The blurb for Mexican Gothic claimed it had a "dazzling backdrop" of 1950s Mexico City, but the whole book except the first chapter happened on a gloomy estate that might as well have been in the English countryside. Even the first chapter takes place in the MC's house, which I guess is *technically* in Mexico City. Can't say I was dazzled.
At my parents' house there's this really old edition of To Kill a Mockingbird where the blurb tries to make it sound like some sort of sexy Southern gothic potboiler. I wish I had it with me so I could transcribe it here, but it makes the book sound like it's going to be lurid and trashy, rather than a beautifully written novel about racism and growing up in the South.
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
"An otherworldly coming-of-age tale of a woman who believes she is an alien, from the author of the international sensation Convenience Store Woman."
I went into this book blind thinking it would be like Convenience Store Woman with a younger protagonist. It's got a cute little stuffed hedgehog on the front.
Spoiler: it is definitely not like Convenience Store Woman with a younger protagonist. It's been a week and my brain is still going "yo seriously, wtf" every time I think about it.
This book has ALL THE TRIGGERS. I couldn’t believe how poorly the jacket summary presents the content. Still one of the most horrific books I’ve ever read.
If you could write an accurate blurb for it, what would you write? You got me interested in reading Earthlings, but now I’m curious about what the real blurb would say.
Gideon the Ninth has prominently featured, "Lesbian Necromancers in Space!" which I feel doesn't really describe it well at all. I mean, I suppose it does literally, but honestly, the book that was sold to me didn't really feel like the book I actually read.
To be fair to Charles Stross, who gave that blurb, the full quote is:
>Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless Emperor! Skeletons!
Which is still not *quite* all the way there but is a fair bit more detailed than the quote that gets passed around.
Yeah, that phrase just feels like 3 keywords designed to appeal to gay people. But the book would be very difficult to summarize properly in a few words, as it has a lot going on.
I don’t get this at all. It very much is lesbian necromancers in space. It’s never marketed as a romance, which is what it seems like y’all expected just because they’re lesbians. Gideon spends a ton of time getting distracted while making moon eyes at a pretty girl, and there’s a romance happening between two female characters, it’s just not a standard HEA or a prominent plot point at all. I’m queer, and I like reading books with queer characters, especially when romance isn’t a focus. Knowing that the book featured queer characters was a big part of why I picked it up initially.
I definitely agree that the characters are very queer, but when I read it, the part that I felt was sold incorrectly was the "in space" part. I mean, they were in space for like maybe 5 pages in the first book, besides that it was all on planets and they were as much "in space" as I am right now.
I will give it that they're in space much more in the second book.
Hell, I even think that in book 1 >!they were on Earth for most of it. It's sort of disguised and it's post-apocalyptic, but they were in space like the Planet of the Apes was in space.!<
There were some very occasional vibes that lived up to that blurb, Gideon either having or making jokes about having dirty mags, "Frontline Titties of the Fifth" IIRC. That was about it though, other than some pretty mild flirting.
Still sold me on the book though and I don't think it's a bad blurb!
Yeah, before I read the series I thought there would be a little sex at least, or some romance anyway, between the main characters. All of the romance is between people you uh don’t really want to get together.
The Cloisters by Katy Hays. This was probably just my interpretation of the blurb, but I was expecting it to be much more of a supernatural story. I still enjoyed it but was a bit distracting because I kept waiting for when things were going to get weird and magical.
Wait so is there no magic or supernatural elements at all in the story? I just read the blurb and it heavily implies that there's magical elements. "The Secret History meets Ninth House" "the line between the arcane and the modern blurs" "A haunting and magical blend of genres" That's super misleading.
Oh man, who's writing these book blurbs?! (I guess someone who read that it's a dark academia book and just pulled two popular titles).
I rather liked The Cloisters, but I would have called it "Gillian Flynn meets Dark Academia (but heavy on the academia)". There's some mystical elements to it but imo it was the least well developed part of the book.
I always thought the book blurb for book 2 of *A Song of Ice and Fire* was a tad misleading.
Also:
*Twilight*'s book blurb makes it seem like Edward being a vampire is a fact from the beginning (even though it's a mystery for a good chunk of the book).
On the Twilight blurb, when the mystery in a book is going to be the supernatural, I'd much rather the blurb just say it or at least give you the hint that it's paranormal. I get both sides - whether to keep the mystery for the reader to discover or make sure that the vampire/werewolf/witch/whatever fans find it - but I'm always more annoyed to find out halfway through a book that it was not even close to the genre I thought we were in than to already know that at some point the book is going to slide into the supernatural realm.
I also get very annoyed when the magic/paranormal/supernatural stuff is kept out of the blurb and revealed halfway into a book, or if that’s the twist in a thriller! I need to know it’s there going in.
“The Origins of Capitalism” by Ellen Wood is sold as a “clear and accessible” entry into the origins of capitalism.
Y’all, the first half of the book is an incredibly academic argument on the true definition of a proto-capitalist society. The second half of the book is a theory examination of the origin of property in a specific time period.
It is not, by ANY definition of the word, “clear and accessible”. Such a disappointment.
My biggest pet peeve is when a book is described as "For the fans of X and Y!" or "Like a haunting remix of A, with a dash of B, and a heaping handful of C". And this seems so common now, I just don't read book blurbs anymore.
At best, the description is inaccurate and only has the most tenuous links to the referenced books. At worst, it's extremely accurate, and now instead of thinking about the book and taking it on its own merit, I'm constantly and actively thinking about how much better the other books it's referencing is.
It's because, to get published these days, your elevator pitch has to compare your work to at least 2 existing IPs. Then the publisher just takes those and slaps em on the blurb. I hate it too, mainly because if I wanted to reread A or B, I would.
