WORST Books I Read In 2025

Well, it's that time. Worst books of the year. I read 100 books in 2025 and I would It was not a great reading year. But also, it wasn't the worst reading year in as much as I I just like kind of wasn't liking a lot of books I was reading, but there were very few that I really hated or that I really loved. So, actually doing these end-of-year lists was kind of difficult, but also kind of easy cuz it wasn't like I had so many and I was like, "Got to narrow this list down." As I was putting the list together, I kind of arrived at 10 of each. And I had no more and no less that I would consider putting [laughter] on my list. And I was like, "Okay, just barely. We had exactly 10." All right. So, I actually have physically most of my worst books, which is unusual. There's two that I don't. So, before I forget them, we'll do those first. Uh but otherwise, this list is in no particular order. I have not ranked them. They are not worst to or least worst to most worst or anything like that. They're just the order that I stacked them. Uh and then starting with the ones that I couldn't stack cuz I don't have them. Usual disclaimers, if you loved these books, if you loved one of these books, all of these books, really happy for you. Um my disliking them changes nothing for you. All righty. So, the two books that I don't have, The Rachel Incident. I never write down author names. I think it was something O'Donoghue, I want to say. And I read this at the beginning of the year, so specifics are fuzzy, but I said this at the time and I stand by it that it's like And so, it was compared to Sally Rooney and that's kind of what got my interest because I love Sally Rooney. And I also quite like the cover of this book, which, you know, I'm a cover buyer. Fully admit that. And I read it when I read it at the time, I was like, "For all the people that hate Sally Rooney, this must be what it's like reading her books because I can see how uh a surface level reading or comparison of the two, if you do like a checklist of things they contain or the type of books they are vaguely described, I could see why you would like lump The Rachel Incident in with Sally Rooney and be like, "Oh, this seems easy." Um but same-sies >> [gasps] >> in the way that I'm think I'm going to do another food metaphor because, of course, I'm going to do another food metaphor. It's same-sies the way that like Kraft Mac and Cheese is to like Michelle and Star Macaroni where you're like, "I mean, yeah, pasta with cheese on it." Um so, same same, but like but not same. Very much not same. Yeah. It's just It's abysmal. And it also it does the thing of having an unlikable protagonist that the author doesn't seem to realize is unlikable. Because again, I have no issue with an unlikable protagonist. Sally Rooney books often contain unlikable protagonists, but Sally Rooney seems fully aware of the fact. Um I don't know if maybe the author like did mean us like did mean to convey that this is not is meant to be a likable protagonist and just wasn't talented enough to like convey that, but yeah. God, that book was miserable. It made me so mad throughout and I I mean, it wasn't It was It was uninteresting and unsympathetic and just bad. It was just bad bad bad bad bad. Uh I was so miserable reading it and it made me want to go read a Sally Rooney book to cleanse my palate. [laughter] So, go read Sally Rooney. And then the other one that I don't have physical copy of is The Sea of Unspoken Things by Adrienne Young, which again I talked about in my wrap-up for the first half of the year. Uh it made me finally officially for sure seize give up on Adrienne Young. I Every time I read a new book of hers for the last few years, I've been like, "I'm done. I'm done with Adrienne Young. I'm not going to keep giving these books chances." And then she'll announce one that's coming out and the concept will sound so cool that I'm like, "Well, I do want to try that." And then it's always bad. This was the worst both in terms of like probably just being the worst, but also the worst in terms of like level of disappointment because even though I was prepared that I was like, "It's probably not going to be that good cuz it's Adrienne Young." But the reason I was like, "Okay, I do have to give her one last shot" is because she said it was really heavily inspired by her relationship with her brother. And I have a very very close relationship with my brother. So, if a book is claiming to be um strongly about a brother-sister relationship, that immediately at least gets my attention. Um depending on what it's going to be. I mean, we're not trying to do Jamie Cersei. Although, Jamie is one of my favorite characters, but not for that reason to be clear. Yeah, so I was like, "Oh, if she This is going to be coming from a really personal place for her, so that's usually that bodes well for for books because uh something that's deeply personal to an author, they're probably going to be slightly better at executing on." Um so, that And then I was like, "And this is just something that's close to my heart, so I will feel more strongly about it." So, I was like, "Maybe this will be the one." It was the worst one and I said when I finished it, when I reviewed it, that like in addition to just being bad, if I was her brother and I read in a dedication or some interview or whatever where she said that this is, you know, inspired by my my relationship with my brother, I was like, "If I wrote I think I said if I wrote this book and and told my brother that he was the inspiration for it, he would say, 'What the fuck?' And he would be right." Cuz I was like, "In addition to not liking this, I kept thinking I was like, 'Is your brother read this or is going to read this or you want him to read this?'" Cuz like Yikes. Yikes. [laughter] I'm