The Ten Worst Books I've Read in 2021

We've had a busy year last year. 160+ articles posted for the blog itself. A whole bunch of books read. So, obviously there were a bunch that were read that just ended up being really bad. Bad enough to warrant one of the best uses of one's time, a listicle. So, what books did I read this year that I wish I didn't? Let's check up on the top ten worst books I've read this year, in really no particular order. This will not include any reposted blogs from Retro Oasis, but will of course count the rereads since trust me, Goosebumps is going to pop up in quite a bit of this list. I'll also keep it to one book per sequel set as I really don't need multiple reasons to explain why Reva Dalby sucks (oop-spoiler!) And with that said, let's get going. 

#01: SAY CHEESE AND DIE—AGAIN!

The more I come back to this book, the more I really feel that it is just a waste of space. The original Say Cheese and Die! was so much better, though granted, it too suffers from many of Stine's worst trappings. But at least it worked as a self-contained story. And Say Cheese - and Die Screaming! was also decent enough and at least allowed for new canon to make it feel fresh. So here's Say Cheese and Die—Again! as just this joyless lump in the middle. Feeling less like the more interesting story about a camera that predicts horrible events, and more about a camera that can just somehow screw with someone's physical being? 

I don't feel I need to go back and talk about just why the issue with Greg's weight is such a problem, but I'll bring it up again that this book's general sense towards heavyset kids feels too mean spirited for its own good. And even when we're supposed to feel for Greg when Mr. Saur just full on goes amateur night on him, it still feels insulting in the wrong way. Add in things like having Greg have to be taken out of school by literally tearing the wall out of the school and you just have Stine going a bit too over the top for his own good. 

And, I get it, Stine's doing a reverse Thinner. Only with less Romani stereotypes and with a magic camera instead. But, even if you take out the issues with the fat shaming and spitefulness to the writing itself, my god is the plot just nothing. Greg becomes a moron who needs to prove to his asshole of a teacher that the camera was real, thus putting others in literal danger, just so he can visit his cousins in Yosemite? Really? You're going to take this literal chaos weapon to school and cause god knows what to happen just because you couldn't be assed to just half-ass your "what I did over the summer" project (though the first book happened during the fall, so...). Unless something compels me, I can at least be happy that I don't need to read this book—again!

#02: DON'T EVER GET SICK AT GRANNY'S

Perhaps the best example of a book losing the plot and falling off the rails by the end, this Ghosts of Fear Street book was easily my least favorite of the ones I read in 2021. And, I get it, people like torture porn stories. But it's a genre I'm not as enthused by. So, a good chunk of the book is just Corey being put in worse and worse situations at the hands of Granny Marsha. And all of that seems fine, until we get close to the end of the book where all logic and reason falls apart. Only to end with the revelation that we've been in a dog's dream the whole time. A dog that knows what "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is, despite being a dog who shouldn't know what a rainbow is because dogs are colorblind!

By the time Meg is reintroduced and we suddenly end one false reality to enter another, this book just ends up feeling like a mad scramble to find a satisfying ending, so everything is thrown at the wall. From dreams within dreams, to wicked witch references, to just going "oh, he's a dog all along". Just didn't sit well with me. And when that's the ending of a book I already wasn't gelling with, then that just leaves me feeling ill.

#03: THE FACE

So this is one of R.L. Stine's favorite books. And given it's a mostly overused trope machine, I can't see how different it is from most middle of the ground Fear Street books. From Stine making it obvious that hypnosis is the reason behind everything way too early, to the general sense that everyone is gaslighting Martha, trying to keep her from remembering Sean for really no good reason. Even when she's remembering Sean more and more in her visions, everyone still doesn't want her to remember for really lame reasons. And then all of this just boiling down to Adrianna using hypnosis to make Martha forget Sean, then try to frame her for his death that Adrianna herself caused, it just falls apart for me.

So, what I'm left with is a book that has such a unique idea. A girl having someone's face stuck in their mind so much that it's all they can draw. And with enough of a mystery to build around that. Only for so much of it to just end up being the same Stine tropes he's already used over and over again. Feels like of all the Fear Street books I've read so far, it's the book with the most wasted potential. Not the worst book I've read, but when there's such a sense of flatness to it, it becomes easily among the worst of the year.

#04: CHEERLEADERS: THE NEW EVIL

Look, I promise this one isn't here just because I'm still salty about the cover bait-and-switch. Yes, this scene kind of happens in the book, but is so unimportant that you wish it wasn't the pick for the cover. Fear Street covers keep giving us evil Santas, but Stine just never delivers on them. That aside, of the five Cheerleaders books I've read, this is definitely the more superfluous Clay of all of them. Giving us the least interesting plot of all of them that kind of falls apart by the end. Its reasoning is also really stupid. Just more of dealing with the evil spirit and making some really stupid decisions. It's also the book that feels like the history of the spirit doesn't matter at all as we get no new leads on any of that.

