Top Ten Books We Liked More/Less Than Expected {24}

Racquel:

Books I thought I'd like MORE:

01: Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins: usually when I don't like a book, it's a combination of too much hype that give me ridiculously high expectations or the book just didn't CLICK with me but I can't say the same for Lola. I had sooooooo sooo many issues with the story itself and to this day, I cannot fathom why I'm one of the very few people who sees these problems. Which is sad because I loved Anna and I preordered Lola and was expecting to love it, especially since reviews were all great and I did read it the moment it arrived but god, I hate hate hate this book. Sorry, Sharon! (who loves this book.)

02: If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Forman: so much hype for these two books and when I read them, I was like meh. But I think Gayle Forman is just not an author for me. Her writing is great but I never like her stories.

03: My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick: overall, I don't regret reading this book but I had issues with it that kept me from fully enjoying it like everyone else.

04: Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake and Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's
by Sarah MacLean: this series is a favorite for romance AND non romance readers but I do not get it. At all. Another case where the author is just not for me.

On a positive note, a book I thought I would like LESS but surprised me:

05: What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen: I love Sarah Dessen but I went into What Happened to Goodbye expecting to hate it because I was disappointed by the last SD book I read, Along for the Ride, and I read a What Happened to Goodbye spoiler that led me to the conclusion that this book sucks so I told myself it was going to be a terrible book and what would you know, I LOVED IT. With expectations that low, there is no place to go but up! This is my third favorite SD book. It was just great and the spoiler I read turned out to be misleading. Yay!

Sharon:
01: Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah Maclean. One of the myriad things Racquel and I have bonded over is our bafflement regarding the widespread love of this book. I didn't hate it, but it fell smack dab in the middle of mediocre for me. (Note: Unlike R, though, I did enjoy Eleven Scandals!)

02: Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire. I have loathed very few books with the intensity I felt toward this one. Had it been advertised differently, I would have been able to forgive it. But my expectations were one place and this book was somewhere else entirely.

03: Unearthly by Cynthia Hand. After my abandoning-less-than-50-pages-in (which I almost never do) experience with Fallen, I was convinced angel books weren't for me. Boy, did Cynthia Hand (with a lot of help from Tucker ♥) prove me wrong!

04: Proof by Seduction by Courtney Milan. I went into this book unsure of whether or not I was going to like it overall due to some potential aspects of the story. But I was desperate for more Courtney Milan, having finished her Turner series. And then lo and behold, this one was amazing!

05: Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda. I cannot for the life of me remember what put me onto this random and obscure book, a translation from its original French. But I know that, although I had high expectations, I did not expect to fall in love to the degree I did.

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