When writing an upcoming post about book ratings, I started to think about average ratings on Goodreads. My rating for September Girls was a HALF of a star and the average Goodreads rating was 2.97. That is extremely low on Goodreads, obviously. I wanted to explore some of the books I’ve read with super low average Goodreads ratings, then see where my thoughts and rating stacked up.
The Word for Yes by Claire Needell | I didn’t like this book and clearly the people of Goodreads agreed with me. This is the lowest average rating on Goodreads out of all the books I’ve read. I expected this to be a powerful and impactful story about the aftermath of a date rape, and how three sisters cope and move on together. That didn’t exactly happen and the story was very pointless, which is sad to say. It doesn’t help that the book was barely over 200 pages long and therefore a little too short to successfully tackle this topic.
Sam and Ilsa’s Last Hurrah by David Levithan & Rachel Cohn | I feel a little bad for this book because it wasn’t THAT terrible? The concept was better than the execution, of course, but whatever. Like many of Cohn/Levithan’s books (when they write together), at least one character has to be a little too manic pixie dream-person or unrealistic. There’s too much forced quirkiness in their characters and that tends to ruin their books for me.
Posh by Lucy Jackson | This is one of the last books I read before blogging in 2014, so I don’t have my detailed thoughts or review for this one. I did give it three stars on Goodreads though, which sounds about right? I didn’t mind this one in general but this was before I was a book reviewer. I agree with a lot of of the Goodreads reviews for this one though: pointless and just chock-full of stereotypes about Upper East Siders. I, however, tend to enjoy those kinds of garbage books.
Cut Both Ways by Carrie Mesrobian | This is another book where I feel like an important topic wasn’t handled properly, or given the right kind of time and attention? Aside from really not enjoying the actual writing, this book was trying to be a lot of things at once and cover too many issues without deftly handling any of them. The story is meant to be about bi erasure, but it was so frustrating to read this MC ignoring bisexuality as a concept throughout the entire book. I thought I was being insensitive until I read other reviewers and many people agreed with me on this one.
September Girls by Bennett Madison | This is the book that inspired this post, when I realized just how many people agreed with me on how bad this story is. I actually gave this a half-star while others were more generous with an almost three-star average. Still very low. This book is GARBAGE and I’m done talking about it on my blog, to be honest.
The Upper Class by Hobson Brown, Taylor Materne, and Caroline Says | Man, I wish I could tell you I remembered anything about this one. It 100% seems like one of those classic old-school YA books about prep school and mean girls… which means I fully loved it at the time. I don’t have a rating for this one on GR but it seems like many users didn’t love this one.
Anne & Henry by Dawn Ius | I did a post about lowest rated books I loved and this one made the cut, so I’ll sing its praises again here. I don’t know anything about King Henry and Anne Boleyn so I thought that would be a problem with this book, but it wasn’t. I know people loved it and knew the history, people who hated it and knew the history, and everyone on the opposite side too. I, for one, enjoyed this.
Rhymes with Witches by Lauren Myracle | This is another pre-blogging mean girls book that I loved at the time but probably would find questionable now. I remember there mayyyybe being a twist in this one? I could be wrong. Apparently it’s a part of a series too which I am just now learning and confused about. I’m not surprised about the average rating.
Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close | After my millions of hours of wedding/bridesmaid-related experience at this point, I wonder if I would view this book differently? I read this one early in my blogging career and remember how pointless it felt, with no real closure for the WIDE array of characters we met throughout the story. It seems like a lot of others didn’t enjoy this one either.
Girls in White Dresses – ugh, yes, pointless is the best way to describe it! Awful book. I think I gave it one star.
SO BORING.
Good to know. It was on my wishlist for a long time, but maybe I’ll just skip this one.
I’ve only read Anne & Henry and hated it. I think it’s one of mmt only ranty reviews!
Oooh I’m curious now hahaha
Haha I had no idea you rated a book a half star! I have to go check out your review now…
LOL it was a rough one.
[…] decided to draft up this post after seeing Lauren @ Bookmark Lit’s post and wondering what my lowest rated books were and where I fell with […]
What an interesting post idea! Not going to lie, if I look up a book on Goodreads and the average rating is really low, it definitely scares me off. Especially if not many friends have read it either haha.
Haha oh totally!! I do this all the time. I think for all of these, I definitely read them before seeing the rating somehow? Like Anne & Henry was a review copy, for example, so I knew the rating wasn’t 100% accurate yet haha.