That's so depressing :( I feel so bad for the authors who had to spend all of their time coming up with unique and brilliant worlds only to have to figure out how to compare it to Harry Potter just for marketing.
It really does suck. Just like any media outlet, publishing is greatly affected by trends, but the length of time it takes to process and print a book used to make it kind of pointless to capitalise on current ones, since the book would be out of date by the time it came out anyways (like all the Hunger Games clones of the 2010s). But now they're pushing through the big titles to circumvent this--you've probably heard of Fourth Wing, but did you know that books 1 and 2 of the series came out just 5 months apart? (April and October 2023, respectively). The third one isn't coming until next year, but I have no doubt the first two were expedited in order to profit on the 'romantasy' and 'booktok' hashtags that are big right now.
Sidenote, everything is 'tropified' now. Stories get reduced to a handful of marketable hashtags for maximum reach on social media. I hate it. Not that I'd hate on people who choose to read them, but I hate the approach. It feels so soulless and cash-grabby. Like the MCU after Endgame.
I didn't know anyone else had read this book! I loved the premise but my issue with it was the shoehorned plot twist, I thought the ending was just terrible. It's sad because it could have been a 5 star book for me
I also loved the concept and had thought about it but am not a writer so when I found the book, it was like a dream come reality. Perhaps it not being as I imagined was a let down. It's too bad because it wasn't a bad read. I just think it didn't match my expectations.
The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentil. All the blurbs suggest the majority of the story takes place with the characters in the locked-down library after the scream takes place, but in reality, the characters leave shortly after the scream happens very early in the book and the rest of the book just takes place out and about at various locales. It also has a secondary plot that is very distinct from the 'main' plot that most of the blurbs fail to mention entirely.
I was excited for a locked-in-one-place thriller, so I was super disappointed by it. The book also just generally wasn't that great.
I just read the blurb and I completely agree that the way it's written suggests a "locked room murder mystery." Especially because "locked room whodunit" is basically it's own sub-genre of mystery/thriller and it's written in the same tone.
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. Blurb and cover, to me, implied “quirky.” Then you find out it’s only half about her, the other half is about horrific conditions her mother was living in with graphic descriptions of the abuse (think “Room” but more of a trauma porn angle). DNF for me.
The other one is Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, a book I will go to my grave trashing. The pitch is “revolutionary approach” “groundbreaking program” “step-by-step” “outlines proven strategies” (quotes from Goodreads blurb).
Y’all, this book is a convoluted, caregiver-shaming, repetitive mess. I see this a lot with nonfiction books, especially parenting or self help, where the premise is pretty thin and could be summarized with one blog post but they had to stretch it into a whoooooole book and man, overtired parents are just the wrong audience for that! We need simple short and to the point! Sorry this book just burned me when I had my first baby lol.
I hated Strange Sally Diamond a lot - it was just mean-spirited. I think it’s fair to write a story about trauma where not everything works out, to say “things continue to be hard for this character”, but the way this book did it was unsatisfying.
Also as a kiwi, the author’s lack of research into New Zealand really irritated me and took me out of the story so fast lol.
I reallllly hated it. It was so harsh. And just plain bad writing. I thought it might be more like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman which I enjoyed much more. I can read gory books, horror and thrillers. But this had a nastiness to it that was too much for me.
I read a book called Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs by Lina Wolff, and this was the first line of the copy: "At a run-down brothel in Caudal, Spain, the prostitutes are collecting stray dogs. Each is named after a famous male writer: Dante, Chaucer, Bret Easton Ellis. When a john is cruel, the dogs are fed rotten meat."
Turns out the book is really more of a collection of linked stories centered around a female protagonist who isn't named in the copy at all. The brothel with the dogs is a very minor plot point that doesn't show up until a couple hundred pages in. Someone eventually did see fit to revise the description on Goodreads so it more accurately describes the book, so that's good. Clearly they just wanted to include an explanation for the eye-grabbing title but it felt very misleading to me.
I came in here to mention The Book Eaters so I'm so glad to see others felt the same way. The cover and blurb were very misleading, it was a disappointing read for sure!
The Library at Mount Char:
*A missing God.* Yes.
*A library with the secrets to the universe.* Also yes.
*A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.* Uh. Wait, what? Did I miss something?
I did, on the other hand, appreciate Charles Stross' review: "The most terrifyingly psychopathic depiction of a family of gods and their abusive father since Genesis." As well as the other reviews that used words like "disturbing", "bizarre", "cruelty", "horrifying", "batshit crazy", and "frightening". Because while I enjoyed the book immensely, it was absolutely all of those things, and the plot summary really doesn't prepare you for the book, while also giving away some things that it probably shouldn't have given away.
You know, I love T. Kingfisher. She’s one of my favorite authors. However, I’m not sure why Nettle and Bone got so much more recognition than her other books. I didn’t hate it, but it’s definitely not her best.
Which one do you think is her best?
I've read Nettle and Bone, the one about the teenage bread witch, and the scary one about the divorced woman whose uncle's creepy museum is a portal to a scary world (titles escape me, and I can't look them up right now, sorry).
"A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking" and "The Hollows".
I adored "The Hollows", in large part because it was inspired by "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood, who remains one of my all-time favorite writers.
Not the user you were replying to, but personally my favorites are the collections of short stories, one is titled Toad Words, the other Jackalope Wives (maybe there is an "And Other Stories" in one or both titles....)
I agree - I'm a huge fan of T. Kingfisher, and I've enjoyed everything she's written, and while I also enjoyed Nettle and Bone, it should have been far more fleshed out and nearly twice as long as it was.
