I Read The Lowest Rated Books On My Shelf. Did They Suck?

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a commission from qualifying purchases.

In March 2023, I looked up the Goodreads ratings of all the unread books on my shelf. I wanted to read some good books, so I thought I'd prioritize the ones that other readers love.

While I was looking at the popular and beloved books, I couldn't help scrolling down and checking out the . . . um . . . not-as-loved books. Which unread books on my shelf had the lowest ratings?

I was kind of shocked. I was excited about those books! Why did readers feel so "Meh" about them? I decided to find out.

During the adventure that was 2023 (and the beginning of 2024), I read the books. Did I hate them as much as everybody else did?

😞  Did These Books Suck?  😕

SPOOK: SCIENCE TACKLES THE AFTERLIFE BY MARY ROACH

Adult Science Nonfiction

Goodreads Rating: 3.59

"What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that—the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.

My review: Mary Roach has an engaging writing style, and she makes herself part of the story. She travels to India to interview people who claim to have been reincarnated; she takes classes on how to be psychic; she goes ghost hunting; and she examines preserved samples of "ectoplasm." Interspersed with her adventures are explanations of real scientific studies that searched for the soul. Mostly, this book is about the fascinating gap between what we believe and what we can prove.

Spook was first published in 2005, and it shows. I probably shouldn't criticize something for being old, but I badly want an updated version! Technology has changed a ton since 2005. Are scientists still looking for the afterlife? What have we found with newer technology? Can we get an updated book with more pictures? We need more pictures of the stuff the author talks about!

This book is fun and quick to read, but it's also frustratingly outdated. I need to find a newer book about the same subject.

My star rating: ★★★

Buy it on Amazon

BANISHED: SURVIVING MY YEARS IN THE WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH BY LAUREN DRAIN & LISA PULITZER

Adult Memoir

Goodreads Rating: 3.55

You've likely heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. Perhaps you've seen their pickets on the news, the members holding signs with messages that are too offensive to copy here, protesting at events such as the funerals of soldiers, the 9-year old victim of a Tucson shooting, and Elizabeth Edwards, all in front of their grieving families. The WBC is fervently anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and anti- practically everything and everyone. And they aren't going anywhere: in March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the WBC's right to picket funerals.

Since no organized religion will claim affiliation with the WBC, it's perhaps more accurate to think of them as a cult. Lauren Drain was thrust into that cult at the age of 15, and then spat back out again seven years later.

Lauren spent her early years enjoying a normal life with her family in Florida. But when her formerly liberal and secular father set out to produce a documentary about the WBC, his detached interest gradually evolved into fascination, and he moved the entire family to Kansas to join the church and live on their compound. Over the next seven years, Lauren fully assimilated their extreme beliefs, and became a member of the church and an active and vocal picketer. But as she matured and began to challenge some of the church's tenets, she was unceremoniously cast out from the church and permanently cut off from her family and from everyone else she knew and loved.

Banished is the story of Lauren's fight to find herself amidst dramatic changes in a world of extremists and a life in exile.

My review: I appreciated learning more about what WBC believes, even if their beliefs make no sense to me. They think they're the only people who are going to Heaven. Everyone else on the planet is going to Hell. God decides a person's fate before the person is born, and there's nothing that can change God's mind. WBC sees themselves as God's messengers. For some reason, God wants us to know we're going to Hell, and there's nothing we can do about it. That's why WBC pickets funerals. It gets them attention so they can spread God's message. I don't understand why we need the message if there's nothing we can do about it, but whatever.

I was surprised that WBC lets their kids go to public school. I'm not surprised that WBC threated to sue the school if the kids got bad grades. I'm also not surprised that WBC requires the kids to picket outside the school on their lunch break. Lauren even picketed her own high school graduation while wearing a cap and gown. That's serious dedication to the whole "God Hates America" thing.

Many members of WBC are lawyers, but they (or Lauren) don't understand the First Amendment. It protects you from the government. It does not protect you from other protesters because they are not the government. If WBC can picket, then other people can too.

I have mixed feelings about this book. The author lived through horrendous stuff, and she's brave to share her story. However, I wish she'd waited another 10+ years to write a memoir. Right now, the book feels very shallow. I think if the author had more distance from her life in WBC, she could have dug deeper into the events and offered more insight. Right now, it reads like a teenage girl's diary. There's a lot of drama but not much analysis. I'll be interested in reading other memoirs from former WBC members and seeing how they compare.

My star rating: ★★

Buy it on Amazon

A SISTERHOOD OF SECRET AMBITIONS BY SHEENA BOEKWEG

Young Adult Alternate History

Goodreads Rating: 3.51

 

Behind every powerful man is a trained woman, and behind every trained woman is the Society. It started with tea parties and matchmaking, but is now a countrywide secret. Gossips pass messages in recipes, Spinsters train to fight, and women work together to grant safety to abused women and children. The Society is more than oaths—it is sisterhood and purpose.

