Worst Books I Read in 2022

We did the best books so now it’s time to do the worst books I read in 2022! I’m glad there isn’t too many on this list. Over the last couple years I’ve narrowed down my reading taste fairly well so there isn’t too many times now that I read a book I don’t enjoy but there are still some that sneak in! Let’s get into it.

Firstly let’s start with The House at the Edge of Magic which was BLAND at best. The only thing I liked about this book was the cover. This was a Howls Moving Castle/Alice in Wonderland wannabe with the most obnoxious main character I’ve ever read and straight out boring plot. I also still do not understand the magic system. This is one of those middle grades were everything is ridiculous and makes no sense just for the sake of shock value. Which is not a trend I enjoy to begin with…

Now moving onto The Attic which firstly what it actually is, is not really what it was marketed as. Spoilers I guess but this has a weird magical realism twist at the end that just made no sense. I was expecting gory zombie apocalypse. Not magic but okay… It started out fine but just got weirder and weirder with every minute. But not like good weird. More ‘the fuck am I reading’ weird? Also the swearing was so overdone. Don’t get me wrong, I swear. Constantly. But even this was a bit much. The swearing also didn’t always make sense. It was like it was there to sound cool and felt unnaturally forced. Not worth the hour it takes to read.

Then onto Lies Like Poison which was just straight up confusing and long winded. Firstly, I usually love stories with multiple time lines but this wasn’t done well. I was confused half the time and the rest of the time bored. I feel like this book could have been shortened to 100 pages and still would have conveyed everything it needed to. The characters were also wildly inconsistent and all over the place. Which was both hard to follow and obnoxious. There are much better YA Mysteries to invest your time into.

Now we have this gem of a book. Rock Paper Killers can be summed up by I was bored shitless! This was the most predictable, boring and uneventful thriller I’ve ever read. Where was the thrill? Now this one will also be in my most disappointing reads and I want to mention why here too. So this book, on every sales site or book app I’ve seen its advertised as A twisty, page-turning thriller from a major new voice in YA or The perfect page-turning, chilling thriller as seen on TikTok! These phrases are literally in the name of the book on every site!

I wasn’t joking… Advertising this way I don’t understand as it sets a certain expectation and when it isn’t that or doesn’t live up to it, it’s even more obvious and in your face how bland the book was.. I get trying to hype it but you gotta follow through!

Now onto the book that still pisses me off on the daily. This just has some shitty rep & some bad messages… The plot was fine but the characters were so bad that it out weighed the plot. The MC is obnoxious at best. The way he goes through crushes on women is just annoying. Literally anything with a vagina he is interested in. The girl he had a crush on would leave the room and another girl would walk in and next second the first girl is forgotten and we have a new crush. No. Stop that.
Then there is the fact that he led someone on and didn’t really bat an eye lid about it. He asked this girl to go to a dance which she assumed it was a date. Easy mistake, fine. He realises that she believes its a date and instead of correcting her he lets her believe it & then goes and makes out with someone else and gets caught by said girl… Like dude. Not cool.
And of course, again we have someone trying to force people to come out before they are ready. Which seems to be a trend for this author. There is a weird love triangle thing going on with a pansexual character who is openly dating this chick but secretly dating this bloke. Which already is not cool and just leans into that stereotype that bi/pan/pol/omni people will cheat because they are attracted to more than one gender. Yeah, that’s not how that works in the slightest and considering this is meant to be a positive story for LGBT+ rep that’s not a stereotype we should be promoting… Anyways! The bloke he is secretly dating thinks it’s a fabulous idea to kiss the bloke in public and in front of the chick he is also dating and force him to choose between him or her. This bloke isn’t openly pansexual, so this is yet another character trying to force people to come out. This crisis was averted by another character but it was never discussed and at no point did this bloke feel bad or apologies for what he was trying to do. I swear this whole book was just drama for the sake of drama.
This book is just Leah on the Offbeat all over again. I love that we have LGBT+ rep in books but I can’t help wondering if some of the representation is promoting harmful stereotypes & toxic behaviour sometimes. Can we normalise calling people out for being crappy in real life and books please?!

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Well that is is for the worst books I read in 2022! Let me know in the comments what you’re least favourite read of 2022 was!