One thing I try not to do is review books that I’ve marked as DNF. I don’t even like to review books I’ve given 1-2 stars to in some cases, unless I really feel the need to share my opinion, but one thing I would never do is tag the author in a bad review or bash the book like a piñata.

This is partly why I put up my ‘DNF Graveyard‘ page, so that I can still list the books I’ve DNF’d over the years and still give a short reason why I did so. There are rare times when I’ll give a book a second chance because I might have just been in the wrong mood when I tried reading it initially, and it turned out that I liked the book a lot. Since that’s not usually the case, I like to have a record of these books as well as the ones I’ve read.

Anyway, the past two months I’ve been in somewhat of a reading slump… well, a bad one, really. I’ve read maybe three books total since mid-October, which is very weird for me. Two of the books I’ve tried reading I ended up DNF’ing as I just couldn’t try with them anymore,

My Recently DNF’d Books

Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie

I know, I know. I never expected to DNF a Christie book, especially one of the Poirot series, but I did. I think a big part of it was just that I wasn’t in a reading mood, yet I tried to read this one because I’d had tickets to a high school production of the play version that one of my friends directed/produced. I’d wanted to read the book first so I knew what to expect, but that didn’t work out. I just couldn’t make myself read without my brain being all over the place while I read, so the day of the play I decided to just put the book in my DNF pile.

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Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist – Codi Hall

I got about 60% of the way through this book and then it got to a point in the story where I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a big person on steamy romance books – I just don’t like to read smut, and that’s okay. Unfortunately, I hadn’t expected the book to take that turn based off of the description and cover… I figured it was a cute Christmas romance. On that note, it doesn’t even feel like a Christmas romance despite all the nods to the holiday in the book. I mean, Nick’s sisters are named Holly and Merry, his best friends is Noel, and they live in Mistletoe. It just seemed like it was trying too hard. One last reason I decided to not finish the book was because of the fact that Nick and Noel drove me nuts with how back-and-forth they were about their feelings for each other. I’m going to stop here before I start a real rant, but basically, this book just wasn’t for me.

I’m really hoping to come out of this slump before the new year. I started reading The White Christmas Inn, which seems promising so far (other than the fact it’s one of those tiny paperbacks), so hopefully there will be a good review of that coming in the next week or so. And if not, the book after that.

So, is anyone else just ready for 2023 or what?

Also, have you read either of these books? What did you think of them?