Let’s Talk Bookish: The Book Everyone Else Loved

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted with Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Book Nook Bits has hosted since April 2022, with Dini at Dini Panda Reads as co-host from February 2025.

Let’s Talk Bookish May 16th:
What is one book that everyone else seemed to love except you? (Isabella @ The Ink Bound Reader)

Prompts: Have you ever experienced what seems like the whole book community raving about a book, only to discover it’s not all that? What are some story elements that put you off while reading? What about books others dislike that you love? Feel free to share examples of which books everyone loved and you didn’t, and vice versa! 🤭

Something I think works in my favour – I don’t buy into hype. If a book interests me, it interests me whether ‘everyone’ is talking about it or not. Sometimes the hype does draw me in to finding out more about a book, but I won’t get a book simply because everyone is raving about it, though it might be that I’ve seen people I trust discussing it and it ends up catching my eye because so many people are talking about it. Then again, with the recent changes to social media, I don’t think I see ‘hyped’ books as much as I used to, or maybe I’ve become a bit too disconnected from the bookish community? Something to ponder for another day.

The first time I remember being truly baffled by what seemed to be everyone else’s reaction to a book was…well, first, let me say that I picked up this book after a recommendation, finished reading it and thought it wasn’t very good, and never expected to hear much about it again. Within a few months it was seemingly everywhere, and I realised just how many people were apparently obsessed with Twilight!

I picked up The Queen of the Tearling after hearing/seeing a few people rave about it, and ended up feeling very disappointed by what felt like a very overrated book. I know lots of people really highly rated A Terrible Kindness, but that book left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, and considering how much I love the show Bridgerton, I very much struggled with The Duke and I.

For me, character is so incredibly important in books – if I don’t click with a character, I’m not really going to enjoy it. And I like characters who push the plot forward rather than just have it happen to them. Someone suggested Twilight to me as I was looking for vampire books, and in the same forum, someone else suggested I Am Legend – which I really enjoyed. The setting and premise were much more interesting. As a main character, I very much found Bella a bit flat and lifeless, and Edward quite creepy. Compare to something like The Vampire Diaries, which kind of has similar elements, and I found Elena to be a stronger voice and the reasons for Stefan and Damon being drawn to her to be more compelling. It also tied into why Stefan is at the school, whereas Twilight a lot of things just didn’t feel very well thought out.

The Queen of the Tearling was just a mess, and felt like it was trying to capitalize on some popular books at the time without understanding them (but you can read more of what I thought in my review). Again, I disliked the main character – she was very ‘not like other girls’, and there was a strange obsession with weight throughout the book. A Terrible Kindness featured a main character I thought was very self-absorbed in the face of a community tragedy, and I disliked the way the book took the Aberfan disaster and used it as a ‘lesson’ for an English man. And as for The Duke and I…characters, again. I adored Daphne and Simon in the show, and think the show made some excellent changes to the characters who, in the book, were very unlikeable.

As for books others disliked but I love, what I tend to find is even if a book is well received initially, sometimes it goes through a bit of a backlash down the line (Babel), but that doesn’t take away from what I liked about it. Or I find myself often surprised when particular books aren’t talked about more. Sometimes, I do think there’s an issue in Book Communities where if you don’t jump on a particular train at the right time, when you find your way there it’s like people have gone from “this is great” to being quite critical of anyone who likes it. Now, those books I mentioned above – maybe you do love one of them, or have fond memories of the book, or completely disagree with what I’ve said. And to that I say good, because the world would be very boring if we all enjoyed the same thing!

There are certain authors, too, who I, personally, think online book communities like to raise up…only to tear them down. While other writers seem to skate back with very little scrutiny. It can be…equally interesting and infuriating to see it unfold. Which is also why for the most part I don’t really pay a whole lot of attention to what people like or dislike, or what books are trendy or hated right now. The main way I get an idea of what others think is usually from Goodreads, so for this, I’m going to just highlight some books I loved and gave 5 stars, but which have an average rating below 4 (and to note, anything above 3.5 for average is, to me, pretty damn good, but these are the kind of books I feel might just deserve a little more love!).

Spin the Dawn (Elizabeth Lim)
We Hunt the Flame (Hafsah Faizal)
Harrow Lake (Kat Ellis)
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (H.G. Parry)
Cinderella is Dead (Kalynn Bayron)

And, as always, please do let me know about the books everyone else seemed to love and you didn’t, or the books you’ve loved that didn’t hit the wider community as much as you would have liked.