Baa Baa Black Sheep

I feel like I am often a black sheep when it comes to popular books or highly hyped books. If everyone else loves it, usually I hate it. If everyone hates it, sometimes I like it. For today, I've compiled a list of books I've been a black sheep on in some way.

Everyone was really excited for Gayle Forman's next book after If I Stay and Where She Went, and I was for sure one of them. Those two books are two of my all-time favorites (don't see the movie though; it'll ruin the magic of them a bit for you because it's so terrible), so naturally I was psyched to hear about Just One Day. However, unlike the rest of the book world, I found it very disappointing. I didn't buy the one night stand romance, and found Alison/Lulu boring and sheltered, even though she tried so hard to step out of her comfort zone. In short, I just didn't buy this book and couldn't get on board with the characters or romance, which left me with nothing to like about it.

When We Were Liars came out, everyone was like, "OMG this book is so sophisticated and literary," and I was over here thinking, "this book is confusing and terrible and everyone in it is terrible and I don't care about them or their rich people problems." This book had all the worst tropes in YA, especially when it came to showcasing the "problems" of extremely privileged and rich people. The writing was also bizarre and came off as trying too hard, and was so pretentious my eyes were stuck in a permanent eye-roll loop throughout the whole book. And oh god, the twist. I hated the twist. It was so dumb. I just...I don't think I can talk about this book anymore.

To be fair, I still haven't managed to actually finish this book. I've tried reading it twice and got a little further the second time but...I just couldn't. I love books in weird formats, but I hate space sci-fi YA, so it was a mixed bag for me. I wanted to like it so badly, but I just couldn't follow the story to save my life and kept forgetting what was happening every two pages. Maybe I'll try it again eventually but for now...no.

I've already talked about disliking Adam Silvera in general, so I'll try to keep this one short. Everyone thought this book was so emotional and sad, but I found it to be entirely too reliant on the gimmick of the concept with little substance where characterization and writing was concerned. Overrated.

In the past, I have made no secret of my hatred for John Green, which has since somewhat abated because I kind of liked Paper Towns and reading about his experiences with anxiety and OCD. I think in general he's way overrated and gets too many accolades for mediocre books while other better writers get compared to him even though they're BETTER. This one in particular, I did not like though. Alaska is total Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and it's just not very well-written. I may not hate John Green anymore, but I still kind of resent his fame, which is basically due to his Internet, video, and podcast fame, and not as much whether he's a good writer.

This is the only book on this list that's here because I liked it more than everyone else. That was probably due to the fact that I hated the author's first book, This Song Will Save Your Life, so I was ready to be more impressed by her second book. In retrospect, it's not that great a book, since Arden is pretty boring for most of it and also vaguely creepy for stalking her favorite blogger, but it's still better than Sales' first one, IMO. It's more of a character-based book than everyone was expecting, I think, which is why people didn't really like it, but that's more up my alley in contemporary YA anyway, so I think that was also why I was more open to liking it somewhat more than the rest of the YA world.