Things that really wind you up in novels

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I just finished reading a 'chick-lit' book (not how it was marketed but it most definitely was, IMO) where the heroine starts out as an ambitious, independent professional who seems like she might be an interesting character for once, then as soon as A Man appears she turns to mush and reveals that all this strong exterior is just a facade she's putting up to stop her heart being broken again. Sigh. To make things worse you could tell she was going to fall for him from about page 20 because a) they hated each other and b) his wife was conveniently dead, AND it had one of those 'quirky' The Quaintly-Named Suburban Avenue Ladies' Flower Arranging Society type titles. It was a shame because otherwise it wasn't a badly written book, it was just ruined for me by too many cliches... What things in a novel make you sigh and think 'Oh God, it's one of those books'?

American use of z instead of s in books set in Britain by British authors. Realization for example.

Peter James and Peter May, I'm looking at both of you. I can't believe both you and your publishers are all too stupid or lazy to set the regional spelling correctly on your word processors.

Books in series that contain background detail within the book. OK not everyone reads series in order, but if you want to make casual readers aware of background, you could put a separate chapter in at the beginning rather than breaking up the story to explain again about a previous job or messy divorce etc.

Writing in accent/dialect.
Tell me where they are from, then write in standard English, please. I can imagine the accent for myself.

No "hand aye say-ed, puh-lease!" She drawled in her Southern American accent.

Ben Elton, I'm looking at you.

Major characters being introduced in the last chapter - unknown dead aunt's dogs bestfriends brother who is unhinged and just happened to recognise you as you crossed the street to drop your drycleaning in at your new bezzie mates drycleaners, because you so need to have your designer dress cleaned when you have being angsting about your lack of money for 23 chapters.

Deathbed confessions - ususally by the character introduced in the chapter above. They are really very misunderstood and didn't mean to throw your adoptive parent off a cliff in a hissy fit.

Not knowing the local geography - Taxi rides that take longer to tell the driver where you need to go than the walk. Or the miraculous pre lunch walk to a picturesque pub across the moors that takes mortals most of the day.

"Fick but heart of gold" locals, who get given a 2nd chance by the heroine and go on to give Alan Sugar a run for his money.

Any character described as "Delicious"

Actually

Books with eye-hitting product placement, where the story and characters etc. are developed over hundreds of pages, but the actual denouement only takes about 5 and leaves you "caught short".
Yes, Patricia Cornwell, I may have been thinking about you when I typed the above...

Tee hee at overuse of 'oh my!' by the way.

Although my absolute desert island book, Lord of the Rings winds me up in two ways:

• predominantly darkly sneering or belittling anything said by Boromir (OK I know he's a bit arrogant) until he's dead, at which point he becomes a paragon of virtue.

• overuse of fucking Lo! or Behold! in Return of the King.

Spelling. Poor spelling ruins a book for me, and using the wrong word - there istead of their for example.

Bad research or no research - Tom Clancy I am looking at you, I very much doubt you can get a ferry to the IoW on Christmas day, you certainly will not see people queuing up in their local bakeries all over London.

Not IN novels as such but my number one windup is when they put the 1st chapter of a forthcoming book in the end and I don't notice. There I am barreling along at usual reading pace when BAM. Book finishes. I usually slow down a bit towards the end - savour the moment. Drives me mad.

I cringe when one character is telling another character that they love them and they use the person's first name and surname.

E.g. "I love you, Kate Smith".

When declaring undying love to a partner, I've never done this.

I can't bear Danielle Steel books. Just find them incredibly repetitive, in terms of each other and worse, in themselves. Literally the same paragraphs end up being repeated several times within the same novel! Please tell me I'm not the only one who has noticed that.

I also loathe the way that so many of her heroines have unplanned pregnancies (in this day and age of widely available contraception), yet every single one of them has moral objections to having an abortion whatever the circumstances (nothing to do with Steele's Catholic background I'm sure).

Also the way the female characters stick by abusive and useless men for far too long, I end up wanting to throw the book across the room in frustration. Or at least I did before I resolved not to read any more. Honestly, after I'd read a few of her novels your average chick lit novel seemed wonderfully original in comparison ;)

The heroines seem to had more than enough money (due to savings, inheritance, fuck knows) to be able to leave their job, live somewhere else for 6 months and decide what they want to do with their lives. A failed romance or 'misunderstanding' is fixed by some lovely friends and gallons of ice cream - not by getting shitfaced, shagging someone in a pub and hating yourself the next day..that might just be me though..

And they're all 'quirky' looking but really beautiful and don't realise it.

And the impossibly handsome vet, doctor, dot com millionaire, secret rock star who is introduced in the first chapter is who she'll fall in love with. Never some weird looking unemployed bin man. With a tic. Who is going bald.

I love this thread!
The thing I hate the most is head-throwing, as in 'he threw his head back and laughed'. I always picture them with whiplash.

Nobody ever works in insurance, conveyancing, local authority, in Asda, as a mid day supervisor, Underground station cleaner....you know those boring jobs that most people have. It's always publishing or marketing. Gggrrrr

I'd much rather see romance blossom while our heroine is stressing out over how to ensure the local bin collection can be maintained following a 25% budget cut.

Historical novels where they give the characters modern reactions. For example, novels about Lady Jane Grey where she moans about "mum and dad just not understanding what it's like to be a teenager, I just want to hang out with my friends". The author practically had her eye-rolling, slamming doors and texting her friends. Different times, different society, DIFFERENT REACTIONS. And breathe

This thread is hilarious GahLinDah yours in particular!

Can I add martina Cole and her use of the word skulduggery in every frickin book grrrr

Hoping Hellkitty just described her DH.

I also hate busy mum plot devices where the heroine is a wonderful exemplary and usually single mum who adores her children loudly for the first few pages to establish the character and spends the rest of the novel chasing after random men and or improbable marketing career.

Child then has a crisis of some sort (disappearance or serious illness) and mum realises her place is with child again.

Oh God yes - Martina Cole! I read her latest book and it was dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.

Always East End villains who are nasty, violent thugs, but have a heart of gold and love their mothers/wives/girlfriends.

Explained everything in words of one syllable - what was happening, what the person thought, what the other person thought, why they reacted like they did, etc. Readers never have to engage brains when they read her books!

Referring to erections as 'hardness', as in 'she reached down and felt his hardness'. I just picture a man with a crotch made of cement.

Busted MrsMorton

Yy Martina Cole, I give you - "belly full of arms and legs" to describe a pregnant woman.

I'm with people on bad research.
The book I'm currently reading starts with someone taking the battery out of an iPad. Honestly. Two seconds of talking to anyone who owns an iPad will show that you can't simply pop the back off and take the battery out. It's not like they are some rare and random item.
There was another book where the protagonist was born the same year as me. She talks about her love of Roald Dahl books, which I loved too, especially Matilda, which I have never read because it was released when I had grown out of his books.

Random, non-central characters who disappear after their first appearance, only to re-appear about three quarters of the way through the book when you have no idea who they are.

And fantasy books are particularly bad for this one - I know you want to show it's 'different' by giving your characters non-standard names, but if you have a huge amount if characters whose names are all about ten characters long and only differ by one or two letters, I probably will get confused. Or if you must, write a list at the front like Jilly Cooper!

(Speaking of whom, she has a definite tic about the rank, sexy smell of wild garlic. I think it might be in every book.)

At belly full of arms and legs