Instead we get a book where Corky and the others are summoning spirits even though that's a dumb idea. Then are straight up ready to drown a girl because they think she's possessed, only for things to go worse and now everyone's got the evil spirit and Kimmy just dies for no reason other than shock value. All to wrap up in the most mediocre way possible. And that's really the best way to look at The New Evil. Just shock value wrapped around a mediocre book. A bitter fart of an ending to Corky's part of the saga. 

#05: BE AFRAID—BE VERY AFRAID!

R.L. Stine hits a wall in a lot of his books, but rarely do we see him hit a wall, back up, start driving, only to hit that same wall. That would be bad enough, but to try some poorly thought out meta commentary about how underwhelming his own books are, well at least he's honest. Honestly, this book comes so close to being a good book. The concept of the card game bringing whatever is played to life is a cool idea. But you can tell Stine had no idea how to progress the story, especially when he transports the protagonists into the world of the game. And if that was the problem, then why not make this a two-parter like Body Squeezers? Then at least you'd have an excuse to come up with stuff. But no. YOU FINISH THE STORY.

And when Stine tries for meta commentary, it somehow makes things worse. Like, sure, you're making commentary on how these kinds of books lack logic and fall apart at the ending, but that's not the clever statement you think it is Bob. You're the one flopping on this. You're the one who is letting their quality drop over time. There's also something very passive aggressive about "YOU FINISH THE STORY". Part of me expected him to add "IF YOU THINK YOU'RE SO DAMN SMART" at the end. So what we get is a book that just has absolutely nothing to contribute and cool ideas with no trajectory. Be afraid indeed.

#06: MONSTER BLOOD IV

I was considering Monster Blood is Back if only for its ending which, hoo boy, was that a lame ending. But, even if Stine dropped the ball at the end, it's still an okay take on the Monster Blood concept. And really, given I had to reread Monster Blood IV, I knew which would ultimately be the worst. Evan and the gang return in a book that doesn't even try to involve the iconic green Monster Blood in favor or weird blue slugs that we're also calling Monster Blood. Andy's still dumb as a post, Kermit is still bratty until it's time to actually do something substantial, Evan still mopes and Conan still bullies. Sunrise. Sunset. Shame that most of the book feels so weird and pointless that you wonder why this had to be a Monster Blood book. And just feels like a sour way to end the original series. 

And since I wrote that blog, I've learned via The Art of Goosebumps that this wasn't even supposed to be the final original series book. Cry of the Cat, the first book in Series 2000, was originally planned to be the 63rd and final original series book. Like, it's a very mediocre book, but it has a dead cat tornado. You're telling me we could have ended the original series with a CAT TORNADO and we were deprived of that, mostly due to Stine trying to struggle over the wall to make it work? Bloody hell.

#07: SILENT NIGHT 3

One of the books I read this year was The Boyfriend. Another Stine standalone that told the story of a rotten rich girl who treats people poorly and gets her comeuppance. In the end, it comes off as if the protagonist has learned her lesson. And that was one book and one book only. We didn't follow up with two sequels to see if Joanna Collier stuck to that or just rebooted and treated people horribly. Oh, but Stine made damn sure to stuff three Silent Night books in our stocking. I'd have taken the coal, thank you. And while one is bearable and two is pretty bad, it's the third that straight up broke me because if we already established in the second book that Reva wasn't going to even try to change, then what the hell was the point of a third?

And that's the problem. Reva is just a horrible person. And even after two traumatic experiences where she almost died, both mostly caused by how her actions affected others, having a third book where she again acts shitty to people, steals boyfriends and again gets into another situation where other people suffer by her actions and she gets to get off scot-free where she won't learn anything just reeks of overkill. So much overkill that I ultimately just abridged and half-assed it by the eighth chapter. It took Reva's fourth (or was it firth?) time mocking Grace's trauma as being weak that I decided to just tap out. And that was still before: 

1. Reva screws with Pam again.
2. Takes credit for Pam and Willow's scarves, having them be named after her.
3. Steals Liza's boyfriend Grant.
4. Her actions being the reason that a mentally unstable Grace murders Liza and the other scarf models.
5. Turning the murders into a pity party about herself in a bid to again get with Grant.
6. Breaking up with Grant who is already mentally broken due to Liza's death.
7. Then later learns that Grant snapped and wants to kill her because Reva's actions have led to the deaths of the other girls. How how she treats people have these consequences.
8. Then, despite overwhelming evidence, says it isn't her fault and then gets to win in the end. 

