The Palace Of Strange Girls by Sallie Day, is easily one of the worst ones I've read.

I bought this book last year but it took me a while to get around to reading it. I read it one boring Sunday, and then was so disgusted that I planned on donating it to a charity shop and completely forgot about it until I found it again today.

But I digress. This book is about a family in the 50's who go on holiday to the seaside - Ruth, Jack, and their two daughters, Beth (seven) and Helen (sixteen).

1. The title has no relevance to the story.

This title made as much sense to me when I finished the book as to when I started it. There was a brief description (about half a page) some point in the story, wherein eight year old Beth came across a tent labelled The Palace Of Strange Girls. She didn't go in or think about it all that much, just went on and carried on with her life and the palace was never spoken about again. So what's the point of that title?

2. The characters are weird. Not necessarily bad, as in they have potential to be interesting, but weird.

Ruth - fussy strict mother who has friction with her teenage daughter.
Beth - seven year old child who's a bit sickly and her mother is overprotective of her.
Helen - sixteen year old daughter who regularly fights with her mother, especially because she wants to leave school and isn't allowed, and because she's got this new friend Connie who's a waitress at their hotel, and Connie is independent and shit, which makes her want to be like her.
Jack - the father who is sad and depressed because his wife won't have sex with him anymore so has an affair with a fifteen year old girl (YES WE WILL GET TO THAT DO NOT WORRY)

The thing is that the author seems to have forgotten to make the characters likeable. You know how a lot of authors go overboard on giving their characters good qualities and end up with no bad?
This is the opposite. This characters are terrible people who have no redeeming qualities at all. Ruth is a joyless dried up old woman who apparently doesn't have any feelings. Jack is a spineless coward. Helen is selfish and spoiled. Beth is just there, she doesn't do much for the plot at all.

Ruth is probably the worst. She's so joyless and dry and awful, almost downright abusive at times. We're never shown a softer side to her at all, and it's just bad.

3. Jack and Connie.

As I said, Jack is depressed because his wife won't have sex with him anymore

Get over yourself, for fuck's sake, like I know you have the most boring most joyless strictest wife in the world, but for fuck's sake, stop moaning, you sound like a child who isn't getting what they want.

So how does Jack deal with this? He gets piss drunk and ends up having sex with his daughter's friend, Connie the waitress, who looks so "mature."

The next day, Helen mentions Connie is actually younger than her and is only fifteen. Jack won't tell his wife nor face up to the fact that he literally just had sex with a minor.

What a great guy.

4. Helen and Alan.

There's this other family at the hotel and they have this weird son Alan with definite creep vibes, and near the end of the book he attempts to rape Helen, only for Beth to save her, which is nice and all, but the scene came out of nowhere and I had no idea why these two random characters were suddenly going off together.

5. Connie is a stupid bitch.

Quote (from memory so it may not be perfectly accurate) from the book, wherein Connie thinks about the fact that she and Jack used no protection:

"She knew she wouldn't get pregnant, she'd had sex with her Geography teacher loads of times and nothing had happened."

okay hold the fuck up, HOLD THE FUCK UP. You're telling me that this fifteen year old girl is sexually active and has had sex with her teacher in the past, okay, that's not a massive problem, and neither is the fact that she clearly isn't educated at all about sex or pregnancy. What is the MASSIVE problem is that she's so idiotic, so smug and such a slimy little bitch. She thinks she's great because she's slept with her friend's dad, like what even....?

6. The ending.

Ruth finds out about the "affair" (*mumbles* I'd actually go as far to call it rape, but you know....) and just you know forgives him and then they go home and the book might as well not have happened because everything's okay now.

In synopsis, this book made me majorly uncomfortable, made me cringe, made me wince, and made me close my eyes in pain. I only finished it because I was bored and wanted to see if it would get any worse.

Like what even happened, what was the main plot?

This is the synopsis on Goodreads:

The Singleton family is on holiday. For seven-year-old Beth, just out of hospital, this means struggling to fill in her 'I-Spy' book and avoiding her mother Ruth's eagle-eyed supervision. Her 16-year-old sister Helen, meanwhile, has befriended a waitress whose fun-loving ways hint at a life beyond Ruth's strict rules.

Okay, see if I was writing this, I'd probably ensure you know, that something ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED, like maybe Helen actually did leave school, or maybe Ruth and Jack actually did split up, or maybe Beth died, I don't know, she might as well be dead anyway for all the relevance she has to the plot.

My first feeling upon starting to read this book was boredom.

Not much was happening AT ALL. Then things started to happen, but they were all weird disgusting things that made no sense and the characters had no reason for doing things. Then when I finished the book, I was baffled, irritated and more than a little disgusted.

This book wasn't even written by a teenager or whatever, it was literally an old woman who wrote it, basing the 1950's seaside setting on her own childhood. Like yes, maybe it means a lot to her and you can kind of see that....?
But at the same time, this is just a mess and no thank you.