The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

What were your least favorite books of the Spring 2015 Challenge? Which books didn't meet your expectations?

These four books were a little disappointing. They were 2 stars.

Skeletons at the Feast
We Were Liars
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
While Beauty Slept

AND....I only had one 1-star rating:

Never Again Good-bye---this was truly dismal.

The one I just finished this morning - ZERO stars
A Dose of Murder

Lol. In public. Book Concierge...that is how I felt about my one star.

I promised myself not to finish a book I didn't like just for the challenge, and I didn't. I did finish a few stinkers for other reasons - like being stunned and unable to believe a book could be that bad all the way through. Lol

Biggest Loser: Heartbreaker was about odious people I couldn't like who actually deserved each other. I guess that makes it a happy ending.

Also:
Prudence disappointed me by being really pointless and making no sense.
An American Childhood disappointed big time as I love her writings but this autobiography was all over the place.

Murder in the Marais
Dreadful

The worst books I read were:
Unelmakuolema by Leena Krohn
The Court by Elizabeth Walker
Kirjaston henget by Jacques Bonnet

I gave all of these 2 stars. Unelmakuolema was pretty weird book and the others were just too boring for me.

I only had one 1* which was Mateship With Birds for award winner for the Stella Prize. I was looking forward to the book and ended up bored and hating nearly all the characters.

My two stars
Fifty Shades of Grey for Read a book that a GR friend has rated 1 or 2 stars.
Daisy Miller
They Never Came Home
Wicca for Beginners: Fundamentals of Philosophy & Practice

I didn't have any one-star reads this time, but I was pretty disappointed in How To Be a Heroine, Girl With a Pearl Earring, and The Children Act, which were all two star reads.

I don't usually have that many one-stars, but I had a few this SRC. I found Posted To Death particularly grating, along with the The Mangle Street Murders. I also had to read A Good Man in Africa for my book club and didn't get on with it at all.

I had a few that weren't that great this season but here are the top 3
It Shouldn't Happen to a Midwife: More Nursing Tales from the Swinging Sixties - Poorly written and hard to follow as author alternates in calling characters by christian/surnames and just overall a dull story.
Born with Teeth: A Memoir - badly named as really just a puffy tale about the authors drama filled mediocre romances.
The Buried Giant - So flowery and filled with metaphors and 'isms that it was like walking waist deep through sand.

The only book I really didn't care for was "The Dinner" by Herman Koch. It was really hard to follow. It jumped around between the past and present and the sections were divided by appetizer, main course, and desert.

There were several books I'm still wondering why I bothered to finish:

The Expected One
Lucrezia Borgia and the Mother of Poisons

And I Was disappointed by
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress
Fairest

I have to disagree with Jayme(The ghost reader) in that I loved The Dinner. I listened to it so perhaps that makes a difference but it reminded me of Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin in that the family relationships were a puzzle to figure out and it had the feel of the unreliable narrator which I really like because it adds another dimension to the narrative.

Disappointments:

Shadowflame - 1 star, so bad it almost ruined the first book of the series for me
Attack on Titan, Vol. 1 - 2 stars, apparently I won't be following along with this manga phenom
Dark Witch - 2 stars, I usually enjoy Nora Roberts but this wasn't even entertaining, just lots of weird rhyming
Death of a Valentine - 2 stars, I think MC Beaton just hated the world when she wrote this

Some of the books I didn't like or were a disappointment:

Persuasion (1 star; utterly boring, just managed to listen to it during commute to work)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (2 stars; such a disappointment, I expected more)
Don't Look Twice (2 stars; again, boring)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (2 stars; again, I expected much more from this book)
Peter Pan Must Die: A Novel (2 stars; I've liked the previous books in the series much better, this was somehow listless)

The Strain by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan. Uninteresting characters who only do things for the sake of the plot, and the writing was shoddy at best.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I won't even start on this one, but it will probably be my least favourite book of the year. Hated it.

Camilla wrote: "Some of the books I didn't like or were a disappointment:

Persuasion (1 star; utterly boring, just managed to listen to it during commute to work)
[book:Do Androids Dream of Electric S..."

I read Persuasion too and hated it. If you mean the Jane Austen novel.

Jayme(the ghost reader) wrote: "I read Persuasion too and hated it. If you mean the Jane Austen novel.
"

Yes, I just needed it for another challenge and it fit here as well, otherwise I would have abandoned it.

I have five that I managed to finish despite not liking them.
Love Medicine - Read for my in-person book club. It was too dismal for me.
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen - I was hoping for more info on the hidden tribe. I guess they really are hidden.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - It was amusing for a couple of chapters, but inserting zombies in the original text got old pretty quickly.
Heaven Is Here: An Incredible Story of Hope, Triumph, and Everyday Joy - I really wanted to like this book, but just couldn't like the author.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane - This was my first Neil Gaiman book. I don't think I'll be reading another one.

I gave up on The Casual Vacancy after the first couple of chapters.