Hello fellow readers!
This post is a bit different from my usual weekly posts. Instead of a book review, I decided to write about the books I’ve DNF’d (a.k.a. did not finish reading) during this year. I’ve written about the worst books I’ve read and the best books I’ve read, but I’ve never discussed the books I necessarily DNF’d and never wrote reviews for. I also did mention a series I did not finish in a Anti-TBR Book Tag post, but that post was published a long time ago. I thought it would be interesting to give some insight into some of the most notable books I’ve DNF’d this year and why I did so.
Please note: If you enjoyed reading any of these books, that’s great! They just didn’t work for me as a reader and it’s perfectly fine if you liked them. Also, I won’t be listing every book I DNF’d during this year since that would lead to an extremely long post to write on my end—just the most notable ones.
“The Invisible Life Of Addie La Rue” by V.E. Schwab
I found it extremely hard to get interested in the main heroine, Addie. She never grows throughout the whole book (or at least, through all of that I read before DNFing). This was very different than the other books I’ve read by Schwab in terms of writing style and pacing, but I don’t think it paid off for me as a reader. I know much of the reading community raved about this book, but I could not enjoy it and ended up DNFing it about halfway through reading it.
“Modelland” by Tyra Banks
I heard and read many mixed reviews about “Modelland,” and it’s not the first time I’ve read books involving models. I thought it would be fun to pick it up and see how it went—and, now, I regret it. There are many confusing subplots involved and the real adventure into the titular Modelland doesn’t start until about one-third into the book. It felt like trying to combine “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory” with “The Hunger Games, “except it’s modeling instead of being in a candy factory. In the end, I DNF’d the book at 50% through reading it.
“The Girl And The Goddess” by Nikita Gill
If you know nothing about Hinduism and the partition of India, I highly recommend that you read up a little bit on both before reading this collection. I can easily see a lot of readers getting lost while reading this collection if they don’t know at least a small bit about the background context. Unfortunately, I DNF’d this collection at 21% through because barely any of the poems (I presume all of them were free verse) were actually poems. It was supposed to be a novel in prose, but most of the poems are simply sentences broken into separate lines.
“A Lesson In Vengeance” by Victoria Lee
I really wanted to enjoy reading this book, since it supposedly has Dark Academia vibes and many literary references to classic books, similar to what Mizuki Nomura’s “Book Girl” did with its series. Unfortunately I ended up DNFing this book at about less than a fifth of the way into the book (so just under 20% through). I think the concepts presented in this book were interesting, but the pacing of the book was incredibly slow. Barely anything happened other than people staring at each other, walking around campus, and occasionally talking to each other. I wish there was more insight into Felicity’s dead girlfriend from the beginning, instead of lingering on all the girls being so catty towards each other.
“Shine Your Icy Crown” by Amanda Lovelace
I’ve reviewed Lovelace’s work before and I had mixed reviews about it, but I honestly could not get into reading this one. It felt like the same rehash of feminist themes and critiquing the patriarchy. Other than using the same themes again, none of the poems felt like actual poems. They’re just sentences broken into separate lines without any consideration given to imagery, metaphor, or any other poetic elements. Just because they’re free verse doesn’t mean that you can just straight-up create broken lines and call it poetry.
Those are all the most notable books I did not finish this year! Were there any books that stuck out to you that you didn’t finish reading? Perhaps they were part of this list, or perhaps not. Let me know in the comments below!
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