The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Or "Never Ever Ever Read This Book. Ever."

Never judge a book by its cover. They always say that. Never judge a book by its cover. Well, I did. And I read this book because it had a quirky interesting cover that made me believe its innards would be something Jonathan Safran Foer-ish. But the cover was a liar and this book was just dreadful and I have developed a brand new faith in adages.

Boy coming of age in England during World War II blah blah blah enters a magical fairy tale universe but it's scarier than a normal fairy tale universe blah blah blah theoretically it parallels his own real world existence blah blah blah comes out on the other side having learned about bravery and loyalty and now he doesn't hate his stepmom so much. And it's not so much that it's cliched (which it is), it's just that it's badly done: the parallels aren't really that parallel, the scariness of the alternate world isn't that scary, and the lessons learned seem to have no actual meaning or significance. A faithful film adaptation of this novel would want so much to be Pan's Labyrinth, but end up its poor bastard cousin directed by Chris Colombus in collaboration with Ron Howard, with a screenplay by the Grey's Anatomy writers.

I've already spent as much energy hating his book as John Connolly spent writing it, so I'll leave it at that.