Books I Couldn't Finish (5)

I used to finish ever book I started, whether I was enjoying it or not. But life is short. I’ve realised that I don’t have time for books I’m not full involved in any longer so if I don’t like something or don’t connect with it as much as I want to, I’ll put it aside. It still makes me feel guilty though, especially if I received them for review so I still want to talk about them, explain why I didn’t like them. Here are the most recent books I DNF-ed.

The Alex Crow, Andrew Smith

I was so disappointed with The Alex Crow. I adored Grasshopper Jungle and Winger and I couldn’t wait for another strange and original novel from Andrew Smith, but I really struggled to even read the 3% that I did – yes, 3%... The timeline was jumping all over the place and I didn’t know where or when I was and it just didn’t give me the opportunity to care about the story or the characters. It was also just weird weird rather than the insanely good weird of Grasshopper Jungle. I won’t be going back to this, but I will carry on reading Andrew Smith’s novels – that’s how good Grasshopper Jungle is.

The Game of Love and Death, Martha Brockenbrough

Now, I really don’t know why I felt the need to put this one down. It’s set in 1920s Chicago with a POC girl working on planes against the backdrop of a game of pawns between Love and Death. I thought the writing and the tone of the prose was beautiful, but I just couldn’t do it. I put it back on my TBR shelf and I definitely plan on picking it back up again as I think I was probably just in the wrong mood for it at the time. I’m very fussy when it comes to historical novels!

Cleo, Lucy Coats

I actually persevered with Cleo for a while – I didn’t DNF until 69%. I’m a huge fan of Ancient Egypt and I find the politics and mythology of that time fascinating so I was expecting to love Cleo. Sadly, I actually found myself completely ambivalent towards Cleo and her mission for about half of the novel and then that just switched to annoyance. There was a heap of instalove and I just couldn’t connect with Cleo. I don’t honestly feel like she had much of a personality, let alone the teenage version of a legendary queen of Egypt. I also found her interactions with her body servant Charm really irritating – the pet names they used for each other had me grinding my teeth. I would actually have been much more interested in Charm’s story!

Sophie