Books been rejected 86 times

[Iloveanimals]

I'm gutted.

What do I do now?
Should I give up?

Have you received any useful feedback? Can you get any honest feedback from someone whose opinion you trust?

Liked the style of writing. Hated the characters

Can you self publish on kindle ?

Time to start a new project.

Not every project finds a home. That's the sad fact of life for us writers.

Were the rejections agent or publisher rejections or a mix of both?

Getahaircutcarl is right. Think about a new project. It took me two novels to find an agent. Then another two to find a publisher Most published authors have a similar story. Persistence is key! But it is hard and I sympathise.

Agree with what others have said. Write another one! It will probably better and you obviously have promise if they like your writing.

Self publishing on Kindle is free, and the reviews you get could be valuable feedback for the next project

Have you thought about the criticism and worked out why it might be? Are your characters too wet, too nasty, too good to be true....?
Have you discussed it with anyone else that has read your book? Even if they didn't agree, they might have some insight as to why it might be.

Then you could consider whether there is anything that can be done to change the aspects people don't like. I discovered when redrafting mine that sometimes it takes surprisingly little alteration to change the way people see a character - sometimes a few lines of dialogue can make a big difference.

I would have a hard think about this as you embark on the next one to make sure it doesn't happen next time.