Books I Did Not Finish (4)

Every so often there is a book that I dedicate a significant amount of time to and I don’t get very far. For some reason these certain book just can’t hold my attention. My general rule of thumb is that if I really, really don’t like the book after at least one hundred pages, I allow myself to set it down and never read the rest of it. I consider these books “did not finish.” I don’t come across these books too often and as of October 2014 I have only had five. So let’s talk about those.

1. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein- I wanted to like this book so much. In fact I wanted to love this book! I had heard mostly wonderful reviews and most everyone seemed to love it. The synopsis sounded absolutely fantastic! I gave Code Name Verity a whole lot more than just the one hundred pages because it was a book club book and I tried my hardest to finish it. But the story was just too choppy and most of the time I didn't understand who’s perspective I was reading from or even what was going on in general. I understand that I was supposed to be like that because it’s a book about a spy, but I thought it was just way too confusing.

2. Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly- I didn't know much about Revolution when I started listening to the audio book so maybe this would have gone differently if I had read the synopsis. But I didn't. Based on how the cover looks (mind you, the cover is not the best way to guess at the books contents), I believed the book to be about a girl who time travels to two centuries in the past in France. Boy was I wrong! I kept thinking to myself, “when is she going to find herself in the past?” but of course that never happened. I got a least a third of the way through Revolution and ended up putting it down because, unfortunately, it never met my expectations.

3. Ten Tiny Breaths by K.A. Tucker- This book is the perfect example of why I don’t read books by indie authors. The writing is bad, the editing is bad and for me, the overall experience is just not great. I cannot tell you how many times the main character said to herself that she has built steel walls around herself so that she would never let anyone get close to her again but that one touch of this really hot guy is threatening to bring them all down. I get it! You don’t have to say it over and over again! With Ten Tiny Breaths I couldn't wait to get to page one hundred so that I could give up on this book.

4. The Murder Complex by Lindsay Cummings- I remember when I read the synopsis of this book for the first time and I thought I couldn't wait over a year for it to be released. So glad I didn't buy it. I got it from the library and immediately started devouring it. The story line read pretty good until she met the guy. It went downhill very quickly from there. I can only roll my eye so many times before it’s time to put the book down. When I got to page 124 she had only seen this guy maybe twice and then this happened: “I start to pull away, but not before he squeezes my hand, just once. ‘Meadow, huh?” he whispers. ‘Well, at least I know your name.’” DONE! I’m out.

5. Touch of Power by Maria V. Snyder- Touch of Power probably does not deserve what I’m about to say about it. I few months ago I was so sick of reading YA that I literally could not even look at the stack of YA books in my room that I had yet to read. I started reading Touch of Power during this time and it clearly clouded my perception. Normally this is the type of book that I would just eat up, but I found it boring, the characters annoying and I still have absolutely no desire to finish it. Some books just get lost in reading slumps.

Every book that I do not finish is given a star rating of 2 or 1 on Goodreads depending on how much I didn't like it. For example: Ten Tiny Breaths is definitely a 1 because I didn't like it from the beginning but Code Name Verity gets a 2 because even though I liked it, it was confusing and hard to read (not because of the content but because of the jumping around). I generally only give books this low of a rating only if I don't finish it.