In 1926, seventeen-year-old Elsie is dropped off in a new city with four other teenage girls. All of them have trained together since childhood to become the Wife of a powerful man. But when they learn that their next target is earmarked to become President, their mission becomes more than just an assignment; this is a chance at the most powerful position in the Society. All they have to do is make one man fall in love with them first.

 

My review: I adore this premise. There's so much potential for backstabbing and manipulation and messy emotions. I mean, imagine being that eighteen-year-old future President. Imagine discovering that your friendships and romance are based on lies. That would be unsettling! It would be even worse to discover that your mother contacted a secret society to direct your entire adult life.

However, that's not what the book is about. That's what I thought it would be about. The actual book is kind of bland. The writing is clunky. The pacing is a disaster. There's no character development whatsoever. The author really beats you over the head with the "women are important" moral.

In reality, the main character doesn't want to be in the secret society. She's not interested in being a wife. She doesn't care about President boy's feelings. It's a story about a teenage girl ignoring a secret society and becoming a writer. She learns to be the #GirlBoss of her own life. That's great, but I've read this story before. I was hoping for something new.

I understand that the author is subverting tropes. She doesn't want to write about bitchy women squabbling over a powerful man. But, the story didn't have to be that. The secret society is intricate and fascinating. I feel like the author threw away a bunch of cool worldbuilding to give us a stereotypical historical fiction plot.

This book isn't what I wanted it to be. That's probably my fault and not the book's. My expectations were very, very wrong.

My star rating: ★★

 

Buy it on Amazon

WINTERKILL BY KATE A. BOORMAN

Young Adult Dystopia

Goodreads Rating: 3.50

Where Emmeline lives, you cannot love and you cannot leave . . .

The Council's rules are strict, but they're for the good of the settlement in which Emmeline lives. Everyone knows there is nothing but danger on the other side of the Wall, and the community must prepare for the freezing winterkill that comes every year.

But Emmeline struggles to be obedient under the Council's suffocating embrace, especially when she discovers that a Council leader intends to snatch her hand in marriage.

Then Emmeline begins to hear the call of the trees beyond the Wall . . .

My review: This was fine. It's a young adult dystopia that takes place in a settlement on the Canadian plains (I think?). I love the setting and the culture of the characters because I haven't seen them in a dystopia before. The dystopias I've read have mostly felt like USA hellscapes. It's nice to see a different country's hellscape.

Unfortunately, the setting is the only thing I liked. Everything else follows a basic YA dystopia script. If I read this book in 2010, I might have been obsessed, but in 2024? Not so much. That's probably my fault more than the book's. I went through a very intense dystopia phase in the early 2000s and read way too many of them.

Like most dystopias, Winterkill has Very Important Capitalized Words. There's a love triangle. There's an outcast teenage girl who seems to be the only person with a semi-functional brain. There are many moments of *Gasp* "The leaders lied to us? Who could have seen this coming?" There are forbidden woods where the leaders (very obviously) keep their secrets. There are prophetic dreams about the secrets in the forbidden woods.

I know I'm ragging on the book, but I didn't hate it! It has a few excellent plot twists, and you're never sure which characters to trust. You might like it if you want an extra dose of The Village, The Hunger Games, or The Forest Of Hands And Teeth.

My star rating: ★★★

Buy it on Amazon

HEY RANGER! TRUE TALES OF HUMOR & MISADVENTURE FROM AMERICA'S NATIONAL PARKS BY JIM BURNETT

Adult Memoir

Goodreads Rating: 3.44

In his thirty years with the National Park Service, Jim Burnett has seen it all: boat ramp mishaps that have sent cars into the water; skunks in the outhouse and bears at the dumpster; visitors looking for the bridge over the Grand Canyon.

My review: This book is exactly what it says on the cover. The author was a park ranger for 30 years (!) and shares (somewhat) amusing stories from his time working in parks.

As someone who works in a park, this book was less stressful to read than other park ranger books. The stories are short and told in a lighthearted way. None of them end in human deaths! That's comforting.

My favorite story is the one about the chicken truck crash. A truck carrying thousands of live chickens fell off a bridge into a fast-moving river. The chickens died on impact when their cages hit the water and broke open. The rangers had to quickly figure out how to stop thousands of dead chickens from zooming downriver into a recreation area. That's definitely not a problem that most people face at work.

