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You can find my Best of the Best 2025 post HERE.
Here it is finally, all the books I read in 2025 that you don't have to, because they were bad or terrible or racist or misogynistic, illogical or all of it.
I started using StoryGraph in January of 2025 and what I love about that app so much more than Goodreads (besides NOT being owned by Bezos) is that you can rate from 0-5, including quarter- and half-stars. I hate just 1-5. There are some books I truly can't give five full stars, but would absolutely give 4.5 or 4.75 to. I can't explain it, it's just a feeling I get in my gut and I just KNOW. And since Goodreads doesn't allow half stars, I always round down. I don't understand rounding up. If you don't feel you can fully give it four stars, why round up your 3.5 to that anyway? It's silly.
That being said, I read some absolutely strocious books this year. Some just have the blurb I posted on Goodreads immediately after finishing it, but books I've posted reviews for are larger; click the cover to find out why it sucked so much.
Here they are, in no particular order, my worst books of 2025
This book could’ve been so good, but the author is condescending and pretentious and rude. What is supposed to be “witty“ instead comes across as childish and mean-spirited. The glossing-over of Errol Flynn‘s rape trial is ridiculous and she clearly still is a great admirer both him and Clark Gable, also a rapist.
Zero scholarly work. No footnotes. Mentions a handful of books that informed his bare-bones history. Very, very simplified explanations of what was happening in the world at various times compared to what the Bible claims was happening as well. Disappointing.
I started deducting a star every time the author used “rubout“ for murder. Within the first hundred pages, counted negative bajillion stars. I also did not know it was possible to make the mafia completely and utterly boring.
Basically just a copy and paste job from other sources. Very surface level information at best. The book is riddled with typos and missing words or letters. These babies deserve so much better.
Ew. Ew ew ew. Nope.Literally the only reason I finished this book was because the absolutely disgusting reveal came so close to the end.
Incest, even accidental incest, is not cool.
I’m glad I read the author’s other work first because if this had been my introduction to her, I never would’ve read anything by this author again. I may still not, considering how gross this was.
Would’ve been a solid read if not for the ick.
Sherri Rasmussen and her family deserve so much better.
Got a weird vibe from the author pretty much from the start of the book. Partway through I looked at some reviews and turns out he’s a creep. The book is not very engaging and I skimmed over all the parts that were most personal about him because I was only interested in the cases and not the stupid Harry Potter parties he went to.
In the same way I felt when reading Hunted by the same author, and wishing all of those dummies had died in the forest, I wish all of these dummies had died in the ocean.Also, more weird corpse stuff. (For reference about weird corpse stuff, see my Goodreads blurb of Gallows Hill.)
I can’t even get over how terrible the dialogue is. It’s stilted and awkward and does not read like high school students talking. This book was just so, so bad. I don’t even understand how it was published.
Saying Mon dieu a bunch of times doesn’t make the time/place (18th century/France) real.I should’ve stopped reading the moment the main character said, “Not today Satan.” I highly doubt that was a phrase that 18th century peasants used.
The potential is here. I so wanted to love this book. I love when terrible things happen to terrible men. But the book absolutely RIDICULOUS. And the writing is not great. The author would’ve been better off setting the story in modern-day France, while still using the Beast story from the 1700s as inspiration.
I absolutely cannot stand it when conversations are re-created in a non-fiction text and there’s no indication of whether or not those conversations are true word for word, or were reported to the author, etc.Also, there’s no doubt that Sharon is a horrible person and a murderer. But what is with the slut-shaming? Why are we not also slut-shaming the men who were married who cheated with her? We get it, she was pretty and had a good figure and big boobs, because we heard it a million fucking times. But you either slut-shame everybody who is cheating or you slut-shame no one.
I absolutely loved the first half-ish, maybe 65% of the book. Then it becomes a clusterfuck. The insta-love was stupid throughout and annoying. Such a shame the book has such a beautiful cover, but hides an absolutely ridiculous story.
This book was a mess. It supposedly is about “hunting the highway serial killers" by the FBI and others. Except it’s not. We get a couple paragraphs sprinkled throughout, dedicated to a couple long-haul truckers who were convicted of murder. We do get chapters about FBI analysis of victims. But then we get a bunch of information about sex trafficking, and also tons of information about the author riding along with a long-haul trucker. This book is not about hunting serial killers who also happen to be long-haul truckers. it’s about a bunch of things very loosely related that don’t all belong in the same book with this title and caption.
Bunch of idiots repeatedly saying they should stick together to stay safe, then promptly running off from one another all willy-nilly over and over again, getting themselves killed as a result.Cookie cutter characters who were indistinguishable from one another and poorly written.
I don’t know why I made myself finish this dreadfully dull and awful book. 
I read the author’s debut and gave it one star because it just was not good. I decided to give the author a second chance because this premise sounded better than the first one. Unfortunately, the result is the same, and it does not work. The whole premise is absurd, and it makes no sense that these kids be allowed to traipse around in the woods for two weeks, especially when a couple years ago a student died during the challenges. Nothing about this book makes sense. Hard pass on anything else this author publishes.
I was fully prepared to give this book 3 stars but the dialogue just got worse and worse. The reveal was interesting, but the writing is so juvenile and awkward.
Figured out the sister angle pretty quick bc of course it was the only way they would really be seeing the one that died. Husband was the obvious suspect from the start. Nothing came as a surprise. None of the characters are likable or seem to like each other at all. I don’t need characters to be likable to me, but they need to have at least some chemistry with the other characters and there was nothing. The characters don’t seem fully developed. And this game that is such a big deal was pretty boring. It honestly doesn’t even make sense. They basically just spend a week spying on and sneaking up on each other to ‘kill’ and steal each other‘s medallions? In New York City? It’s like the book couldn’t decide what it wanted to be: lots of nostalgia for their time at Harvard and missing their friend or them being adults yet still playing this game even though they all have very serious things going on in their adult lives.
The ones so bad or boring or poorly written that I DNF-ed
Did you read any stinkers this year?
Happy Reading!
Sarah
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