not saying you can't write about a brother-sister relationship if you have a bad one and that's going to be your source of inspiration because you have a really bad relationship with your brother, you can do that. But it was bad in a way that like It painted the brother in a bad light, but also painted the narrator in a bad light. It was I It made me feel really uncomfortable, honestly, especially knowing that this was like inspired by any real people in her life or whatever, that this was more like personally like the author putting themselves into it. I Oh, boy. No. >> [sighs] >> No. Okay, on to the books then that I have physically here. Again, in no particular order. I have top of the stack, Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher. Uh T. Kingfisher is generally hit and miss for me. This was the biggest miss of them all. The other like misses for me have been more like womp womp, like didn't love it um kind of thing, not like hate. I pretty much hated this. I read it with my patrons and I felt bad >> [laughter] >> because um like this is quite well-beloved and I wouldn't say all my patrons agree with me that this is bad. Although, I was not alone in disliking it. Yeah, this made me This gave me such ick. Like this was pitched to me in a way that I expected to if not love it cuz I'm not really a romance girly, but I can like an occasional romance if it's done really well or if it's doing things in a way that I particularly like. I heard such good things about this and the way that was pitched to me and like when I was told like what are its features, why I might like it, I was like, "Yeah, okay, that sounds like something that I actually might be interested in." And oh my god. This made me so uncomfortable. Like it literally made me want to crawl out of my skin sometimes. I Yeah. Anyway, if you love this, I'm really happy for you, but I did not find this cozy. I found this so upsetting to read. All right, next up is another book that is extremely well-beloved and for years I've been looking forward to reading this book thinking that I've got sitting on my shelf a future favorite. It's just not a favorite yet cuz I haven't read it yet, but I know that someday when I read it, it's going to hit It's going to be a book that I'm like, "Why didn't I read this sooner?" Um and it's awful. And I want the time back that I spent thinking of it as a future favorite. And [snorts] that is The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. This book is so bad. I cannot believe how bad this is. Again, it's not just like, "Oh, it's not as good as I thought it would be" or like, "Oh, unfortunately, it's not a new favorite." It's not just not a new favorite. This book is horrendous. endous. I was shocked. And I also I went through the like I'm always gaslighting myself when I'm reading a book that I am determined to like or have spent so long believing that I will like. So, for the a good chunk of this book, I was like, "Well, but like maybe it's going to It's just that it's like at the start, it's it's not like it'll get there" or like just hold space for And I'm like, when I finally admitted to myself, and this is what always happens, when I finally admitted to myself that no, this is bad, then I could get through the rest of the book um so much faster cuz I wasn't like, "Um maybe I'm just like not in the right headspace for it. So, I'll put it down until like I'm fully ready to receive it." I was like, "No, this is bad. Let's get through it. Let's get through it and let's not pretend this is good." Wow. It's it's honestly really offensive like the way it's treatment of women. Um but it's also really long and really navel-gazy uh navel-gazy, really pointless, really up its own ass in a way that like reaches new heights. Like I've certainly said that about other books and other books have done that and pissed me off. This is like new like top shelf like rarely has a book reached this level of being up its own ass. >> [gasps] >> I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. I was like, "Who is reading this and going, 'Yes, this is a masterpiece. Special editions, let's go.'" Like I What is this? Literally, what is this? I Yep. I Not not for me. Not a favorite for me. Uh next is a book that I read with Blades and Bodice Herbers. I picked it, so this is on me, but I frequently picked books for Blades and Bodice Herbers that I ended up being the one to hate. Um and that is The Library at Helliford by Cassandra Khaw. And um I've only read other one other book by Cassandra Khaw and I really really liked it. And so, when this new one was coming out and it's so intriguing and pretty and was giving sort of dark academia Eldritch something something, I was like, "Well." And it's it's not super long and uh we needed to pick something kind of gross and spooky for Halloween. So, I was like, "Well, perfect." Um and having read um the other book that I read by Cassandra Khaw is The Salt Grows Heavy and having read that, I was like, "Well, that certainly would be a good like spooky season read. So, if this is giving the same, you know, obviously not story, but like a similar tone, imagery, etc. I was like, "Yeah, that's going to be great. It's going to be perfect." Um this book is such a mess. None of us who read it, uh I don't the you can go watch the live show where we're all kind of scratching our heads at it. Uh it's really difficult to follow what the heck is even going on here. Um but it doesn't exactly reward you for attempting to figure that out cuz there's really nothing here to like that you'd be like, "Oh, like once you understand it, it's actually" No, it's not. It's not actually anything. It's just gross. Cuz it is extremely gross. It did deliver that. There's so much gross imagery. But, honestly, there's such an onslaught of