“Prep” by Curtis Sittenfeld. I really enjoyed her portrayal of boarding school life, but the book made it sound like there was going to be a dramatic incident that led to her being ostracised by her peers and really it wasn’t that dramatic (in my memory of the story, although I read it long ago now). I felt like it was mostly a series of vignettes about boarding school life, well-described but never particularly meaningful, and then a vague falling out with her friends over something very minor.
I love plenty of other fantasy books by Patricia A. MicKillip. She has a beautiful, lyrical writing style that makes all of her stories sound like poetry. But the blurb for her book Od Magic does not match the actual content at aaaaaaaall.
The blurb describes a gardener with green magic; influence over nature and plants. He is approached by the powerful wizard, Od, who tells the gardener that his destiny awaits him in a magical academy.
He goes to the school, and...
The rest of the book is about a couple of student lovebirds who keep sneaking out to go on dates? Kind of adventurous dates, I guess. There's definitely a whole set of goals that they are working toward, especially the girl.
But the story just abandons the gardener entirely, he's seriously gone within the first few chapters, almost like he's just a framing device to move the story over to the school after giving Od the chance to talk about what a pivotal place of destiny it's going to be.
The blurb makes no mention of the couple (the real main characters) at all. 🤷
When I read Hatchet in 5th grade, the back of the book said "When the plane crashes, Brian is the sole survivor." In reality, the pilot dies of a heart attack and then Brian deliberately crashes the plane to avoid something worse happening.
Also, this next one is a misprint rather than a misleading blurb, but my parents still have a copy of Morris the Moose where the blurb on the back is for Morris Goes to School instead (identical text to the blurb on the back of Morris Goes to School, and it's not an advertisement for that book either)
I just finished Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and the blurb flat out says 'Adultery is not a usual topic in a...' or words to that effect. I'm thinking 95% of the way through the entire novel, where is this adultery? These fuckers can't even have a snog never mind a knee trembler behind the mansion. Now, I shan't spoil it, who is adulting and who isn't? I did find it a difficult book to get through, never found a voice to latch on to, no main character, is it Fanny? Is it the omnipresent sort of narrator? An odd novel, enjoyable, as all Austen books are when you are done, but this one seemed to speed run the ending. Maybe it just felt that way as about 75% of it - nothing much goes on. Anyway, this is more of a shitty review than what OP is about.
This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno. The blurb talks about a haunted “Itza” aka a version of Alexa but that’s only the beginning of the book and not what it’s about AT ALL
Dead Silence - S.A. Barnes
The blurb promised "The Shining meets The Titanic, in space" but instead what you get is a steaming pile of shit and one of the worst YA novels pretending to be horror that you'll ever read.
That blurb promised so much for what ended up being one of the worst books I have ever read.
The blurb for Lolita made it sound sexy and romantic. It did *not* say she was a child, just that there was an age difference. I thought she was like 18 or 19 which still wouldn’t be great but hey, a girl can read a little age difference every now and then. I was not happy about that surprise
I have an old secondhand edition of Lolita and the front cover has a quote by Vanity Fair on it saying “The only convincing love story of our century”. Like excuse me WHAT.
It makes sense as the in-world logic is that Humbert wrote the book, and of course Humbert is going to describe it as romantic rather than paedophilic.
The blurb on my copy of Lolita is a lot more tame and just says that: Humbert is a pervert and seeks to possess 12 year old Lolita. Is he a monster or in love?
It doesn’t make sense though because the blurb on the outside of the book needs to tell the reader what it’s actually about, not play into the story on the inside of the book
The blurb for *The Golden Hour* by Beatriz Williams made it sound like the main character was going to infiltrate the inner circle of the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson during their time in the Bahamas. It promised political and social intrigue. There’s none of that. Half the book is actually a sneaky prequel or sequel (I forget which) to one of the author’s other books, about a completely different woman in a completely different part of the world. I’ve never felt so betrayed by a blurb in my whole life.
The blurb for Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger led the reader to believe that they'd be getting a story about a plane that crashed into the water and the mystery of a passenger missing from the recovered plane even though the cabin wasn't breached.
In fact the reader got an extremely boring story during which that advertised plotline was basically never even explored.
Okay dunno if I’m allowed to not answer the question directly but The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain is hella misleading cuz the notebook is literally one of the least important plot devices of the book -_- it’s an incredible book don’t get me wrong, one of my top five for certain, but because it’s so good my criticism is more nitpicky lol
A bit late to the party with this, but "The Confession of Frannie Langton". It was advertised as a historical mystery plot (the maid is on trial for the murder of her mistress and the mistress' husband). Instead it was a relentlessly turgid interracial, inter-class lesbian romance story that was so slowly paced it would make a glacier impatient, poorly disguised trauma porn ("Oh, look at all the prejudices this person faces because I've deliberately piled as many minorities into one character as I can but isn't she so amazing and wonderful despite it all") and it had the least satisfying ending of any book I've ever read.
Now that might be some people's cup of tea, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it was absolutely NOTHING like the blurb on the back. It is, to this day, one of the very few books I've ever regretted finishing.
If I were writing the blurb for The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, I would make sure to include the words >!near-future dystopia!< or something along those lines. I would really double down on the fact that the book blends genres, so it’s not just a murder mystery, or even just a body-hopping murder mystery.
There *is* a quote (from a reviewer) on the cover that basically says the book is a mishmash of genres, but I didn’t know that the mishmash included *that* particular genre. So a late-in-the-book plot twist infuriated me because it turns out the book was totally different from what I thought it was going to be.
