Badly Written Best-Selling Books, Ranked By Frustrated Readers
Vote up the poorly written books that feel like first drafts.
There is no rule that says poorly written books can't be bestsellers. It stands to reason that the publishing industry would have a rule like this in place, or at least that there should be. But there isn't, and that has led to some questionable and downright basic books finding mainstream success over the years. Books like Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Catcher in the Rye, It Ends With Us, and The Da Vinci Code are consistently ranked as some of the most overrated books of all time, but they are still bestsellers with dedicated fan bases.
The following list features books that read like badly written first drafts. Whether you're a bookworm or a casual reader, vote for the books you think could have used a couple more rounds of editing before making their way into bookstores.
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What It’s About: Anastasia Steele, a recent college graduate, enters into a passionate affair with billionaire business tycoon Christian Grey.
What Makes It So Bad: Fifty Shades of Grey began its life as Twilight fan fiction, which should tell you all you need to know about its quality. The book is one long series of ridiculous metaphors, sentences with too many adjectives, clichés, and passive voice. In addition to a nonexistent plot, the bland, one-dimensional characters are downright boring, which makes it impossible to care about them.
The Worst Line:
His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel… or something.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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2The President Is Missing
What It's About: President Jonathan Duncan races to reveal a traitor in his cabinet while thwarting a cyberattack that would cripple the nation's economic and military infrastructure.
What Makes It So Bad: This book may be considered a political thriller, but is boring and generic from start to finish. Co-author Bill Clinton essentially wrote a book in which he could play pretend that he was an action hero with political savvy, which resulted in some obvious backstory parallels between President Duncan and himself. But even that pales in comparison to the fact that the characters have no real personalities or depth to compensate for the lackluster villains, repetitive word choice, and unoriginal story. Don't hold your breath for an exciting ending either. The good guys win, the bad guys lose. The end.
Worst Line:
From her bag, she removes the cord of rope with a noose on one end. She throws it up over the lowest-hanging branch, a good four meters above ground—about thirteen feet high. It takes her three tries to get the noose end over the branch. Then she raises up the other side of the rope as the noose side lowers down to her. Once she has it in her hand, she slides the straight end of the rope through the noose. Then she pulls down on the straight end slowly, careful to avoid any snags, as the noose end slowly rises again. On the branch, the two sides come together in a knot.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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3The Hating Game
What It's About: Lucy Hutton is pitted against fellow executive assistant and workplace rival Josh Templeman for a coveted promotion. As the competition heats up, Hutton and Templeman are forced to wrestle with their feelings for one another.
What Makes It So Bad: The Hating Game relies on tired tropes to create conflict in what would otherwise be a mundane, if slightly toxic, workplace experience. The main characters are reduced to a series of bland clichés that are supposed to give them depth and make them interesting, but really only succeed in making them difficult to take seriously. The big twist ending also leaves a lot to be desired, mainly because it invalidates the entire plot in the name of “true love.”
The Worst Line:
I hope it's not too forward of me to say, but your eyes are incredible, Lucy. I die when you blink.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It’s About: Teenager Bella Swan moves to Forks, WA, a perpetually dreary and rainy Northwestern town. There she meets and falls in love with Edward Cullen, a 17-year-old vampire with sparkling skin whose family does not drink human blood.
What Makes It So Bad: Whether you love or hate the story itself, it’s hard to argue with the fact that Twilight is a poorly written book. Poor grammar, uneven pacing, odd sentence structure, and lackluster characters with uninteresting motivations all come together to create a novel that, despite its adoring fan base, will never be considered quality literature.
The Worst Line:
One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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5After
What It’s About: Tessa Young’s college future is set in stone until she meets the rebellious Hardin Scott and falls passionately in love with him.
What Makes It So Bad: Poorly written characters and romanticizing a largely hateful and abusive relationship do not make for a quality romance novel. Not to mention the lack of a meaningful plot and one-dimensional characters that completely take the reader out of the story.
The Worst Line:
Just because he can't love you the way you want him to doesn't mean he doesn't love you with everything he has.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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6Icebreaker
What It's About: Anastasia will stop at nothing to be a figure skater for Team USA, but when an accident at the rink puts her skating partner out of commission, she is forced to skate with a hockey player she despises.
What Makes It So Bad: It's hard to have a believable romance when the two characters who are supposed to fall in love have zero chemistry. Their entire relationship, from the “I hate you” stage to the “I can't live without you stage,” feels incredibly forced, as does every “conflict” they encounter throughout the “plot.” The clunky writing style doesn't help matters.
Worst Line:
He’s in a Maple Hills Titans T-shirt and gray sweats, and I hate myself for being a woman swayed by a man in gray sweatpants. Sh*t. No, there will be no swaying.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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7It Ends With Us
What It’s About: Flower shop owner Lily Blossom Bloom moves to Boston and falls in love with a neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid. As their relationship develops, her first love Atlas reappears and challenges the new life she has built for herself.
