I Dare You To Book Tag

Hey, Strangers! You know, I’ve really begun to love book tags. They really make you think about books in a different way and are just really fun. So today I decided to do the I Dare You To book tag, after watching Melbourne on My Mind do it. All right, so let’s get into it.

Dare you to jump backwards: Name a book you went into blindly and it let you down.

Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes. I picked this one up because I adored Heartless by Marissa Meyer and wanted to see someone else’s take on the titular Queen of Hearts. And it was so bad. I barely got through the first three chapters before I had to DNF. Oh god, it was so bad.

One drink too many: Name a book that gave you a hangover.

The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare. The first time I read that series, it was all I could think about for the next month. To this day, I am still shook.

Spin the bottle: Name a book with a terrible romance or romance scene.

I technically didn’t read the book, though I have read this particular scene and it was… no words can describe it. I am, of course, referring to the infamous Rowaelin sex scene in Empire of Storms. Sarah J. Maas is bad at writing sex scenes anyway, but this one really takes the cake. Aelin catches on fire, which turns the sand to glass (they’re on a beach), and when Rowan orgasms it makes lightning strike and trees explode. Also his penis is referred to as “velvet-wrapped steel.” I just… WTF.

Mooning: Name a book that was too descriptive.

Literally anything by Charles Dickens. I’ve read Great Expectations and Oliver Twist and DNF A Tale of Two Cities because it was so slow. The description really bogged everything down and, in a lot of ways, got in the way of me caring about the characters.

Scream and Run: Name a book that wasn’t descriptive enough or left you confused.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. So much was devoted to Dorian’s pastimes over his long youth, but I could’ve done without that and had… something else it its place. I don’t know what. All I know is, at the end, I had no idea what to do with what I’d been given. I get the overall theme, but it was just… weird.

Staring Contest: Name a book you thought was going to take forever but was over in the blink of an eye.

I hate to use one of her books again, but honestly A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas. Knowing how tedious her writing can be, I was exhausted just thinking about reading it. But I wound up finishing it in a couple days. I forgot how additive her books can be.

Car Crash: Name a book that started great but ended badly.

For me this has to be Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven. It follows Libby, a fat teen, and Jack, who has a disorder that doesn’t allow him to remember faces. I actually really enjoyed the first half. It was fun and fluffy. And then the book took a turn for the worse. And I can pinpoint the exact moment that it did: when Jack looked at Libby and thought, “She’s graceful for a fat girl.” He just had to qualify that. And it completely undoes all the body positivity messages that the book was giving before. At this point, I just briefly skimmed through the rest. Some highlights I witnessed were Jack breaking up with Libby because she’d “have to stay fat” so he’d remember who she was (never mind whether she wants to lose weight or not), Jack almost kidnapping a child he mistook for his brother because, for some reason, he never told his family about his condition, and Libby forgiving Jack simply because he shouted about his condition at a party. This was a book I was glad to DNF and it still makes my blood boil.

Amnesia: Name a book that was forgettable or you forgot you read.

Indian Killer by Sherman Alexei. I took a whole course on Native American Lit and my professor decided to do half a semester of Louise Erdrich and half of Sherman Alexei (to allow us a more in-depth education on two tribes, rather than a surface level education for many). And until recently I could only remember one Alexei book that we had read and that was only because I had previously read it in high school. I really don’t remember much of what happened in this book, but I remember not caring much for it (I preferred Erdrich’s writing).