Do you like unpopular opinions? Well, then you’re in luck, because I am FULL OF THEM. Like, for example, I loved Krystal on The Bachelor. And not just because she made for good entertainment, I legitimately loved her. She was my number one pick from day one. I wanted her to win.
But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about bookish unpopular opinions, and I have several, many of which I feel like I usually present very carefully for fear that fans will go full tilt Walking Dead on me and tear me to literal shreds.
Now, onto the actually book-related unpopular opinions. If you were looking for reasons to dislike me (HA!), here’s five:
1. ACOTAR is terrible and I hate it.
And no, I’m not going to “hang in there” or “stick it out for book two, because I swear, that’s where it gets really good!”
Because I don’t think those are good justifications at all. If even the diehard fans of a series are like, “sure, the first book is really not good, but if you suffer through it, you’ll be glad you did”…yeah, that’s not a great sign. I mean these are the fans of the series saying these things—the people who like it. That doesn’t give me much hope, if any at all.
I forced myself through this book because there is sooo much hype about it in the book world and because people are totally obsessed with it, so I figured there must be a damn good reason why.
There is not.
The whole beginning of the book—like legitimately three-quarters of the book—is. So. Boring. Nothing interesting happens until the very end of the book when the main character finally comes face to face with the villain of the book. The villain who, I might add, was all “shrouded in mystery” and just referred to as “she” for the entire book, with other characters assuring the MC that they can’t tell her about the villain, but just trust us, she’s really, really bad. I guess this was supposed to amp her up and make us wonder about her, but in reality all it did was make me very, very bored, because I didn’t even know who the major threat was. All I got to see was this boring MC going through her boring life in which the only times she gets into any trouble is when she just fails to listen to the very simple directions of her faerie friends/kidnappers.
Yes, I said friends SLASH kidnappers.
I’ll admit, as villains go, Amarantha is a pretty good one. Maybe the whole book would have been less boring if we had led with that and let us know what the MC was up against instead of all this secretive nonsense.
And this is not even remotely delving into all the abusive relationship stuff going on in this book, which is another reason to dislike it, especially when I see readers saying that these relationships are #goalzzzz and they totally wish they had someone like the male love interests in this series when in reality, no…no, you don’t. But that’s a whole separate point from the fact that it is so boring I’d rather read an Algebra textbook than ever delve into this novel again.
So, no, I will not read ACOMAF. No, I don’t care if that’s “where it really gets good” or “where things really heat up” or “OMG it’s like A;LSDKJALDA;;S.SLAL’E@#DJAOA!!!” I don’t care that Feyre gets a new (old) love interest and that ACOMAF is chock full of sexy times. If the first book was this much of a problematic snoozefest, I just have no reason to pick up the second. It’s that simple.
Hate me yet? Well, hold onto your butts. I’ve got more.
2. I am not a fan of The Dark Artifices series.
This is an unpopular opinion of mine that even took ME by surprise. Trust me, I, more than anyone, really thought I was going to love The Dark Artifices series (for the unindoctrinated, it’s the third series by Cassandra Clare following Shadowhunters, a race of human-angel hybrids who are responsible for hunting demons and other creatures in order to protect the world). If you’ve been here for longer than two seconds, then you probably already know that The Mortal Instruments is my JAM. I mean, I love those books. I fell hard for those books and almost every character in them (except Simon and Alec—hi, more unpopular opinions). And then when The Infernal Devices series came out I was super stoked, and while I didn’t love them as much as The Mortal Instruments (largely due to a severe lack of Jace), they were also so good and I enjoyed them immensely (and was totally #TeamJem).
And then TDA came out. The excitement! The mayhem! But after reading Lady Midnight I felt decidedly meh. Yeah, it was cool to be back in the Shadowhunters world, but I wasn’t loving it. I thought maybe I just needed to wait until the second book and maybe things would pick up and I’d really like it. So I bought Lord of Shadows and went into it ready to love it—but alas, all it did was confirm my ultimate feelings of meh.
I was actually really disappointed in myself for not liking this one. I was disappointed in the books, as well, but really disappointed in my reaction to them. I wanted to love them! Why wouldn’t I? But I just couldn’t, and to be honest, I am probably not even going to buy the third one because there are so many books out there to read, I don’t want to spend time forcing myself to read one that I’m not really interested in.
