The worst books of 2020

Some of these I do feel bad about. They had good intent and they might not even be badly written. It probably isn't them. It's probably me.

The Invisible Guardian

by Dolores Redondo

A murder investigation that I solved in chapter six. As I felt pretty certain I knew who the killer was so early on, it didn't make for a very exciting read and was very anti-climatic at the end when it was revealed to be exactly who I'd thought it was. I did like the main character and there are a lot of layers to the story, it just wasn't compulsive reading for me. Especially the overindulgence in background information. It's set in Spain and throughout the investigation you're loaded with a lot of unnecessary historical and cultural tidbits. While they would be interesting if I was reading historical fiction (or non-fiction), in a dark murder investigation knowing that the town used to be named such and such and the church walls are so and so, drags the pace. I won't be reading the rest of the series, but I did enjoy watching the movie trilogy - which oddly enough I thought did a better job at keeping the murderer a secret in the first film.

Brightly Burning

by Alexa Donne

Let me start by saying that this is not a bad book. If I had been 12-14 years old I might have enjoyed it and I believe the intended readership is on the younger side of the young adult demographic, so it does do it's job in that sense. However, I'm putting it in my worst reads as while I liked the sound of it, I didn't enjoy the result. This is a sci-fi retelling of Jane Eyre. I love Jane Eyre and I love sci-fi, it should have been a good fit. The trouble is it fits as well as Cowboys and Aliens did. Two factors made this a book I will never re-read. One, the dialogue is just not good. Jokes are not funny, characters are not believable. And two, as it intends to reference Jane Eyre, you will inevitably be wishing you were reading that instead of this. The main character doesn't have the depth that Jane does and the Mr Rochester certainly doesn't have the charisma. I did come across this book from Alexa Donne's YouTube channel and that I highly recommend watching if you're interested in how publishing works and writing advice.

Frost Blood

by Elly Blake

I didn't finish this one. I got halfway through and ultimately decided that life's too short. It's supposed to be a fantasy war/love story but it's pretty much only a love story that happens to sometimes reference strange powers. There are two main characters, a girl with fire powers and a boy with frost powers. Since the moment they meet, how they feel about each other becomes the sole focus of the book. Who cares about the king that killed the main character's mother (no, I'm not going to look up the main character's name. Can't remember the guys name either). Dethroning the king and getting her revenge matters not when Frosty McDreamboat is around. And he's around a lot. Even in scenes he has no business in, suddenly he'll appear. The author can't seem to go a chapter without squeezing him in somehow and it reduces the female lead to some hormonal wreck that keeps staring at him and wondering if his heart pounds as loudly as hers does... Blergh.

The Bone Houses

by Emily Lloyd-Jones

This book was incredibly disappointing. Picking up the book I loved the look and feel of it - the artwork is beautiful. The concept too is interesting and I could easily fall in love with the world. Even the characters are likeable. But although those are great positives, the story is so repetitive and I hated the writing style. I don't need characters to remind us of their motivation in every chapter, and more that half of the time the formula was pretty much: bone house (i.e. corpse) attacks, Ryn fights with axe, Ellis is in pain and some romantic will they/won't they internalised monologue. Bonus sometimes being that the goat saves them. None of the reveals were shocking and I found myself scanning past a lot of it as I felt I'd already read a similar description or action a paragraph ago. Amazed that I did finish this one to be honest.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

by Patrick Ness

Another one I didn't finish. And I'd heard so many good things about this one. The idea of the story is very intriguing: men's thoughts are heard as loud as if they'd spoken them, while women are next to non-existent and their thoughts are still internal. I suspect it's another book I may have enjoyed if I was the age demographic it's intended for. As is, I found the main character very grating and the action felt forced at times - characters literally putting a knife to the main character's throat just to end the chapter when it's obvious that there wasn't going to be a big showdown. The main character never really feels in danger, it reads as though action is needed so here's an explosion or here's a 'fight'. I listened to maybe more than half of this on audible but decided not to finish it as the intrigue that started the novel became less and less interesting to me as time wore on. Why thoughts could be heard in the first place, what happened to split the world and where the mysterious girl came from, are questions I'll never know the answer to.