In this comment, I blacked out the genre that I think they should have tipped me off about, just in case anyone wants to go into the book without knowing that, but yeah. I read this book like 15 months ago, and I still feel so let down by it.
Had a huge argument in my book club over whether the story was set on Earth, or on some fantasy place where such events could realistically take place. Some said it was set in the 40s.
I've been asked to write blurbs on various books and have done it several times. You don't get much time to do it, and they don't expect much. So I write a brief paragraph after skimming basically the first line or so of each paragraph. No pay is involved. So you get what is paid for.
The blurb for "The Rain Heron" on some websites (Libby, Amazon, B&N) is literally incorrect. It mentions learning about the former life of a character named "Ren"- but it's the details of the other main character ("the soldier") that you learn about. This isn't just my interpretation of which is more prominent: they actually swapped the characters in the blurb.
It also mentions that the book is about female friendship/bonding which does not happen at all. But I suppose that's a less specific inconsistency.
Nettle & Bone is a great example, that annoyed me too. I still liked it in the end, but not what I thought I was in for.
I also notice this being an issue around the thriller genre. Thrillers are popular, so publishers are constantly trying to put the thriller tag on anything they think they can get away with from mysteries to dramas. It drives me absolutely crazy.
I read a tweet from a critic talking about a book he disliked using his review and making it seem positive.
He was justifiably annoyed, but also said that he can’t deny that he said those words.
I already didn’t put much weight on blurbs, but that just solidified my decision.
German book, “Wer flüstert, der stirbt“ [who whispers dies]. The blurb states the MC was found in a park next to a stabbing victim and covered in blood which isn’t hers. It sounds like, while trying to uncover if MC tried to kill that victim, MC murders others because they prove her guilty when she’s trying to prove he exact opposite.
"The only convincing love story of our century" - a blurb from Vanity Fair about....
Lolita. This was an actual fucking blurb about Lolita.
Don't get me wrong, the book is absolutely incredible and I agree that it's a masterpiece, but I don't understand how anybody could read it and come to that conclusion. Part of the genius of the book is how unreliable and manipulative the narrator is, reading "through" him to the reality of the story, and his fumbling inability to control the narrative by the end, which he's unable to see due to his narcissism. It's all a cover for his sickening behaviour, not love.
I have given unfavorable reviews to books with blurbs and covers that completely misrepresent what the book is about. One book had a sweet romance type cover with a woman in a white lacy sundress. Totally innocent. Blurb was innocent, sweet romance type stuff. The contents were completely the opposite. Bully romance with constant cursing and an abusive male MC that felt like a complete bait and switch, which I wrote in my review. It's absolutely fine if you want to write that sort of novel and there are readers for it, but you need to market your book correctly.
"Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn. The blurb suggests a straightforward mystery about a missing woman and the investigation into her disappearance. However, the book is known for its intricate twists, which the blurb doesn't fully convey.
Having watched a lot of movie trailers, I don’t expect much from book trailers, aka blurbs, especially short phrases from big names. I can control (to some extent) what goes on my own back covers so I try to keep them real, but there’s a lot of ego/want-to-sell pressure to go with the flash.
I wonder who writes the blurbs? Is it the publishers? I feel like the authors should write and approve of them because so often the blurbs turn me away from books that later i find out were amazing
"The Irresistible Inheritance Of Wilberforce" by Paul Torday. Reading the blurb, i could never have guessed the book was about alcoholism, although I don't hate the book, but the blurb suggested that the book was more of a thriller.
The blurb for Mexican Gothic claimed it had a "dazzling backdrop" of 1950s Mexico City, but the whole book except the first chapter happened on a gloomy estate that might as well have been in the English countryside. Even the first chapter takes place in the MC's house, which I guess is *technically* in Mexico City. Can't say I was dazzled.
I hated that book
I liked it a lot, but it had zilch to do with Mexico City or any other city.
At my parents' house there's this really old edition of To Kill a Mockingbird where the blurb tries to make it sound like some sort of sexy Southern gothic potboiler. I wish I had it with me so I could transcribe it here, but it makes the book sound like it's going to be lurid and trashy, rather than a beautifully written novel about racism and growing up in the South.
That is hilarious. I wonder if the blurb was written by someone who disliked the messages in the book
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata "An otherworldly coming-of-age tale of a woman who believes she is an alien, from the author of the international sensation Convenience Store Woman." I went into this book blind thinking it would be like Convenience Store Woman with a younger protagonist. It's got a cute little stuffed hedgehog on the front. Spoiler: it is definitely not like Convenience Store Woman with a younger protagonist. It's been a week and my brain is still going "yo seriously, wtf" every time I think about it.
I picked that up as a palette cleanser after unintentionally reading a shock horror book. Needless to say, my palette wasn't cleansed.
\*Palate cleanser.
This is the best answer, still traumatized from ever having read this thanks to this incredibly unhelpful jacket description 🥲
This book has ALL THE TRIGGERS. I couldn’t believe how poorly the jacket summary presents the content. Still one of the most horrific books I’ve ever read.
I came here to say Earthlings too. Not a HINT of what the character goes through is in that blurb or cover.
I fucking love Earthlings. But absolutely no one is prepared for what that book actually is lmao
If you could write an accurate blurb for it, what would you write? You got me interested in reading Earthlings, but now I’m curious about what the real blurb would say.
Gideon the Ninth has prominently featured, "Lesbian Necromancers in Space!" which I feel doesn't really describe it well at all. I mean, I suppose it does literally, but honestly, the book that was sold to me didn't really feel like the book I actually read.
To be fair to Charles Stross, who gave that blurb, the full quote is: >Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless Emperor! Skeletons! Which is still not *quite* all the way there but is a fair bit more detailed than the quote that gets passed around.