I think one of the main reasons I was so disinterested in this series is its cast of characters. I was never interested in Emma Carstairs during her appearances in The Mortal Instruments. I was never interested in Julian and his merry band of misfits excessive number of siblings that he has to raise. I was mildly interested in Mark and how he joined the Wild Hunt, but not super interested. But I guess I hoped that once they were older and had their own book series I would be more interested. Turns out I was wrong. I am still not interested in them as the main cast of their own series.
What. A. Letdown.
Perhaps more bewildering, however, is the fact that I seem to be the only one in this boat. I’ve seen most Clare fans singing the praises of the series in their loudest Buddy the Elf approved singing voices, and have even seen some reviewers say that it is Clare’s best and most sophisticated work so far.
And I’m over here like…uhh???
So, I guess I’m very alone in this particular dinghy. More power to you if you like them, because that means you’re lucky enough to still be enjoying Clare’s work, but for me, the magic just isn’t there with this particular series. I’ll stick to the OG Mortal Instruments.
Here’s an unpopular opinon part 2A for you: I love The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones movie adaptation.
SUE ME.
Alright, prepare yourselves for this next one. You ready?
3. The Cursed Child seriously wasn’t that bad.
Don’t come at me with this “all true fans of Harry Potter hate this book” nonsense. Don’t even. I grew up with Harry Potter. (Like, legitimately grew up with it. I wasn’t born in 1999 and am just saying I grew up with it.) I was a kid as the books were being released and had to actually wait in between books to find out what happened and then rush to get the next one so I could find out before any of the other kids at school spoiled it for me. Life was hard back then, okay?
I am a diehard Harry Potter fan out here with the rest of them, and I just don’t get all the hate for The Cursed Child. There are several things I don’t get: first of all, I don’t get why, when it was first released, people were all worked up that it was a screenplay and not a novel. People acted like they were blindsided by it, when in fact, it was no secret that The Cursed Child was a screenplay…because it was about to be a play. On a stage. And that’s how plays work.
Second, I don’t understand these criticisms of “mer mer mer, it reads like HP fan fiction, mer mer mer”. First of all, I might direct you to this thread by author Rainbow Rowell on Twitter, which makes some very valid points about fanfiction and books that “read like fanfiction”. “Reading like fanfiction” isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And second of all, we don’t always like or have to like things that happen in our favorite books or series. I have read plenty of books where I didn’t like something that happened, and though I still like the book and the series, I might disagree with certain events or certain plot points. That doesn’t mean I hate the whole thing…I just hate that part.
Personally, I loved the plot of The Cursed Child, and most of it made perfect sense to me and seemed like a really logical progression of the storyline to explore. I loved Draco in this, even though he broke my sad, Draco-loving heart. I also liked his son, Scorpius, and I guess I’m just going to be on board with the whole Malfoy lineage now, what can I say? I would also love (like, absolutely die) to see this on stage. I think it’s a great story, and it would be amazing to see it brought to life on the stage.
In short, I understand that not everything is everyone’s cup of tea. Obviously. I like this, other people hate it. Other people like ACOTAR, I hate it. I get that people aren’t going to like it. But it sometimes seems like a good 90% of the Harry Potter fandom is “secretly” (it’s not a secret, y’all) hating on The Cursed Child and once one person says it, other fans come pouring out of the woodwork to shout about how much they hated it too, and I just don’t get it. For years and years after the Harry Potter series ended, people were devouring every little morsel of the Wizarding World they could get their hands on via Pottermore, companion books, and yes, even fanfiction, to a point where people were practically chanting in the streets* for MORE HARRY POTTER, MORE HARRY POTTER.
And then they got more Harry Potter.
And then they were pissed about it.
And then it became, “We didn’t mean more Harry Potter like this.”
So I guess maybe this is the perfect example of “be careful what you wish for”.
TL;DR: I liked The Cursed Child. Even if that’s not the “popular” opinion.
*I’m obviously being facetious when I use the expression “chanting in the streets”. Again, don’t @ me.
Let’s take a look at one of my less controversial unpopular opinions, shall we?
4. I love “bitchy” main characters.
Or side characters. I’ll take them where I can get them, but I’d prefer them as main characters.
This one could perhaps be more inclusively summarized by saying that I love flawed main characters. Even super flawed main characters. And while very few people probably want their main characters to be perfect, but I think we see a lot of characters that fit into that good-at-everything and also totally-drop-dead-beautiful-and-she-doesn’t-even-know-it trope, and oftentimes “good at everything” also means good at being really, really nice.
