Absolutely Ridiculous Things in Books

[SmidgenofaPigeon]

I’m reading (it’s painful and I will use it for kindling when I’m finished) Just My Luck by Adele Parks. I actually used to enjoy her books back in the day for a bit of mindless escapism and the characters were well-written but they’ve slid into lunacy over the last few years. Think twins pretending to be the same person and getting married to one guy (or something like that) and a mum’s glamorous 45 year old mate shagging her 17 year old son and getting pregnant while they all live under the same roof.

The latest one they win the lottery and calamity ensues in the most implausible ways possible.

The daughter in this one is musing over the fact that her boyfriend has turned into a bit of cad and she’s moping about, and musing over missing ‘the musty smell of his balls’

THE MUSTY SMELL OF HIS BALLS.

The character in question is FIFTEEN. She was ONLY FIFTEEN YEARS OLD (in the voice of Micheal Caine)

Please add, there must be loads, and we can have a laugh on this horrible wet January afternoon.

@polkadotpjs I’m a big fan of Bridget Jones too, agree it’s a very comforting read. I remember reading it for the first time when I was about 17 and finding it funny but not particularly relatable, then realising how spot on it really is once I hit my 30s and was still single!!

This one is a good read and very funny: www.goodreads.com/book/show/43528.And_God_Created_the_Au_Pair

Love this thread btw!

Obviously I meant suspension of disbelief by the way. Never read a book written by me.

I've loved this thread as it's not only been funny, reading about howling errors snd ludicrous scenarios but has also made me think again from different angles about books I've read.
I got fed up
Of the formulaic girl pitches up in village/ quaint coastal town and revitalises the high street with her new cafe/ bookshop or whatever. The first few were nice and some quite brilliant for escaping but then meh.
I don't think books need to be super realistic - I avoid books with cancer / child loss themes at all costs as I don't find them entertaining when it happens and has affected me but I do hate mad errors!

Hi all

Thanks so much for the nominations - we're moving this thread over to classics now.

@KitchenDancefloor@OnceIWasAnApe totally agree with you on the Dawn French book ‘According to Yes’, utter utter bollocks. Also tried to read Celia Imrie’s books, more celeb-written dross.

And as for Cecilia Aherne, particularly PS I Love You... a friend recommended it but oh, how I hated that book. The film is worse.

GrandTheftWalrus

It was Sophie Kinsella 'Wedding Night'.

It was absolutely ridiculous and I have no idea why I kept plugging away at it. I'm not a reader of chic lit usually and this certainly hasn't changed my mind about it.

@EthelMerman what was particularly disappointing about Dawn French's novel is that her autobiography was so readable. That and it was all I had to read in a hospital waiting room for several hours. I just needed something light to take my mind off the situation and I kept bouncing back to reality with a thud thinking, 'what a load of old shite'.

I will never forget reading Adele Parkes' first book. In which she said that she'd been so sexual with the bloke she was shagging that she could ' pick his arsehole out of a line up'

I didn't read any more of her books.

I finished reading Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho and it was such a good read. I really recommend. It was funny, quirky and had a main character who was smart and funny and not perfect. So good.

As much as I like the handsome stranger getting interested in our protagonist, I do hate few things that repeat all the time:

• The guy being mean and controlling but it is ok, because he loves her
• Descriptions of all the clothing, if this does not serve a purpose like describing an awful bridesmaid dress to show distress of the character, what is the point?
• Kids that always behave, and are not seen. Sometimes author just forgets that s/he put any offsprings in the mix because they are too hard to write
• The main love interest usually doesn't have job that he needs to be in apparently. When our protagonist has to attend work he can just pop in in the middle of the day. No biggie.
• Woman needs to be bad with money and spends on shoes and clothes
• It is fine for main heroine to be with taken/engaged/married man, because he is with a bad woman. It is always woman fault that the guy cheat on her, rrrriiggghhtttt.

I would love to read a book that has three parts.
First the beautiful, but not knowing about it, girl that gets the guy who breaks an engagement with the bad woman.
Second part from the perspective of the bad woman that shows the life with cheating guy who once showered her with the attention that this new girl is getting.
And then an epilogue when the guy meets a young, beautiful girl again and breaks his second engagement when reality of normal life kicks in again.

It is fine for main heroine to be with taken/engaged/married man, because he is with a bad woman. It is always woman fault that the guy cheat on her, rrrriiggghhtttt

This was one of my most hated tropes in chick lit. If the guy was so perfect, why is he such a poor judge of character that he manages to get himself entangled with a woman who (seemingly) has no redeeming features? Although I guess it works both ways as the heroine is often in/just got out of a relationship with a total loser.

It's why I liked Marian Keyes later books as the characters were more rounded out and less one dimensional and none of the significant others were there simply as a plot device.

@prismWitch

I finished reading Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho and it was such a good read. I really recommend. It was funny, quirky and had a main character who was smart and funny and not perfect. So good.