it constantly that you're pretty desensitized to it from page one. Cuz it just opens with being gross and doesn't stop until the end and you're like, "Now I get it." Yeah, that's super nasty. Yep, I not I understand what we're doing. Yep, okay, great. And more of it. Awesome. It was like for such a short book, it's kind of slog to get through cuz it's so baffling and gross. That's all it is. It's baffling and gross. That's all it has to offer you. And a pretty cool cover. So. Pretty big disappointment. Next is a book that I actually had planned to do a review for um like I it's own separate video and I was actually taking notes while I was reading it when I when I realized that I probably want to talk about this cuz it was so bad. So, I do have some notes on my phone, but I read this a quite a while ago and never got around to filming that. And then this one the Good Reads Choice Award. So, that made me wonder do I I was like, "Maybe I really should do that video." And then it was the end of the year and I got sick and all this other jazz. So, I'm and unfortunately not going to do a separate video cuz I think at this point I probably need to reread the book to fully do a video like that justice. Um because now if I did it, what I'm about to do is like, "Well, it's a little hazy for me cuz it's been a minute since I read it." And the book is Bury Your Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab. This is really really bad and really really long and really really stupid and filled with plot holes. Plot holes that like in general being really nitpicky about plot holes is not really something that I indulge in. I do try to read things in good faith. I know maybe you're like smirking or rolling your eyes at me saying that cuz I have a reputation for being quite nitpicky. But by by by that I mean if it's like relatively small stuff that is like, "Okay, that's technically a hole, but like the overall story and like what we're doing with the characterization like isn't really that affected by it. It's just kind of like, 'Yeah, okay, technically that's a hole.'" But if it is something that is like even if it's small, but it does have a massive effect on the characterization or is like really yanks you out of the story, well then I will nitpick the heck out of it. So, this was more of the case here. This is such a long book about characters that are not written well. Um they're mostly really unlikable characters, but they are not interesting and they are not compelling. They're really boring and there's just so many pages here that do not justify their existence. The the the vampire lore that's offered here is also pretty abysmal. And here too this is where nitpicking comes into it because the characterization suffers when our our one of the main characters will be surprised by information that it seems really really unlikely they would not have been given because of the amount of time that's passed and the amount of time they've been with the people they're supposedly with where like I wrote it down on my phone, but there's like a scene where she finds out something that it's I guess it's not a hole in the sense of like technically there was no scene before that where she did find this out, so now it's a hole that she supposedly doesn't know it. It just really beggars belief that she wouldn't have this information after all of this time. Like this would have come up. Like what? Then don't tell me. Don't give me this time skip because what is supposed to have happened during that time if she didn't find this out? It's it's just a a book that I mean V. E. Schwab in general has lately kind of like the books are like up their own ass in a way that, you know, like the it's like, "Oh, these are the only things they're doing something." This long slog about female vampires that's like, "Oh, well like we're going to do like feminist and vampires." And like it's not just like dudes that can have dark morally gray tones about vampires. Women can do too. And like to be fair, I really don't like Interview with a Vampire. I think that's awful. Um so I'm not out here saying this is no Interview with a Vampire. How dare? Interview with a Vampire also sucks. So, um yeah, I The fact that this won the Good Reads Choice Award, I was [laughter] like, "What the fuck?" This is why we can't have nice things. Um next is a book that uh is a classic. I have the 50th anniversary edition and I'm pleased to report that not a single one of my patrons disagrees with me that this is bad. We were all shocked. Um and that is Watership Down by Richard Adams. What is [laughter] this book? >> [gasps and sighs] >> If you have never read it, but you've probably heard of it cuz it's a classic. It is about bunnies, but it's a really dark book. And that's all I'd really ever heard about it was that like it's this classic, it's about bunnies, and then everyone's like, "Oh, it's like such a traumatizing story that like people kids are traumatized from having seen the film as a kid or people are traumatized by reading the book." And the only like thing that sprang to mind when I heard that was The Velveteen Rabbit. And obviously The Velveteen Rabbit is not a real rabbit, but I was like, "That's pretty traumatic." So, I was like, "Rabbits and trauma." I'm expecting something that traumatizes me in a similar way, I suppose. But this traumatized me not so much as like the story itself, but more so like I've got so many questions about the author and what he's trying to accomplish here. Because this is a book where we're told that like he this is stories that he told to his daughters, two little girls. And he goes out of his way in this story about rabbits to make sure that it is abundantly clear that female rabbits serve no purpose but to be the breeders of other rabbits. This is not something that