Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Thoughts on Tomes. If you want to join or find out more information about the weekly themes check out the Goodreads page! This week’s topic is going to be both fun and polarizing, as the theme is books we dislike but love to discuss. I tend to rant a bit when talking about books I hate so I will try to keep it short and coherent! We all have books that we don’t like, but the books that I seem to really dislike (okay, hate) also happen to be some of the most popular books. I even have a dedicated bookshelf for them on Goodreads. So I thought I’d add a little warning for this week: unpopular opinions ahead.

THRONE OF GLASS SERIES – The first three books were great. Throne of Glass had such potential to be a great series. And then Queen of Shadows happened. Somewhere between the publication of Heir of Fire and writing Queen of Shadows, Sarah J. Maas developed amnesia. She threw away three books’ worth character developments and plot, all to make way for a new ship. That’s unforgivable and it’s Writing 101: Things You Shouldn’t Do As an Author. SJM changed the direction of the series to write her self-insert fantasy/hot fae fanfic and destroyed everything that was written previously. After HoF, the series become ripe with inconsistencies, abusive love interests, and gross, toxic relationships. I could literally write an entire blog just about how much I hate this series and everything wrong with it but I’ll force myself to stop now. If you want more of my thoughts on this series and this author you can check out the anti- tags on tumblr, they all pretty much sum up my feelings. 

A COURT OF MIST AND FURY – Maas must suffer from a severe case of inconsistency or something because otherwise I don’t understand how she can go from writing ACOTAR to ACOMAF. The fact that she turns one of the villains from the first book into the love interests is horrible enough as it is, but the fact that she has to do it at the expense of another character’s development is not only unforgivable, but really says something about her writing. It should be disheartening to everyone that young women/girls read these books and are influenced by what they read. The fact that I see so many people call Rhysand and Feyre “couple goals” and find Rhysand’s abusive and problematic behavior “romantic” is what’s wrong with Young Adult books these days. 

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY – If you haven’t noticed, there tends to be a theme with all these books that I hate vehemently: they feature toxic, abusive relationships. When Fifty Shades of Grey first became popular with all my friends (and the rest of the world), I checked it out. I only skimmed the first book but that was enough for me. All I kept thinking was: what the f*ck, people actually like this trash?! I tried to explain to my friends why I hated the book, and how it’s a terrible representation of a BDSM relationship, but it fell on deaf ears. And here’s the thing, it’s not just the portrayal of an abusive relationship as romantic that’s the biggest problem: the writing is so, so bad. Every time my close friends bring this book up I always tell them I can suggest a whole handful of erotic books that are ten times better, but alas, they never take me up on the offer. 

SHATTER ME – Getting through the first two books of this series was like dragging glass across my eyes. The biggest issues for me are the writing style, Juliette, and yes, *gasp* Warner. First of all, it took me three tries to get through the first book because I could barely standing the writing style. I literally could not stand it and almost DNF’d three times. I don’t remember if I actually finished the second book or not because they made zero impression on me other than I thought there were terrible. I also really disliked Juliette. I thought she was super boring as a character and I couldn’t stand her. Again, the fact that the male lead’s past abusive behavior is excused so he can become the love interest is so gross to me and a trope that I’m frankly tired of seeing in Young Adult books. Authors, please stop this. It’s 2018. 

TWILIGHT – Okay, so when I first read these books I liked them. To be fair, I was in middle school. And then I read them again when I was older and the movies were set to come out soon and I realized how bad they were. The writing is barely mediocre, Bella is a complete Mary-Sue and actually really, really dumb, and Edward is super creepy.