(like Buzzfeed but without funny dogs)

Here it is. Your first 5 (or last 5) favorite books of the summer, reviewed!

20. Nutshell

I can’t believe anyone had anything positive to say about this book. Take several awful people and a gross premise and have them talk about how to be even more insufferable for 200 pages. It’s as if McEwan thought “I have a good rep in the literary world, let me write the worst possible book and see if they’ll fall all over themselves to tell me how great I am anyway.” The only plus is that is wasn’t that long. I loved Atonement, and there may have been one other that I read that I liked, but it’s all be downhill since.

19. The History of Love

I can’t believe anyone has more than ~1 good thing to say about this book. The emotional struggle of the old man tugged the heart strings. Being at the sunset of your life and wondering what it’s all about. At 36 I have plenty of those moments, so I can only imagine 50 years from now. But the story was confusing and the pay off was weak. Avoid.

18. My Name is Lucy Barton

I have nothing to say about this book because nothing happened. Why was this woman in the hospital? Was she actually abused? Was her mother abused? Was she just a jerk? What did she write? What happened to her marriage? None of these questions will be answered. I didn’t even car enough to get a full size picture of this one.

17. The Rules Do Not Apply

I wanted to punch this book in the face. Here’s an obnoxious person who writes about her averagely interesting life with ok skill and interacts with other unappealing people and then suffers a terrible tragedy and then the book ends with little to no progress. She is so wrapped up in this life she barely notices what’s happening to anyone else she “cares” about. It also includes an implied cautionary tale that if you try to live your life before having children, you will be punished, and you will encounter people who will make you feel like any suffering is your selfish fault for waiting to have kids. I don’t 100% think this is what she was suggesting, rather it was her own feelings and what she interpreted from her encounters, but for someone on the edge of child bearing years, it was more of a knife twist that you want for a beach read.

16. Nora Webster

This book was fine but it sticks at the bottom of the list because Brooklyn (both the book and the movie) was such a lovely, simple story that exemplified, for me, what historical fiction can be. I see the attempt to tell the simple story of a woman navigating family life, and I appreciated some of her breaking out of her old life, but it didn’t have the joy or progression that it needed.