Worst Books I Read in 2021

2021 was…well, it was a year, wasn’t it? Was it worse than 2020? I guess not, but it wasn’t great either.

Despite all that, there were a lot of good parts in 2021. I got a job, and then another job, and then another job, and then got offered another job, but decided four jobs was just a bit much. I also got to go out in public and do fun things for about three months… And I read some great books!

I also read some bad ones.

The bad books of 2021 range from really bad and possibly quite offensive to a large majority of people, to simply mediocre. And, luckily for you, we’re going to take a look at some of the books that made 2021 just a little worse than it was otherwise.

(You can take a look at my worst books of 2020, and 2019. Also, we’re not going to be completely negative here, I will post about my favourite books very soon!)

A Darker Shade of Magic: V.E. Schwab

This book made me question literally everything. It’s so beloved by basically everyone, it has a strong premise, I love the idea of Kell and secret Londons and everything.

And then I read it and was simply…confused. I kept waiting for the story to start, until it finished? And it wasn’t bad, it was just confusing. Was there a story? I don’t know! I kept waiting for the inciting incident, and then I read The End.

So basically, I didn’t like it, it was mediocre, but I want Kell’s coat (and Kell).

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek: Kim Michele Richardson

Oh boy.

This book was “Let’s make a book about racism…but let’s still centre white people because having an actual black character would be scandalous”.

Like really. This book is about Cussy May, who is a blue Tennessee woman (her skin is blue because of a genetic issue, which deoxygenises her blood, making it a chocolate brown, rather than red colour, and thus making her skin appear blue). Now all this is fine, and Cussy’s job is super cool, because she delivers books by mule to the almost impenetrable mountains of Tennessee. And there’s a lot of opportunity to tackle how people view those with disabilities and facial differences. But Richardson doesn’t do that. Instead, she decides to tackle racism.

Yes, racism.

Cussy is repeatedly referred to as a “coloured” and at least twice as a “n*****r”. She has to follow the same rules as the black residents of the town. Then, spoiler alert, her husband is arrested and imprisoned for marrying a “coloured woman”. Which is obviously ridiculous because the whole reason she’s blue is because she’s white.

To sum it up, could have dealt wonderfully with facial/skin differences…instead tries to tackle racism and fails completely and is also just boring.

The Vanishing Point: Val McDermid

This book was…bizarre.

Essentially, it’s about a ghost writer, who’s hired to write for a B-list celebrity from a trashy reality show, who’s about to have a baby. They become friends, the baby is born, and a whole list of increasingly weird things happen until eventually, the celebrity dies (this isn’t a spoiler, as it’s literally in the blurb) and leaves her son in the custody of the ghost writer.

Then the son is kidnapped. But who did it? and why?

The answer is so weird, and because I’m assuming none of you will want to read this, I’ll tell you that the kid was taken by his mother, who actually isn’t dead, but instead murdered her cousin, who looks just like her {and used to masquerade as her for the paparazzi} and she’s now living in a de facto relationship with her oncologist.

The book ends with the ghost writer murdering the celebrity because “you can’t kill someone who is already dead”, and then taking the kid back.

Wow.

I’m gonna leave it at that.

A Pho Love Story: Loan Le

I feel kinda bad sticking this one on my worst reads list, because it wasn’t bad. It was just boring and mediocre. I didn’t connect with the characters, I thought the story was a tad melodramatic, and the descriptions of the Vietnamese food made me hungry.

Over all, it was a solid three star read, not great, but not bad.

CSI Told You Lies: Giving Victims a Voice Through Forensics: Meshel Laurie

This book was bad because it really got me hyped, and then dashed my expectations by being completely different to what it promised.

Essentially, if you pick up a book called CSI Told You Lies, you would expect it to be about the lies that CSI has told you, for example, the myths perpetrated by crime tv shows. Which I was so keen for, because I love mythbusting and I love forensic science.

Instead, this book was just a badly cobbled together, badly edited collection of interviews with different forensic scientists. There was no overarching theme to the book, nothing to really link the different people and events together, it was just…not great. And there was absolutely no mythbusting.

Also, there’s a crystal skull on the front cover, so…um?

The Real Silent Witnesses: Shocking Cases from the World of Forensic Science: Wensley Clarkson

This book was boring and confusing. It’s like a tie in nonfiction book to the show The Silent Witness, which I’ve admittedly never seen. But basically it’s a run down of forensic science, and…I just couldn’t work out who the target audience was? If you’ve watched the show, you probably know all of the info in this already. Each chapter is around 250-750 words on a subsection of forensic science, or a well-known crime case. It wasn’t particularly indepth at all, and I think there would be very few mystery or true crime who would find this interesting.

And then again, maybe it was aimed toward people who don’t know anything about forensic science and haven’t seen the show…but then why make it into a show tie-in and constantly reference the characters and plots?

So, overall, I haven’t seen the show and I’ve learnt too much about forensic science to really enjoy this one.

English History Made Brief, Irreverent and Pleasurable: Lacey Baldwin Smith

Unfortunately, this book was everything but brief, irreverent and pleasurable. It was long, boring and covered the most basic, whitebread version of English history.

I went into this thinking it would be something along the lines of Bill Bryson, or Stephen Fry’s Victorian Secrets, where we would learn about the amusing, weird and taboo, secrets of history. But no, it was really just the same old stuff we’ve heard before, William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, WW1, etc. Nothing exciting here, and it was also just far longer than it needed to be, and not brilliant editing.

The Last Wish: Andrzej Sapkowski

You know when you’re in your happy place, reading lots of new fantasy novels, where diversity is celebrated, women are people (and not sex dolls or goddesses), and the setting is more than a carbon copy of England.

And then you read an older work and you’re like…ah, the sweet, sweet taste of misogyny.

But seriously, the way women were treated in these stories was just so gross and made me so uncomfortable. I would like to blame it on the translation, but unfortunately I don’t read Polish, so I can’t confirm.

However, I just spent the whole of the book cringing at the, uh…descriptions of the female characters (even the young girls!)

Anyway, I did love Geralt, so I will give the next one a chance and see how it goes.

Traces: The Memoir of a Forensic Scientist and Criminal Investigator: Patricia Wiltshire

This book was disappointing because it could have been something great, and it wasn’t. It was aggressively mediocre, and I’m kind of salty that I spent an Audible credit on it.

For some background, Patricia Wiltshire is a forensic ecologist, who works mainly in rape and assault cases, using forensic evidence from the environment to work out who was where and did what, etc. She’s a trailblazer in her field (the literal and figurative field, lol) and an amazing scientist…but just not a great writer.

I think this book could have been brilliant if she’d had a ghost writer, or an interviewer, or even a really good editor. But as it was the book was boring, jumped around between timelines, spent a lot of time focussing on Wiltshire’s childhood, and was very repetitive. Over all, not the greatest forensic science book I’ve read (stay tuned for my BEST OF post, which will have a few!)

Did you read any really terrible books this year? Please rant about it, I want to hear your woes.