Despite feeling like an overall good reading year, 2024 still brought some duds my way. There’s a strange katharsis in spilling a years-worth of reading-salt in a single post, so that’s what I’m planning to do here.
Obligatory disclaimer for this list specifically: all of this is based off my subjective experiences, and none of these opinions are meant to offend or discredit any author or reader. It also warrants saying that, in past years there’ve been books on these lists that I actively resented, either for harmful ideas, bad representation of minorities or narrowminded ideas in general. There are surprisingly few of those this year, so I’m not overly mad at any of these. Some of these, specifically the disappointing ones, absolutely have an audience out there, and I’d still recommend them if you feel you might be in that audience.
I narrowed my list down to 10 entries, but was left with a handful of dishonorable mentions, for which I’d like to do a quick rapid-fire-round to get us in the mood. All of these disappointed me in a very particular way, but not enough to deserve a full spot on the list.
First: Gliff by Ali Smith, Playground by Richard Powers, Enlightenment by Sarah Perry, Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong, and Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors, all for being hyped to high heavens but being painfully average 2.5-3 stars for me…
Second: Midnight on Beacon Street by Emily Ruth Verona, Bloom by Delilah Dawson, The Night Guest by Hildur Knutsdottir and The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown for delivering perfect-sounding horror-synopses, and completely failing to deliver on those…
And third: Mirrorred Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse for putting a god-awful cover on a book I actually love, and Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio for putting a stunning one on a mediocre book.
Having said that, let´s get into the list-proper.
Most Disappointing:
1. City of Saints and Madmen – Jeff Vandermeer
City of Saints and Madmen was the definition of a disappointment to me. I wanted to love it based on the concepts and story being told. I thought I would love it based on the authors track record. And even though the book overall was not a good experience for me, there are still elements of it I appreciate.
City of Saints and Madmen is set in the titular city of Ambergris, that is packed to the brim with political intrigue, strange characters, complex lore and (because this is Vandermeer) Mushroom-people. Rather than a single narrative though, we explore this city through a series of interconnected short stories, disguised as a collected volume of city-guides, faux academic papers and journal entries from inhabitants. It’s this alternative format that broke my enjoyment. Between the strange typography, the constant fourth-wall-breaks and the footnotes and appendices longer than the actual text of the story itself, I literally lost the plot. As mentioned in my review, similarly to House of Leaves, this is a marmite-book that has a bit of a cult-following, so it’s still worth a try if this bizarro-style is something that tends to work for you.
2. Infinity Alchemist – Kacen Callender
Here’s another book I fully expected to love based of the authors track-record. I love their contemporary middle-grade and YA-works for the way they explore themes of queerness, mental health and racial identity through beautiful stories and equally stunning prose. Seeing them translate that into an YA-fantasy novel featuring a magical school for alchemical magic sounded like a recipe for success… Unfortunately, despite the themes being present, all of the rest of Callender’s quality of writing seemed lost here. A bare-bones McGuffin-chase-plot that still managed to contain plot-holes despite its simplicity, insufferable characters with an unconvincing instalove-romance between theme, disjointed writing and more brought this book to its knees.
You can find my full review here.
3. Solenoid - Mircea Cărtărescu
Another one where I went back and forth between disappointment/worst is Solenoid… On the one hand there’s the honest annoyance I feel when I think back on the time I wasted on this doorstopper of a book. On the other hand, I can see that Solenoid is an incredibly popular work of literary fiction that meant a lot to many people, so calling it “objectively bad” is probably a bit disingenuous. So what is this brick of thesaurus actually about? Well, it describes itself as “Based on Cărtărescu's own role as a high school teacher, it begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics.”That description could either fit a layered and ambitious masterpiece, or a novel so self-obsessed and pseudo-intellectual that it thinks itself to be one. It turned out to be the latter… To me, there was nothing of substance beneath all the bloat, and although I realize that some of my annoyances may be “intentional by the author”, I hated my time reading this.
