Top Ten Tuesday: my most disappointing DNF’s

So the wonderful people behind Top Ten Tuesday are taking a 7 WEEK BREAK and I’m like “um, what do I do on Tuesday’s now????” So I’ve just decided to go back through some of their old topics and keep my TTT posts going each week until they’re back with new stuff! (TTT is back on Aug 15!)

This week I’m going to feature the most disappointing of my DNF’s – as in, I’m really sad that I couldn’t finish them.

Synopsis: An unnamed defendant stands accused of murder. Just before the Closing Speeches, the young man sacks his lawyer, and decides to give his own defence speech.

He tells us that his barrister told him to leave some things out.Sometimes, the truth can be too difficult to explain, or believe. But he thinks that if he’s going to go down for life, he might as well go down telling the truth.

There are eight pieces of evidence against him. As he talks us through them one by one, his life is in our hands. We, the reader – member of the jury – must keep an open mind till we hear the end of his story. His defence raises many questions… but at the end of the speeches, only one matters:

Did he do it?

DNF’d at 63%

I was really upset that I ended up putting this one down. It was a highly anticipated book for me and I had seen a lot of glowing reviews for it. In the end, I just couldn’t get past the colloquial language used in it and I found the entire story a whole lot of waffle and got very, very bored with it.

 

Synopsis: Four months after the explosion at the Garden, a place where young women known as the Butterflies were kept captive, FBI agents Brandon Eddison, Victor Hanoverian, and Mercedes Ramirez are still entrenched in the aftermath, helping survivors in the process of adjusting to life on the outside. With winter coming to an end, the Butterflies have longer, warmer days of healing ahead. But for the agents, the impending thaw means one gruesome thing: a chilling guarantee that somewhere in the country, another young woman will turn up dead in a church with her throat slit and her body surrounded by flowers.

Priya Sravasti’s sister fell victim to the killer years ago. Now she and her mother move every few months, hoping for a new beginning. But when she ends up in the madman’s crosshairs, the hunt takes on new urgency. Only with Priya’s help can the killer be found—but will her desperate hope for closure compel her to put her very life on the line?

DNF’d at 33%

I super-duper enjoyed the first book our from Hutchison, so when I saw this was coming out I was really excited… but then I read some of it. I just couldn’t get with this one on any level. I found the relationship between the two main characters really uncomfortable and unprofessional and I wasn’t interested in the story. Nothing happened in the whole third of it that I read. Dull.

Synopsis: My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They’re not my real parents, but they tell me what to do, and what to say. I’m supposed to say that the bruises on my arms and the black eye came from falling down the stairs.

But there are things I won’t say. I won’t tell them I’m going to hunt for my real parents. I don’t say a word about Shadow, who sits on the stairs, or the Wasp Lady I saw on the way to bed.

I did tell Mick that I saw the woman in the buttercup dress, hanging upside down from her seat belt deep in the forest at the back of our house. I told him I saw death crawl out of her. He said he’d give me a medal for lying.

I wasn’t lying. I’m a hunter for lost souls and I’m going to be with my real family. And I’m not going to let Mick stop me.

DNF’d at 23%

It may seem like I didn’t really give this one a try, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it at all. The whole story was wrapped up in a floaty, poetic prose that made little sense to me. Shame, because Hamer’s first novel was a gem.

Synopsis: STOP.

You should not have touched this book with your bare hands.

NO, don’t put it down. It’s too late.

They’re watching you.

My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours.

You may not want to know about the things you’ll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it’s too late. You touched the book. You’re in the game. You’re under the eye.

The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.

The important thing is this:

The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. 

John and I never had the chance to say no. 

You still do.

Unfortunately for us, if you make the right choice, we’ll have a much harder time explaining how to fight off the otherworldly invasion currently threatening to enslave humanity.

I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind:

None of this is was my fault.

DNF’d at 78%

Yes, maybe I should have just finished this one-off, but it was seriously bumming me out and putting me in a bit of a reading slump. I had looked forward to this book for a good year before I finally got around to reading it, so you can imagine my dismay at picking it up and feeling like the author had written three separate stories and glued them all together in attempt at writing a novel. Plus, the descriptions in this were absolutely disgusting and really flared up my anxieties when it comes to textures.