What Makes It So Bad: The writing style of It Ends With Us is accessible to a broad range of romance readers, but is ultimately sloppy and underdeveloped. While the difficult topics author Colleen Hoover tackles in the story are important to address, the characters and overall plot lack the substance required to honor those topics. There is also a lot of unnecessary extra drama that does nothing to encourage character growth or further the plot.
The Worst Line:
Just because we didn’t end up on the same wave, doesn’t mean we aren’t still a part of the same ocean.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It's About: In a dystopian America, Dagny Taggert and her lover Hank Rearden struggle to manage a transcontinental railroad amidst the increasing overreach of their socialist government.
What Makes It So Bad: Atlas Shrugged often feels more like an endless, melodramatic diatribe than a work of fiction. While some might praise the novel as a love letter to business, individualism, and capitalism, it's really just the author's personal philosophies tied up in a series of exhausting multi-page monologues.
The Worst Line:
She heard the words; she understood the meaning; she was unable to make it real—to grant the respect of anger, concern, opposition to a nightmare piece of insanity that rested on nothing but people’s willingness to pretend to believe that it was sane.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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The Shack
What It’s About: After a family tragedy sends Mack Phillips into a crisis of faith, he receives a mysterious letter that sends him to a shack in the Oregon wilderness. There he meets a trio of individuals who help him process his tragedy and reclaim his faith.
What Makes It So Bad: Plenty of controversy surrounds The Shack and its portrayal of Christian themes, God, and scripture. Regardless of how one feels about the book's theological concepts, it is hard to ignore the amateurish writing and overly-simplistic prose.
The Worst Line:
Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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Fourth Wing
What It's About: Cadet Violet Sorrengail is assigned to the Fourth Wing at Basgiath War College where she will train to become a Dragon Rider. To become one of these elite soldiers, Sorrengail must survive training, successfully bond with a dragon, and keep from falling in love with her sworn nemesis.
What Makes It So Bad: Roughly 75% of this book's issues could be resolved with stronger pacing and better editing, but even that wouldn't make it a good book. The story is full of unnecessary filler disguised as worldbuilding, with countless pages dedicated to Sorrengail sitting through class or mastering a Wipeout-style obstacle course designed to murder her and her classmates. And yet, despite this endless infodumping, the world never feels anything but flimsy. It doesn't help that most of the characters are bland placeholders who seemingly only exist to be killed off, and the supposed forbidden, enemies-to-lovers romance between the two main characters feels forced. The dragons are kind of cool, though.
Worst Line:
My breath catches and my body warms, the traitorous b*tch. You are not attracted to toxic men, I remind myself, and yet, here I am, getting all attracted.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It’s About: Sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose which of the post-apocalyptic Chicago factions she will devote the rest of her life to. Her choice sends her down a dangerous initiation path, where she has to learn who to trust and how to survive the city’s growing unrest.
What Makes It So Bad: Divergent takes the best tropes from YA and dystopian literature and mashes them up into a convoluted society that makes no sense. The societal rules that make up the Divergent universe force flat, uninspiring characters with painfully few redeeming qualities, and who are literally characterized by a single personality trait. Unless you’re special, like Tris, and have more than one defining personality trait - then you can bring down an entire corrupt government with the help of your new boyfriend, who is also super special.
The Worst Line:
You chose us. Now we have to choose you.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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12A Court of Thorns and Roses
What It's About: Feyre Archeron is sent to live out the rest of her days in the dangerous world of Faerie as punishment for killing a wolf. But the world of the Fae and her captor are not what they appear to be, and soon Feyre must face an ancient evil that threatens the man and the home she has come to love.
What Makes It So Bad: It's a shame that ACOTAR is so popular because it has some serious problems. It would be easier to forgive the cringe-inducing language, awkward pacing, and weak sentence structure if the book had a stronger plot or less deplorable characters. But it doesn't. This book is filled with male characters whose violence and cruelty are repeatedly romanticized as passionate love (which is gross), and female characters who aren't given any kind of agency or depth. The addition of a weak, uninspiring faerie riddle as a plot device and lazy Beauty and the Beast imagery succeeds in making this a truly terrible book.
The Worst Line:
I love you, thorns and all.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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13City of Bones
What It’s About: After a series of murders and familial disappearances, 15-year-old Clary Fray is thrust into the mysterious and dangerous world of a race of demon-hunting Nephilim called the Shadowhunters.
What Makes It So Bad: While the story itself is entertaining, City of Bones struggles with predictable plot lines and pacing. Likable characters who engage in unrealistic-sounding dialogue are also an issue, largely because the majority of the characters are teenagers who proudly state they “aren’t like everyone else.” (Spoiler alert: they are, in fact, just like every other teenager who has ever existed between the pages of an urban fantasy novel.) It can be difficult to wade through the thick layers of sarcastic, carefree-but-secretly-wounded immaturity that these characters possess.
