Ok I haven't read Monsters, but as someone who dedicated their grad school research to fan studies, I have a lot of feelings about the conversation surrounding "separating art from the artist." I think the reason Monsters is so popular is because it is justifying people's desire to still love a piece of art even when the creator is a PoS. It is inadvertently encouraging people NOT to think critically about their relationship with a fandom (especially when it comes to one that holds a lot of nostalgia). I could really dive into this whole topic, because it is massive and complicated, and spans over a wide variety of fandoms--from books, to TV, to sports, to actors. It's something that is ingrained in our culture and can't be unpacked in a single chapter of a single book. I was very interested in reading Monsters because of my scholarly focus, but I am so glad I saw your review first. It would've pissed me off to no end for all of the reasons you described.
I am blind from birth. using it as a plot point to keep suspense up, using this person's disability as a reason for their bitterness, or whatever? no thanks. I may be a bitch sometimes, but it's not because I can't see! it's just my nature! LOL, thanks for warning me off this one.
You mean I get salty Winn AND Becca today??? 🎉🎉🎉🎉 Also: with your accent I hear your name as Gwen and now I picture a spider covering bad books in webs (in case lovely spouse Harry needs more permutations 😂😂)
About Monsters, thank you for having this discussion. I’m a trans person and I feel safe here. My worst book of 2024 was The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell
🔥🔥 You just saved me from reading We Used to Live Here in February. It drives me crazy when the premise of a book doesn't make sense or when you have to question a major plot point...
Omg, this is my first year when I actually read similar books to you and the worst books of the year were sometimes opposite of my rating :). Both Study in Drowning and Thursday Murder club were highly rated. I really appreciate your reviews, though. It always helps me realize why exactly I liked a book so much if obviously it had some draw backs. The thing is you are correct and I did not read the 'Secret History', maybe then Study in Drowning will go into the read and forgotten :P
Uh oh! I hope I agree with lovely spouse Harry on the Thursday Murder Club because I've been reeeeeeeeally wanting to read it! I'm a cozy mystery lover though. My worst book was one called The Long Flight Home by Alan Hlad. It was historical fiction and I threw the book at the wall at the end.
🧂I love your salty reviews. You often save me the time and frustration of reading a book that is heavily promoted but poorly written. I have been on the waiting list at the library for "We Used to Live Here" and have just removed myself.
I have a rec for you that's completely outside of your comfort zone (i've never seen you read xanxia before but could have missed it), yet I think you'll enjoy it: Beware of Chicken by CasualFarmer. In my country it's only available as an ebook but maybe there's a physical version in yours. If you read it, I truly hope you enjoy!
Very bummed to hear about Janice Hallett! I appreciate your insight, and it sounds like I'll be removing her other books from my TBR. The search continues for great mixed media books.
I love Jane Doe as a terribly cold main character. She doesn't apologize for it. And the second one was just as interesting to me. Very few readers I'm around know about her rather unorthodox methods. I have a video up of my worst books of 2024. One of my absolute dislikes was The Last Tale of the Flower Bride. Ugh. I was so angry at it. Still am.
A big YES to everything you said about We Used To Live Here! I've seen so many people say it's the scariest book theyve ever read and I feel like I must've read a different one!! It just annoyed me 🤔
Same with The Examiner! I felt a bit conned as well as this is the same mixed media format, the plot consists of art and yet unlike in The Appeal where we could see the actual Posters, not one Art piece, photo etc was displayed.
i want to say i love how book taste varies so much person to person because one of these is one of my least favs of all time and another one is a fav of all time. Things Have Gotten Worse… is one of the only books i’ve ever given 1 star. it felt like there was not real plot or character development, he just wanted to shock people. like you said- it wasn’t actually well crafted horror, just shock value. and it felt icky to me that he used lesbians to do it. Girl in Pieces was one of my favorite books. I don’t think that i loved it because it was phenomenal but because of how much i related to it. i was very much the main character when i was a teen and so it just really captured me. i don’t like trauma porn but i am a sucker for the ya wacky mental health books because i was a wacky mentally ill young adult.
🧂 I didn't have a worst book with any saltiness this year. BUT back in 2022 I read White Girl Problems by Babe Walker and it still pisses me off! Any time I see a "worst book" video, I think of this book. And it's been 2 freakin years since I read it! And I didn't even finish it I hated it so much! I only got half way thru before something happened that I wanted to burn every single copy of this book.
