The most common things left behind in hotel rooms are chargers, “intimate” items, and books. Every year, Travelodge releases a list of those unfortunate tomes, and here is this year’s top ten, and for your snarky pleasure, comments from Amazon readers.
Topping the list, to the surprise of literally no one who has ever seen the internet, we have the third in the inexplicably best-selling Fifty Shades series. (So many unanswered questions from the first two, I know…. ).
1. Fifty Shades of Freed by E.L. James
Review: Be under no illusions Dear Readers, this book is terribly written. It makes Twilight look like Anna Karenina and that is saying a lot since it started as Twilight fan-fiction (if that isn’t enough to put you off then you cannot be saved, good luck to you). I’ve read stories by 5th Graders with more character development and narrative drive than this.
Review: Bare to You is as close to Fifty Shades of Grey as a book can get and not be called Fifty Shades of Grey.
3. The Marriage Bargain by Jennifer Probst
Review: Poorly written dialogue & sex scenery* make this book very boring.
(*Sex scenery? What is that, exactly?)
Review: In the author’s acknowledgements she writes that she got stuck when the book was 82% completed, and her editor had to help her finish it. She should have just stopped at 82%. I wish there was a way to demand my money back after feeling totally manipulated and ripped off.
5. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
Review: I thought that a writer of her prodigious talent would probably be able to pull off a non-Potter adult novel with ease. I was so wrong. Dear God, was I wrong.
6, Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
(Stay in enough hotel rooms, you could get the whole set gratis! Why you would want them, however….)
Review: The repetition…and the repetition…and the repetition. I’m convinced the author has a computer macro that she hits to insert one of her limited repertoire of facial expressions whenever she needs one. According to my Kindle search function, characters roll their eyes 41 times, Ana bites her lip 35 times, Christian’s lips “quirk up” 16 times, Christian “cocks his head to one side” 17 times, characters “purse” their lips 15 times, and characters raise their eyebrows a whopping 50 times. Add to that 80 references to Ana’s anthropomorphic “subconscious” (which also rolls its eyes and purses its lips, by the way), 58 references to Ana’s “inner goddess,” and 92 repetitions of Ana saying some form of “oh crap” (which, depending on the severity of the circumstances, can be intensified to “holy crap,” “double crap,” or the ultimate “triple crap”). And this is only part one of a trilogy…
If I wrote like that, I’d use a pseudonym too.
7. Reflected in You by Sylvia Day
(Where have we seen this name before? Oh, yes… at the #2 Spot. Apparently “A Crossfire Novel” is where words go to die.)
Review: What’s better than a multimillionaire whose obsessive stalking borders on the insane??? One who sidelines as a murderer! That’s right ladies!! Nothing says romance like a man who not only tries to kill you in his sleep, but will “selflessly” kill others in your defense…
(If you don’t picture this when I say “Mr. Wiggins”…. Get off my lawn)
Anyway, apparently Mr. Wiggins’ fans aren’t much for assembling words either. Although this book was abandoned nearly as frequently as the others, it has a total of five review on Amazon.
ANNND rounding out the top ten? Well, what a total surprise, Ms. James and Ms. Day….. AGAIN!