I've had so many blog tour posts on my blog lately that I figured I'd write something different. Keep in mind that this is my attempt to make sense of things and in my head, this totally makes sense. Ha!
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Last Sunday my brother and I decided to watch Warm Bodies. Unfortunately when we got to the cinema, we weren't able to watch it because the next screening would be too late in the afternoon and we really didn't want to wait. It was down to either Die Hard or Beautiful Creatures. I can tell my brother wanted to watch Die Hard(-erer) but I refused. Basically, he was forced to watch Beautiful Creatures. He didn't have a choice, really. How could he possible say no to his little sister?
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Last Sunday my brother and I decided to watch Warm Bodies. Unfortunately when we got to the cinema, we weren't able to watch it because the next screening would be too late in the afternoon and we really didn't want to wait. It was down to either Die Hard or Beautiful Creatures. I can tell my brother wanted to watch Die Hard(-erer) but I refused. Basically, he was forced to watch Beautiful Creatures. He didn't have a choice, really. How could he possible say no to his little sister?
Long story short: we both loved the movie. Part of the reason why we did was that we had low expectations coming into the theater. We were expecting something Twilight-y and thankfully we didn't get that. I also liked the casting; I liked how everyone looks and I especially like their acting. There were scenes that were a bit off/cheesy though but overall, it was great (for me at least).
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| Source: impawards |
In fact my brother liked it so much (he's straight by the way), he dragged me to the bookstore right after to purchase Beautiful Darkness (I already have Beautiful Creatures). Unfortunately though, only books 3 and 4 were in stock. Boo~
Anyway I told him not to get excited yet because I haven't read the book and he might not enjoy it as much as he enjoyed the movie. I went on Goodreads to read the reviews and found that a lot of people rated it 1 star saying it was full of cliches, and it was so slow. That didn't make me want to not read the book though (because I already have it LOL). I just figured, maybe it's just the hype.
HERE'S MY TAKE ON HYPES.
Hypes can either make or break a book. If the book's over hyped, people will either love it so much or hate it to the moon and back. I know because I've been there. I've often tried out really popular books because I wanted to see for myself what the fuss was about. I would begin reading it with high expectations and if I end up enjoying it, I'll rave about it along with the many readers who share the same sentiment. On the one hand, when I do end up not liking a highly popular book, I tend to go full on hate mode because I think it simply does not deserve all the attention it's getting.
Anyway I told him not to get excited yet because I haven't read the book and he might not enjoy it as much as he enjoyed the movie. I went on Goodreads to read the reviews and found that a lot of people rated it 1 star saying it was full of cliches, and it was so slow. That didn't make me want to not read the book though (because I already have it LOL). I just figured, maybe it's just the hype.
HERE'S MY TAKE ON HYPES.
Hypes can either make or break a book. If the book's over hyped, people will either love it so much or hate it to the moon and back. I know because I've been there. I've often tried out really popular books because I wanted to see for myself what the fuss was about. I would begin reading it with high expectations and if I end up enjoying it, I'll rave about it along with the many readers who share the same sentiment. On the one hand, when I do end up not liking a highly popular book, I tend to go full on hate mode because I think it simply does not deserve all the attention it's getting.
I think part of the reason why Beautiful Creatures got so many 1 and 2 star ratings was because of the hype. I noticed that compared to the other books in the series, the first one has way more ratings and it has a lower average star rating. (I've used the word "rating/s" so much it's starting to sound weird) I got the following data from Goodreads:
Beautiful Creatures: 3.81 avg. rating; 88,895 ratings
Beautiful Darkness: 4.00 avg. rating; 31,719 ratings
Beautiful Chaos: 4.14 avg. rating; 15,916 ratings
Beautiful Redemption: 4.11 avg. rating; 7,876 ratings
I THINK...
1. A lot of people decided to read Beautiful Creatures because there's a movie coming out and I want to read the book before watching the movie because that's how bookish people roll. Hence, the 80,000 plus ratings.
2. The people who didn't like the book,which were a lot, didn't read the sequels (naturally) and that's why there was a sudden drop in ratings. And people didn't stick with the series long enough to finish it so the ratings went down greatly with each sequel.
3. A lot of the people who hated the book, hated it because of the hype. I noticed that my favorite/trusted bloggers/reviewers generally liked Beautiful Creatures and they've read it back when the book came out, meaning, pre-hype.
...OR MAYBE
The book isn't really oh my god this is friggin' awesome-awesome or as good as the movie.
I DON'T KNOW.
Man, the idea for this post sounded way better in my head.
Anyway......... (awkward pause) all I really wanted to say in this post is: Hypes are cool because it gets the word out, but then it can get ugly when people don't get satisfied and they go, why is this popular again? And you know how overly critical people can get about hyped books. Or movies. Basically anything.
I admit, I let hypes get to me but now I'm really trying my best to give each book a fair shot. After all, every author deserves it. It's not that easy to write books let alone a whole series.
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Beautiful Creatures: 3.81 avg. rating; 88,895 ratings
Beautiful Darkness: 4.00 avg. rating; 31,719 ratings
Beautiful Chaos: 4.14 avg. rating; 15,916 ratings
Beautiful Redemption: 4.11 avg. rating; 7,876 ratings
I THINK...
1. A lot of people decided to read Beautiful Creatures because there's a movie coming out and I want to read the book before watching the movie because that's how bookish people roll. Hence, the 80,000 plus ratings.
2. The people who didn't like the book,which were a lot, didn't read the sequels (naturally) and that's why there was a sudden drop in ratings. And people didn't stick with the series long enough to finish it so the ratings went down greatly with each sequel.
3. A lot of the people who hated the book, hated it because of the hype. I noticed that my favorite/trusted bloggers/reviewers generally liked Beautiful Creatures and they've read it back when the book came out, meaning, pre-hype.
...OR MAYBE
The book isn't really oh my god this is friggin' awesome-awesome or as good as the movie.
I DON'T KNOW.
Man, the idea for this post sounded way better in my head.
Anyway......... (awkward pause) all I really wanted to say in this post is: Hypes are cool because it gets the word out, but then it can get ugly when people don't get satisfied and they go, why is this popular again? And you know how overly critical people can get about hyped books. Or movies. Basically anything.
I admit, I let hypes get to me but now I'm really trying my best to give each book a fair shot. After all, every author deserves it. It's not that easy to write books let alone a whole series.
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How about you? What's you take on hypes?
or...
If you have any thoughts about Beautiful Creatures, feel free to leave a comment below!
"1. A lot of people decided to read Beautiful Creatures because there's a movie coming out and I want to read the book before watching the movie because that's how bookish people roll. Hence, the 80,000 plus ratings."
ReplyDeleteI agree with that. I told myself that I would only watch movie adaptations after reading the book. With BC, I'm not dying to read it yet when the movie came out so I decided not to read it.
I confess, I added it to my tbr pile before because of a review from a someone I've been following in Goodreads but personally, the synopsis didn't wow-ed me.
Maybe I'll read this soon, but there are books I want to read first before this.
I read the synopsis of all he books in the Caster series and I didn't like ANY of them. They weren't very captivating. They were kind of vague, in fact. Ohhh maybe I'll do another disorganized topic post on book blurbs. Heh
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