You know what I love about books and reading? I really hated We Used to Live Here, and The Thursday Murder Club, things we agree on. But for many of the reasons you mentioned not enjoying The Housemaid, I consider Frieda to be a reading slump buster for me. Any time I'm feeling slumpy I know I can put on a Frida and while it may not be a great book, it will get me interested in reading again. 🧂🧂
I’m so glad to have missed out on all these train wrecks. My worst book of the year was Assistant to the Villain. I’m still salty about that one, especially because it had such a fun cover.
I am new here, but I had a book that meets a couple of things you mentioned? I read "Vera Wong's Unsolicited Guide to Murderers," which was a cozy mystery with a diverse cast centered on Vera Wong, a 60yo Chinese woman. Might not be for everybody but I had a good time. I looked over everything I read, and only one still made me frustrated - "The Love Hypothesis," an Ali Hazelwood romance that involved a guy pulling a full car way too casually 😂😂😂 my lesson of the year is that Ali Hazelwood is not for me 😢
Have you read anything by Lyndsy Spence, Winn? She wrote an interesting biography of Maria Callas a few years ago and released a new book about Vivian Leigh that last year, and she's really good at writing honest, sympathetic books about women who were in the limelight in the way Elizabeth Taylor was.
So. Dark Academia is my beloved, and i love reading the "nobody talks about these books for some ungodly reason please someone?" - i just. The Afterdark by E. Latimer; it's Dark Academia, it's sapphic, it's horror, it's a spooky forest, it's a mystery that just keeps mysterying until the last absolute last sentence... i just finished it and i'm O_O T_T O_O! but. idk just a recommendation i guess. >_>
I finished the housemaid earlier today and I hated it soooooooooooo much. How dare you call it the housemaid when she’s is no longer a maid at about 50%. And the last 50% isn’t even about the maid anymore…. Like wtffff??? I’m giving it “if I had a physical copy I’d hurl it out the window/5 stars”
I really enjoyed We Used To Live Here though I take some of your points about it.I won't be watching the screen adaptation for reasons...Thanks for calling out ableism.Nothing irks me more then people panting over disability twists.Hello Riley Sager and CoHo.
🧂always love your salty videos, Winn! My worst book of the year was The Only One Left by Riley Sager, it was so bad and there were so many ableist things in this book, absolutely hated it. I was also very disappointed with Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch by Codie Crowley. The dust jacket tells you something that takes the character about 40% of the book to figure out, it also just made no sense to me.
I must agree with you on Freida McFadden- I am a lover of mystery/thrillers so was drawn to this author because of the all the hype. I have started a couple of their books in hopes that the first DNF was a one off but unfortunately this author is not for me. I agree they seem cookie cutter as well as the women portrayed seemed very one dimensional and just annoyed me. Thank you for sharing your opinions, although I do not always agree on all of you opinions I do enjoy these videos. Happy New Year and congrats on the new chapter of your life, Winn. 🎉
Agree with Dead Weight.. I found it triggering for me personally and not the educational way I expected. I didn’t hate it or anything but just not what I was kinda hoping for.
I've been interested in An Education in Malice but now I don't know 😅 Sandra put it as one of her faves of the year and you as one of your worst, it's shocking to see such contrast
Have you ever given danmei (chinese gay fiction) a try? The stories in this genre are almost always very complex and slow-burn. I particularly loved The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by MXTX for fantasy, and I Can Do It by Jiang Zi Bei for e-sports romance
A Feather so Black by Lyra Selene. I'm not the biggest fan of romantasy to start with but this was executed SO poorly. I went on to read The Cruel Prince later last year and went "Ahhhhhh, THATS what Selene was trying to do..." Needless to say, she failed spectacularly.
Florida by Lauren Groff was definitely the worst book I read, in terms of writing and my experience with it, lol. And then immediately after that, Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin and Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo were similarly unpleasant for me. For those, I can at least admit my expectations were somewhat at fault, but I still found them plotless, jumpy, and focused on all the wrong characters.
the worst book i read last year was the moonlight market! it felt far too quick and the mc had no common sense and it also felt a little bit incesty which was just a no
My worst book of the year was Lady MacBeth by Ava Reid. I hated that book, and it really hated Scottish people, particularly Scottish men, because there are no women at Macbeth’s court. She also made Lady MacBeth a French teenager, who if she was a bar of chocolate would’ve eaten herself. And the thing that really boiled my piss, Macbeth has two witches locked in his dungeon, one is called Gruoch, as in the real name of MacBeth’s Queen. Also she moved Glamis Castle to the most northerly part of Scotland overlooking the sea, had MacBeth fighting Æthelstan of England, because who else does Scotland fight, but Æthelstan died 100 years before MacBeth became king of Scotland. She has this weird author’s note about using period accurate spelling, but she clearly made it up, because it’s basically just adding letters in weird places, as opposed to using the Gaelic spelling. It’s the absolute worst.
