By Jessica Woodbury — Aug 5, 2025

Hate Read Summer

Since the death of Book Twitter sometimes I feel like I've been cut off from the reading world. I have never really felt at home in the bookish corners of Instagram and I refuse to download Tiktok so now all the book discourse feels like it happens somewhere far away. But sometimes a publicist goes so hard that even I will hear about an It Book. And this summer the most mentioned It Book I have heard appears to be a pretty blatant attempt to ride the coattails of All Fours. It is If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard, and I am so happy to report that I did not remember the title and had to look it up because I have been trying to push it away from me like it is a mosquito and I am wearing a thick coating of DDT bug spray.

The books media world is now itty bitty given that journalism is dying and criticism is dying and critical thought is dying and literacy is dying, but somehow many of the people in it have fallen for IYLILIKY which shows you that either the publicist at Henry Holt is extremely powerful and called in a lot of favors or that people really do have terrible taste.

I did NOT hate read this book. I already hate read a book about a middle aged woman finding herself this year, Crush by Ada Calhoun. It was so bad that I gave it one star on Goodreads. I have logged over 2,000 books on Goodreads and I have given only five 1-star reviews. It was that bad. When I was reading it a few months before publication I was actively concerned that it was going to turn into a buzzy it book and honestly I was so relieved when I never heard about it and never saw it prominently featured during my many bookstore visits this year. A relief.

But I didn't need to hate read IYLILIKY because I ALREADY READ THIS BOOK. Because the author has already published this book. It was a memoir called We Are Too Many that came out in 2023 and that was extremely bad. (I didn't give it a star rating, which was generous of me.) This new book is being generously called "autofiction" but is about the exact same events. This is truly unhinged behavior and how this woman managed to have not one but two terrible books published about her divorce is bananas to me. There have been several articles and a few novels about this divorce and at the rate we are going I expect we'll soon have a prestige television series. It would be interesting if it was, well INTERESTING. But it is not. And maybe it would be good if the writing was GOOD. But We Are Too Many was not just bad but baffling. The kind of thing I would be embarrassed to put out in the world even if it didn't involve my husband sleeping with my best friend. This all happened ten years ago but it will be inflicted on us, apparently, forever. (This is literally the third year in a row of books about this divorce, since not only has Pittard written two books about it but her ex-husband released one last year as well. I have not read that one either because, well, it sounds like the most boring book ever written and I only have so much patience. The marketing copy literally includes the sentence "Could a love affair be the answer he’s been searching for?" as if we need more books about mediocre men trying to fuck their way into being less mediocre. That is every book by a straight man from 1950 onwards.)

But I will tell you I take a little bit of comfort in my quick check that IYLILIKY (lol forgot the title again and thus forgot the acronym and had to scroll up) has not made the bestseller list and that in its 3-ish weeks of release it has less than 150 Goodreads reviews. The remaining literati may have tried to make this book happen but we the public were too smart to listen to them. Now we just have to make sure no one publishes any more books about this divorce.

I know it isn't cool to hate books. We're supposed to support creators and help people find things they love. But you know what? Sometimes I just want to talk trash and I have a newsletter. Because sometimes what you need is for someone to warn you off of a book and tell you, "Oh sweetie no."

But maybe if I was considered fancy book media then I could swing an interview with this author and ask her the one question I have been wondering about ever since I read her 2023 memoir. Specifically, "Why did you give this book a title that alludes to child murder-suicide???" And before you are thinking "Jess, wtf" I hate to spoil the 1895 novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy but the phrase "we are too many" is indeed a major plot point in the most depressing novel ever written. And as a professor of English Literature you would think she would know that. I just... I have so many questions. How did this book get published and no one said anything. Surely I am not the only person who read Jude. (I may be the only person who is considering getting a Thomas Hardy tattoo and yes I took a Thomas Hardy seminar in college so okay I see your point.)

I've had a few hate reads this summer, just the good old-fashioned kind where it had a good premise and then squandered it and you've already sunk so much time that now you have to see it through and start to relish just how much you hate it. Or because you think you might hate a really popular book and you have time to kill and the audiobook is on Libby. That last one would be my recent hate read of When We Were Villains, which is one of the books people love to talk about when they wax poetic on the non-genre that is "dark academia." The tldr is that it is 1) a completely blatant The Secret History ripoff that is lucky you can't copyright a plot and a setting and a vibe and characters etc etc, and 2) has about 15% of its total word count actually copy-pasted from Shakespeare which would also feel like it was really going beyond the boundaries of fair use if Shakespeare wasn't in the public domain.

Why all the hate? It's nice to have a release valve. It's nice to have a safe space to complain. The world is on fire. And my own summer has been pretty damn hellish. (My saintly children remain saintly and wonderful but pick basically anything else and it sucks.) The books haven't been good enough this year, and I could really use some real bangers. My Best Books of 2025 shelf has only 7 books on it and I haven't added a new one in nearly 3 months.

