Ever since 2015 when I decided to be more proactive and smarter about my TBR list, I’ve found myself DNFing more books than ever. I’m sure some people will read that and think “how awful” but I don’t see it necessarily as a negative thing; if anything, it has improved my reading life in an extremely positive way. Ever since I wrote a post explaining why I wanted to DNF more books, I’ve found myself in less reading slumps because I’m not reading books simply because I feel like I have to finish them. If I don’t find myself interested in one book, I simply stop it and read another until I find one that sticks.
>> SERIESous Discussion: DNFing ARCs
According to the “My Reading Habits by Month” post earlier this year, I nearly tripled the amount of books I DNF’d in 2017 compared to 2016 (going from 7 books to 17). Which also means I have more DNF reviews sitting in my “posts to publish” queue than ever before.
Which is how I came up with the idea for this review blitz! I had imposed a rule on myself to only post one DNF review a month–which is hard! And thanks to other commitments, I often moved those post around and they never seemed to see the light of day. I also found myself running out of spots for reviews I had fully completed and ready to go. So I needed a new solution. After I posted my Trilogy Termination Blitz in the Spring this year, I decided to do a similar thing with DNF reviews. And because I like alliteration (and the idea of yearly wrap-ups in December) , I picked December.
Now: what is a DNF’d review?
For me these are reviews of novels I never finished. Meaning I started them but stopped reading before I reached the end. These are not reviews for series where I read the first book completely and then opted to not read the sequel. Those get the regular “series review” treatment on my site as I have a conclusion card to tag them appropriately. I’ve also excluded those DNF reviews for brand new book series that had their inaugural title released this year. Those series get a special “Fresh Friday” review post.
These true DNF reviews get a bit of a different review format in comparison. In them, I list what I liked, what I didn’t and if I ever plan on finishing the series. I always find these reviews helpful when I’m deciding whether or not to add a book to my TBR and that’s what I aim for these reviews to do and why I publish them.
What Reviews are on the Way?
These are reviews that I wrote in 2017 and 2018. Some of these reviews were written a long time ago (ie early 2017) and got lost in various shuffles. But I wrote them immediately after I stopped the book so my feelings and thoughts are fresh.
Here are the reviews you will see over the next few days (note the links may be “broken” as the reviews aren’t published yet):
While I never want to DNF books (especially when most of these are ones I’ve spent my money to buy), I know it is an inevitable fact of being a book reader. I hope to make this more of a yearly feature as a part of my December year-end-wrap-up going forward but you might see the occasional one pop up throughout the year.
I hope you enjoy the reviews I post over the next week! And if you read and enjoyed these books, I would love to get your takes on them! Who knows, maybe I’ll pick them up again!
I love this idea!!! I have a bunch of books I’ve DNFed for one reason or another, but I always forget to post them or they get pushed back forever and I forget about them. Looking forward to your thoughts on the books above!
Thank you! I was inspired by another blogger who answered questions about why a book didn’t work for her and I like that it made me really think about the titles. I’m a mood reader at heart so sometimes it’s simply a timing thing (ie not in the right mood) that I don’t enjoy a book and doing these reviews helps me gauge whether that is the reason I didn’t finish it.