Hi everyone! Welcome back. I'm Di and
today I'm bringing you my highest rated
and lowest rated books on Goodreads for
2016. So I have a list of my five-star
rated and two-star rated books on
Goodreads, which were my highest and
lowest ratings given in 2016. I wanted
to share those with you today. I will not
be giving synopses of any of these
books but I will try to link my written
reviews from my blog in the
corresponding blog post that will go
with this video. So let's go ahead and
get started. I'm going to start from the
earliest part of January and move up to
the most present time of year and so
we're going to start with highest-rated
books first. We'll start off with Dust
& Decay, Flesh & Bone, and Fire & Ash.
These are books two, three, and four from
the Rot and Ruin series by Jonathan
Maberry. I buddy read this series with
Raul over at Latin Lector. I gave each of
these books five stars. This series was
just so engaging and interesting and I
really enjoyed buddy reading it with
Raul. I think Flesh & Bone only got a
4.5 actually but because Goodreads
doesn't do the half star rating it did
end up with a five-stars because I round up.
Still overall the series was
excellent and I do highly recommend it.
The next book I want to mention is
A Ghouls Guide to Love and Murder.
This is by Victoria Laurie and is the
tenth and final book in the Ghost
Hunter Mystery Series.
This has been one of my favorite
series over the last couple years and it
ended in early 2016. I still think about
it quite a bit,
the series as a whole, and it's just one
of those series that has stayed with me.
I really enjoyed the paranormal aspect
and the ghost hunting and the cast of
characters. Really really great series if
you're looking for a paranormal twist to
your mysteries.
Next up was The Secret Garden. This is by
Frances Hodgson Burnett. I have been
meaning to read this for a long time and
finally got to it this year. I am so glad
that this was as good as the Hallmark
movie that I grew up with. That one for
me is the best movie reenactment. I have
watched the other one that came out but
I just don't like it as much as the
Hallmark version. Then I have to mention
Marked in Flesh.
This is the fourth book in The Others
series by Anne Bishop. I have really
enjoyed reading this series. I had been
borrowing them from the library until
after I read this one, then I decided
that I really needed to have a copy of
the entire series for my collection.
The author did a virtual signing, so I
was able to get a signed nameplate to
put in my book.
This has been a series that I've
recommended to several people since I
started reading it last year. The next
book is coming out in the spring and I
can't wait to get my hands on it. Then
there was Anne of Green Gables. Again,
another one that I've been meaning to
read for a very long time. I grew up with
the Sullivan Entertainment miniseries
with Megan Follows and
adored the story. So again, super happy
that the book was just as good as I
hoped it would be and I'm glad that I
finally checked this one off my list. Then
there was The School for Good and Evil
by Soman Chainani. This is the first book
in The School for Good and Evil series. I
do have the box set and was supposed to
have finished the series in 2016, but
just never got the chance to pick up the
next two. I will definitely be checking
those off in 2017. This just really made
you think about what is good, what is
evil, and it really makes you think about
the difference between doing good on the
outside as opposed to being good on the
inside. I really enjoyed this story and
can't wait to get back into this world.
Then there was The Haunting Season by
Michelle Muto. This I read on Kindle
Unlimited and is the story about the
Sylar House and the investigation with
the teens who have supernatural
abilities. Super interesting book. Gave me
the creeps. Really great one to read
during Halloween and I will definitely
be picking up more by this author in
2017. Then there was Summerfall. This is
the prequel novella to Winterspell by
Claire Legrand. I'm reading Winterspell
right now, but I've kind of been in a
reading slump. Not because I'm not
enjoying the book, it's just I don't feel
like reading. I'm hoping to get Winterspell
done by time 2016 is over but it
may carry on into the new year. I decided
to read Summerfall before jumping into
Winterspell because I thought it might
give me some kind of background
familiarity with the story and so I
dove into it. I really enjoyed it.
It focused more on Fey and human
relationships, and a little bit of
politics, and I just really remembered
how much I enjoy books which fairies in
it. This one kept me captivated from page
one and I just could not put it down.
Since Winterspell is a retelling of The
Nutcracker, I had expected the prequel
novella to hint at something that might
be familiar but it really didn't have
any kind of connection to The Nutcracker
story at all. I think if you were
really interested in this new novella, you
could definitely pick it up without
having to read Winterspell, if that
didn't seem like something interesting
to you.
And last but not least of my five star
rates on Goodreads for 2016 is Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,
because it's Harry Potter. I read this
for Harry Christmas To You this year
continuing on from where I left off last
year. This I always say is not my
favorite book in this series, but that
doesn't mean that I don't enjoy this one.
