Top 5 Wednesday: Disappointing Eye Candy

Top 5 Wednesday is hosted by Lainey at gingerreadslainey on Youtube. You can find the Goodreads group here.

Hi everybody! This week's topic is disappointing eye candy (books that looked beautiful but were awful). I'm sure everybody has judged a book by a cover at least once in their lives, and I'm certainly guilty of it. Some of these books weren't "awful" necessarily, but their insides were not as pretty as their outsides. Here's my list!

1. Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

I read this one a long time ago, so I don't remember why I didn't enjoy it, just that it wasn't great. I remember asking my mom for it for Christmas. Well, I got it, in all its hardbacked, silhouetted, winged glory. It still sits on my bookshelf - I haven't had the heart to get rid of it (yet). But I never did buy the sequel.

2. The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

I was expecting so much more from this one. I actually really liked the first half of the book. It was creepy, I liked the romance, and I liked Mara's snarkiness. Then the second half to last third of the book happened and it kind of ruined it for me. It didn't satisfy me and I didn't like the direction it was headed.

3. A Madness so Discreet by Mindy McGinnis

Total cover buy. I had heard about this book maybe once before, and I was intrigued by its premise, but what really hooked me was the cover. I love the creepiness of it all. Plus girls in dresses are my weakness. I liked some elements of it, like the idea of insanity and the Sherlock Holmes vibe I got from it. The story had potential, but it just fell flat for me.

4. The Selection by Kiera Cass

Girls in pretty dresses: check. I really wanted to like this one. It was described as a Hunger Games meets The Bachelor kind of deal. As a fan of both series, I was severely disappointed as it didn't contain nearly enough violence/drama/romance as I was expecting. I'd like to give this one another shot in the future, but I just remember really not liking it the first time around.

5. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

I really didn't like this one. Maybe it's just a growing hatred for dystopia. Or maybe its the characters, or maybe its the writing style, or the plot, or the ending... There were just a lot of issues. I usually enjoy flowery writing, and I would even put my own writing into this category, but this book took it way overboard, in a bad way. Sigh. What a waste of a gorgeous cover.