2022 DNF Round Up

I decided to hold off on my DNFs until the end of the year and, surprisingly, I didn’t have as many as I thought I would. Although, I didn’t really read as much this year as I normally do. Still, I ended up with 7 DNFs this year and I also came to the realization that some authors just aren’t my cup of tea, more about that in a later post.

 

Here’s what I DNF’d in 2022.

I Found You by Lisa Jewell

East Yorkshire: Single mum Alice Lake finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement she invites him in to her home.

Surrey: Twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed.

My Thoughts: I was intrigued by the concept but, sadly, the blurb was the only thing that held my attention. This was my first Lisa Jewell novel and it didn’t go well.

I have been *attempting* to get through this book for at least two years (possibly longer) and I still have a little over 3 hours left on the audiobook. I’m just done with it, there’s no way I’m going to be able to finish this. It was as entertaining as watching paint dry. I didn’t care about the plot, the characters were annoying, and it was just lackluster. I had a feeling early on how this would end—I asked a friend and it turned out I was right—and the writing wasn’t intriguing enough to make me want to keep listening.

The Truth About Melody Brown by Lisa Jewell

When she was a child, Melody Browne’s house burned down, destroying all her family’s possessions and her memories. Ever since this tragic event, Melody Browne has had no recollection of her life before she was rescued from the flames.

Now in her early thirties, Melody is a single mother, living in the middle of London with her teenaged son. She hasn’t seen her parents since she left home at fifteen, but Melody has no desire to reconnect until one night, while attending a hypnotist show with a date, she faints. When she comes around, she is suddenly overwhelmed with fragmented memories of her life before that fateful fire.

Slowly, she begins the arduous process of piecing together the real story of her childhood. Her journey takes her up and down the countryside, to seaside towns to the back streets of London, where she meets strangers who seem to love her like her own. But the more answers she uncovers, the more questions she is left with, and Melody can’t help but wonder if she’ll ever know the whole truth about her past.

My Thoughts: Again, I was intrigued by the blurb but bored with the content. This was my third Lisa Jewell book and the second one that I DNF’d.

It took me about 3 weeks but I managed to read 71 pages (13 chapters) before I put this one down for good. I could get into the plot, I didn’t care for the characters, everything was, again, lackluster and I wasn’t going to make myself finish a book I wasn’t enjoying.

Binding Vows by Catherine Bybee MacCoinnich

Duncan MacCoinnich's task... Travel to the twenty-first century Renaissance Faire, deflower the Druid virgins, and go home. Only his job is not so easily accomplished with the virgin in question, Tara McAllister. Time is running out. The evil is closing in on them both. Tara finds Duncan irresistible after what was supposed to be a mock Hand-fasting binds them. When Duncan whisks her to his home in Scotland she could accept that. But, can she forgive him for taking away her modern life when she finds herself in the sixteenth century? And is it love they feel? Or something else?

My Thoughts: I was looking for a sexy little Scottish time travel romance and this wasn’t it, sadly.

It had potential: druidic aspects, nasty witch tossing out curses, hunky highlanders. Unfortunately, the heroine was bloody annoying and I’m not sure why the hero just didn’t leave her stranded somewhere in the Highlands. The writing itself was a bit meh and sort of felt as though the author was going off the ‘how to write a Scottish time travel romance’ checklist. There was nothing about this one that made me want to finish reading it.

Amy & Lan by Sadie Jones

Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood ever. They live on a 78-acre farm in the South West of England, with sisters and brothers, other kids, chickens, goats, three dogs, and even a calf, called Gabriella Christmas.

The three sets of parents are best friends who came to Frith from the city, and are learning, year after year, how to farm the land.

Free and unsupervised, Amy and Lan play with axes and climb on haystacks, but there is grownup danger at Frith they don't see. It's Gail, Lan's mother, and Adam, Amy's father who should be more careful. They should learn what kids know: never to play with fire.

My Thoughts: I received an ARC of this from the publisher and I was intrigued by this one because it was being compared to Little Men by Louisa May Alcott but, sadly, this didn’t feel like it was going anywhere.

I read about a third of this and nothing was grabbing my attention or making me want to read more. I don’t necessarily think this was a bad book but it was just too slow for me and didn’t really have that Little Men vibe that I was expecting.

Still Series by Amy Stuart

Instead of including the blurbs, I just linked to GoodReads to save time.

Still Mine | Still Water | Still Here

My Thoughts: A friend recommended this series and I couldn’t get into the first two books so she said that the third was the best and it would make me want to read the first two. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I just couldn’t get interested in any of the books, no matter the order I read them.

Amy Stuart’s writing is often compared to Lisa Jewell’s and I don’t think that style of writing is for me.