The majority of the tales are "meh." They're just stories about normal ranger duties. There's a story about a large family from Afghanistan. The family got lost on their way to the campground and needed the author to guide them there. Then the author had to leave his home in the middle of the night to tell the family to turn down their music and control their bonfire. Then the other campers were scared of the family because of racism. (The author also sounds a bit racist, TBH.) Then the family went on a river trip and got lost, so the author had to get in a patrol boat and go fetch them. It's annoying to spend so much energy on one family when the park is full of visitors, but these are all normal duties. This is what rangers do all day. I kept waiting for something unusual to happen in the story, but nothing did.

I think the problem with this book is that the author isn't a good writer. The stories have long set-ups and not much pay off. I wasn't always sure what I was supposed to take away from them.

My star rating: ★★

Buy it on Amazon

THE TURN OF THE SCREW BY HENRY JAMES

Adult Classic Horror

Goodreads Rating: 3.40

 

A young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncle at his grand country house. She sees the figure of an unknown man on the tower and his face at the window. It is Peter Quint, the master's dissolute valet, and he has come for little Miles. But Peter Quint is dead.

 

My review: This is a confusing one. It's about a governess who agrees to teach two children at a fancy house. The children are unusually well-behaved, which makes the governess suspicious because she knows the older boy was expelled from boarding school, but no one will tell her why. Then the governess starts seeing ghosts. The gossip among the servants leads her to believe that these are the ghosts of two former employees who may have had sex out of wedlock. (Gasp! Shock! The horror!) The governess becomes obsessed with making sure the children never see the ghosts.

This novel is confusing because none of the characters explain anything or say what they're thinking. The characters talk around their problems, and it's up to the reader to figure out what the heck is actually going on. I'm not sure if I did a good job of figuring it out. I'm stupid! I need more handholding with my literature.

I do like the themes. This book was first published in the late 1800s, but the themes will always be relevant. The governess is completely obsessed with making sure the children never interact with the (allegedly) sexy ghosts. In her effort to protect the kids, she ends up ruining her relationship with them. It makes you think about where the line is between protecting a child and hurting them by overprotecting them.

Even though I like the themes, getting through this one was a struggle. I was often confused. At the end, I was left with a lot of unanswered questions. I wish I had read the book for a class so a smart person could tell me what I was supposed to get out of it.

My star rating: ★★

 

Buy it on Amazon

THE BEAUTIFUL POETRY OF DONALD TRUMP BY ROB SEARS

Poetry (?)

Goodreads Rating: 3.38

What if there's a hidden dimension to Donald Trump; a sensitive, poetic side? Driven by this question, Rob Sears began combing Trump's words for signs of poetry.

What he found was a revelation. By simply taking the 45th President of the United States' tweets and transcripts, cutting them up and reordering them, Sears unearthed a trove of beautiful verse that was just waiting to be discovered.

This groundbreaking collection gives readers a glimpse of Trump's innermost thoughts and feelings on everything from the nature of truth, to what he hates about Lord Sugar. And it will reveal a hitherto hidden Donald, who may surprise and delight both students and critics alike.

My review:  I don't know if I should give this book a high rating because it's stupid or a low rating because it's stupid.

Rob Sears combed through Donald Trump interviews and Tweets to find all of Donald's "best words." Sears grouped the random Trump quotes by subject and then arranged them into a poetry collection. The result is profound works of art like these:

This country is going to hell in a handbasket

It just seems that our country is not what it used to be
New York Fashion Week is really bad and used to be so glamorous and exciting
Vanity Fair Magazine, which used to be one of my favorites, is failing badly
A lot of people are switching to these really long putters. Very unattractive
Our poor, poor country


I make this promise

I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States
I promise I will never be in a bicycle race
I will not rename the White House
And I promise not to talk about your massive plastic surgeries that didn't work
I promise. Thank you

Each of those lines is from a different interview or Tweet, so they're all out of context, but the arrangement is amusing.

I appreciate the amount of work that went into making these poems. The creator had to consume massive amounts of Trump media, which was probably an unpleasant experience. The arrangement of the quotes is creative. I bet Rob Sears is actually a good poet.

On the other hand, the book is a bunch of out-of-context Trump quotes. Why would anyone want to read that? Why did I read that?

Maybe art doesn't need a point. This book is . . . an object that exists.

My star rating: ★★

Buy it on Amazon

THE PRICE GUIDE TO THE OCCULT BY LESLYE WALTON

Young Adult Fantasy

Goodreads Rating: 3.35

When Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island more than a century ago, her otherworldly skills might have benefited friendlier neighbors. Instead, guilt and fear led the island’s original eight settlers to burn “the witch” out of her home. So Rona invoked the privileges of a witch; she cursed them. But such a spell always comes with a terrible price, and in punishing the island's residents, Rona also bound her family ever tighter to them.