I would say Familiar was dreadful. If you know anything about Jewish folktales and history, the beginning and her “magic” is just gave me the ick to the point where I would argue that it was borderline antisemitic. I mean it played into stereotypes of Jews being swindlers and charlatans. I don’t know what the author was thinking or how nobody thought that this was in poor taste or something. I truly expected more from the author. 😢
Ok I haven't read Monsters, but as someone who dedicated their grad school research to fan studies, I have a lot of feelings about the conversation surrounding "separating art from the artist." I think the reason Monsters is so popular is because it is justifying people's desire to still love a piece of art even when the creator is a PoS. It is inadvertently encouraging people NOT to think critically about their relationship with a fandom (especially when it comes to one that holds a lot of nostalgia). I could really dive into this whole topic, because it is massive and complicated, and spans over a wide variety of fandoms--from books, to TV, to sports, to actors. It's something that is ingrained in our culture and can't be unpacked in a single chapter of a single book.
I was very interested in reading Monsters because of my scholarly focus, but I am so glad I saw your review first. It would've pissed me off to no end for all of the reasons you described.
I am blind from birth. using it as a plot point to keep suspense up, using this person's disability as a reason for their bitterness, or whatever? no thanks. I may be a bitch sometimes, but it's not because I can't see! it's just my nature! LOL, thanks for warning me off this one.
I think it might need to be done tastefully. My disabilities definitely made me bitter. So people like that definitely exist.
You mean I get salty Winn AND Becca today??? 🎉🎉🎉🎉
Also: with your accent I hear your name as Gwen and now I picture a spider covering bad books in webs (in case lovely spouse Harry needs more permutations 😂😂)
About Monsters, thank you for having this discussion. I’m a trans person and I feel safe here.
My worst book of 2024 was The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell
0:32 you need the let’s get ready to rumble music ❤️
Also; The House Across The Lake by Riley Sagar almost got flung across the room! 😂
I’m so happy to have found your channel Winn! I love the level of detail you go into in giving your review!
🔥🔥 You just saved me from reading We Used to Live Here in February. It drives me crazy when the premise of a book doesn't make sense or when you have to question a major plot point...
Noooo I loved We Used To Live Here! But I can absolutely see why you didn't 😂.
Totally agree about Thrusday Murder Club though.
Omg, this is my first year when I actually read similar books to you and the worst books of the year were sometimes opposite of my rating :). Both Study in Drowning and Thursday Murder club were highly rated. I really appreciate your reviews, though. It always helps me realize why exactly I liked a book so much if obviously it had some draw backs. The thing is you are correct and I did not read the 'Secret History', maybe then Study in Drowning will go into the read and forgotten :P
YES i'm so happy someone else didn't like Thursday Murder Club. That thing put me in a 2 month long reading slump 😩 i shiver when i see that cover
🧂ooooffft! I love it ❤ also that sweater is so dang CUTE
Uh oh! I hope I agree with lovely spouse Harry on the Thursday Murder Club because I've been reeeeeeeeally wanting to read it! I'm a cozy mystery lover though. My worst book was one called The Long Flight Home by Alan Hlad. It was historical fiction and I threw the book at the wall at the end.
Yay, another Winifred video! Even if it's worst books you had me doing a drum beat too!
🧂I love your salty reviews. You often save me the time and frustration of reading a book that is heavily promoted but poorly written. I have been on the waiting list at the library for "We Used to Live Here" and have just removed myself.
I have a rec for you that's completely outside of your comfort zone (i've never seen you read xanxia before but could have missed it), yet I think you'll enjoy it: Beware of Chicken by CasualFarmer. In my country it's only available as an ebook but maybe there's a physical version in yours. If you read it, I truly hope you enjoy!
Very bummed to hear about Janice Hallett! I appreciate your insight, and it sounds like I'll be removing her other books from my TBR. The search continues for great mixed media books.
I love Jane Doe as a terribly cold main character. She doesn't apologize for it. And the second one was just as interesting to me. Very few readers I'm around know about her rather unorthodox methods.
