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What am I? A Sheep. | 4 Books I Haven't Read, Because Someone Else Hates Them

By HenleyF - October 27, 2016



I have a bad habit of judging books based off their reviews. I think I covered this a little in my other post Reviews: Are We Influenced by Others?, which also gets the opinions of a couple other book lovers for reference. I get influenced extremely easily, especially if theres floods of negative reviews all criticizing the same thing. I'm pretty sure that it's happened more that four times, but these are the ones of the top of my head. 

Any John Green Books


Manic Dream Pixie Girl Syndrome. We were having a chat about books in class, and this came up. Need I say any more?
"that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures." - as described by Nathan Rabin

Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by M. E. Thomas


At first glance, this book looks really really interesting. The concept is unique (I haven't come across many books about BEING a sociopath) and I think the cover manages to convey what the book is about. Well, probably. I didn't get very far into in.
Countless reviews have called this book 'uncohesive' or 'disgusting' and apparently the author is 'extremely vain'. Me, being the sheep that I am, put the book down as soon as I had checked out of the library. Forgetting why I picked it up in the first place, it just suddenly didn't seem like a book that I would be interested in reading. Why did I do that? *this is me being sad, but also continuing to not read the book


The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead


I haven't really read any of her other books, the Vampire Academy series right? Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of vampires to be completely honest. I think that might of had a little bit of influence in my decision to not pick this up (I'm sorry!), but literally every review that I read said that they were 'disappointed' in it. So, that's a no for me.




Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell


At first, I wasn't reading this book because I'm not the biggest fan of contemporaries. The cover was cute and everything, but I was worried that the story was just going to be a rehash of something that had already been written (which most stories are tbh, it's the characters that make the books interesting imo). Then, I stumbled upon a couple of posts talking about how racist the book was. Truthfully, I only went back to the article once, but whenever I catch sight of the book I always have the nagging feeling of guilt and unease if I were to pick it up. So I haven't.

read more about the book being racist here and here


Have you read any of these books? If so, can you understand why I didn't read them or are you judging me super hard right now? I'm loving my first choice of gif by the way, if you haven't watched (the UK version) of Skins, you definitely should! Oh but please don't start with the US version, it's not that great. To put it nicely. Oh, and please let me know if you find the number of gifs in the post too distracting! It would be really helpful to know, thanks in advance!

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26 comments

  1. Evelina @ AvalinahsBooks27 October 2016 at 19:13

    Oh no, why are you in blogspot and not wordpress D: aaa how do I follow you?? Email only, I guess, let me see.

    This is a really relevant topic. I have noticed that I also harbour views about books based on opinions, and not just review opinions - I mean, if a certain group of people likes it, that means I probably won't like it. We should really be more open-minded, I guess. But I've been trying to more and more, from the time I joined the Twitter book community :) because they're all so different, and that's just lovely. Turns out, a lot of the books I'd been avoiding because of 'opinions' are actually pretty good.

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books27 October 2016 at 20:19

      Aw that's such a sweet comment, thank you! There's always Bloglovin' if you run out of options.

      I completely agree about being open minded, but I guess it's a bit hard if you're part of the book community and getting bombarded by opinions all of the time! I spend a lot of my 'bookish' time on goodreads, which mostly focuses on reviews and nothing but reviews. So they're a little hard to escape. For example, The Siren by Keira Cass was one of the books that I was going out of my way to avoid. It just didn't seem like that many people liked it, so I didn't really want to spend my money on it. That was a mistake. Turns out I absolutely adore the book, flaws and all! Even though it was only by chance that I actually read it (traded it with another book lover).

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  2. Evelina @ AvalinahsBooks27 October 2016 at 20:28

    I should look into bloglovin. Still no idea what that is :D

    Yeah, I spend a lot of my time on goodreads too.

    Buddy reads are always very good for that. I once read a chick lit book through buddy reads - a book I would have NEVER picked up. But it turned out to be the smart chick lit kind - it was a lot of fun.

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books28 October 2016 at 11:17

      Ooh yes, buddy reads are fun! As well as introducing us to new books, it also kind of hypes us up a little bit more. I last read The Watchmen with a couple of my friends (which we didn't like all that much), but it made it a lot more fun! It also wasn't something that I would normally read.

      Bloglovin' can be super useful for keeping up with a ton of blogs! I've only just started using it again, but it's helped out a lot in terms of keeping track of blogs that I like c:

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  3. Adventures with a Book Nerd28 October 2016 at 04:30

    Yep, I read The Glittering Court, and yep, I was EXTREMELY disappointed. I would give the Vampire Academy series a try though! I enjoyed those. :)

    Thanks for stopping by Adventures with a Book Nerd! :D

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books28 October 2016 at 11:14

      Yes! That seems to be a common issue with the glittering court, perhaps it was because her first series was so good that people were expecting more? I'm definitely going to try and check them out. Thanks for the comment!

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  4. Valerie28 October 2016 at 08:12

    Even before blogging, I had this problem of looking and reading reviews about books before I bought them, or at least looking at the avg. rating. I remember reading a couple of John Green books before becoming a book reviewer, and even then not liking them too much. But I thought it was the norm to love them, so I felt pretty bad about it. So I'm glad now that I'm not the only one!

    I have read Eleanor & Park, though it was a few years ago. Looking back, I could definitely see how it was a bit racist, or at least stereotypical. I didn't really like the book that much, it was meh for me! So honestly I don't think you're missing out on much!

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    1. Valerie28 October 2016 at 08:19

      Sorry I am trying to stalk you, but I don't suppose you have a Twitter? I found you on instagram though!

