Are they? Most of his books seem to sit around 4/5 and Remains of the Day even has over 4. Those are pretty decent scores on Goodreads. For comparison, Great Gatsby has 3.9, 1984 has 4.2, Animal Farm has 4 etc.

Why pay any attention to meaningless numerical ratings handed out by strangers?

Have no idea, his works are amazing. They’re beautifully somber is the best way I’d describe them. Especially his most recent one, Klara and the sun was very thought provoking and left an everlasting impact on me during a rough time I was going through.

For “Never let me go” I would say it’s because it’s marketed as some kind of twist story when that’s not the point of the story. While we do get a twist we can work out the major part of it well ahead. The point of the story was to feel for the characters hearing about the relationships among them.

So someone picking this up for a gripping horror novel with a twist end would be bitterly disappointed. As one reviewer put it “…he rambled on for 100s of pages” when that’s all all the books I read do.

I blame the two line reviewing social media bookfluencers for false marketing.

I’ve only read two of his books and I loved them. That said, slow and sad is a distinct stylistic choice (especially these days!), so it doesn’t surprise me that they’re divisive.