But one of the life lessons I am chewing on is how you can't just count on something or someone to come in and save you. You have to put in the time and slowly chip away. And that is what I will keep doing with books, dammit. Because you never know when the next one will sweep you off your feet.

And now time for some June and July releases. Despite my complaining there are several good ones! Summer had a notable overall uptick in quality even if there aren't as many individual standouts. LOTS of thrillers in June/July, just fyi.

In honor of the theme, I shall begin with the books I hated:

Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor. A total ripoff of Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow but make it Elizabeth Holmes. I wouldn't mind the ripoff part if this was good but it is terrible.
Strange Houses by Uketsu. Okay "hate" is a strong word, but given how much I was delighted by the first translated novel from Uketsu earlier this year, Strange Pictures, this was a big disappointment. It is just the most ridiculous story, but honestly I can't hate because I still read the entire thing when it starts getting ridiculous on like page 5.
Greenwich by Kate Broad. Tries to be a literary thriller and just fails. There is not much more to say.
Maggie; or A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee. Another divorce book but one that is way too whimsical, which is super weird given that it is divorce AND cancer. This did not work for me at all.

Let's start with a list of honorable mentions that didn't quite grab me enough for a full blurb.

Flashlight by Susan Choi. I have been reading Choi for a very very long time and this is a big swing, even for her, but it never gelled for me.
El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott. Another author I've been reading forever but this may be my least favorite of hers in a good while. It's fine? But not fantastic.
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie. This has all the pieces of a fascinating novel about the role of a critic and cancel culture and #metoo and then just doesn't become fascinating. But may work better for you than it did for me.
The Dry Season by Melissa Febos. I have deeply enjoyed some of Febos' other work but the premise here didn't pan out. A work of memoir and nonfiction about celibacy, the history and the personal story feel like they are really disconnected. It becomes very clear that celibacy is not really the issue for Febos at all.

And now the ones I liked:

This is one of those goes-backwards-in-time plots which is incredibly hard to pull off in a crime novel, but I think Swanson does it! It's also a twisty marriage novel where we start with the couple that has a few decades of buried secrets and gradually work our way back. Some solid twists, although this is really a book for people who are in it for the character and story, not a thriller.

Jess Walter wrote a very, very popular novel called Beautiful Ruins that I have never read. I had zero interest in it but now that I enjoyed So Far Gone so much, I am reconsidering. This is a book that tries to do what feels impossible: grappling with our present political moment. It is, as it should be, also about many, many other things. It is emotionally satisfying and a real plot-heavy ride to boot.

A coming-of-age novel about a teenage Black girl in rural Georgia in the 1960's who spends a weekend in Atlanta trying to get an abortion. I absolutely loved spending time with the first person voice of teenaged Doris, who despite her condition is a real churchgoing girl who does not hesitate to judge the people around her. (Thus the title.) Maybe it packs in a little too much (SNCC! lesbians! it's a lot for a very sheltered girl but also for a reader!) but it's always delightful.

A very solid PI novel set in Toronto. Loves its hardboiled roots but feels determinedly modern. We need more neo-noir!

I loved Tess Sharpe's duology of The Girls I've Been and The Girl in Question so there was no doubt that I would read her new adult standalone No Body No Crime. Sharpe and her characters are very recognizable (especially if you do her audiobooks, which she reads herself) but she also has such a knack for incredibly twisty thrillers that are compulsively readable. Loved the banter between these two queer heroines, a billion flashbacks, and some dumb and detestable villains.

This isn't exactly a book of twists but it sure will make your head spin. This is a complexly plotted book from the author of The Eighth Detective, which was also complexly plotted. Not exactly a puzzle mystery but I also can't really think of a model for you either. But if you aren't willing to be deeply disoriented and not know what is happening from one chapter to the next with all kinds of stories and characters to keep straight, this won't be for you. But if you love that shit (like me) have fun.

🚨 New Denise Mina!!! 🚨 I have effusively talked up Mina for so long now I feel like a broken record. This is more thriller-y than many of her books, and is just such a brilliant use of an antihero. It's one that I finished and wanted to give a round of applause for as a crime novel reader who is so often disappointed. Whether our protagonist Claudia is going to be a good or a bad person is one of the major questions of the book, the best kind of stakes (along with plenty of murders, don't worry). May well be my favorite crime novel of the year, very likely my favorite thriller.

It is August and I am reading September releases which normally would stress me out but it's not even my fault! There are a bajillion books out in September! I have already read 11 of them and I'm only 2/3 or so of the way through my list.

But I am excited about several of these August books so maybe I will even get another newsletter out before the end of the month. Although every time I say that it guarantees that I do NOT so let's use reverse psychology and say nope no way I'll see you in September!

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