I have a video up of my worst books of 2024. One of my absolute dislikes was The Last Tale of the Flower Bride. Ugh. I was so angry at it. Still am.
A big YES to everything you said about We Used To Live Here! I've seen so many people say it's the scariest book theyve ever read and I feel like I must've read a different one!! It just annoyed me 🤔
Same with The Examiner! I felt a bit conned as well as this is the same mixed media format, the plot consists of art and yet unlike in The Appeal where we could see the actual Posters, not one Art piece, photo etc was displayed.
i want to say i love how book taste varies so much person to person because one of these is one of my least favs of all time and another one is a fav of all time. Things Have Gotten Worse… is one of the only books i’ve ever given 1 star. it felt like there was not real plot or character development, he just wanted to shock people. like you said- it wasn’t actually well crafted horror, just shock value. and it felt icky to me that he used lesbians to do it.
Girl in Pieces was one of my favorite books. I don’t think that i loved it because it was phenomenal but because of how much i related to it. i was very much the main character when i was a teen and so it just really captured me. i don’t like trauma porn but i am a sucker for the ya wacky mental health books because i was a wacky mentally ill young adult.
🧂🔥 that was an awesome start into my day, thanks Winn 😀
🧂 I didn't have a worst book with any saltiness this year. BUT back in 2022 I read White Girl Problems by Babe Walker and it still pisses me off! Any time I see a "worst book" video, I think of this book. And it's been 2 freakin years since I read it! And I didn't even finish it I hated it so much! I only got half way thru before something happened that I wanted to burn every single copy of this book.
You know what I love about books and reading? I really hated We Used to Live Here, and The Thursday Murder Club, things we agree on. But for many of the reasons you mentioned not enjoying The Housemaid, I consider Frieda to be a reading slump buster for me. Any time I'm feeling slumpy I know I can put on a Frida and while it may not be a great book, it will get me interested in reading again. 🧂🧂
I loved we used to live here 😅😢
hi guys its winn made me EMOTIONAL. I LOVE U
unless you slam a book i liked, ive not finished the video yet ok bye
I’m so glad to have missed out on all these train wrecks. My worst book of the year was Assistant to the Villain. I’m still salty about that one, especially because it had such a fun cover.
I am new here, but I had a book that meets a couple of things you mentioned? I read "Vera Wong's Unsolicited Guide to Murderers," which was a cozy mystery with a diverse cast centered on Vera Wong, a 60yo Chinese woman. Might not be for everybody but I had a good time.
I looked over everything I read, and only one still made me frustrated - "The Love Hypothesis," an Ali Hazelwood romance that involved a guy pulling a full car way too casually 😂😂😂 my lesson of the year is that Ali Hazelwood is not for me 😢
Here for the tea 🫖
A bit of both! 🧂🔥
2525 Spicy Winn, I am here for it! My worst book of 2024 was Diavola it's a contrary opinion I know. 🤭
We love a salty Winn! ☺️💛🧂
Have you read anything by Lyndsy Spence, Winn? She wrote an interesting biography of Maria Callas a few years ago and released a new book about Vivian Leigh that last year, and she's really good at writing honest, sympathetic books about women who were in the limelight in the way Elizabeth Taylor was.
Saw your face pop up and SCREAMED "WINNNNNNIIIIE!!!"
So. Dark Academia is my beloved, and i love reading the "nobody talks about these books for some ungodly reason please someone?" - i just. The Afterdark by E. Latimer; it's Dark Academia, it's sapphic, it's horror, it's a spooky forest, it's a mystery that just keeps mysterying until the last absolute last sentence... i just finished it and i'm O_O T_T O_O! but. idk just a recommendation i guess. >_>
I finished the housemaid earlier today and I hated it soooooooooooo much. How dare you call it the housemaid when she’s is no longer a maid at about 50%. And the last 50% isn’t even about the maid anymore…. Like wtffff??? I’m giving it “if I had a physical copy I’d hurl it out the window/5 stars”
I really enjoyed We Used To Live Here though I take some of your points about it.I won't be watching the screen adaptation for reasons...Thanks for calling out ableism.Nothing irks me more then people panting over disability twists.Hello Riley Sager and CoHo.
🧂always love your salty videos, Winn! My worst book of the year was The Only One Left by Riley Sager, it was so bad and there were so many ableist things in this book, absolutely hated it. I was also very disappointed with Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch by Codie Crowley. The dust jacket tells you something that takes the character about 40% of the book to figure out, it also just made no sense to me.