Full review can be found here.
4. Brat: A Ghost Story – Gabriel Smith
Every now and then I get one of those “the-ones-that-got-away-books”: books were I’m convinced based on themes, stories, descriptions and reviews from people I trust, that they’ll be my perfect book. And when they turn out not to be, there’s this phase of denial where I almost want to believe that I can get a different outcome by trying to read them again. Brat: A Ghost Story was one of those books.
Endorsed by BooksandLala (one of the most reliable Booktube resources for recommendations for me), this is a literary fiction novel about grief and loss of control from the perspective of our titular millennial “brat”. Gabriel's life has always been objectively cushy, until things have started to crumble all at the same time. His father passed away, his mother is in a care-home, his partner left him, and his writers block has prevented him from writing a single chapter towards the novel he owes his editor. On top of that, his house is haunted, versions of his unwritten manuscript begin to insert themselves into his life, and his actual skin has begun to slough off… There were so many amazing ideas and concepts in this book. I just wish they’d been explored by a different author and with another protagonist at its center. I couldn’t get over how horribly janky this writing was, nor could I get past the protagonist obsession with his own genitals that appeared on every single page.
Full review can be found here.
5. House of Frank – Kay Sinclaire
My final disappointment is a book that is both here on its own merits/vices, as well as a stand-in for an entire subgenre. Cozy fantasy is a trend I desperately want in on. I love the idea of “Skyrim-side-questing” our way through a fantasy world, whilst focusing on a smaller-stakes story with preferably a lovable cast and emotional heart to it. Rather, I feel like this subgenre has just become an easy cash-grab for publishers and authors to push out their underdeveloped fanfiction. “Low stakes” shouldn’t be a synonym to “low bar”, and yet still authors are limboing underneath that thing like crazy.
House of Frank had the right ideas about it though, attempting to pack an emotionally laden story of grief and healing at its core. Which makes it even more disappointing that it didn’t succeed, and the emotional beats ended up feeling more like melodrama than actual heart…I had quite a few problems with this story, apart from it being underdeveloped. All of which you can read about in my review.
Overall, it’s the giant gap between potential and actual delivery that ended it a spot on this list.
Objectively the worst:
1. Graveyard Shift – M.L. Rio
I went back and forth on whether to classify Graveyard Shift as a disappointment or an actual failure, as it was both in my opinion. This was one of two novella’s I was extremely hyped for this year (the other being The Night Guest), and the fall between the level I expected from M.L. Rio, and the level she delivered was enough to break some bones… Graveyard Shift has a simple, but intriguing set-up. A group of night-smokers meet by chance every night in an unused cemetery behind a college-campus, which has become their designated smoking-area. One day, they find an open grave, and decide to investigate. From its set-up, this could’ve been a suspenseful, semi-closed room horror/mystery with an interesting cast, set over a single night. If only it had actually been finished, before the publisher pushed it out of the door. Graveyard Shift is not actually a novella; it’s an unfinished draft for a novel disguising as one. I’m genuinely convinced that this wouldn’t have been published in its current state, had it not had Rio’s name attached to it, so Flatiron knew it would sell regardless. Publishers need to realize this is not okay, so they dare to critique even their star-authors, because I know for a fact that M.L. Rio can do better than this.
My full review can be found here.
2. The Deading – Nicholas Belardes
The Deading is an indie-published eco-horror novella that I picked up based off the synopsis alone, as it sounded like my perfect horror story. Eco-horror about a small coastal town where a mysterious contagion wreaks havoc on the local population (mollusks, birds and people alike). Think 28 Days Later meets The Bay and add a bit of the Lovecraftian. With a synopsis like that, and a cover to match the vibes perfectly, I couldn’t wait to get into this story. Unfortunately, the execution just wasn’t there. Jarring, flat and disjointed, this thing was just treading water. What little substance there was (mainly towards the titular act of “deading”, which the author seemed to use as a metaphor for social media trends etc…), wasn’t nearly as clever as the author thought it was… Full review can be found here.