We getttt it. Obviously we all love nice people. Who doesn’t love nice people? Except maybe that crazy lady at Kohl’s.
But a flawed, kind of bitchy, maybe a little bit too sarcastic main character? Sign. Me. Up.
I’m not saying I want my MCs to be straight up bad people, but you have to admit, it makes the journey a little more interesting when the pilot has strong convictions and a bit of an acid tongue. I’ve seen lots of times when readers complain that they didn’t like a book because the main character was a jerk or was mean and they couldn’t identify with them, etc., but for me, that just means that character is unapologetically themselves and does not give two shits what you think, which is my favorite kind of character—both to read and to write.
Even extremely flawed main characters are a welcome change for me. Think of Anna Fox in Woman in the Window: she’s agoraphobic, she’s an alcoholic, she’s clearly abusing her medication, and she’s overall awkward and not great at fitting in in the world.
And I totally loved her. She’s got a lot going on, and that’s awesome. It’s way more interesting than reading about someone who’s totally got their shit together, because who can identify with that? Who really totally has their shit together? Don’t lie to yourself.
As a final note on this topic, I want to share a quote from author Melissa Albert in an interview she gave to OwlCrate recently about Alice, the main character in her new novel, The Hazel Wood:
“We often talk about badass women as being ‘unapologetic’, as if the feminine default is to apologize—and I kind of love that apology is anathema to Alice. She’s prickly and closed off for good reason, and even though she’s aware that her life would be easier if she were more amenable, she accepts the cost of who she is without resentment or regret.”
Heck yes. That alone made me so excited to read the book, and I really hope I end up loving Alice because she sounds like exactly the type of character I would like—and if we’re being brutally honest here, she also sounds a little like me.
Which is perhaps another reason why I really love characters like this. But personally, a character having a bit of a bitchy side just isn’t enough to turn me off from a book. Disclaimer: again, if you go full-fledged down the road to the point where they’re just not a good person at all (ahem, Before I Fall), yeah, I’ll lose interest. But I’m completely on board for more characters—especially female characters—who don’t find it necessary to be nice to everyone, and are perhaps a little prickly.
And finally…
5. I actually really like ambiguous endings.
And yes, I do count them as “real” endings.
I’ve heard some people argue that it’s not a real ending because they don’t find out “what happens” or there’s “not enough details” or “things aren’t wrapped up”, and I’m here to tell you: if it ends, it’s an ending. That’s the ending, whether you got it all wrapped up with a bow on top or not.
I don’t want to know what the three words were that Eleanor wrote to Park.
I don’t want to know or dissect how it could be remotely possible for Ig to grow horns.
I don’t want to know what’s in the box from Castaway.
I don’t.
That is how the writer wrote it, and they wrote it that way for a reason. Just because every single question you could possibly think of isn’t answered, doesn’t mean it isn’t an ending or isn’t a “real” ending.
This is not to say you can’t dislike ambiguous endings (or that ambiguity will work for everything/is always appropriate—it won’t, and it isn’t). Again, everyone has their own taste, and if you hate ambiguous endings, that’s fine. But let’s refrain from calling them “not real endings”. They are endings. Just like in life, things don’t always end finitely. Sometimes there are loose ends. Sometimes things are up in the air. Sometimes things are grey rather than black and white. And I love to see that reflected in literature—even though I’m fully aware that I am part of a small group that feels this way, and most people would rather get some explanations.
I clearly remember reading a short story I wrote out loud at a writers’ event when I was in college, and after I was done, one of the event organizers came up to me and asked, “So what happens?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused because I’d just read the story literally from beginning to end.
“What happens to her?” she asked, referring to the main character. “I have to know. I mean, that’s not it, right?”
“That’s it,” I told her. “That’s what happens.”
Sure, on the downside, ambiguous endings might leave you wondering. But on the plus side, they might leave you wondering.
After all, it’s been nearly 18 years since Castaway came out, and people are still talking about it.
Alright, that’s it for now! I actually do have more unpopular opinions, but I don’t need people coming to my door with pitch forks or anything.
What about everyone else? Do you love/hate my unpopular opinions? Do you have any unpopular opinions of your own? I actually love hearing unpopular opinions, even if they clash with my own thoughts, so let me know in the comments! You know I’d love to talk. <3