I am so glad that I am not the only one who didn't enjoy The Thursday Murder Club.
🧂 We love a salty Winn.
I must agree with you on Freida McFadden- I am a lover of mystery/thrillers so was drawn to this author because of the all the hype. I have started a couple of their books in hopes that the first DNF was a one off but unfortunately this author is not for me. I agree they seem cookie cutter as well as the women portrayed seemed very one dimensional and just annoyed me. Thank you for sharing your opinions, although I do not always agree on all of you opinions I do enjoy these videos. Happy New Year and congrats on the new chapter of your life, Winn. 🎉
Agree with Dead Weight.. I found it triggering for me personally and not the educational way I expected. I didn’t hate it or anything but just not what I was kinda hoping for.
well, the blake lively casting aged like milk, truly. I'm also 10% in We Used to Live Here, for Winterween.
I loved we used to live here i wanted to reread it lmao but i never noticed the wait till my husband tells me what to do point...😅 true tho
I've been interested in An Education in Malice but now I don't know 😅 Sandra put it as one of her faves of the year and you as one of your worst, it's shocking to see such contrast
One of the probably 3 worst books videos I’m clicking on this year. 😂
🧂I am here for the salt. My worst was Pumpkin Spice Cafe. It was sooooo bad. I also hated a cpuple sheri Lapena (sp?) Books.
I loved the housemaid book as an audio book.
Have you ever given danmei (chinese gay fiction) a try? The stories in this genre are almost always very complex and slow-burn. I particularly loved The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by MXTX for fantasy, and I Can Do It by Jiang Zi Bei for e-sports romance
A Feather so Black by Lyra Selene. I'm not the biggest fan of romantasy to start with but this was executed SO poorly. I went on to read The Cruel Prince later last year and went "Ahhhhhh, THATS what Selene was trying to do..." Needless to say, she failed spectacularly.
🔥 (my worst book of the year was A Tempest of Tea; great setting, very boring execution with cliche characters).
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Let's GOOOO!
No no no dont say that I got two Frieda McFadden books for Christmas 😅
Mmmmm, my favorite seasoning 🧂
Florida by Lauren Groff was definitely the worst book I read, in terms of writing and my experience with it, lol. And then immediately after that, Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin and Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo were similarly unpleasant for me. For those, I can at least admit my expectations were somewhat at fault, but I still found them plotless, jumpy, and focused on all the wrong characters.
the worst book i read last year was the moonlight market! it felt far too quick and the mc had no common sense and it also felt a little bit incesty which was just a no
Thank goodness! Another person that doesn’t like The Housemaid. I DNFed that sucker around 25% but my bookclub loved it. Bleh!
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This is the FIRST negative review I've seen of We Used to Live Here and now I am even more curious 👀
🧂 love a salty video
My worst book of the year was Lady MacBeth by Ava Reid. I hated that book, and it really hated Scottish people, particularly Scottish men, because there are no women at Macbeth’s court. She also made Lady MacBeth a French teenager, who if she was a bar of chocolate would’ve eaten herself. And the thing that really boiled my piss, Macbeth has two witches locked in his dungeon, one is called Gruoch, as in the real name of MacBeth’s Queen.
Also she moved Glamis Castle to the most northerly part of Scotland overlooking the sea, had MacBeth fighting Æthelstan of England, because who else does Scotland fight, but Æthelstan died 100 years before MacBeth became king of Scotland. She has this weird author’s note about using period accurate spelling, but she clearly made it up, because it’s basically just adding letters in weird places, as opposed to using the Gaelic spelling.
It’s the absolute worst.
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Hi 🧂 🔥🔥🔥
🧂🧂 I think The Eyes Are The a Best Part was my worst book of 2024 😅
THANK THE GODS SOMEONE ELSE HATED WE USED TO LOVE HERE!!!!!! I ABHORRED this.
affiliate links for books you hated..?
other people may still want to read it. might as well get their bag 😂
First! (Omg, I hate myself right now.)
I would say Familiar was dreadful. If you know anything about Jewish folktales and history, the beginning and her “magic” is just gave me the ick to the point where I would argue that it was borderline antisemitic. I mean it played into stereotypes of Jews being swindlers and charlatans. I don’t know what the author was thinking or how nobody thought that this was in poor taste or something. I truly expected more from the author. 😢
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Monsters was awful
Regarding The Examiner, Hallety did the same thing in The Appeal
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When it’s revealed the « annoying » character has DID
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