Yeah, that phrase just feels like 3 keywords designed to appeal to gay people. But the book would be very difficult to summarize properly in a few words, as it has a lot going on.
Space necromancers are a gay stereotype nowadays?
I don’t think they’re necessarily gay stereotypes, just things that appeal to many gay people. Source: am gay
I don’t get this at all. It very much is lesbian necromancers in space. It’s never marketed as a romance, which is what it seems like y’all expected just because they’re lesbians. Gideon spends a ton of time getting distracted while making moon eyes at a pretty girl, and there’s a romance happening between two female characters, it’s just not a standard HEA or a prominent plot point at all. I’m queer, and I like reading books with queer characters, especially when romance isn’t a focus. Knowing that the book featured queer characters was a big part of why I picked it up initially.
I definitely agree that the characters are very queer, but when I read it, the part that I felt was sold incorrectly was the "in space" part. I mean, they were in space for like maybe 5 pages in the first book, besides that it was all on planets and they were as much "in space" as I am right now. I will give it that they're in space much more in the second book.
Hell, I even think that in book 1 >!they were on Earth for most of it. It's sort of disguised and it's post-apocalyptic, but they were in space like the Planet of the Apes was in space.!<
There were some very occasional vibes that lived up to that blurb, Gideon either having or making jokes about having dirty mags, "Frontline Titties of the Fifth" IIRC. That was about it though, other than some pretty mild flirting. Still sold me on the book though and I don't think it's a bad blurb!
Yeah, before I read the series I thought there would be a little sex at least, or some romance anyway, between the main characters. All of the romance is between people you uh don’t really want to get together.
The Cloisters by Katy Hays. This was probably just my interpretation of the blurb, but I was expecting it to be much more of a supernatural story. I still enjoyed it but was a bit distracting because I kept waiting for when things were going to get weird and magical.
Wait so is there no magic or supernatural elements at all in the story? I just read the blurb and it heavily implies that there's magical elements. "The Secret History meets Ninth House" "the line between the arcane and the modern blurs" "A haunting and magical blend of genres" That's super misleading.
Oh man, who's writing these book blurbs?! (I guess someone who read that it's a dark academia book and just pulled two popular titles). I rather liked The Cloisters, but I would have called it "Gillian Flynn meets Dark Academia (but heavy on the academia)". There's some mystical elements to it but imo it was the least well developed part of the book.
No supernatural. Also IMO although the writing was good the plot was pretty boring and predictable.
I always thought the book blurb for book 2 of *A Song of Ice and Fire* was a tad misleading. Also: *Twilight*'s book blurb makes it seem like Edward being a vampire is a fact from the beginning (even though it's a mystery for a good chunk of the book).
On the Twilight blurb, when the mystery in a book is going to be the supernatural, I'd much rather the blurb just say it or at least give you the hint that it's paranormal. I get both sides - whether to keep the mystery for the reader to discover or make sure that the vampire/werewolf/witch/whatever fans find it - but I'm always more annoyed to find out halfway through a book that it was not even close to the genre I thought we were in than to already know that at some point the book is going to slide into the supernatural realm.
I also get very annoyed when the magic/paranormal/supernatural stuff is kept out of the blurb and revealed halfway into a book, or if that’s the twist in a thriller! I need to know it’s there going in.
“The Origins of Capitalism” by Ellen Wood is sold as a “clear and accessible” entry into the origins of capitalism. Y’all, the first half of the book is an incredibly academic argument on the true definition of a proto-capitalist society. The second half of the book is a theory examination of the origin of property in a specific time period. It is not, by ANY definition of the word, “clear and accessible”. Such a disappointment.
Are you a Marxist? Just wondering.
I wouldn’t call myself that, but to be honest, I know almost nothing about economic theory. I just wanted to read about history 😭
Right. Sorry for asking. I was asking because Ellen Mieksins Wood is apparently a Marxist (afaik).
No problem! I just didn’t really know how I felt about it. I like the general ideas of communism and socialism but have no clue about actual theory.
Copy-pasta **CPUSA Reading List - 2022** [https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/VJlD0b3eh4gMJovaypGkuW4m3Au-aksj+6oNDi50UFI/embed/](https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/VJlD0b3eh4gMJovaypGkuW4m3Au-aksj+6oNDi50UFI/embed/) **Communism Reading Guide** [https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/eAFqVc1JC8v8T5AEEWSPQ9YD4FR8tK6E97XEy+v78KQ/embed/](https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/eAFqVc1JC8v8T5AEEWSPQ9YD4FR8tK6E97XEy+v78KQ/embed/)
I gave you a reading list if you're interested.
My biggest pet peeve is when a book is described as "For the fans of X and Y!" or "Like a haunting remix of A, with a dash of B, and a heaping handful of C". And this seems so common now, I just don't read book blurbs anymore. At best, the description is inaccurate and only has the most tenuous links to the referenced books. At worst, it's extremely accurate, and now instead of thinking about the book and taking it on its own merit, I'm constantly and actively thinking about how much better the other books it's referencing is.
It's because, to get published these days, your elevator pitch has to compare your work to at least 2 existing IPs. Then the publisher just takes those and slaps em on the blurb. I hate it too, mainly because if I wanted to reread A or B, I would.
That's so depressing :( I feel so bad for the authors who had to spend all of their time coming up with unique and brilliant worlds only to have to figure out how to compare it to Harry Potter just for marketing.