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    2. Fleur @ Frankly Books28 October 2016 at 11:12

      I feel like that quite often too, I was never a huge fan of Illuminae (shocking, I know) and it kind of made me feel like I was missing out on something when literally everyone was gushing about it. I mean, I loved the concept and the illustrations but I just couldn't get into the story!

      It's a bit of a relief to hear you say that aha, always nice to get confirmation from someone else. Do you want to leave your twitter handle in the comments? I was actually just about to make one and would love to connect on there as well!

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  5. Arkon and Annie28 October 2016 at 18:16

    Manic Dream Pixie Girl Syndrome - that's just hilarious and accurate to John Green books. They're really nothing special. We really liked your use of Gifs in this post. They made us laugh a lot :)

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books29 October 2016 at 11:14

      Yay! I'm glad I managed to make you laugh aha (I tend to go a bit over the top sometimes). One of my friends really swears that the Manic Dream Pixie Girl Syndrome is the core theme of his books, so I wasn't really that into the idea. I'm glad I don't appear to be missing out on anything!

      Thanks for taking the time to read and comment x

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  6. CG @ Paper Fury28 October 2016 at 19:10

    I totally get influenced really easily by reviews too!😂 But I'm okay with that because there are soooo many books to read out there, right?! We need to somehow whittle them down a little bit haha. I didn't love Eleanor And Park but I didn't mind it too much! I didn't consider it racist, but I'm going to check out that article you linked to. *nods*
    But omg Glittering Court? YOU MADE THE RIGHT CALL. I suffered through it and disliked it so bad.😂
    I love John Green though! I think he does use the manic pixie dream girl trope a lot (or dream boy😂) but I think he does it well..and like Paper Towns, for instance, has the message that you shouldn't turn people into your personal manic-pixie-dream-girls because it's dangerous and it's not healthy for them or you. So it was kind of turning the trope on its head, which I loved!

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books29 October 2016 at 11:28

      Oh yes that's true, I'm already overloaded with unread books on both my tbr list and my shelves. I think if I hadn't rejected some (even though their cover's were really pretty) I would have never loved reading as much as I do!
      Eleanor and Park probably wasn't as racist as the article said it was, but they did have quite a few valid points. I feel better about not reading it, over reading it and then feeling a bit squicky afterwards. Saves me from a slight existential crisis I think!
      John Green turning the trope on the head sounds awesome, although I think I would prefer to watch the movies over the books (*gasp* I know, I'm terrible). Simply because a. Cara Delevingne b. I need to read the overload of books on my shelves and c. I just really like watching movies.

      Thanks for reading and commenting Cait x

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  7. Aj @ Read All The Things!28 October 2016 at 22:22

    I think I’m not influenced enough by reviews. A lot of times, my blogger friends will all read a book and hate it, but I’ll be too stubborn to listen to them. I’ll read the book, hate it, and say “Well, that was awful. I should have listened.”

    Aj @ Read All The Things!

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books29 October 2016 at 11:22

      Ooh, that could be considered a good thing as well! Gives you a chance to discover new (and maybe completely awesome) books that you might not have read if you had listened to your friends. Personally I think I'm too influenced by reviews, so I admire you for going your own way!

      Thanks for reading and commenting Aj x

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  8. Amber Elise29 October 2016 at 05:59

    You made the right decision skipping Glittering Court. That book had no movement whatsoever!

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books29 October 2016 at 11:20

      Ah, good! I was kind of considering it because the cover was so pretty (*sigh*) but I'm glad I gave it a miss. There are so many other books that I need to discover!

      Thanks for reading and commenting x

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  9. Esther @ Queen of Fantasy29 October 2016 at 19:51

    ADMITTEDLY I haven't read any of these. Three because I wasn't all that interested. BUT I haven't read Glittering Court because of how many bloggers I know who don't like it so I can't bring myself to EVEN THOUGH PRETTY COVERS???

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books29 October 2016 at 19:57

      YES, why must the cover be so pretty? I feel so tempted to pick it up and start reading it, even though I know that I probably wouldn't like it that much. HOLD ME BACK!

      Thanks for reading and commenting Esther x

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  10. Poulami Ghosh30 October 2016 at 00:35

    I haven't read any books from your list either, I did read TFIOS though but it was pretty meh for me. I definitely don't want to pick up Glittering Court or any of Green's books either.

    - Poulami @ Daydreaming Books

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books4 November 2016 at 08:50

      That's exactly how I feel, although I have been tempted in the past to pick up one of John Green's books. Everyone else seems to adore them! Thanks for reading and commenting Poulami x

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  11. Prabhleen3 November 2016 at 19:43

    I have read Eleanor and Park and it is indeed racist. I mean, I am Indian, so I know that racist comments suck. also, I have also read Looking for Alaska by John Green and wasn't a big fan. I will NEVER, EVER read Thirteen Reasons Why because I have seen bad reviews from almost everyone that I follow.
    Prabhleen@ http://www.booksarelife987.wordpress.com

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books4 November 2016 at 08:57

      Yep, racist comments are terrible. Hopefully we're moving past that and people are seeing the ignorance of their ways (one day it will happen). I’ve never actually seen any reviews of 13 Reasons Why, think I read it when I was a lot younger and wasn’t really clued in so I didn’t mind it that much. What was the issue that most people had with the book?

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  12. Heather Duff4 November 2016 at 05:38

    I haven't read a John Green or Rainbow Rowell book because I don't know, everyone seems to love them and I know I'll be the one to hate them!!!

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    1. Fleur @ Frankly Books4 November 2016 at 08:59

      Ooh that's almost the opposite of how I feel. I know that I'll probably love the books, but they have such problematics themes that I just don't want to :/ If I do read them, and love them I'll be a bit at odds with myself I think.

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  13. Megan21 May 2017 at 18:06

    Yeah, I'm not a fan of Elenor and Park or John Green books either.

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