Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish that other bloggers are welcome to join in, to create Top Ten lists on varying topics. This week it’s Top Ten Books We Wish Had More Development In Them. Plot or characters!

Paein

1 Bloodlines (series)

by Richelle Mead

I loved Vampire Academy but I felt that this was stagnant in comparison. Sydney and Adrian kept hashing out the same arguments over and over and the same situations kept cropping up. I think part of the problem was no one had the sass level of Rose…

2 Mechanica

by Betsy Cornwell

This is a cCnderella retelling and while it was pretty good, the end just didn’t fit. It sort of raced towards one ending then turned around and produced this one. To get to this ending I feel that the story needed more development towards this end.

3 A Whole New World 

by Liz Braswell

More character development please. Lots more.
I was expecting to get lots more back story and information in this book, but it was an alternative timeline with LESS character information – perhaps because it was assumed that the reader had seen the film. I’d been looking forward to following alternative Jasmine and Aladdin, but these guys were just so two dimensional I was disappointed.

4 The Selection (series)

by Kiera Cass

Took America four books to realise she was in love with Maxon. It took too long. It was pretty much the whole plot of the entire series too. She didn’t really develop as a person either, she basically agonised over the same thing every book.

5 Defy

by Sara B. Larson

Oh boy did I dislike this one. It was a mulan-esque story. Girl pretends to be a boy to join the fight and in this case stay out of the breeding houses. Fine, sounds fantastic. Except she spent her whole time worrying about not being a boy – which would have given her away, Alanna (The Song of the Lioness) just got on with it and fooled EVERYONE. Too many people guessed this secret. And they were all experts without training…so I stopped reading it.
Better development, of plot AND characters and this story would have been fantastic!!

…

Ms4Tune

 

6 Nerve

by Jeanne Ryan

One of the biggest disappointments on my 2016 reading pile. The premise promised so many amazing things and yet it lacked the suspense and drama I was expecting. I really wished it had more development to give it that creepy, dangerous atmosphere that I had been promised.

7 Soundless

by Richelle Mead

Soundless was supposed to be this amazing book smothered in Chinese Folk-lore but it just wasn’t. There was hardly any reference to anything Chinese like – other than the names and the mention of the Chinese alphabet…

8 Goblin Secrets

by William Alexander

I was surprised by how little development there was for this magical world considering it won an award. For me, it seemed like we were just supposed to know all about Goblins and Baba Yaga etc. I felt like I’d stepped into the middle of a book rather than started a new one.

9 Brightwood

by Tania Unsworth

I guess this was aiming for Magical Realism? But honestly, I have no idea. I couldn’t figure out if the main character could actually talk to animals and inanimate objects in this story or whether she was just a little strange cos she was so lonely. Either way I felt there was a lack of development of this world which left me confused. I also thought the plot was really slow and only really started right at the end. Beautiful cover and lovely writing but really disappointing story.

10 Avoiding Temptation

by K A Linde

Avoiding Temptation was the final book in the Avoiding series and I was so disappointed. The reason for this was that KA Linde had created some really amazing characters and crafted a great storyline but for some reason seemed to throw it all out the window when it came to writing this book… For me, none of the characters seemed themselves, the storyline didn’t seem to flow very well and it just seemed to be forced in a direction that just made the past 2 books seem a waste of time. I should have just stopped after book 2.