T5W: Top 5 Misleading Synopses!

This is a weekly meme within the book community that was created by Lainey of GingerReadsLainey, but is now hosted by Sam of Thoughts on Tomes.  If you’re interested in participating, find out more on the Goodreads group!

This week’s topic is Most Misleading Synopses!  Have you ever read a synopsis and thought the book sounded dumb, but then you read the book years later and it’s actually amazing?  Or have you ever read a synopsis and thought it sounded amazing, but it actually turns out to be nothing like the synopsis?  Or what about a synopsis that spoiled something that happens 75% of the way into the book so you just spend most of your time waiting for that one element you already know?  Well, then this is the topic for you!

This topic was really hard, so I only ended up choosing three books!  These books are ones that the synopsis sounded really great and lured me in, but ultimately the stories turned out to be nothing like I thought or wanted to read.  I guess my imagination created a better story!  In no particular order, here are my selections!

1.  Hit by Lorie Ann Grover

This one seemed billed on the idea that this young girl who has committed to going to one college on a full scholarship falls for a student teacher at her school who also teaches at the other college that she has also shown interest in.  She starts expressing her feelings for him in a poetry journal that he reads and writes back to, slightly naive to the fact that she has convinced herself that his responses are alluding to his love for her as well.  One morning, she decides to declare her intentions to him once and for all, while at the same time, the teacher decides to end the speculation because the fallout from that kind of attention is too much for him to handle this early in his career.  As both head to the school in the rain, he ends up hitting her with his car and everything changes.

This book had great undertones of a thriller that suggested perhaps the teacher intentionally hit her to get rid of the complications she was bringing to his life, but that wasn’t the case at all.  He simply just accidentally hit her when she stepped into the road and there were no hidden motives!  He was truly remorseful about the whole thing.  But then the story became more about her finding confidence in herself to realize that she didn’t just have to go to the college that her parents expected her to go to because of the scholarship, but rather the one that she did want to go to and not because she was chasing some unattainable love interest.

I did not like this one at all, especially once she ends up in the hospital after the accident, having her skull opened up to reduce the brain swelling and all the family seems to be concerned about is with her appearance!  Her brother comes in for the first time to see her and dramatically grimaces, saying something about her looking like Frankenstein and he can’t even look at her because she’s making him sick!  The parents don’t even knock him upside the head and remind him that his sister is lucky to be alive!  They just give excuses about how he’s in shock!  Whatever!  What an obnoxious family and an obnoxious book with no redeemable qualities, except for maybe the cover, but then that’s just being as superficial as this book!

2.  Read Me Like A Book by Liz Kessler

3.  Gemini by Sonya Mukherjee

This story is about 17-year-old conjoined twins, facing a crossroads, and as their graduation from high school comes closer, they must untangle their dreams from each other and figure out what it means to be her own person.  This sounded intriguing and inspiring given their medical condition and what they and their family must have faced in the small town they grew up in, but ultimately, it was just a really underwhelming coming of age story filled with the same tropes in any other average angst-ridden teenage drama.  There’s hardly any personal or emotional depth to the story of the girls being conjoined and both girls are so similar in voice that it’s hard to even tell them apart or believe that this is supposed to be exploring two widely different individuals.  If you’d like to read thoughtful and moving stories about conjoined twins, I highly recommend One by Sarah Crossan or The Girls by Lori Lansens.

So those are the books that really misled me.  Are there any books that turned out to be misleading for you?  Let me know in the comments!