is just mentioned. This is not something that is like once in a while comes up. This is not something that is just implied now and again. This is integral to the unfolding of the plot. The plot is about this. >> [sighs] >> So, even if I didn't know he was telling these stories to his like little girl daughters, I would be like, "What the dude?" But knowing that that's where this came from and then he wrote it down, I super duper what the Like were you was this like an act of aggression against these children that you were doing this? Like [laughter] what? What is this? Why would you do this? Why? So, like it is well written in the sense of like the prose is good. Um a lot of the sort of like um anthropomorphization of the rabbits while keeping them very rabbity is very cleverly done. So, like there's talent here for sure. This isn't someone who is like a talentless hack who's like bumbled their way into, you know, doing misogyny. There's this So, the only conclusion to be drawn is that this is deeply intentional, which is so much more disturbing. Um I What? What is this? So, do not recommend unless you want to be horrified. Uh and not in the way that I was expecting. I was expecting to be weeping and sobbing and being traumatized over dead bunnies. No. I mean some rabbits do die in this, but that's not what traumatized me. Next is a book that um again I read towards the beginning of the year, so details are hazy, but I despised it. Um and that is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. And this is a book where once again we have entered a situation where the author is so so confident and so arrogant about talking down to you from the lofty perch of this concept that they've come up with that they fail to realize how actually they have inadvertently been extremely offensive, [laughter] which is really aggravating. Like I don't think this is a well-written book, but also the added layer of like you really think you're doing something here with this concept. And what you are in fact doing by being so aggressive about this concept is like actually being really offensive because you kind of overshot the mark there. You were just so like tunnel visioned about what your concept was that you failed to realize the side effect of what you were doing here. And I just had such a horrible taste in my mouth reading this book. I was like, "Get over yourself. No." No. I absolutely not. But it's uh it's won a bunch of awards and everyone says it's amazing. So, I'm the idiot. So, definitely go read it cuz um I cannot be trusted. Uh then next is a book that I talked about in my it was for my um actually the last two are for my priorities vlog. So, if you watched that, you already heard what I have to say in much greater detail than I'm going to go into here. Um but it's For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten. This is a I think YA or new adult romance, I see I suppose is where it would be shelved. It It's a purported to be a Red Riding Hood retelling, but is in fact a Beauty and the Beast retelling with some Red Riding Hood window dressing. But it's not really much of a Beauty and the Beast retelling either. It's not much of anything at all. What I said ultimately after my ramblings and irritations in the vlog was that this is like the absence of a book. There's just such It cannot be overstated how much nothing there is in this book. That plot, characters, concept, lore, magic, it's just it's just nothing. It's just white cardboard. >> [laughter] >> I it that that doesn't make any sense, but not in a way that makes me angry. It just makes me go, "This doesn't make sense." But I also don't care and you don't seem to care and there's just like nothing to this. I I can't even like muster strong feelings about it because I feel nothing about it cuz there's just nothing here to feel anything about. So, yeah, took me forever to get through for that reason cuz I wasn't even like if I'm if I really hate something, then the rage will sometimes motivate me to read it so I can be like, "Oh, how much worse can it get? Show me." This I was just like, ah, this is just it just keeps going. And it keeps being nothing. I feel nothing. >> [laughter] >> So, don't recommend. And last but not least is a book that is the opposite of that in as much as I have very strong feelings about it. It was the first book I read for the vlog project. And that is Lady Macbeth by Ava Reed. It's one of the garbage books that I've ever [laughter] read. >> [gasps] >> I don't understand why you would retell Macbeth if you clearly hate the play Macbeth. You clearly hate the character of Lady Macbeth. And the thing you hate most of all is Scotland and Scottish people. Who No one made you retell Macbeth, Ava Reed. If you hate all of this so much, why would you take it upon yourself to retell this of all plays? Shakespeare wrote plenty of plays that are not set in Scotland. Pick one of those. Actually, don't pick one of those. Actually, do whatever you want cuz I'm not going to get any more of your books, so it doesn't matter what you do. But, this is just so unnecessary, so deeply offensive, so the opposite of feminism, the opposite of what a retelling should be, the opposite of what a book should be. What an aggravating, baffling read. I Yep. I It's disgusting. It's It's one of the worst books I've ever read in my whole life. Um, zero out of 10. And those were the worst books that I read in 2025. Let me know uh which of those were your favorite books. Um, why I cannot be trusted, why my opinions are the worst, um or alternatively why you agree with me and you feel seen, why you also hated these books and you're so glad someone else did, or why you've never read these books and you don't care about my opinion. Whatever you want to tell me. Then I'll see you in my next video. Bye.