What are some books that started out very strong, but ended up being very disappointing?

I love it when I start a new book and it has me hooked immediately. If the first few pages are enough to blow my mind, surely the rest of the book will live up to those expectations!… Right? Right?

Well, not always, obviously.

There’s two books that come to mind right away when I think about how captivating they were in the first few chapters, pages, and in the case of these, the opening sentences. I was blown away by the opening sentences, and so let down by the rest of the story!

The first one was Animal by Lisa Taddeo. A lot of people love Three Women, but I’m not the biggest nonfiction reader, so I opted for one of her fiction books instead. I wasn’t sure I was going to like Animal, so I read the first page in the bookstore. I was so enthralled by it that I read the whole first chapter in the checkout line and the second chapter in my car outside the bookstoke because I literally couldn’t put it down. And then… it lost me, probably around the 30% mark. It switched from this gripping story of female rage and obsession, into this clunky book full of unnecessary traumatic scenes where half of them felt entirely unnecessary to the plot. I was so disappointed when I finished it.

The next one, I’ll admit that I DNF’ed it, was When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill. One of my favorite book influencers had this as her favorite book of 2024. So I picked it up, read 150 pages in one day… and DNF’ed it the next. I think it truly has one of the best opening lines of any book I’ve ever read, even still having not finished it. I was obsessed and convinced it was gonna be one of my favorite books of the year last year! But then around page 200, a particular scene came out of nowhere that I was unprepared for and I knew the rest of the book was gonna be picking up the pieces, and I just couldn’t carry on. So, I DNF’ed it. I don’t know how vital the last chapter I read was to the rest of the story, so I can give this one a little more credit than I can gove to Animal, but I was disappointed nonetheless.

Anyways, what are some of the biggest letdowns you’ve ever read, that started great and ended poorly? I’m always curious to see if anyone shares similar opinions as me with some of these!