Created by Emma from Emmmabooks

Today’s challenge is hosted by Amy from Bursting With Books.  Her challenge is to talk about a book you’ve rated three stars or less.

For this challenge, I decided to go with two books that I rated three stars and two books that I rated two stars and why I rated them that way.

The first three-star book that I’m going to talk about is Royce Rolls by Margaret Stohl.
This book is a reality tv show but novelized, the concept and format were interesting and it was entertaining but I had issues with it. My first issue is that one of the characters in this book, the producer of the show is homophobic. One of the characters in the show is gay, and he’s the younger brother. The producer of the show considers him to be the “cute gay brother.” The main character of the book, Bentley challenges the producer’s views by saying, “I’m not going to let you keep him sidelined because of your own homophobia.” While the homophobia of one of the characters is challenged, it’s still harmful. Another issue I had with the book is the body shaming and how the family of the reality show was only able to eat certain foods so that they don’t get fat.

The next three-star book is The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy: A Handbook for Girl Geeks by Sam Maggs.
I had a hard time really connecting with this book. I gave it three stars because of the information that I found useful and it was written in a way that was entertaining to read. I did find myself skimming over the parts where things didn’t apply to me or that I didn’t connect to at all.

The two books that I rated two stars are Illuminae by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman and The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

I’m going to start with why I rated Illuminae two stars. I know Illuminae when it was first released was really hyped, and I wanted to read it. I had heard things about the different format and the way the story was told and I was intrigued. Needless to say, I really loved the unique format and the detailed graphics, other than that I was extremely bored with the content. The content didn’t hold my attention and I struggled to get through this book. There were times when I was really bored that I wanted to DNF it, but I wanted to see how it ended so I pushed through it. This is also a series that I decided I wasn’t going to continue reading.

The next book I rated two stars was The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I decided to read this book after hearing that it was going to be made into a TV show which was dubbed as a cross between Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. Now, I love Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. I had also seen some Booktubers talking about this book on Booktube. I did not like this book at all. I found too many connections to other books that I read. I enjoyed the element of magic, but there were times when I got bored. I couldn’t stand Quentin, the main character. He was very whiny and I felt that he came across as whiny. I did have an easier time getting through this book than Illuminae.

I could have easily picked three books for each star rating, however, I didn’t want to go overboard so I kept it at two each.