Being Pickier About The Books I Read…And Buy!

So I recently finished reading a book that I was certain I would love. It was a psychological thriller with a description right up my reader alley. It has glowing reviews from other big-time authors. A positive review in Publisher’s Weekly. And it’s one of the BIG book club selections.

I thought yes, for sure I’m going to love it. I also purchased this book for two of my book loving friends. That’s how sure all the book industry support made me feel. I mean, how could all this praise and recognition be wrong?

Well…they were wrong.

This book was unnecessarily long.

The main character was terribly miscast.

The scenes, of which many were repetitive and completely unnecessary, were poorly drawn.

Then there was the writing slapdash toward the finish line, as if the author too could not wait to finish this book.

I did not like this book, not at all.

I did finished it. And it had a fantastic concept–great concept, mediocre execution.

And no, I won’t be sharing the title and dogging the book publicly here. As a writer myself I have zero interest talking negatively about a specific book. So sorry I won’t be saving you from making the same mistake I did.

However, I will say that my experience with this book, and several others I’ve read that similarly benefited from a lot of industry support, have made me now cautious, and skeptical, about how certain books get selected. And as a reader, I no longer have any trust in these “list” books.

So as I said in an earlier post, if you see me talking about a book on my blog, you can know for sure that I thought it was excellent and it comes highly recommended by someone who is a little tired of buying and reading books that are all hype and no substance.