Are there key words on the jacket that puts you OFF a book?

Agree with many of you on here - it is very difficult to find a decent book to read and there is so much drivel out there.

One of the books I attempted to read while on holiday this shite was not doing it for me at all - on the back it sounded ok but it read nothing like I expected it to. I would read 5/10 pages at a time and still be none the wiser, and even more bored.

I then noticed that 2 of the reviews on the cover used the word "atmospheric" to describe it. Well, that was the seal of doom for me - it was deposited straight into the hotel library.
"Atmospheric" is all well and good...but not in place of a decent plot and coherent writing.
I will never again read anything that is described as "atmospheric"

Nothing to do with it being Irish btw - I am Irish and read many Irish books and authors, but this was just plain, unadulterated garbage.

geeka it's not so much Ireland that bothers me, it's that particular type of story during those particular decades, 30's through 60's probably, the miserable childhood where everybody is either drunk or dead, and the cover has a brown photo of some poor kid in a cap and no shoes.

I really don't like those books no matter where they are set, but Frank McCourt started all this so I'm blaming him. He opened the floodgates to the rest.

As I said, there are plenty of other books set in Ireland or by Irish authors that I really enjoy, just not this type.

Often they tend to use dialect style writing as well and you have to decipher what they are talking about and it seems like a bit of an effort when the entire book. Actually most books that do this annoy me. They have to be really bloody good books to be worth the effort of wading through dialect if they take it too far.

My mother likes to read a lot of books that go by names like The Rose of Liverpool Street or The Flower of the East End or Sixpence for the Land Girl. She's always offering to lend them to me but those titles just put me right off.

Choc Lit is a publisher (of chick lit, naturally): www.choc-lit.com

And following on from the magical healing powers of animals I submit destructive and savage mischievous but nevertheless delightfully loveable animals:

Fido and Me
Felix and Me
Taming Grogan
One Man's Mutt

And on, ad nauseam.

The moving, uplifiting true story of an unlikely friendship between a man on the streets and the ginger cat who adopts him and helps him heal his life.

Life for her and her eight-year-old son Joshua seemed relentlessly bleak.
Then George the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel bounced into their lives.

The inspiring account of a family's struggle to break into their son's autistic world - and how a beautiful retreiver dog made the real difference.

A selectively mute boy's extraordinary bond with the family cat has inspired his mother to tell their story

The cat that unlocked a boy's heart

Heart-warming... No cat-lover will be surprised by the story of how a grey and white rescue cat called Billy wove his feline magic around Fraser

Endal: How one extraordinary dog brought a family back from the brink

Okay OKAY I get it…people with crap lives feel a bit better for having a pet. Sheesh, how much more of this schmalzy bandwagon-jumping nonsense can the publishing industry possibly sustain?

chocolate features heavily in choc-lit would never have guessed.
Sounds fucking dire.

Add that to my list then.choc-lit put it back

Don't forget the marriage proposal at the end inside said chocolate shop...

Random *consisting there. Jeez the grammar is terrible. Sorry, tired. It's no worse than the actual type of book I'm emulating though.

Choc lit. An example;

Sally is devastated about her break up with her lawyer fiancé Adam, her job isn't going well and she's finding city living not what she expected it to be.

Leaving behind her close knit group of friends (the neurotic bestie, the ditzy bombshell and the token gay) she takes some time away from her hectic life and recent trauma and goes to stay in Tiggleton on the Whye, a quiet little hamlet consisting where luckily enough her kindly one deceased aunt lived in a beautiful cottage adjoining a chocolate shop. (Which is there for Sally to move into, no I don't understand either).

...Sally finds making chocolate therapeutic, reopens shop, meets local curmudgeonly but hot and single vet, locks horns a few times, goes to many many ceilidh evenings in pub with a band of eccentric locals who naturally all love her, friends visit and comment on how well she suits country life, how much weight she has lost, how glossy her hair is from country air, twists ankle in rainstorm, rescued by vet, admit feelings - kiss, falling out over misunderstanding, fiancé comes back on the scene, considers leaving chocolate shop, village woman has a word, Bingo the dog needs midnight surgery, Sally assists vet, kiss, love, chocolate etc etc...

And breathe, Choco-Shit for beginners.

P.s, I would buy your book, it sounds... Lively.

Will no one tell me what choc lit is????

Anything reviewed by cosmopolitan, good house-keeping, the DM.

I think there is a disclaimer that it isn't endorsed Beer, but you make a good point.

If I was Mary Berry I'd be looking to sue their arses off, "it's nothing to do with ME", imagine being associated with such bilge? People will assume she's endorsed it.

'A dark secret from the past threatens to destroy everything'.

Having said that, I did read I am Forbidden whose blurb has something along those lines and it was fabulous.

anything with a lot of pink on the cover, or that describes the female protagonist as 'beautiful' or 'headstrong'.

no to 'saga' or anything with positive reviews from the Daily Mail.

That makes me cross too devil. If they don't give me a hint to what the story is actually about, I can't be arsed parting with my money.

Choc lit!! What us it anyway???

Any book that goes on and on about how wonderful the author is, how many awards etc. without giving me a plot line. That goes straight back on the shelf, no matter how prize winning the book is