It just is missing something for me, but
still a five-star read. I'm so glad that
i revisited this one this year because
there were a lot of things that I had
forgotten and a lot of things that were
different from the movies. The movies
I've watched tons more but this
particular book I believe I had only
read once before I reread it this year.
I've reread the other installments
multiple times but this one I just tend
not to pick it up. If I do a reread of the
series,
I usually skip over it because just not
my favorite, but I am glad again that I
picked it up and refamiliarized myself
with this one. So this is,
this was my last five star read for 2016.
So those are my 11 five-star rated books
for 2016 and now onto the two star rated
books. I try very hard not to give one
star ratings on Goodreads. There really
has to be nothing redeemable about the
book for me to give it one-star. So I
think i've been on Goodreads about four
or five years and I think in that time
I've only given one or two one star
ratings. This year, no one star ratings
but there were a few two star rated
books for me. I really take the Goodreads
description for two-star rating
seriously which is that it was okay, or
for me it was just ok, it wasn't good. So
these were the books that I thought were
just ok in 2016. Again I'm going in order
from towards the beginning of the year
up to current, So the first book was
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming. This is the
first book and the James Bond series. I
grew up on James Bond. It was something
that I enjoyed watching with my
Grandfather, so i was really interested
in getting into the the novels and was
so disappointed in this book. Now Casino
Royale was one of the newer movies and I
had already seen it before I read the
book. I would definitely say that the
movie was better than the book in this
instance and I was really disappointed
in Bond's inner monologue. It was very
crude and he had not nice things to say
about women, and I understand that
was written in a different time but that
doesn't make it okay or enjoyable for me
to consume. When I have to read about the
not nice things that he thinks about
women that just kinda ticked me off so
though the case was good,
James Bond's character was disappointing.
Therefore this book got two stars. The
next book that I gave two stars to was The
Green Mile by Stephen King. Now I was
kind of familiar with this story
obviously there was a movie that was
released on it.
I was never interested in watching that
movie and never have and I never will. I
think...I don't even know how far into
this book I got before I started
skimming. It just wasn't interesting to
me. I kind of formed an opinion as to how
I thought the book was going to end and
it just seemed to be going in that
direction. The side stories didn't
grab my attention I ended up skimming
all the way to the end just to know for
sure what happened. If it was
different than what I perceived was
going to happen then I would have gone
back and read it through completely but
it wasn't,
and so I just decided to be done with it.
I didn't DNF it because I did read
through the whole last chapter or two so
I do count that as read, but yeah not for
me. It wasn't a story that would have
been in my wheelhouse and it was just ok.
Another book that disappointed me was A
Perfect Crime. This was by A Yi
and it was translated from Chinese. This
was very disappointing because it was a
"own voices" book but it was...there was
nothing to it. Like if you read the
synopsis on Goodreads, that's basically
what this book was about. Nothing other
than what is written in the synopsis I
think would be interesting to anybody.
The character was unforgivable.
He basically did what he did just
because he was bored and wanted to see
if he could get away with it. This just
wasn't what I thought it was going to be
and the language used was very crude and
I don't know if that is just a result of
the translation but it just didn't sit
well with me. Again, it was just ok. And the
last book I gave two stars to was a book
that I read as part of my First in a
Series Cozy Mystery Book Club. That was
The Great Turkey Caper. This is the first
book and the Agnes Barton Holiday
Mystery Novellas series by Madison Johns.
I think the reason that this one
disappointed me so much is because I
wasn't aware that I should have read
other books from either the regular
Agnes Barton series or the Agnes Barton
Paranormal Mystery series before I read
this one. This is marketed as a first
book and a series so I thought it would
be okay to pick it up.
Not to mention that usually in series
there is some kind of character recap
where they reacquaint you with the
characters and maybe some things they
did or some of the things they like....
something. But this book has none of
that so that made it difficult to
understand why the characters were doing
the things that they were doing.
I didn't like the way that they
questioned people or why people were so
happy to oblige when they were being
questioned by these two senior citizens.
And again, it wasn't bad. I thought the
mystery was good. I didn't know who the
culprit was but it was just ok. And so
that kinda was the last ok book for me
in 2016. So those are my highest and
lowest rated books on Goodreads in 2016.
Let me know what some of yours were or
if you've read any of these.
I hope you're all doing great and until next
time, Take Care and Smi-Le Always. Bye!
No comments:
Post a Comment