I try and avoid DNFs. I don’t like leaving bo0ks unfinished or giving up on them because it feels a little bit like failure. I’ve found I’m quite intuitive when it comes to choosing books to read and often hit the nail on the head by finding books I really click with. Though in the past year or so there have been a few books which I later regretted picking up. Some of these I’ve read all the way through and disliked them by the end, others I put down before reaching the halfway mark.

These books come under three categories:

1. Books I thought I’d love but just ended disappointment
2. FOMO (very popular or incredibly hyped books)
3. Sequels to a book or series I enjoyed initially

Like I said earlier, I don’t like leaving books unfinished. I think this just makes me think I’ve wasted the purchase as I buy 95% of my books. By the end of the year I hope to give all these books another go, in the hopes that I’ll finish them and actually enjoy them.

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence (and the rest of The Broken Empire trilogy)

I finished this book at the tail end of 2022 and I really didn’t click with it. It just felt so edgy and lacked a lot of substance. When I think about books that “read like YA” I think about Prince of Thorns. I absolutely adore the UK paperback covers, I think they’re incredible and this was a big reason why I purchased the entire trilogy in one go, as well as the notability of this series in the grimdark adult fantasy space. Even when I took the books to the checkout desk in Waterstones the bookseller told me she loved the series! I can’t leave the books unread now I own them all.

When I first posted my review I sited me having just finished Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy as a possible reason why I didn’t enjoy Prince of Thorns. I felt like it was just juvenile compared to the writing and amazing character work in the First Law, despite fantasy readers online often grouping both series together for being of the same quality. I’m giving it another go in the next few months. I’m not rereading it straight away as I’m reading another Abercrombie book at the moment and don’t want it not enjoy it again for the same reason.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

I spoke about this a little bit in my past reading update, I read about 179 pages and had to give up because the cringe was just off the scale. Not going to lie my main motivation for wanting to finish it is just so I can write a deep-dive style review fully discussing why I don’t like it. I think it perfectly displays how my reading tastes over the years, I’m sure that if I’d read this at 16/17 I’d have really enjoyed it.

Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo (Grishaverse book 3)

I really enjoy the Grishaverse as a whole. The Six of Crows duology is so enjoyable and I like the concepts presented and general worldbuilding. The Shadow and Bone trilogy is a little weaker than the rest of the overall book universe. It’s a very good example of what YA fantasy was like in the early 2010s, which isn’t necessarily bad, but just very of it’s time. I liked Shadow and Bone, hated Siege and Storm and have tried to read Ruin and Rising twice now but can’t seem to get past page 50. Not because it’s bad but I just don’t have the motivation to finish it anymore. But I need to!

I want to read the next duology in the series but unlike the Six of Crows duology where you could read those without having read the original trilogy, you do have to have finished it in order to read King of Scars and Rule of Wolves. Like most YA books of earlier years you can get through them in a weekend. Once I get a bit of free time in my reading schedule I just need to pick it up and finish it.