3. This Wretched Valley – Jenny Kiefer
This Wretched Valley is a supernatural survival horror story an expedition of 4 climbers ascending a mysterious mountain in the Kentucky wilderness. Months later, 3 bodies are discovered in unexplainable conditions. The fourth hiker is still missing. Was what happened a force of nature, or something more supernatural after all? I was fairly interested in this premise and had access to it risk-free through my library, so I gave it a go, despite the low average ratings upon release. To summarize: this was just plain dumb B-horror. In fact, had this been a corny B-movie with great nature-visuals, I’d probably have had a ton of fun with it. What irked me enough to put it on this list is the marketing.Quirk books decided to market this as a serious adult horror novel, heavily focusing on it “taking inspiration from the Dyatlov Pass Incident”. That honestly felt disrespectful to me, and I’m going to have to spoil some things to get across why. The Dyatlov Pass Incident is a true case involving a climbing-tragedy that befell real people. (I recommend Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident if you want to learn more about it). Using it to market what is essentially a YA-slasher novel featuring teen-relationship-angst, weapon-wielding ghosts and bloodsucking forest-grounds is frankly more than a bit tacky... A full review can be found here (Goodreads only, because of the amount of spoilers involved)
4. Supplication – Nour Abi-Nakhoul
I’m keeping this one short, because despite it being “objectively” the worst written thing I’ve read in 2024, I feel a little bad for it. Supplication is a debut novel that actually felt like it had a lot of intention behind it. If follows the hallucinatory journey of a woman who wakes up tied in a basement, with a man with a knife standing over her. As she barely escapes with her life, she flees into the night of an unknown city where she roams the streets in search of safety. Set firmly inside the (obviously scattered and messed up) headspace of a survivor of extreme trauma, the entire novel is set up like a hallucinatory fever dream of stream-of-consciousness writing. The thing with writing fever-dream-style fiction is that there’s a very delicate art to it, where you toe the line between capturing that experience, and actually disintegrating into rambling incoherence. The latter happened here, and it resulted in something that was utterly unreadable, despite its best intentions. Apologies to the author, as I genuinely hate to put smaller debut authors on here, but unfortunately, this was objectively one of the worst written books I encountered this year. Full review can be found here.
5. House of Rot – Danger Slater
Finally, in the number one spot is a book I do resent a little bit, because this author knew exactly what he was doing, so I don’t feel as bad for critiquing on the choices made here. House of Rot was sold to me as a horror novella that deals with the anxiety of a young couple moving into a new rental apartment at the peak of the housing-crisis (relatable content here…), only to find it covered in strange mold. That was something I absolutely wanted to read! A non-exhaustive list of things I didn’t want to read were: - a beat-by-beat description of a commercial for Doritos (Jalapeno and Salsa Verde, to be specific) in the middle of an already short novella… - the same, but for a Taco Bell commercial… - the state of two characters being described as “a human crunch wrap supreme”, which believe it or not, is not the justification for the aforementioned Taco Bell-commercial description. Seriously, does this man have stock in Fast-Food??- a graphic description of a characters penis rupturing open, only to stop-gapped with a fungal bloom. No we’re not done yet… The then decides to use a toothbrush to… never mind, you get it… Granted, I could’ve saved myself this one, had I done a bit more research into the author. His Goodreads profile page has the top question as “what’s Hamsterbation”, with the authors answer being“Hamsterbation is when you masturbate, but when you finish, instead of semen, hamsters come out of you.”That’s the level of maturity on display here, and also that’s enough internet and books for me for the day, thank you very much.
What a joyful place to end just before the Christmas-break… Luckily, things can only look up from here on out, as my final two wrap-up-posts will be all about my Favourites and Honourable mentions for the year. Stay tuned for those, as well as my reading plans for 2025, all of which will be coming your way between Christmas and New Years.
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