Synopsis: Twenty years ago, the mysterious death of his aunt left Aaron Holbrook orphaned and alone. He abandoned his rural Arkansas hometown vowing never to return, until his seven-year-old son died in an accident, plunging Aaron into a nightmare of addiction and grief. Desperate to reclaim a piece of himself, he returns to the hills of his childhood, to Holbrook House, where he hopes to find peace among the memories of his youth. But solace doesn’t come easy. Someone—or something—has other plans.

Like Aaron, Holbrook House is but a shell of what it once was, a target for vandals and ghost hunters who have nicknamed it “the devil’s den.” Aaron doesn’t believe in the paranormal—at least, not until a strange boy begins following him wherever he goes. Plagued by violent dreams and disturbing visions, Aaron begins to wonder if he’s losing his mind. But a festering darkness lurks at the heart of Holbrook House…a darkness that grins from within the shadows, delighting in Aaron’s sorrow, biding its time.

DNF’d at 66%

I didn’t like this one due to the romance in the story. I had been on a bit of an Ahlborn spree, finishing two of her books consecutively before this one, but I didn’t think the characters had any chemistry in this one and so I was finding it hard to get along with them.

Synopsis: Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.

More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia’s teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that’s cruelly ripped open when Claire’s husband is killed.

The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it.

DNF’d at 64%

I had to put this one down due to my hatred of the audiobook narrator. I was actually enjoying the story, but I couldn’t focus enough on it as it was being read to me by someone whose voice I found super irritating. I have since bought the paperback of this and plan to read the thing in its entirety again soon. (Maybe).

Synopsis: Pay close attention and you might solve this.

On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.

Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.

Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.

Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.

Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.

And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon’s dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?

Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

DNF’d at 30%

I just couldn’t get past how YA this was. I had hoped it wouldn’t have bothered me because it was a mystery novel, but it still did. In the end, I spoiled the reveal for myself by reading some spoiler filled reviews on GR.

Synopsis: Danny is only five years old, but he is a ‘shiner’, aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of an old hotel, his visions grow out of control. Cut off by blizzards, the hotel seems to develop an evil force, and who are the mysterious guests in the supposedly empty hotel?

DNF’d at around 30%

AGHHH this is my most frustrating DNF novel. I put this one down due to the fact that I was reading it on my commute to work and so wasn’t feeling any of the creepiness it was meant to! I need to find some time to just sit down on my own and read this one.

Synopsis: Giverny, France. During the day, the town is the home of the famous artist Claude Monet and the gardens where he painted his Water Lilies. But once the tourists have gone, there is a darker side to the peaceful French village.

This is the story of thirteen days that begin with one murder and end with another. Jérôme Morval, a man whose passion for art was matched only by his passion for women, has been found dead in the stream that runs through the gardens. In his pocket is a postcard of Monet’s Water Lilies with the words: Eleven years old. Happy Birthday.

Entangled in the mystery are three women: a young painting prodigy, the seductive village schoolteacher, and an old widow who watches over the village from a mill by the stream. All three of them share a secret. But what do they know about the discovery of Jérôme Morval’s corpse? And what is the connection to the mysterious, rumored painting of Black Water Lilies?

DNF’d at 30%

This one was spoiled for me because some tit didn’t tag spoilers in their review and so I found out what the hell was going on and decided to put it down.

Synopsis: What if you could get away with murder?

Single mom Kristy Tucker works as press agent for the Texas Department of Corrections – handling everything on death row, from inmate interviews to chronicling the last moments during an execution. Her job exposes Kristy to the worst of humanity and it’s one that’s beginning to take its toll.

So when Kristy meets Lance Dobson, her son’s martial arts instructor, she believed she finally found her happy ending. She was wrong.

Kristy soon discovers that Lance is a monster. Forced to endure his verbal and physical abuse, Kristy is serving her own life sentence . . . unless she’s willing to take matters into her hands. Perfectly poised to exploit the criminal justice system she knows so well, Kristy sets out to get rid of Lance – permanently.

DNF’d at 40%

This one is my most recent DNF and I’m actually going to post my DNF review for it soon! I just don’t like Overton’s writing.

So there we have it! These are the top ten books I’m disappointed to have marked as DNF.

What do you think about my list this week? Have you read (or DNF’d) any of these books?