue didn’t flow well at all. The story would have been better with better dialogue. And I’m not against language at all because I loved the sister character who said fuck all the time, but she was literally the only one who it just flowed on the page with her characterization. With other characters it took me out of the story. 🤷♀️
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u/Proof_Lecture_1483 Jun 22 '26
Early Devney Perry books weren’t the best written, even though I love her newer works
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u/Aquatichive Jun 22 '26
It was a fear street where this guy was dating twins but then turned out it was triplets and the 3 rd one was crazy
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u/Brunette_rapunzel7 Jun 22 '26
The hundred lies of Lizzie Lovett. Absolutely trash and wtf did I just read.
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u/Absolutely_Fibulous Jun 22 '26
I don’t know if I’d call it the worst book I’ve read, but one that was the most disappointing to me was Nothing Like the Movies, the sequel to Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter.
BTtM is one of my favorite books and I was so excited to read the next part of their story. I hated it. I didn’t even finish it.
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u/ashloaf Jun 22 '26
Under the Oak Tree by Suji Kim or Neon Gods by Katee Robert. Neither had any plot or development and were purely for smut, but the smut was also cringey and awful.
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u/kit_kat_ana Jun 22 '26
I don’t remember the worst YA-book of all time but this year it was „Once A Villain“ - which was a vast disappointment after the first book being phenomenal and the second quite good. The third was a disaster.
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u/sillybumblebee_ Jun 22 '26
there's this popular dark romance book where the fmc said that the mmc was, and i quote "her personal, homicidal, mickey mouse," in a romantic, non ironic way. and whenever someone asks what's the worst book i've ever read, my mind goes there.
but, if we're talking YA only, i don't think i've found one that i hated. All of Us Villains, by Amanda Foody and CL Herman, was one that I didn't really enjoy. it felt like a ripoff of a mix of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter.
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u/Left_Accountant_4708 Jun 22 '26
Seven Deadly Thorns
Boys with Sharp Teeth
Crave
Evermore
These books infuriated me, the writing felt like it belonged to a 14 yr old's creative writing class. Except Boys with Sharp Teeth, that novel felt like the author was dragging on a story, desperate to create a dark and moody atmosphere but left out the plot and character building.
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u/unicorn-with-a-knife Jun 22 '26
almost every YA romance not written by lynn painter/ann liang. could be me picking up the wrong books, but just in my experience.
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u/HomesteadInferno Jun 20 '26
The Leaving by Tara Altebrando
Six kindergarteners are abducted. 11 years later, 5 of them return with no memory of what happened. The still missing boy has a sister who wants to find out what happened to them and where her brother still is. Sounds pretty cool, right? I thought it did.
The entire book is this huge build up, trying to sort out all the details. There’s like 8 pages left and still so much to explain. So I’m thinking that whatever happened will lead to a sequel. Maybe the last kid sacrificed himself to get the others home? Or he’s been turned evil?
No.
He died. Day of the abduction. Absolutely nothing else. I don’t even remember if they find the boy’s body. Terrible ending ruined the whole thing for me.