Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly book meme brought by T5W on Goodreads.
Beware the Ides of March, they say. I certainly hope none of you are horribly betrayed on today of all days, not even by this post. Today for Top 5 Wednesday we're talking about the books or characters that have done us wrong. This one was pretty difficult for me to write, actually. There have certainly been a lot of books that disappointed me (I wrote about some of them here), but betrayal? I had to dig deep into the Land of Repressed Things for some of these.
Just A Warning: I'll be talking a bit about the plots, but nothing too horribly spoiler-y. However, if you want to avoid spoilers of any size, even of AWFUL BOOKS, then maybe skim this one?
Allegiant by Veronica Roth was NOT the thrilling conclusion to the Divergent series. This book felt like an aggressive form of betrayal on so many levels, even before you get to that shitty final choice she did NOT need to make. This was a book I literally did throw as soon as I finished it.
I wasn't thrilled with the writing or story line of Mockingjay in general (of course, the movies are different stories), but feel Gale in particular was unforgivable. Of course I can understand the it's war, greater good, and so forth, but I definitely back Katniss up when she tells Gale she never wants to see him again for the role he's played.
I've loved so many of Jessica Park's novels, including Left Drowning and the Flat-Out Love series. This book, however, is just a total WTF. It starts off as a fairly normal contemporary, and then rapidly goes to some other weird place where people are dying and coming back and life and existing in some weird alternative dimension and you're wondering what the hell you missed. I got halfway through it and wanted to throw it across the room.
I wrote a review of Becoming Us a few months ago, but I'm still pretty mad about it. Granted, I also never read the 2nd-book-that's-really-the-1st-book (even though this is listed as 1st book), but I don't think it matters. In this book, I think it's the author who betrayed us. The romance was not cute or sweet, and the main character does NOT end up with a good guy. But yet it's not portrayed as a cautionary tale; the abuse is presented as normal, as just issues to work through. No thanks.
This is probably the most upsetting of all the books on this list. I was insanely in love with this book, with its charts and graphs and gorgeous sentences and diverse cast and sweet romance. It was going to be a perfect book, the most perfect of all the books I'd ever read. Then you get to the end, and it's so offensive and disappointing. You can read my full review of Everything, Everything here.
So, there's my list. What are some of the books or characters you've felt most betrayed by? I will add them to my NEVER TO BE READ list.