The Books I DNF’d last month |Mini-Reviews

Hi, guys! I hope you’ve managed to control your Animal Crossing addiction and actually made some progress in your O.W.L.s TBR over this weekend! 😀 I still haven’t succumbed to the pressure to buy Switch, so I’m safe from THAT addiction. But I’ve been playing a little bit more of Nevernight this weekend and watched TONS of YouTube videos… 

Somehow, I still finished a bunch of books and I’m feeling very confident that I actually might be able to complete all 12 O.W.L.s prompts. Crazy! I know! 

Since I’ve been dedicating a lot of time to reading over the past 2 weeks, I’ve accumulated quite a lot of read books that needed to be reviewed. I usually track my reading on Goodreads but also in a Google Sheet, where I highlight in red, purple, pink (whatever I’m feeling at the moment) the books that need to be reviewed. And that’s how my sheet looks right now:

Yeah… No comments… 

To make life a little bit easier for me, I decided to make one post dedicated to all the books I DNF’d in March, chat a little bit about them, try to “justify” why I didn’t finish them and maybe you’ll convince me to give one of them a second chance? Hmm. 

BOOK 1 – Platform Seven by Louise Doughty [DNF @11%]

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«Platform Seven» by Louise Doughty was the book selected for Literally Dead Book Club hosted by Kayla @BooksandLala over on Youtube. I love watching Kayla’s videos! They bring so much joy into my life. Even though I have a different taste in books than her, I still can find some book recommendations, but in general, I watch her videos because of her personality and because they make me happy. Especially the reading challenges, they are so fun to watch! 

The book club started this February and I really liked the first book she chose, but March pick was voted for on Instagram and, oh my, it was BAD. I saw on Goodreads that a lot of people also DNF’d it. So I’m looking forward to watching the live show and see why people didn’t like. 

Why didn’t I finish this book?

• I didn’t like how it was written from the ghost perspective (at least the beginning was). I wasn’t introduced to this ‘ghost’, didn’t get attached to her and I honestly didn’t care who she was and what happened to her.
• The beginning of March was rough reading time for me. The reading slump was too close for my liking, and I decided to put the book down before it got even closer. 

BOOK 2 – Ruthless Gods by Emily A. Duncan [DNF @21%]

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Immediately after DNF’ing «Platform Seven», I decided to pick an ARC that I’ve been a little bit nervous about – «Ruthless Gods» by Emily A. Duncan. It’s the second installment in the Something Dark and Holy trilogy with the first book being «Wicked Saints». 

I was so excited about this series! Slavik folklore and culture in fantasy books are my favorites tropes, and I was very sure that I would love this series as much as The Grisha Trilogy or even more because I heard that it was darker and bloodier. And… it wasn’t. 

The first book I finished in February and was rather disappointed by it. You can read my full review of «Wicked Saints» to see why it didn’t live up to my expectations. 

So of course, I was nervous about the second book. But once again, I heard some good things about it and I really needed something easy and fast-paced to help me with the reading slump. Unfortunately, after 90 pages I had to put it down. 

Why didn’t I finish this book?

• It wasn’t capturing my attention,
• I didn’t care about any of the characters and wasn’t enjoying the writing style whatsoever. 

BOOK 3 – Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth [DNF @50%]

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«Chosen Ones» by Veronica Roth was definitely the biggest disappointment of all. I loved the Divergent trilogy. In fact, I read all three books in less than 3 days! But this one… it took me a while just to read the first half of the book. 

Maybe it was my reading slump that prevented me from enjoying this story, or maybe it’s the fact that I don’t really like superheros. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

In this book, we met the four chosen ones years after they defeated the Dark One and saved the world. Each one of them dealt with the consequences of their victory differently.

The concept is very interesting – magical artifacts, magic in the modern world, different dimensions and big evil force to overcome. But the way the story is told, with a lot of info dump, didn’t let me get attached to the characters the way I wanted to.

I’m sure that all the action will take place in the second half of the book, but I wasn’t interested and invested enough to patiently wait for the story to get better. 

Why didn’t I finish this book?

• There was a lot of telling and not much showing;
• I struggled to get attached to the characters and care about their well-being;

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Out of these three books, «Chosen Ones» is probably the one I might give a second chance some time in the future. However, my TBR is big enough already. Is it really worth it adding to it a book I might not enjoy? 

Have you read any of these books? What did you think about them? Do you usually give books a second chance?
Let me know in the comments below!

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