What are your book pet peeves?

[AlpacaTheBags]

What tropes or clichés annoy you in books?

I have so many but one is when the main character is at risk so they move far away to make a new life where no one will be able to connect them to their past. Good plan but they always go to some tiny coastal or rural village(Population 150) and buy or rent the most well known and distinctive building in the place(Usually a potter's or lobster fisherman's cottage.)

And then when the villain inevitably catches up with them, they always run towards the cliffs to have their final encounter. I don't know why because you can guarantee that at least one of them is going over the cliff.

So many things.

I hate series of books where the protagonist starts out as an ordinary person dealing with extraordinary situations, but then gradually becomes irresistible to the opposite sex and also inherits or marries so much money that they basically have nothing to contend with and have also become essentially superhuman.

Surprise family members in any form whatsoever. Recent perpetrators of this include Elly Griffiths and Alexander McCall Smith, both of whom should know better. Surprise pregnancies are also nothing but tedious.

Any book with a title like "The quaintadjective cosynoun of cutefirstname cutelastname" is best avoided.

When the only-elliptically-referred-to Big Tragedy is a dead child. As soon as the hints at a Dreadful Past come for a couple, you know it’s going to be loss of a child.

Clearly insanely attractive women being negged by the author - “lips too wide to be conventionally beautiful” etc etc.

Characters the author is clearly in love with. Jean Aule (?) of Clan Of The Cave Bear series and Jondalar and Louise Penny’s crime series with Chief Inspector Gamache do this.

Students ALWAYS have “double French” etc. I’ve taught for 20 years and never encountered double lessons on a timetable!

We often had double lessons - 1980s comprehensive school - maybe they died out before the 21st century and the author doesn't realise😂

But I hate the way James Patterson's books have a chapter every half a page! The most ridiculous one where the chapter ended halfway through a bloody sentence, then the next chapter started with the rest of it! I swear he does it to make his books look longer, otherwise they'd be the size of an Enid Blyton and no one would pay £8 for it! (I get mine from charity shops!)

For the first time ever I put a book down with perhaps 50 pages to go, it was a Lee Child's book and normally I love them. It was just too technical and I was worn out trying to understand it.

I think it used to be common to have up to 8 30/35 minute lessons in a school day, which meant plenty of doubles. Nowadays it’s far more usual to have lessons of around an hour so no doubles.

Characters the author is clearly in love with. Jean Aule (?) of Clan Of The Cave Bear series and Jondalar and Louise Penny’s crime series with Chief Inspector Gamache do this..

Ganache will literally be elected the new Messiah in a few more books.

Clan of the Cave Bear

How could I have forgotten that. This thread is reminding me of how many bad books I've read over the years. Not all bad by any means, but still

Yes to the present tense fad.it reminds me of writing exercises in first year French when you had only got as far as…the present tense.

Very, very gruesome torture and death scenes, nearly always inflicted on women. There’s really no need to go into graphic detail ( oddly female writers seem to be some of the worst for this, yes Val, I mean you). Hints can be just as frightening but less glorifying.

Heroines going out for a completely irrelevant run and never getting cramp, a stone in their shoe, caught in the rain , or just thinking ‘I think I’ll skip the run tonight and have a cup of tea instead’.

Oh, and books where the middle aged, probably overweight and certainly rather bad mannered and grumpy has no trouble pulling the gorgeous much younger heroine or victim ( probably interchangeable in this scénario). Plus books which abandon the plot for a long diatribe about a political issue or character which has absolutely no relevance to the story.

in fact, I don’t think much of any Stephen King after Cell.

Grumpy bloke, obviously

Every time a heroine goes for a run they feel the familiar pump of adrenaline in their veins, the feeling of their feet on the pavement driving away all their cares as their heart beats faster and the insistent drum of the music in their earphones drowns out every worry they’ve been having.

Now I like running but I still manage to worry plenty while I’m doing it, and I don’t go into a bloody trance-like state.

Product placement.