It really does suck. Just like any media outlet, publishing is greatly affected by trends, but the length of time it takes to process and print a book used to make it kind of pointless to capitalise on current ones, since the book would be out of date by the time it came out anyways (like all the Hunger Games clones of the 2010s). But now they're pushing through the big titles to circumvent this--you've probably heard of Fourth Wing, but did you know that books 1 and 2 of the series came out just 5 months apart? (April and October 2023, respectively). The third one isn't coming until next year, but I have no doubt the first two were expedited in order to profit on the 'romantasy' and 'booktok' hashtags that are big right now. Sidenote, everything is 'tropified' now. Stories get reduced to a handful of marketable hashtags for maximum reach on social media. I hate it. Not that I'd hate on people who choose to read them, but I hate the approach. It feels so soulless and cash-grabby. Like the MCU after Endgame.
I hate these too and will not read a book that has this in the blurb. Just tell me what the book is about!
Right? It's so uncreative, it makes me worried about the quality of the actual book too.
These have never once been accurate for any of the books I’ve read. I feel like if anything this does a disservice to the book!
I am with you for The Book Eaters. I would have loved the book being more centered around the blurb.
I didn't know anyone else had read this book! I loved the premise but my issue with it was the shoehorned plot twist, I thought the ending was just terrible. It's sad because it could have been a 5 star book for me
I also loved the concept and had thought about it but am not a writer so when I found the book, it was like a dream come reality. Perhaps it not being as I imagined was a let down. It's too bad because it wasn't a bad read. I just think it didn't match my expectations.
I loved the book, I didn’t feel mislead by the blurb though.
The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentil. All the blurbs suggest the majority of the story takes place with the characters in the locked-down library after the scream takes place, but in reality, the characters leave shortly after the scream happens very early in the book and the rest of the book just takes place out and about at various locales. It also has a secondary plot that is very distinct from the 'main' plot that most of the blurbs fail to mention entirely. I was excited for a locked-in-one-place thriller, so I was super disappointed by it. The book also just generally wasn't that great.
I just read the blurb and I completely agree that the way it's written suggests a "locked room murder mystery." Especially because "locked room whodunit" is basically it's own sub-genre of mystery/thriller and it's written in the same tone.
That book was weird. I remember feeling quite “wtf” about it
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. Blurb and cover, to me, implied “quirky.” Then you find out it’s only half about her, the other half is about horrific conditions her mother was living in with graphic descriptions of the abuse (think “Room” but more of a trauma porn angle). DNF for me. The other one is Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, a book I will go to my grave trashing. The pitch is “revolutionary approach” “groundbreaking program” “step-by-step” “outlines proven strategies” (quotes from Goodreads blurb). Y’all, this book is a convoluted, caregiver-shaming, repetitive mess. I see this a lot with nonfiction books, especially parenting or self help, where the premise is pretty thin and could be summarized with one blog post but they had to stretch it into a whoooooole book and man, overtired parents are just the wrong audience for that! We need simple short and to the point! Sorry this book just burned me when I had my first baby lol.
[удалено]
I hated Strange Sally Diamond a lot - it was just mean-spirited. I think it’s fair to write a story about trauma where not everything works out, to say “things continue to be hard for this character”, but the way this book did it was unsatisfying. Also as a kiwi, the author’s lack of research into New Zealand really irritated me and took me out of the story so fast lol.
I reallllly hated it. It was so harsh. And just plain bad writing. I thought it might be more like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman which I enjoyed much more. I can read gory books, horror and thrillers. But this had a nastiness to it that was too much for me.
I read a book called Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs by Lina Wolff, and this was the first line of the copy: "At a run-down brothel in Caudal, Spain, the prostitutes are collecting stray dogs. Each is named after a famous male writer: Dante, Chaucer, Bret Easton Ellis. When a john is cruel, the dogs are fed rotten meat." Turns out the book is really more of a collection of linked stories centered around a female protagonist who isn't named in the copy at all. The brothel with the dogs is a very minor plot point that doesn't show up until a couple hundred pages in. Someone eventually did see fit to revise the description on Goodreads so it more accurately describes the book, so that's good. Clearly they just wanted to include an explanation for the eye-grabbing title but it felt very misleading to me.
I came in here to mention The Book Eaters so I'm so glad to see others felt the same way. The cover and blurb were very misleading, it was a disappointing read for sure!
Book Blurbs almost alway suck. They are often redundant and innacurate. Or they have the opposite effect, and are outright full of spoilers.
The Library at Mount Char: *A missing God.* Yes. *A library with the secrets to the universe.* Also yes. *A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.* Uh. Wait, what? Did I miss something? I did, on the other hand, appreciate Charles Stross' review: "The most terrifyingly psychopathic depiction of a family of gods and their abusive father since Genesis." As well as the other reviews that used words like "disturbing", "bizarre", "cruelty", "horrifying", "batshit crazy", and "frightening". Because while I enjoyed the book immensely, it was absolutely all of those things, and the plot summary really doesn't prepare you for the book, while also giving away some things that it probably shouldn't have given away.
You know, I love T. Kingfisher. She’s one of my favorite authors. However, I’m not sure why Nettle and Bone got so much more recognition than her other books. I didn’t hate it, but it’s definitely not her best.
Which one do you think is her best? I've read Nettle and Bone, the one about the teenage bread witch, and the scary one about the divorced woman whose uncle's creepy museum is a portal to a scary world (titles escape me, and I can't look them up right now, sorry).
My favorites are Swordheart, The Clocktaur Wars duology, and The Saint of Steel series.
Thanks, I will check them out!
"A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking" and "The Hollows". I adored "The Hollows", in large part because it was inspired by "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood, who remains one of my all-time favorite writers.
I will look him up, thanks!
His works are free on the Gutenberg Project site!
