If we were to start listing all books that have disappointed me, we would be here for a long time. Rarely do I finish a book and feel like I completely wasted my time. If I disliked the book, then I disliked it; I move on to the next one. However, every now and then, a book will come along and make me so angry that I feel like I've completely wasted my valuable time. I usually try to forget these awful books because they do not deserve to be remembered in any capacity.
Road Ends by Mary Lawson is not a book I feel like I completely wasted my time on, but I certainly wanted to hurl it across the room when I was finished with it (but I didn't because I had wisely borrowed it from the library rather than buying my own copy).
I am a very big fan of Mary Lawson; she writes prose in a stunning and haunted way that captured my attention, even when her books were the usual fantasy books that I loved as a teenager. When I had heard that she was writing a new book, I waited in absolute eager anticipation. Little did I know that it would be absolute disappointment.
This story is about a dysfunctional family in the fictional small town of Struan in northern Ontario. The father, Edward, dreams of travelling the world, but is stuck here with his family. He ignores all of them and locks himself in his office all the time. His wife, Emily, is obsessed with having more children, but is incapable of taking care of them once they're past the baby stage. Their eldest son, Tom, is 25, working an aimless job, struggles with getting over the death of a friend, and also ignores all the problems in his family. Meg, the next oldest child, is stuck taking care of her 8 brothers, but then in a moment of impulse, leaves and moves to England to start a new life.
The beginning and middle of the story was very promising as the story introduced our cast of dysfunctional characters. However, these selfish and self-centered characters didn't change or come to terms with anything by the end of the book. The story feels unfinished, like it's only been half told, and my very satisfying ending got cut out of it. To quote my GoodReads review, while Lawson portrays the flaws of human nature not every story has a happy ending, this one lacked a cohesive closure for everyone. I was really, really let down by this book.
Runner-Up:
Road Ends by Mary Lawson is not a book I feel like I completely wasted my time on, but I certainly wanted to hurl it across the room when I was finished with it (but I didn't because I had wisely borrowed it from the library rather than buying my own copy).
I am a very big fan of Mary Lawson; she writes prose in a stunning and haunted way that captured my attention, even when her books were the usual fantasy books that I loved as a teenager. When I had heard that she was writing a new book, I waited in absolute eager anticipation. Little did I know that it would be absolute disappointment.
This story is about a dysfunctional family in the fictional small town of Struan in northern Ontario. The father, Edward, dreams of travelling the world, but is stuck here with his family. He ignores all of them and locks himself in his office all the time. His wife, Emily, is obsessed with having more children, but is incapable of taking care of them once they're past the baby stage. Their eldest son, Tom, is 25, working an aimless job, struggles with getting over the death of a friend, and also ignores all the problems in his family. Meg, the next oldest child, is stuck taking care of her 8 brothers, but then in a moment of impulse, leaves and moves to England to start a new life.
The beginning and middle of the story was very promising as the story introduced our cast of dysfunctional characters. However, these selfish and self-centered characters didn't change or come to terms with anything by the end of the book. The story feels unfinished, like it's only been half told, and my very satisfying ending got cut out of it. To quote my GoodReads review, while Lawson portrays the flaws of human nature not every story has a happy ending, this one lacked a cohesive closure for everyone. I was really, really let down by this book.
Runner-Up:
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs Jacob, a teenager, discovers that the creepy stories that his grandpa told him were true all along. He discovers an abandoned orphanage as well as the peculiar people from his grandfather's tales, but must defeat an evil that has been haunting him since before he was born. The storytelling felt quite flat for me and while there were moments of suspense, it also felt quite predictable. I really enjoyed the creepy photographs but felt like the story did not do them justice. |