Taking one for the team - PSA warnings on bad books

Ok, I'm not saying I'm the arbiter of all taste (although I should be, lol), but I thought I'd start a thread to warn others of books I found eye-rollingly bad. Some I stick with, but most I bail on because life is too short to read bad books.

For openers - Watcher on the Edge

It features Gage (shades of Pet Sematary anyone?), a veteran suffering from PTSD, a condition I have sympathy for, but Gage refuses help even though he knows he needs it and self-medicates with tequila, gummies and psilocybin. Because his Other Than Honorable discharge, he finds it too difficult to get legit work, so ends up as bagman and sometimes thief for a low-level hood in Cleveland. On one of his burglaries, he witnesses a murder that turns into a missing, presumed drowned case on Lake Erie. All fine and good, but I can't understand for a minute why the hell he cares about the murderer or the murderee. Some blathering about how it's like Afghanistan all over again or something, but it's really murky and unbelievable. Not buying it. He's pretty careful with all his other criminal activities, but now he decides to blackmail the murderer with his knowledge. Not proof, mind you. It's monumentally stupid. Oh and also stupid is when he bails on a pick up because he sees he's being watched and will probably be arrested when he gets the duffel out of the locker (Get Shorty anyone?). He's right and has video on his phone of the watchers, but does he show it to his pissed off boss when he fails to show up with the bag? Nope. Ugh. Between all the stupidity and unbelievability coupled with the overly affected narrator, this one is a DNF. Luckily it's part of the Audible Plus catalog, so I don't have to eat the cost or return it. Just quietly delete it off my phone. Bleah.

I would say it's difficult to create such a thread, because I can tell you a book I'd put as eye-rolling bad, but people adore.
1st to Die by James Patterson -- bad enough I refused to progress into the rest of the series.

I'll also add in another I read recently: Ties that Bind by Carolyn Arnold
Couldn't even finish this one because I could find to only sympathize with the corpse. No other character drew me in. Yet it's a national bestseller and has multiple 5 star reviews.

I bailed on The Paris Deception. Though the plot was plausible (art forgeries in order to save "degenerate" pieces from being burned by Nazi taste-mongers), there was absolutely no one likeable in the entire cast.

>2 gilroy: As we get to know the tastes of various folks here, we'll know whether we line up or not and I always appreciate being warned off something that I might not like. On the flip side, I also know that what some people really hate, I enjoy so that might be a reason to try something. Like I read a review here of a book I ranked as the best the year I read it, called too complicated to follow. Valid, but I love convoluted plot lines and so would call that person's loss, my gain.

Patterson is decisive I think, he continues to sell a ton of books, but I stopped reading him in my 20s.

I "won"Call of the nightingale for early review and consequently felt obligated to finish it. It was a painful read. My sole half star rating.

Ugh. Bad. Just bad.

Mine isn't a DNF.... I finished it but rolled my eyes the entire time and definitely did not want to read the rest of the series. But the series was hyped so much and it's even got a recent movie with a star-studded cast— The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.

The trope of a civilian sticking their nose into the police's investigation is often unbelievable to being with. This had a whole crew of retirees getting into the business of solving the crime, including interviewing people, chasing leads, rutting out clues, the whole shebang. And the police constable was like "please stop" at first, and then just rolled with it. If it had been written more farcically or tongue-in-cheek it might have worked, but it had an earnest tone.

>7 monnibo: I finished it, too, but didn't like it much either.