As much as I like the handsome stranger getting interested in our protagonist, I do hate few things that repeat all the time:

• The guy being mean and controlling but it is ok, because he loves her
• Descriptions of all the clothing, if this does not serve a purpose like describing an awful bridesmaid dress to show distress of the character, what is the point?
• Kids that always behave, and are not seen. Sometimes author just forgets that s/he put any offsprings in the mix because they are too hard to write
• The main love interest usually doesn't have job that he needs to be in apparently. When our protagonist has to attend work he can just pop in in the middle of the day. No biggie.
• Woman needs to be bad with money and spends on shoes and clothes
• It is fine for main heroine to be with taken/engaged/married man, because he is with a bad woman. It is always woman fault that the guy cheat on her, rrrriiggghhtttt.

I would love to read a book that has three parts.
First the beautiful, but not knowing about it, girl that gets the guy who breaks an engagement with the bad woman.
Second part from the perspective of the bad woman that shows the life with cheating guy who once showered her with the attention that this new girl is getting.
And then an epilogue when the guy meets a young, beautiful girl again and breaks his second engagement when reality of normal life kicks in again.

I think Jane Fallon has more or less written this book. Might have been her first one.

@arsenicNLace that's the one. I usually enjoy chick lit books but that one was so stupid.

Loving this thread!

A small point I've become mildly obsessed with in American books: they always 'grab' things, from takeaway coffee to toast.

Not pick up. Not eat. Not buy. Grab.

I fell down the 99p kindle hole again and thought of this thread very quickly when the heroine in chapter one is a 5’3” ‘pocket venus’ with much talk about her tall husband, her high heels, and looking silly together in photos. And in chapter two she is ‘tall and slim’.

It’s by a proper published author. Not Straight To Kindle.

I hate the ones which start with a perfect husband, perfect family perfect life. Then by the end it turns out that the husband is an abusive cheat who murdered some other woman. Not a hint of an unreliable narrator, just lying to the reader so you can have a big reveal at the end.

Oh sooo many books have the seemingly normal husband turn out to be a complete psycho! The book I originally started the thread about is an example- he suddenly morphs into a callous adulterer who lets his daughter get beaten up by gangsters

I'm getting increasingly tired of the "angelic teenage son accused of rape by a lying girl" trope. I've read quite a few of them recently and the boy is ALWAYS vindicated by the end, much to the relief of his mum who believed him all along. It would make an infinitely more interesting story if it turned out that he had done it, and it would be less likely to contribute to the perception that girls lie about rape all the time.

I've just started a Beth O'Leary that I picked up cheap in Sainsburys.

4 pages in and we've had 3 incorrect spellings unusual names.

There’s an old Jane Green book called ‘Babyville’ where one of the characters’Sam’ is mooing over a crush she has who will be visiting her imminently. In the time it takes for her 6 month old to take a nap, she manages to transform herself (bath/ shave legs / hair pack the lot), clean the entire house till it sparkles and make a bloody banana bread. I’m lucky if I can get a cuppa down me during nap time. Later on in the book she is able to set up a business doing illustrations and portraits cos - you know- she has so much fricken spare time!

Is it the latest Jilly Cooper where Rupert cops off with a South African nanny then keeps referring to her noonaa as a butter churn? That was hard going! 🤮

I went off all chick lit books a decade or so ago when, due to a series of unexpected events, I had to go and live with my parents in Cornwall for a few weeks. Whilst I was there, no one left me a fortune or a cottage, I didn't find a business which was run down for me to step in and magically transform ..... Oh, and there wasn't a moment where I suddenly had to appear in a cocktail dress or anything so there wasn't an opportunity for [handsome eligible men] to suddenly notice my beauty.

WhoAteAllTheChocolate, get off Mumsnet right now and start writing that novel! i want to read it.

Brilliant thread, thanks, SmidgenofaPigeon. This has really cheered me up after a miserable day.

This thread is fabulous.

I must confess though - I have borrowed (for free from the library) the audiobook 'The Shelf'. It's horrible!

I'm having a hard time at work and I needed something ridiculous to listen to. This fits the bill perfectly. I actually left it running today by accident so I missed an hour but I didn't give a shit, and I could easily work out what had happened during that time.

It's awful!

@RedWhineandgo

This thread is fabulous.

I must confess though - I have borrowed (for free from the library) the audiobook 'The Shelf'. It's horrible!

I'm having a hard time at work and I needed something ridiculous to listen to. This fits the bill perfectly. I actually left it running today by accident so I missed an hour but I didn't give a shit, and I could easily work out what had happened during that time.

It's awful!

Yes!! I hated this and reviewed it on my 50 book challenge

This book enraged me! Everything the book sounds like it is (after only reading the blurb), is reinforced by actually reading it. I truly can't see why it's a book about feminism, For the situation to end up as it was (all power to strong women, we don't need men etc), I found was wholly undermined by the fact that the women couldn't have discovered this thinking themselves, but had to be physically placed in that situation by the man in the first place! Looking at the reviews women seem to really like it so maybe I've not 'got' it.

@Sobloodyexhausted

Is it the latest Jilly Cooper where Rupert cops off with a South African nanny then keeps referring to her noonaa as a butter churn? That was hard going! 🤮

He actually called it.....brace yourself......buttercunt 🤮🤮🤮