11 Books That Divide Readers – And Why We Love Them Anyway

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“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”

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Some books are simply impossible to ignore – not because everyone agrees they’re brilliant, but because they divide us readers. Polarising books spark debate, ignite heated discussions, and even generate passionate online conversations. Whether it’s unconventional storytelling, morally grey characters, or endings that defy expectations, these novels elicit strong reactions: readers either love them or hate them. Yet there is something undeniably irresistible about a read that challenges our tastes, makes us think, and pushes us out of our comfort zone. Today at What We Reading, we’re diving into our favourite divisive novels, exploring reads that split opinions but still capture our hearts. From controversial classics to modern reads that provoke mixed reviews, we’ll look at the stories that are worth discussing – and why we can’t help but love them anyway. 

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The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt

Kicking off our list of books that divide readers is Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Aged thirteen, Theo Decker survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and clings to the thing that reminds him most of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately hauls him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. 

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America, and a drama of enthralling power. Blending unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful story of loss and obsession, though it continues to polarise audiences on the back of its hefty length. 

Fifty Shades Of Grey – E.L. James

One of the most popular book series of all time, you can’t move for the criticism Fifty Shades of Grey has garnered during its time on the shelves. When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The innocent Ana is startled to realise she wants this man. Grey admits he wants her too – but on his own terms. 

Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success, Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by his need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires. 

Yellowface – R.F. Kuang

Authors Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena is a literary darling, whereas June is a nobody. So, when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse, stealing Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese labourers during World War I. So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? 

Yet June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she’ll go to keep what she thinks she deserves. R.F. Kuang’s bestselling novel, Yellowface, won serious acclaim as a gripping social satire, plenty of readers also found the work heavy-handed. 

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The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

One of the most enduringly popular mystery-thriller books of all time, The Da Vinci Code hasn’t been exempt from criticism for its historical liberties and has even been banned for its approach to religious matters. Whilst in Paris on business, symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night call: the elderly curator inside the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. While working to solve the case, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci. 

In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. The Da Vinci Code remains a lightning-paced, intelligent thriller that is unpredictable right up to its stunning conclusion. 

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

Why Lolita is on our list of books that divide readers should be pretty self-explanatory, given its subject matter. The story is told through the eyes of Humbert Humbert, a refined, eloquent French intellectual who becomes obsessed with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze, whom he calls “Lolita.” After marrying her mother to stay close to her, Humbert claims custody of Lolita when her mother dies. What follows is a disturbing road trip across 1950s America as Humbert attempts to justify and romanticise his abuse of the young girl. 

Told entirely through Humbert’s unreliable lens, Lolita is at times a mesmerising and deeply unsettling read. Nabokov’s rich, lyrical prose collides with the profoundly disturbing premise, challenging us readers to separate the narrative beauty from the moral horrors in play. 

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Normal People – Sally Rooney

At school, Marianne and Connell pretend not to know one another. He is popular and well-adjusted; she is lonely and private. But a strange connection soon grows between the two of them – one they are determined to conceal. Years on, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet with new friends, whereas Connell has grown shy and uncertain. Throughout college, the pair circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities, yet always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. 

In Normal People, Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly sparse prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship. And whilst some might not have found the characters the most likeable, we think this is still Rooney’s best novel to date. 

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The Catcher In The Rye – J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye remains one of the most divisive novels in modern literature. Told through the lens of iconic yet polarising teenager Holden Caulfield, the novel charts his few days in New York City after being expelled from prep school. Readers are still split over Holden: some adore his raw honesty, his cynicism, and vulnerable insights into adulthood, whereas others find him whiny, self-absorbed, or frustratingly aimless. 

The tension is precisely what helps make the book a standout among books that divide readers. It’s a blend of coming-of-age themes, social critique, and a stream-of-consciousness narration that sparks passionate debates, proving that polarising books can be loved and critiqued at the same time.

The Rules Of Attraction – Bret Easton Ellis

An author who you either love for his unflinching nihilism or loathe for his self-absorbed, sometimes unlikeable character, Bret Easton Ellis is at his most unfiltered in his classic work, The Rules of Attraction. Set at an affluent liberal arts college during the height of the Reagan eighties, the story follows a handful of rowdy, spoiled, sexually promiscuous students with no plans for the future – or even the present. 

Three of them – Sean, Paul, and Lauren – become involved in a love triangle of sorts within a sequence of drug runs, “Dressed to Get Screwed” and “End of the World” parties. As Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at the self-consciously bohemian Camden College, treating their sexual posturing and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion, he exposes the moral vacuum at the core of their lives. 

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My Dark Vanessa – Kate Elizabeth Russell

Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic forty-two-year-old English teacher. Years later, Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa. Vanessa now faces an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of the past. 

Alternating between Vanessa’s past and present, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking, gripping, and undoubtedly a divisive read on the back of its dark subject matter, it is a masterful depiction of troubled adolescence and raises questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. 

Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. 

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jestbends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human – and one of those rarer books that renew the idea of what a novel can do, though its intimidating length and ambition don’t make it a classic for everyone. 

My Year Of Rest And Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh

Our narrator in this polarising read should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibilities; what could be so terribly wrong? 

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh aims to answer that very question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad concoction of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and darkly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of the most talented and divisive writers of our time. 

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