If you’re like me, you read a lot and you’re also chronically online, and so you’re bound to have come across “BookTok.” BookTok is a set of influencers and channels that are dedicated to informing viewers about great, or not so great books. Books that are popular on BookTok are well-known and are recognized by bigger companies.
Some of these famous books are worth it, and some aren’t. I’m going to be reviewing a couple of books that I have read, and telling you if they actually live up to the hype.
“The Cruel Prince” by Holly Black is one of the most viral Young Adult (YA) Fantasy books out there. It’s set in a world of elves and kingdoms, and is a fantasy book focused on politics, with a hint of romance. The enemies to lovers romance is done so well and I happily devoured every scene of it. The plot was interesting and actually made me want to read further.
Jude Duarte, the main character, is so well written. I loved that Jude wasn’t the typical ‘not like other girls’ character. She was both a dangerous assassin, and a caring person. I also loved Cardan Greenbriar, the main love interest. Although I kind of hated him at first, readers get more insight into his life as it goes on. I grew to absolutely adore the complexity of the character.
Another thing I loved about this book was the world-building. The entire time I was reading this book, I was immersed into the world of Faerie. Black provides so much detail, and it didn’t leave me confused like other fantasy books I’ve read. While this book contains romance, it wasn’t thrown at the reader from the start. It was gradual, and let the reader focus more on the lives of the characters and the problems they would later face.
Some books may get popular enough to be turned into movies or tv shows. This includes “One of Us is Lying,” a YA murder mystery book. The book was hyped up to be a thrilling high school mystery, but in reality it was just a cliche book with an unsatisfying ending.
All of the characters were stereotypical, and didn’t provide much depth to the story itself. While the book may have started out interesting, it got more and more predictable as it went on. Lots of people I had seen online were raving about the ending of the book and how amazing it was, but I found it disappointing. It seemed like an easy way out.
I absolutely adore Karen McManus’s other mystery books, but this one didn’t match the standards. The story had a lot of potential to be a gripping teen thriller, and for half of the book it was. However, there were lots of small details of the book that made it difficult to like.
“It Ends With Us,” a romance book written by Colleen Hoover, is probably the most famous BookTok book of all time. There were some people online who mentioned how problematic the book is, saying how Hoover glamorizes abuse and toxicity – nonetheless, the majority of BookTok labels it as an amazingly written book. But is that actually true?
Reading it was something I will never forget, and I don’t mean that in a good way. The book starts off describing the terrible relationship between Lily, the main character, and her dad. He was an alcoholic, and he severely abused Lily’s mother. While I get that there needs to be awareness for domestic and sexual violence, this book seemed unrealistic. The book barely went into the emotional and mental issues that people face after any type of abuse. The vocabulary used to describe the incidents seemed like a five year old was describing it, which is weird, because it was actually a teenager, and later on a woman in her mid-twenties.
Lily faces the same abuse her mother went through, but in the future. She meets Ryle, a rich neurosurgeon, who is written to be fine at first but he gets more problematic as the book progresses. I think Hoover tried to foreshadow the abuse that would eventually happen to Lily, but it was obvious from the start. When we meet Ryle, he tries to smash a chair out of anger, and Lily doesn’t think much of it. It just annoyed me at how much stuff was just pushed aside by Lily, even when he actually physically hurts her.
She mentions her ex-boyfriend, Atlas, who leaves her for the military and never comes back. But he then pops up in her life when she’s dating Ryle. Atlas might just be the most boring love interest I have ever read about. He seemed to have a cliche tragic backstory, a handsome look, and a soft personality. But, the soft personality was actually just a mix of bland responses and someone who knows how to bake cookies. The relationship between Atlas and Lily didn’t seem as deep as it was described to be. It was just two people who couldn’t get over their exes.
I understand that this book is a representation of the abuse that has happened in Hoover’s life, but perhaps there was a different type of book that she could have written about it. Overall, this book seemed like a dream that Hoover had that she made into a book. In reality, it was a terrible nightmare. The wording is weird, the plot is uninteresting, and the characters are all surprisingly underdeveloped.
BookTok books are often known for their ‘interesting’ plot. But these plotlines are often just problematic events with even more problematic characters. While some books may be good and live up to expectations, most are severely overhyped. Personally, I prefer to explore libraries and find books that I have never heard of before. Social media can be misleading. Trusting some of these channels can lead you into a book that you wish you had never read.