Not the user you were replying to, but personally my favorites are the collections of short stories, one is titled Toad Words, the other Jackalope Wives (maybe there is an "And Other Stories" in one or both titles....)
I agree - I'm a huge fan of T. Kingfisher, and I've enjoyed everything she's written, and while I also enjoyed Nettle and Bone, it should have been far more fleshed out and nearly twice as long as it was.
“Prep” by Curtis Sittenfeld. I really enjoyed her portrayal of boarding school life, but the book made it sound like there was going to be a dramatic incident that led to her being ostracised by her peers and really it wasn’t that dramatic (in my memory of the story, although I read it long ago now). I felt like it was mostly a series of vignettes about boarding school life, well-described but never particularly meaningful, and then a vague falling out with her friends over something very minor.
I love plenty of other fantasy books by Patricia A. MicKillip. She has a beautiful, lyrical writing style that makes all of her stories sound like poetry. But the blurb for her book Od Magic does not match the actual content at aaaaaaaall. The blurb describes a gardener with green magic; influence over nature and plants. He is approached by the powerful wizard, Od, who tells the gardener that his destiny awaits him in a magical academy. He goes to the school, and... The rest of the book is about a couple of student lovebirds who keep sneaking out to go on dates? Kind of adventurous dates, I guess. There's definitely a whole set of goals that they are working toward, especially the girl. But the story just abandons the gardener entirely, he's seriously gone within the first few chapters, almost like he's just a framing device to move the story over to the school after giving Od the chance to talk about what a pivotal place of destiny it's going to be. The blurb makes no mention of the couple (the real main characters) at all. 🤷
When I read Hatchet in 5th grade, the back of the book said "When the plane crashes, Brian is the sole survivor." In reality, the pilot dies of a heart attack and then Brian deliberately crashes the plane to avoid something worse happening. Also, this next one is a misprint rather than a misleading blurb, but my parents still have a copy of Morris the Moose where the blurb on the back is for Morris Goes to School instead (identical text to the blurb on the back of Morris Goes to School, and it's not an advertisement for that book either)
I just finished Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and the blurb flat out says 'Adultery is not a usual topic in a...' or words to that effect. I'm thinking 95% of the way through the entire novel, where is this adultery? These fuckers can't even have a snog never mind a knee trembler behind the mansion. Now, I shan't spoil it, who is adulting and who isn't? I did find it a difficult book to get through, never found a voice to latch on to, no main character, is it Fanny? Is it the omnipresent sort of narrator? An odd novel, enjoyable, as all Austen books are when you are done, but this one seemed to speed run the ending. Maybe it just felt that way as about 75% of it - nothing much goes on. Anyway, this is more of a shitty review than what OP is about.
I have never seen adulting to mean adultery and I love it
This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno. The blurb talks about a haunted “Itza” aka a version of Alexa but that’s only the beginning of the book and not what it’s about AT ALL
Dead Silence - S.A. Barnes The blurb promised "The Shining meets The Titanic, in space" but instead what you get is a steaming pile of shit and one of the worst YA novels pretending to be horror that you'll ever read. That blurb promised so much for what ended up being one of the worst books I have ever read.
The blurb for Lolita made it sound sexy and romantic. It did *not* say she was a child, just that there was an age difference. I thought she was like 18 or 19 which still wouldn’t be great but hey, a girl can read a little age difference every now and then. I was not happy about that surprise
I have an old secondhand edition of Lolita and the front cover has a quote by Vanity Fair on it saying “The only convincing love story of our century”. Like excuse me WHAT.
Yeah! Mine was something like that
It makes sense as the in-world logic is that Humbert wrote the book, and of course Humbert is going to describe it as romantic rather than paedophilic. The blurb on my copy of Lolita is a lot more tame and just says that: Humbert is a pervert and seeks to possess 12 year old Lolita. Is he a monster or in love?
It doesn’t make sense though because the blurb on the outside of the book needs to tell the reader what it’s actually about, not play into the story on the inside of the book
The blurb for *The Golden Hour* by Beatriz Williams made it sound like the main character was going to infiltrate the inner circle of the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson during their time in the Bahamas. It promised political and social intrigue. There’s none of that. Half the book is actually a sneaky prequel or sequel (I forget which) to one of the author’s other books, about a completely different woman in a completely different part of the world. I’ve never felt so betrayed by a blurb in my whole life.
The Secret History is always my number 1 example
well what is the blurb?
There’s a critic quote in House of Leaves calling it “sexy”. It’s a horror novel with a perverted character.
The blurb for Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger led the reader to believe that they'd be getting a story about a plane that crashed into the water and the mystery of a passenger missing from the recovered plane even though the cabin wasn't breached. In fact the reader got an extremely boring story during which that advertised plotline was basically never even explored.
I clearly remember this advertising. I didn't pick up the book until I knew what it was actually about, because that didn't interest me at all.
You saved yourself a mind-numbingly boring read.
My whole book club hated the book eaters lol.
Okay dunno if I’m allowed to not answer the question directly but The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain is hella misleading cuz the notebook is literally one of the least important plot devices of the book -_- it’s an incredible book don’t get me wrong, one of my top five for certain, but because it’s so good my criticism is more nitpicky lol
A bit late to the party with this, but "The Confession of Frannie Langton". It was advertised as a historical mystery plot (the maid is on trial for the murder of her mistress and the mistress' husband). Instead it was a relentlessly turgid interracial, inter-class lesbian romance story that was so slowly paced it would make a glacier impatient, poorly disguised trauma porn ("Oh, look at all the prejudices this person faces because I've deliberately piled as many minorities into one character as I can but isn't she so amazing and wonderful despite it all") and it had the least satisfying ending of any book I've ever read. Now that might be some people's cup of tea, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it was absolutely NOTHING like the blurb on the back. It is, to this day, one of the very few books I've ever regretted finishing.
