30-Day Book Challenge: Day 18

Edited to add: I'm recycling this post for Jessica's Book Chat (hosted at Press Play this week) for June 7. The topic is: What is a book you read & loved but didn’t expect to? Or maybe one you thought you’d really enjoy and then didn’t? This post answers the first part of the prompt, and you can see my failed attempt to find a book I thought I wouldn't like but did here.

Day 18 - A book that disappointed me

Image via Goodreads.

The Magicians. I discovered this book through a list on Oprah's website called "Books to Read After Harry Potter." I had already read many of the suggestions (including The Hunger Games, Narnia and His Dark Materials series) and wasn't interested in some of the others, but The Magicians looked intriguing. It was described as "a grown-up Harry Potter," so I gave it a shot. Well, "grown-up" is certainly one way of putting it. The awkward sexual references and unnecessary vulgar language was a little off-putting at first (a kiss on the lips was stimulating in Rowling's novels), but even after I got used to the writing style I couldn't get over the sheer weirdness of the book. I was constantly asking myself what the heck I had gotten myself into, up until the very last page of the book, which managed to almost pack in enough strangeness to outweigh the rest of the book. But hey, I'm still planning to read the sequel (it was quite the cliffhanger ending), so I can't have been that disappointed. Just more surprised, I guess.