Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. This weeks topic is books that you hated but are glad that you read. I changed that to books that were disappointing as I hate very few books.

1. The Japanese Lover – Isabelle Allende. It had been a long time since I had read any Allende when I read this last year. I was expecting some beautiful piece of magic realism akin to Eva Luna. This just a fairly average romance / family saga.
2. Mockinjay – Suzanne Collins. What a disappointing end to the Hunger Games. There are no games, for a start. The whole thing dragged and the ending was corny. Made me wonder why I had bothered.
3. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall. I know it’s a classic and really important in the LGBT canon but it really was a struggle. Stephen was a hard heroine to like and it all seemed woefully old fashioned.
4. Fifty Shades of Grey – E.L. James. To be fair, I was never expecting this to be good. But despite the fact that it is terrible, I am glad to have read it. It makes me feel a lot better about my own writing.
5. The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough. How this has got itself onto all those books you must read before you die lists is beyond me. It’s badly written, the characters are superficial and it is far too long.
6. Wonder – R. J. Palacio. This was underwhelming for me. I guess I just have no heart but this genuinely left me cold. It was extremely corny as well.
7. The Insurgent Series – Veronica Roth. Not quite sure why I persevered with these books. They certainly didn’t get any better.
8. The Casual Vacancy – J. K. Rowling. Just not as good as Harry Potter.
9. Hidden Figures: The UntoldStory of  the African American Women who Helped Win the Space Race – Margot Lee Shetterly – This was disappointing because I was expecting something different. I had just seen the film and thought that the focus might be the same but this starts much earlier and the focus is much broader. Not really what I was looking for.
10. The Angel’s Game – Carlos Ruiz Zafron. I loved The Shadow of  the Wind and was very excited to read this. (Always going to lead to disappointment, being over-excited!) But this was not even in the same league. I haven’t bothered reading any further on in the series.