Again, I get it. The bitchy rich character type is a character type people like. But most of these characters have dimensions to them. Reasons to hate them, but also know why they are who they are. And no, at this point, her mom being dead doesn't count as a reason for Reva to be this way. It's not justification for a person constantly being that horrible. And in 2021, the last thing I want to read is the ultimate embodiment of a Karen getting to have a happy ending after destroying so many people's lives. Oh thank god there isn't a Silent Night 4. 

#08: SUNBURN

So this was before I really learned that the covers that I find cool usually lead to disappointment. Really, there's not much I can say about Sunburn that I won't be covering in more detail with the pick below this one. Just that much like that one, this book just ends with bad people winning. The people who destroyed someone's life get to go off innocently while the person they left for dead ends up actually dying. Granted, she murdered her twin sister (oh hi Identical Twin plots) but even with that, I'd have preferred to see Alison succeed and not have Claudia and her friends ride off into the sunset. Not to mention the book feels clunky. Mostly for ways that most Fear Street books feel clunky, but this was far more noticeable. Leaving us with a book that's not very fun in the sun.

#09: HIT AND RUN

The more of R.L. Stine's books that I read, the more that I begin to notice many of Stine's worst traits coming front and center. The more ugly side of a well off human being. And Hit and Run is where those horrible traits start to show themselves the worst. His thoughts on mental health, his feelings that the ones who make others suffer should be the ones to survive (Just like Sunburn), and the most damning, that homeless people don't matter and that who cares what happens to their bodies? Use them as lame prank props? Go to town. 

There's this lack of fun that comes with Hit and Run. The characters we're supposed to root for are awful people who spend most of the book antagonizing and scaring Eddie. The same Eddie who the book wants us to boo. To treat as the villain because he ultimately snapped. So, I'm supposed to hate Eddie, and not Winks who the book gleefully mentions is the one who picked on Eddie more than anyone? The one who made it so others would bully Eddie. So, I'm supposed to be happy that Winks gets a happy ending? Said it before and I sure as hell will say it again, FUCK WINKS! And fuck Jerry while we're at it. Creep who works at the morgue and just uses cadavers like toys. Literally feeling that some homeless John Doe matters so little that their corpse can be desecrated as his plaything to help Eddie get revenge.

And even after all of what happened, we still end with Four of the worst characters (Yes, even Cassie) getting to live happily ever after, while Eddie's the one who doesn't get a happy ending. The same foursome still using corpses as jokes. This in my mind is top tier Stine garbage. Not to mention the book's just bland overall and lacks anything to really make you care. Nothing that really makes this "I know what you did" plot unique from all the others. And I think I'm burned most of all because I really wanted to like this one. Stine, you ran over my heart, then backed over it for kicks.

#10: WHISPER OF DEATH

What better book to end on than with the book I was okay with when I first read it, but after hindsight and what's unfolding in the United States has become perhaps the one I feel I should have been harsher towards. Whisper of Death has such a neat idea, even if that concept of a barren world and the ghost of a pregnant teenager sort of crafting her own narrative and her own grim stories does kind of feel messy the further it goes down, feeling like Pike starts to trip over his own feet to tie all of this with the real reason I regret not being harder on this, an abortion plot. 

There really isn't an easy way to look at how Pike presents abortion and the fates of Rox and Betty Sue and not feel like there's a spitefulness to it. The fact that the two girls having the abortions die (Betty Sue on her own and Rox through planned parenthood) and Pepper, the one who wooed two girls, impregnated them, then threatened to ditch them if they didn't abort their child, gets to be the one who walks out of the story still alive, even if the ending may say otherwise. 

I read a few other reviews of the book and a general feel of the book is a very anti-woman feel to it. At first, I agreed with it, but after reading Witch, I really agreed with it. I've only read four of Pike's books, but there is this feel of a woman should die for her sins while the shittier guy gets to live. And it's hard to tell if either Witch or Whisper of Death is more insulting, whether its Rox dying mid-abortion or Julia sacrificing herself to heal Scott, who the book establishes as a sex pest early on. And then I think of Witch and then remember Road to Nowhere and the heavily forced religious stuff. So you can see why I've been more pensive to touch Pike works. I intend to get back into that this year, but after the existential crisis Whisper of Death gave me, as someone who can't even give birth, you can understand why. A book that has great ideas, but suffer under the spiteful feel of its writer. Eh, at least I liked Monster.

And those are the ten worst books I've read in 2021. Not a supremely shocking list, but one that was a bit cathartic to cover. Sometimes  you have to look back at the bad stuff to move forward to hopefully better things to come in the coming year. Expect the more positive best list next week.