Book icks

I hate this too! It is true to say that pretty much all of these complaints are about crap books. I have very catholic reading tastes but good literary fiction generally doesn’t make these errors - it’s the penalty of reading mass market stuff. Also publishing has fashions - this leads to lots of poor copy cat novels.

Which is why it has to be multiple characters to wind me up. People have unpopular, unfashionable or ahead of the curve names as individuals. I had a colleague in the very early 2000s who insisted that caller had to be young as 'no-one was called Kylie before the 80s', except there was a Kylie in my sisters class who would have been born in 1970 or 71, and of course Ms Minogue herself.

So if a contemporary novel about 50 somethings had a Tiffany or a Kylie fine, as long as it also had a Sarah or a Claire, a Michelle or Jenny, a Mark or a David, a Gary or a Paul and at least one Steven/Stephen.

But if they are called Alfie, Evie, Oliver, Lily, Mabel and Jaxon it's unbelievably grating just at it would be if a group of pre-teens in a novel set in 2025 were called Beverly, Maureen, Terry, Ken, Gemma and Barry. You might have one of those but the odds of a whole gang who's names were well outside of the top 100 when they were born?

Diaglogue apparently written in an accent but its just gibberish.
We want to read the story not solve a cryptic puzzle.

"Historical" fiction that cant get basic history right. My worst example... the husbands/sons being in France throughout WW2 and all being demobbed in time fir the VE day celebration.

Book covers at the moment! Every other psychological thriller has a photo on the front of a house which is dark with one light on in the window

Also Lisa Jewell books. Love the stories but she is always describing the characters as she “narrowed her eyes” - once you notice it is hard not to. If me and my daughter mention Lisa Jewell we scrunch our eyes as we say the name

Americanisms that don’t make sense in the context.

I once read one by an American author that had drapes and faucets and closets throughout.

Another - different author - in which a character.started out from Victoria station in London to travel to NE England and met an RAF officer with the rank of Major. Sloppy, just sloppy.

British and American authors writing Golden Age type crime with no clue about procedure.

And getting titles wrong. Sir John Smith's wife is not Lady Mary. (Unless she is Lady Mary in her own right.)

@FuckoffeeBeforeCoffee I was going to say the same thing!!

padding - drives me insane.

When there's an elaborate, complicated pattern of the villain behaving in mysterious, obscure, and puzzling ways that hint at deep, twisty, fascinating, multilayered secrets and then ... 300 pages later, the explanation turns out to be ... they're completely bonkers and have no idea why they did any of it, LOL!

Pointless dream sequences, usually in italics - I just skip them

Americanisms that don’t make sense in the context.

For instance, I read a book by a Welsh author where an old English family kept a dolls’ house on display in their English home. It was consistently referred to by everyone as the dollhouse.

I still enjoyed the book but that was irritating.

Descriptions of messy eating. It makes me feel sick & I’ve closed books & left them on the tube / bus before for that.

When everything is explained at the end neatly. Usually the perpetrator being arrested or is about to die and confesses to what the whole plot of the book is.

You could skip to the last few chapters and get all the information without reading the whole book.

Two things.

When I’ve invested time to read and by the three quarter mark, it’s clear the author has lost steam. The characters are stuck in a repetitive loop of thoughts or actions and I regret picking up the book. I either skim to the end or don’t finish.

Other issue is too much detail for mundane things. Don’t care if the character decides on tea this time, not coffee. Get on with the story.

When the fuck did everyone start “padding” instead of walking?

Modern books set in the past, e.g. neo vintage whodunnits, where early twentieth century British characters talk modern and rather Americanised English. Especially if it's therapy-speak. Stiff-upper-lip English villagers talking about "being there for you" etc. just grates.

My particular bugbear is Irish authors who give their characters names that aren't used here in Ireland, just so they appeal to a wider (particularly US) audience. It's so inauthentic. They're never called Mary or Jack, always something poncey like Mara or Cashel. Cashel is a town in fucking Tipperary, fgs, it's not a name, and a mara is a South American rodent, not a romantic heroine. I can't see beyond the rodenty teeth.

Oh, and sloppy editing. If our handsome hero has blue eyes in chapter 2, don't make them brown in chapter 5. It really fucking annoys me.

<< and breathe>>

Main characters with striking, unusual eye colours. Aquamarine, bright green, cerulean blue, amber, fucking magenta for all I know.

Bonus points if it's the heroine and she starts looking in a mirror in the first chapter and seeing her gigantic violet eyes and various other beautiful features so that the author can describe them to us.

Just bugger off. When a character's eye colour is the only thing you can find to make them interesting then this is not the book for me.

when a book is written from multiple first person povs but they all sound exactly the same

Similarly, characters of different ages, sexes, backgrounds, whose dialogue all sounds the same. I once gave up on a book in which a boy from the East End, a Scotland Yard detective and an American woman journalist all spoke the same way.

When all the characters have current top 10 names but are meant to be in their 30s 40s or 50s.

And characters in historical fiction who have names that were unheard of in the past, or which are quite wrong for a person of that background.

Hard to explain but, unless it's relevant to the plot, I don't like it when books give very specific cultural/technological references that just aren't right for the era or cause the book to date very quickly.

For example, I read a book recently where, rather than use a generic term like 'social media', the author wrote about a 15 year old who used 'Facebook' specifically. No other platform more popular with teens today was mentioned. This book was published in 2025,.and there was no other indication that it was set in anything other than the present day so it just seemed out of touch.

Also dislike 'brand-dropping' along the lines of, "He slipped his Air Pods into his ears before hitting shuffle on his Spotify playlist and heading out to where his blue Volkswagen Golf 2l GTI was waiting for him."

??

When all the characters have current top 10 names but are meant to be in their 30s 40s or 50s.

The whole Harry Potter thing. Hated the little mr perfect he was written as and absolutely zero believability in any of the characters.

The fact that a lot of them (not all) over the last decade are pretty much the same.

I like crime fiction. But things that piss me off - one detective who drank so much coffee I felt like I'd overdosed on caffeine. Saying "snapped on blue nitrile gloves" - a few times in a book I can cope with, but you don't need to say it 27 times. Also one author whose favourite line seems to be - the smile didn't reach his eyes, once OK - do not repeat it multiple times in all of your books. And breathe.