The Worst Line:
'Here’ as in your bedroom or ‘here’ as in the great spiritual question of our purpose here on this planet? If you’re asking whether it’s all just a cosmic coincidence or there’s a greater meta-ethical purpose to life, well, that’s a puzzler for the ages. I mean, simple ontological reductionism is clearly a fallacious argument, but-
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It’s About: Thomas awakens on an elevator with no memory of his past life and is dumped into a clearing with a group of 30 other teenage boys. He is assigned the task of runner and becomes responsible for navigating the constantly shifting maze outside their clearing to find an escape.
What Makes It So Bad: Although The Maze Runner succeeds in being a fast-paced YA dystopian thriller, there isn’t much else to like about it. It is full of clunky prose and an overuse of confusing, made-up slang words that make it difficult to immerse oneself in the story. Additionally, the poorly developed, unlikable characters continually make nonsensical decisions that do nothing to further the already struggling plot.
The Worst Line:
You’re the shuckiest shuck-faced shuck in the world!
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It's About: A murdered teenage girl named Susie watches over her friends and family from her own personal heaven and makes peace with her death.
What Makes It So Bad: The cast of characters in The Lovely Bones are supposed to be in immense pain as they process an unspeakable tragedy, but that doesn't always translate through the weird metaphors and flowery prose the author uses to describe them. There is also no plot to speak of.
Worst Line:
The tears came like a small relentless army approaching the front lines of her eyes. She asked for coffee and toast in a restaurant and buttered it with her tears.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It's About: In a world on the brink of catastrophe, a worldwide virtual reality game called OASIS provides a digital escape from the horrors of daily life. When the creator of OASIS dies and promises the winner of the next game his fortune, high-school student Wade Watts joins the hunt.
What Makes It So Bad: Ready Player One takes a cool concept and completely drops the ball with its execution. Somehow, in a plot full of riddles and literal challenges, the main character is never actually tested or challenged. Instead, he succeeds with ease over and over again, smug and self-assured in his expansive knowledge of everything under the sun, and constantly spouting obscure pop culture references that don't add much to the plot.
The Worst Line:
That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it's also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It’s About: Symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptographer Sophie Neveu team up to solve the murder of her estranged grandfather. They soon find themselves caught up in an ancient religious feud between the Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion, who believe that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene had a child.
What Makes It So Bad: The Da Vinci Code’s gripping (and controversial) storyline made it a bestseller, but its general execution is widely considered to be lacking. Riddled with repetitive prose, clichés, poor grammar, and annoying cliffhangers that add nothing to the plot’s overall tension, it is an excellent example of what not to do when writing.
The Worst Line:
The fond memory caused Sophie a pang of sadness as the harsh reality of the murder gripped her again.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It’s About: High school student Holden Caulfield wanders around New York City in search of meaning after getting kicked out of another prep school.
What Makes It So Bad: Depressing books can be great reads, as can coming-of-age books that question societal norms in abstract, teenage-centric ways. But The Catcher in the Rye, which is a depressing, coming-of-age novel, is not a great read. The plot is as aimless and meandering as its main character, who is so bland, whiny, and entitled that it's impossible to appreciate the struggles he’s supposedly working through. One could argue that the book, which was written in the late 1940s and has been criticized in recent years for being misogynist, racist, and ableist, simply didn’t age well. One could also argue that it was never all that good to begin with.
The Worst Line:
I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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19What It’s About: Dune follows the journey of nobleman Paul Atreidies as he adapts to life on the harsh desert planet Arrakis.
What Makes It So Bad: Dune is a rich sci-fi fantasy that succeeds in creating a believable world. However, its overly drawn-out plot and lengthy introspective moments cause pages of boredom that are hard to push through if you aren't dedicated. The prose isn’t flowery or difficult to digest, but it often lacks the tension and suspense necessary to make Atreidies’s excruciatingly long journey interesting.
The Worst Line:
He who controls the spice controls the universe.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It's About: On his 11th birthday, Harry Potter receives a letter announcing his acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. While at school, he learns the truth about his parents' death and the mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead.
What Makes It So Bad: It's no surprise that a debut novel written for children doesn't exactly hold up as quality literature. Despite the series's enduring success, the first Harry Potter book is riddled with clichés, lazy metaphors, and awkward sentences that shouldn't have made it past the first draft. The author tells the reader what's happening instead of showing them, and relies on an excess of adjectives and adverbs to convey emotion. The book is only 223 pages, but it is an exhausting read.
Worst Line:
He bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave him what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
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What It’s About: The Corleones are an Italian-American family navigating the complex world of organized crime in New York City. When patriarch Vito Corleone declines to get involved in the drug trade, he forces his sons into a war between the city’s biggest crime families.
What Makes It So Bad: Francis Ford Coppola may have created a cinematic masterpiece with his film adaptation of The Godfather, but the novel it’s based on is essentially a work of poorly written pulp fiction. Pages of infodumping, endless subplots that go nowhere and contribute nothing to the overall story, and downright weird descriptions of characters and their inner thoughts make this a book you’re probably safe to take off your TBR list.
The Worst Line:
Tell my father I wish to be his son.
Needs a rewrite?Buy at
