Top 5 Wednesday #30: Disappointing Reads of 2018

Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly meme created by GingerReadsLainey and now managed by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. For more information on this meme, visit the Goodreads group. This week’s topic is:

Most Disappointing Reads of 2018

Perfect timing for this topic. I was considering to do such a post when I decided to check the T5W topic for this week. The following are my lowest rated and least liked reads of 2018.

Delicious! by Ruth Reichl ★★☆☆☆

A contemporary novel about a young woman who moves to New York City seeking to work at a food magazine. The story started out great and held my interest through the protagonist getting a job at the food magazine Delicious!, befriending her co-workers, securing a part-time at a cheese shop, and having fun cooking food. It mainly went downhill for me when she got a makeover and the romance develops. And the ending sucks!

School for Psychics by K.C. Archer = ★☆☆☆☆ ½

A paranormal novel about a young woman who learns she has psychic abilities and is recruited to join a government program that trains psychics. Another one that started out good and then went downhill. I DNF’d this, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. (It probably got better later.) I enjoyed the story until the protagonist gets to school for psychics. Up until then, it was interesting and even a little funny. But at the school for psychics, what I thought to be an adult or even a new-adult novel quickly felt like a YA romance (and not a good one), so I got frustrated and gave up halfway through the book.

The Oddling Prince by Nancy Springer = ★★☆☆☆

A YA fantasy novel about a young prince who’s torn between the love he has for his father and his step-brother. Basically, the king falls ill because a ring magically appears on his finger and won’t come off. A dude randomly shows up, manages to remove the ring, and then declares himself the king’s son. The prince and the queen accept the random dude but the king is mistrustful and refuses him. << Had to say all that because this one is hard to summarize in a sentence. This one isn’t bad, actually. The writing is good and I’m sure the story is decent. I just…ugh! I didn’t like it. I didn’t like how things turned out or progressed or wrapped up. Definitely didn’t like the ending much. I agreed with the king for part of the time because as wonderful as Albaric is why would the king, or any of the royal family, quickly and easily believe someone who pops up outta nowhere, easily save the king, and THEN reveals that he has a claim to the throne?! (Not that he wants the throne, but still… Yo! I’d be mad suspicious too.)

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory ★★☆☆☆

A romance novel about a young woman and a young man who get stuck on an elevator together, decide to go on a fake date together, hook up, and fall in love. It’s actually a decent read and a quick one too, and I like that it’s about an interracial couple. However, I found it hard to believe in the strength of their relationship because all we mostly see them do is hook up. Well, not really because those hook-up scenes are like fade-to-black scenes in old movies so we don’t see them do much. I just don’t believe they have a strong, intimate relationship that’ll later lead to something more meaningful.

What is your least liked book of 2018?