Lazy loading in EFCore loads all the data even if not accessed

Question

I have been trying to use lazy loading in ASP.NET core 6, I have followed the documentation to do so. However, the behavior of the lazy loading is not the same as described in the docs

Lazy loading means that the related data is transparently loaded from the database when the navigation property is accessed. Here

builder.Services.AddDbContext<AppDbContext>(
    options => options.UseLazyLoadingProxies()
     .UseSqlServer(builder.Configuration.GetConnectionString("Default")));

Currently I have the following entities

    public class Book 
    {
        public long Id { get; set; }
        public string Name { get; set; }

        public long AuthorId { get; set; }
        public virtual Author Author { get; set; }
    }

    public class Author
    {
        public long Id { get; set; }
        public string Name { get; set; }
    }

And I have this endpoint

[HttpGet]
public IEnumerable<Book> GetBooks()
  {
      var list = _appDbContext.Books.ToList();
      return list;
  }

And the resulted SQL quires are

SELECT [b].[Id], [b].[AuthorId], [b].[Name]
FROM [Books] AS [b]


SELECT [a].[Id], [a].[Name]
FROM [Author] AS [a]
WHERE [a].[Id] = @__p_0

So in the endpoint I am not accessing the property Author inside Book entity, then why ef core is loading data that I dont need it kink of like eager loading but with two queries.

Answer 1

After investigation I realized that AutoMapper was accessing the Author so that is why its always retrieving the Author data.

So, lazyloading in EFCore is not convenient currently.