Fast-forward to the present day and all Nor Blackburn wants is to live an unremarkable teenage life. And she has reason to hope that she may have escaped the thorny side-effects of the family matriarch’s curse. But then a mysterious book comes out, promising to cast any spell for the right price. The author—Nor’s own mother—seems capable of performing magic that should be far beyond her capabilities. And such magic always requires a sacrifice.

A storm is coming. It's coming for Nor.

 

My review: I had high hopes for this one because I loved the author's first book. It was weird and magical. This book is also weird and magical, but I couldn't connect to the characters.

I love the atmosphere and setting. This is an eerie little book. It's like a dark fairytale full of whimsical characters.

I wish we had gotten to know those characters better. They have so much potential, but they're all so flat! I was never motivated to pick up the book because the characters don't feel real. I didn't care about their friendships or teenage love triangles. Then there's a weird epilogue that kills the magical vibes and seems to be setting up a sequel. We don't need a sequel! We need characters with unique personalities.

I wasn't a huge fan of this one. It's a typical YA paranormal fantasy. I guess I was hoping for more.

My star rating: ★★

 

Buy it on Amazon

THE WARLOW EXPERIMENT BY ALIX NATHAN

Adult Historical Fiction

Goodreads Rating: 3.30

Herbert Powyss lives in an estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman's fashionable investigations and experiments in botany. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science—something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London. He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: For seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the basement of the manor house, fitted out with rugs, books, paintings, and even a chamber organ. Meals will arrive thrice daily via a dumbwaiter. The solitude will be totally unrelieved by any social contact whatsoever; the subject will keep a diary of his daily thoughts and actions. The pay: fifty pounds per annum, for life.

Only one man is desperate enough to apply for the job: John Warlow, a semi-literate laborer with a wife and six children to provide for. The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included.

My review: It's a historical fiction book that's inspired by real events.

I couldn't put this book down because I was fascinated by the dynamic between Powyss and Warlow. It was especially interesting to see the disconnect between what Warlow needs and what Powyss thinks he needs. Powyss fills the underground apartment with books, musical instruments, and nice clothes. These are things that Powyss loves. However, Warlow can barely read, has no interest in music, and doesn't bathe or change his clothes. Powyss designed the perfect environment for himself, not for the person who will actually be living there.

The disconnect continues when Powyss is writing observations about his experiment. He hears Warlow laughing and tries to guess which book Warlow is reading. Warlow is not reading. Warlow is slowly going insane while surrounded by books. (Honestly, that part is relatable.)

I enjoyed this book because of the characters' failure to see the world outside of their own interests, but I understand why the book has an abysmal average rating on Goodreads. The plot is slow. The characters are selfish, juvenile, and insufferable. There's a lot of violence against women.

I like the book because I'm a weirdo, but I'm not sure who to recommend it to. Other weirdos? People who like slow horror? I suspect quite a few readers will hate this one.

My star rating: ★★★★

Buy it on Amazon

RAISING THE DEAD: THE MEN WHO CREATED FRANKENSTEIN BY ANDY DOUGAN

Adult Science / History Nonfiction

Goodreads Rating: 3.26

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, introduced readers around the world to the concept of raising the dead through scientific procedures. Those who read the book were thrilled by this incredible Gothic adventure. Few, however, realized that Shelley’s story had a basis in fact. What she imagined as her modern Prometheus was a serious pursuit for some of the greatest minds of the early 19th century. It was a time when scientists genuinely believed, as Frankenstein did, that they could know what it feels like to be God. Raising the Dead is the story of the science of galvanism.

My review: If you're interested in the history of medicine, then the information in this book is fascinating. I loved learning about Scotland in the 1800s. I enjoyed the stories of the doctors and the executed criminals who made scientific advancements. It's interesting to learn about the missteps, the quackery, and the animal cruelty. I read most of the book in one night because it's compelling.

However, it seriously lacks focus. I suspect there aren't enough historical records about galvanism to create an entire book. The author goes deep into the personal lives of the doctors and the recently dead criminals they used in their experiments. The analysis of Mery Shelley's Frankenstein seems a bit random because the real-life doctors weren't attempting to create new life. They were trying to create defibrillators, which is much less scandalous. While I was reading, I often wished the author would stop meandering and get to the point.

If you can overlook the misleading title and quite a few typos, this is an informative read. I learned a lot.

My star rating: ★★★

Buy it on Amazon

That's it! What did we learn from this experience? Did the books suck? Honestly . . . yeah, they mostly sucked. I guess we learned to trust Goodreads ratings. The only book that has really stuck with me is The Warlow Experiment. I want to reread it. I thought the premise and character development were fascinating, but I can see why that wouldn't be enough for most readers. Most readers probably want more action.

Have you ever loved a book that has terrible Goodreads ratings?