Books that just are...

So, it’s no secret that not every book is made equal. Not every book is amazing, not every book is terrible. Some books just… are. They’re the books that you read and after you’ve finished them you think, “Well, that’s that book read,” and it made you feel nothing overwhelming. Like, you didn’t dislike it to the point you have to stop reading it, but it wasn’t so good that you couldn’t stop reading it. You finished it, and you moved on with your life and never thought about it again.

And that’s exactly what this post is about, some of the books that I’ve read that just were. I read them and once I was done, I thought to myself, “That was definitely a book that exists”, and then when on to read something better.

For the video version of this post (CLICK HERE)

Now, before I get into the books for me that “just are”, I would like to mention that this is all my opinion - my subjective opinion. I feel like I need to mention this because what I might have felt was a book that didn’t send my wig flying to Arkansas might be a book that you love. Just know that this is only my opinion and has no bearing on the books themselves.

So the first one in this post is Been Here All Along (BHAA) by Sandy Hall. Now, this book is actually the only book that I’ve gone and reviewed on a website that isn’t just my blog or YouTube channel, just because I so strongly felt that this was a middle of the road book that just is.

Okay, so, BHAA has four POVs throughout, and it switches between them to tell the story. Now, I don’t have a problem with a multiple POV book, my favourite book of all time (They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera) is a duo-POV book. I think multiple-POVs, when done well, can make a book so much better. The multiple POVs can let us look into different characters’ minds and their motivations and immediate thoughts and responses. But my issue was that BHAA didn’t use them effectively. One of BHAA’s POVs (that’s so many acronyms, I’m sorry) was basically the “villain” of the story, which in itself isn’t a bad thing, but the “villain’s” POV is spent having them feeling bad and trying to apologise to one of the protagonists which just, to me, made the whole book have a “don’t hate this character, please” feeling to it. And because of that feeling, the book didn’t feel like it had any conflict to it. And since there was no conflict, I never really cared that much for what happened.

The book does have cute moments, I’ll give it that. But just cute isn’t enough to take my wig off. To paraphrase RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Alyssa Edwards, “It’s cute versus gorgeous. And when cute is next to gorgeous, gorgeous trumps cute.” BHAA is just cute, not gorgeous.

So, next up we have The Paris Novel by Anthony McDonald. I read this one more recently than I did BHAA. Now, I sentence I remember writing in the post I made on The Paris Novel is that it was definitely a book that I read… And that was when I knew it had to sit in this post as well.

I remember that on the blurb of The Paris Novel, there was a whole-ass torrid love affair that was presented as a main selling point to the book. But then I got into the book, as one does when they read a book, and the love affair… It was there, I can say that. The love affair advertised to the readers was definitely there. However, just because it was there, that didn’t mean that it was as strong as it was sold to the readers as. I remember I finished reading the book and sort of just sat there like, “Oh, that was the love affair?” Like, the love affair just seemed like it was something that happened during the book, not the main point.

The thing was that I felt like I read something different than what was advertised to me. Now, the thing was that I didn’t dislike what I read. The book felt more like it was just about the protagonist’s time in France more than the love affair. And I wish it had been advertised more as that, and the love affair could have just been advertised as something that happened, then I think I would have liked the book more. I also remember thinking that the cover to this book was just awful…

And the final book I want to mention is another that I’ve mentioned on this blog before, S.T.A.G.S. by M.A. Bennett. This was a book that the more I’ve sat on it and the more that I think about it, the more I’m like, “I have very few thoughts about this.” Like, I remember vaguely what happens, and luckily, I keep all my old Word Docs for these blog posts (I could also just go re-read my own posts), and I remember what I thought about this book. I remember being disappointed by the end of the story. Like, I remember mostly enjoying the book until the end of it, because it had one of those, “Oh, we’re doing this for the end?”

I’m going to insert a spoiler warning here for S.T.A.G.S. here about the ending. Okay? Stunning. So, this book has this big dramatic build-up to the end where the protagonist, Greer, is climbing up a waterfall because she’s being chased by the main antagonist. Atop the waterfall, the antagonist admits to all of the bad things that they did, and Greer reveals that she recorded everything that the antagonist said. In response, the antagonist throws themselves off of the waterfall and dies, and that’s pretty much it. It was like, for lack of better comparison, the story took us to the top of the waterfall, and instead of the exciting jump into the pool of water below, the story throws itself over the edge and dies… It was an exciting build-up for a really bad payoff.

And here’s a really bad transition for me to say that this is the end of the post. I’d like to do this post again at some point, but that will be some point quite far into the future since I’m going to need to actually read the books that are the epitome of “Go girl, give us nothing”.

    Okay, bye.