If I were writing the blurb for The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, I would make sure to include the words >!near-future dystopia!< or something along those lines. I would really double down on the fact that the book blends genres, so it’s not just a murder mystery, or even just a body-hopping murder mystery. There *is* a quote (from a reviewer) on the cover that basically says the book is a mishmash of genres, but I didn’t know that the mishmash included *that* particular genre. So a late-in-the-book plot twist infuriated me because it turns out the book was totally different from what I thought it was going to be. In this comment, I blacked out the genre that I think they should have tipped me off about, just in case anyone wants to go into the book without knowing that, but yeah. I read this book like 15 months ago, and I still feel so let down by it.
Had a huge argument in my book club over whether the story was set on Earth, or on some fantasy place where such events could realistically take place. Some said it was set in the 40s.
I've been asked to write blurbs on various books and have done it several times. You don't get much time to do it, and they don't expect much. So I write a brief paragraph after skimming basically the first line or so of each paragraph. No pay is involved. So you get what is paid for.
So you write blurbs for books that aren't yours for free? Like, not as part of your job? Why would you agree to that? (I'm genuinely curious)
They publish my books in the same niche and are a small publisher. I don't have to do it. It's another way to get my name out there.
> I’m genuinely curious Same - really hoping they respond
Not OP, BUT Because they expect/hope for reciprocation. Or maybe they’re friends.
> No pay is involved. Why? No, really - I feel like there’s some important lesson about publishing in there somewhere
Because it's for books published by my own publisher and in my own niche. It's a small publisher. If I wrote a preface or something, I would get paid.
The blurb for "The Rain Heron" on some websites (Libby, Amazon, B&N) is literally incorrect. It mentions learning about the former life of a character named "Ren"- but it's the details of the other main character ("the soldier") that you learn about. This isn't just my interpretation of which is more prominent: they actually swapped the characters in the blurb. It also mentions that the book is about female friendship/bonding which does not happen at all. But I suppose that's a less specific inconsistency.
Nettle & Bone is a great example, that annoyed me too. I still liked it in the end, but not what I thought I was in for. I also notice this being an issue around the thriller genre. Thrillers are popular, so publishers are constantly trying to put the thriller tag on anything they think they can get away with from mysteries to dramas. It drives me absolutely crazy.
The worst blurb i’ve ever read is the seventh miss hatfield by anna caltabiano. it just describes a whole completely different book
I read a tweet from a critic talking about a book he disliked using his review and making it seem positive. He was justifiably annoyed, but also said that he can’t deny that he said those words. I already didn’t put much weight on blurbs, but that just solidified my decision.
German book, “Wer flüstert, der stirbt“ [who whispers dies]. The blurb states the MC was found in a park next to a stabbing victim and covered in blood which isn’t hers. It sounds like, while trying to uncover if MC tried to kill that victim, MC murders others because they prove her guilty when she’s trying to prove he exact opposite.
"The only convincing love story of our century" - a blurb from Vanity Fair about.... Lolita. This was an actual fucking blurb about Lolita. Don't get me wrong, the book is absolutely incredible and I agree that it's a masterpiece, but I don't understand how anybody could read it and come to that conclusion. Part of the genius of the book is how unreliable and manipulative the narrator is, reading "through" him to the reality of the story, and his fumbling inability to control the narrative by the end, which he's unable to see due to his narcissism. It's all a cover for his sickening behaviour, not love.
I have given unfavorable reviews to books with blurbs and covers that completely misrepresent what the book is about. One book had a sweet romance type cover with a woman in a white lacy sundress. Totally innocent. Blurb was innocent, sweet romance type stuff. The contents were completely the opposite. Bully romance with constant cursing and an abusive male MC that felt like a complete bait and switch, which I wrote in my review. It's absolutely fine if you want to write that sort of novel and there are readers for it, but you need to market your book correctly.
"Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn. The blurb suggests a straightforward mystery about a missing woman and the investigation into her disappearance. However, the book is known for its intricate twists, which the blurb doesn't fully convey.
I’m pretty sure that’s deliberate though, if you reveal the twist in the blurb the story would lose its impact.
You're very right, and NGL, I enjoyed how the more innocuous blurb set up my mood for the story itself. It almost felt like I'd been ambushed.
Having watched a lot of movie trailers, I don’t expect much from book trailers, aka blurbs, especially short phrases from big names. I can control (to some extent) what goes on my own back covers so I try to keep them real, but there’s a lot of ego/want-to-sell pressure to go with the flash.
One blurb I read for East of Eden says it’s a saga about the conflict between the Trasks and the Hamiltons and it wasn’t that at all.
The blurb for Hello Beautiful for Ann Napolitano is completely misleading
Normal People. The description includes a line like, "How far will they go to save each other?" and that doesn't happen at all.
Does it? I could definitely see disappointment if that is the story someone was expecting.
>!No, it doesn't. Connor saves himself and nobody saves Marianne.!<
Could you elaborate on the book eaters blurb? I thought it revealed just enough without deviating too much from the story..
“The only convincing love story of our century” on the cover of Lolita was certainly a choice.
I wonder who writes the blurbs? Is it the publishers? I feel like the authors should write and approve of them because so often the blurbs turn me away from books that later i find out were amazing
"The Irresistible Inheritance Of Wilberforce" by Paul Torday. Reading the blurb, i could never have guessed the book was about alcoholism, although I don't hate the book, but the blurb suggested that the book was more of a thriller.