Dan Brown without a doubt. You know an author is controversial when the Catholic church wants to boycott their novel and other authors take turns to insult it. Brown is not a spectacular writer, but he knows how to tells an interesting story that keeps reader turning the pages. I know a lot of critics felt that The Da Vinci Code was a terrible novel, but nobody can dispute what a cultural phenomena it became. As an aspiring writer myself it gives me hope that I could one day write something that will entertain people that much. Personally, I find the stuff written by Brown to be much more entertaining than say the massive books written by so called "masters" that are barely readable.

Dan Brown, Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut, Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowling, Stieg Larson, you name it and you'll find plenty of critics who bashed it while readers loved it. I haven't done any research on the topic, but to me it feels like there are certain genres where critics and readers always tend to disagree with each other. I'm not sure if critics are more obsessed with the technical aspects of the writing instead of how the books make them "feel" though. Romance novels tend to catch the most flak from critics, but thrillers also regularly get a beating from critics. It's just one of those things that bookworms have to put up with!

Honestly, there are just way too many to mention here. If I had to listen to every review by critics, then I would never even have touched some books or discovered a lot of my favorite authors. I mean the Harry Potter series of all books were panned by critics when it was first released and many of them were convinced that it would amount to nothing. I'm guessing that a lot of these critics are feeling pretty stupid after it became such a worldwide success. The same could be said about even older classics like The Great Gatsby and Catcher in The Rye. I could go on and on, but the point is that critics are only human and like they rest of us they have their own tastes when it comes to books. I'm sure there are a lot of people who agree with the assessment by critics, but at the end of the day, it is YOU who will be reading the books and only YOU can decide whether or not they are worth your time.

I feel like I should add that I have discovered quite a few critics who I wholeheartedly agree with, so it is probably a case of finding a critic with taste that aligns to your own.

I was a little shocked when I read what some critics had to say about Gillian Flynn after I read Gone Girl. It makes me glad that I didn't bother reading any reviews before I started the book otherwise I might have skipped it. I guess it's not as bad as some authors who regularly get flak from critics, like Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer and E. L. James.