Fiction cliches you hate

[SPBInDisguise]

I read mostly crime and thriller.
Can't bear books that take the first hundred pages to describe the landscape. Thick frost, frozen lake, snowy trees, onto the action please.
Detectives that drink lots of coffee and work all night but somehow seem to actually work very little

Adorably short upper lip? How strange

big dry pieces of historical fact randomly scattered amongst the story. Bo-ring.

Where everything metaphorically lands in the female characters lap. Whether it be...

Money or a property-via an inheritance from aged aunt.

An impossibly handsome and stupidly rich/successful man.

A fantastic job, in a fantastic company where despite being a total klutz, through amazing stokes of luck she does fantastically well..

Any heroine who "nibbles" food. I immediately imagine her with big Bugs Bunny teeth.

Anyway, give me a heroine who has a healthy appetite.

I've never understood "Their bed hasn't been slept in". It comes up all the time. How do they know? You get up, make the bed. It looks exactly as it did before. Yet it is an aha moment all the time.

Any "chick-litty" heroine who is usually a size 12 (so constantly watching her weight) and always has a "willowy" friend, who is gorgeous and gets all the men (apart from the one reserved for the protagonist.
Also heroine usually works in some random office job, generally publishing, that she's generally a bit crap at because she spends all her time emailing people or shopping in her massive lunch breaks, but still usually catches a break managing an important account or entertaining an international client.
I don't read them any more :)

I really hate it when an author has the same detailed sex scene several times in a book and often in several books. I really enjoy Nora Roberts but every flaming book has the same scene-only the names are changed. I know its escapist rubbish and better written than the ubiquitous 50 shades of knickers but variety would be good.

AlexReid

Yy to any historical novel with dangling historical events. "Shall we go to the Great Exhibition, dear?" No, fuck off.

Any historical novel with lovingly described anachronisms. "She sat in the breakfast room in her crinoline sipping freshly squeezed orange juice and eating blueberry pancakes." No she fucking didn't.

Anyone, anywhere, ever, "munching" chocolate. Happens in books, but particularly in magazines. If you are "munching" your chocolate, you are Doing It Wrong.

I hate it when the love interest or heroine is going out with a really one-dimensionally horrible person (the women always have painted nails, the harlots). Then when they get chucked for the heroine/love interest they always thoroughly deserve it, as if the other person had nothing to do with the relationship and was just a victim of their horribleness.

YY AlexReid on the beautiful-but-doesn't-know-it heroine. See One Day, 50 Shades etc.

Lisabeth Salander's whole face has darkened now.

I DETEST bookes featuring former ladette Irish journalists/tv newsreaders/fashion editors come over all motherly after being dumped by their caddish bedfellows and embark toute suite to a remote cottage where the nearest neighbours are bog dwellers - her parents are frantic rosary twitchers. Her friends are kerrrrazy and swear and smoke a lot.

She mopes about in arran knits swearing and her car inevitably dies. It's called Martha or Bertha or some such kooky funny name.

She eventually hooks up with really fit kind Irish hunk who lives with the bog dwellers in yonder village. They have tame but over breathy sex and she does indeed fall preggers. Kerrrrrazy mates turn up for a wedding in the bog.

So,,,,,, all of Marian Keyes books then.

You've not actually read any Marian Keyes, have you?

Yes.

alexreid and inItToWinIt sounds like all of Sophie Kinsellas books. I love her and have them all but they also really piss me off.

And yes the girl who thinks she is ugly but really is gorgeous. See all Katie Price books which I also love it.

Oh. You must be describing about the only one I haven't read, then.

Perhaps I mean someone else. All I know is there is some shit Irish chick lit out there. And I seem to read it a lot!

I read shit chick lit a lot too. Especially when I pick it up in the train station.

I just don't think it's a Marian Keyes plot and it's going to bug me now while I work out which book it is (very trivial!).

With 'Sophie Kinsella as Madeleine Wickham' books, what bugs me is the totally implausible poshness of random people. I'm not sure if that's a cliche.

It's definitely someone Irish with dark hair who looks like colleen Nolan a bit.

I have made up my mind not to read chick lit ever again. I just don't care enough whether they should get pregnant or fly to dohar to meet the bastard who only wants them for sex.

It's bring up the bodies or bust for me from now on.

Where heroines are inexplicably irresistible to all the male characters - yes Sookie Stackhouse I'm looking at you..

DeWe - I might be misremembering, but I think that the Box of Delights is a magical 'resetting' of time, rather than a dream as such, and it all really happened. Don't you think?

I agree on the body parts coming into contact with scalding liquids. In real life, the detective would be leaping around screeching and their partner would be making vague noises of concern.

The phrase "He said thickly". How do you say anything thickly? Unless you are stupid of course.