It's Not You, It's Me (21)

It's not you, it's me."  Some books just don't work for me, whereas other readers may really enjoy them.  This feature will be showcasing books that I never finished or reviewed; you know…...the dreaded DNF.

The People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder  

Goodreads says, "Relationships are awful. They'll kill you, right up to the point where they start saving your life. Paul and Alice’s half-sister Eloise is getting married! In London! There will be fancy hotels, dinners at “it” restaurants and a reception at a country estate complete with tea lights and embroidered cloth napkins. They couldn’t hate it more. The People We Hate at the Wedding is the story of a less than perfect family. Donna, the clan’s mother, is now a widow living in the Chicago suburbs with a penchant for the occasional joint and more than one glass of wine with her best friend while watching House Hunters International. Alice is in her thirties, single, smart, beautiful, stuck in a dead-end job where she is mired in a rather predictable, though enjoyable, affair with her married boss. Her brother Paul lives in Philadelphia with his older, handsomer, tenured track professor boyfriend who’s recently been saying things like “monogamy is an oppressive heteronormative construct,” while eyeing undergrads. And then there’s Eloise. Perfect, gorgeous, cultured Eloise. The product of Donna’s first marriage to a dashing Frenchman, Eloise has spent her school years at the best private boarding schools, her winter holidays in St. John and a post-college life cushioned by a fat, endless trust fund. To top it off, she’s infuriatingly kind and decent. As this estranged clan gathers together, and Eloise's walk down the aisle approaches, Grant Ginder brings to vivid, hilarious life the power of family, and the complicated ways we hate the ones we love the most in the most bitingly funny, slyly witty and surprisingly tender novel you’ll read this year."

My Thoughts:
I love a good wedding story, so I had high hopes for this one. Plus, I've read some awesome reviews for this book, but ultimately, I just wasn't feeling it. I may pick it up at a later date, because it definitely has potential, but it was a bit too cynical for me. I like my summer reads a bit lighter unless they are thrillers.

Romancing the Throne by Nadine Jolie Courtney 

Goodreads says, "For the first time ever, the Weston sisters are at the same boarding school. After an administration scandal at Libby’s all-girls school threatens her chances at a top university, she decides to join Charlotte at posh and picturesque Sussex Park. Social-climbing Charlotte considers it her sisterly duty to bring Libby into her circle: Britain’s young elites, glamorous teens who vacation in Hong Kong and the South of France and are just as comfortable at a polo match as they are at a party. It’s a social circle that just so happens to include handsome seventeen-year-old Prince Edward, heir to Britain’s throne. If there are any rules of sisterhood, “Don’t fall for the same guy” should be one of them. But sometimes chemistry—even love—grows where you least expect it. In the end, there may be a price to pay for romancing the throne...and more than one path to happily ever after."

My Thoughts:
I love a good story about royals--usually they are my favorite, but this one with such hard-core sibling rivalry got old. I just couldn't stomach it. Also, I found it too Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous for me and the dialogue was irritating.

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins 

Goodreads says, "A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged. Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return. With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present. Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath."

My Thoughts:
I was so pumped for this book since I enjoyed The Girl on the Train, but this was a big epic fail for me.  I read about 100 pages and I was still so confused as to what was happening. And not in a good unreliable narrator kind of way. In the type of way that I was thinking to myself.... what is this story even about? Why am I reading it? Plus, there were about one million points of view, which made things even more confusing.

The Sunshine Sisters by Jane Green 

Goodreads says, "Ronni Sunshine left London for Hollywood to become a beautiful, charismatic star of the silver screen. But at home, she was a narcissistic, disinterested mother who alienated her three daughters.   As soon as possible, tomboy Nell fled her mother's overbearing presence to work on a farm and find her own way in the world as a single mother. The target of her mother s criticism, Meredith never felt good enough, thin enough, pretty enough. Her life took her to London and into the arms of a man whom she may not even love. And Lizzy, the youngest, more like Ronni than any of them, seemed to have it easy, using her drive and ambition to build a culinary career to rival her mother's fame, while her marriage crumbled around her.   But now the Sunshine Girls are together again, called home by Ronni, who has learned that she has a serious disease and needs her daughters to fulfill her final wishes. And though Nell, Meredith, and Lizzy are all going through crises of their own, their mother s illness draws them together to confront old jealousies and secret fears and they discover that blood might be thicker than water after all."

My Thoughts:
In the past, I have enjoyed Green's novels, especially because they are perfect as beach reads, but this one didn't jive with me.  I was disappointed by how depressing it seemed.  The main character was pretty annoying and a total narcissist; plus, the subject matter was a bit too dark for me to bring it to the beach. I guess I was originally sucked in due to the beachy cover?

What do you guys think? Have you read any of them? What are some of the latest books that you DNF? Let me know in the comments.