Obvious wish fulfilment usually in "literary" books where the main character is the author a not especially attractive middle aged writer/journalist/philosopher, but when a young, gorgeous person of their preferred sex enters the story, that person is massively sexually attracted to the main character for no discernible reason.

People looking out of the side of their eyes. This is one of the reasons I stopped reading the Stephanie Plum books. That and the fact they were all the same!

Clearly insanely attractive women being negged by the author - “lips too wide to be conventionally beautiful” etc etc.

I personally imagine them all looking like the Joker when this card is pulled. Wide-set eyes? Praying mantis. Nose with a gentle tilt to the tip? Probably Tiddler the Riddler.

Authors that don't use speech marks 😡 Sally Rooney I am looking at you!

Lack of paragraphs and chapters

Agree about "padding" and "sneering" both exceptionally over used.

Those titles that go "The ........... Of ....(insert place name)....." or "The ............'s Daughter/Wife/Sister"

Any book with "laugh out loud funny" or "funniest book of the year" on the front or back cover. Always utterly unfunny.

Books with a massive preview of another book in the back. So annoying when you think you have got another hundred pages to go and the book finishes. Even more annoying if you read it because then when you read the previewed book you spend the first two chapters trying to decide whether you have read it before.

Books that are published with more than one title because you inevitably end up buying the same book twice.

Books that use multiple names for one character, especially if there are lots of characters like this or the names are similar. First name, surname, and if appropriate mum/dad is plenty, don't go overboard with several nicknames and a formal title etc too. If you must have multiple names due to the plot (eg inheriting a title, military rank, or things like Russian names) then at least give us a list in the front of the book.

I don't get the hate for books in more than one timeline. Providing they make it clear when the time changes I quite like these. Same with multiple narrators.

Badly done unreliable narrators. I.e.

Part One:

Lots of things happen that are logically impossible, rationally inexplicable or downright bizarre.

Part Two:

Nothing in part one really happened because the narrator is unwell/on drugs/dreaming/a fantasist.

This really made me laugh!

And the women whose eyes are "too large" = The Fly.

I love a mystery book but I can't bear it when e.g. three people from a group have been horribly murdered at a remote/inescapable location and someone starts sneering (yes) when another character expresses fear/suggests that they should all stick together to avoid danger. They usually say something along the lines of "I won't let the fact that a terrifying serial killer is slaughtering us one by one ruin my morning walk". And then obviously either they or the person they told off is the next victim. It's just so unbelievably not how people ever behave it stops me in my tracks every time.

Characters spontaneously vomiting due to emotional upset.

Women driven psychotic by childlessness.

This is a great thread :)

Primary schools in Scotland - loads of 12 year olds 😁
My gripe - the woman is feeling nauseous, her period is late but doesn’t automatically think she could be pregnant.

Books set in cities the author has obviously never been to and is just listing a few well known areas. Especially London, when they very clearly only saw London on a school trip to Leicester Square in 1997 and hated it, so they make up a load of "Four Weddings"- esque nonsense.

Ooh and in those "move to the country" books, they're the only person in the village/town who isn't an nth generation local. Everyone else is suspicious of them. Also everyone else is only mildly educated at best.

They never bump into anyone who is maybe a local teacher and is really pleased they've arrived as they need another clarinettist for their jazz band. They never end up living next door to someone who maybe started life in Canada or Pakistan, or happen across the umpteen other people who previously moved from the big city having "discovered" said picturesque village and are also trying to make their cupcake business/art therapy enterprise/home for tragical kittens a success.

I recently read a book with a very diverse cast list, where the author talked about and thanked all the “sensitivity readers” she’d had read her drafts to make sure she wasn’t offending anyone and was getting all the cultures right. Then she had a contemporary British character throw pound notes at someone.

Books that are peppered throughout with designer brand names. I don't mind them if, say, they are describing something that's an important one-off such as a wedding dress, but I don't need to know the brand of the heroine's best friend's everyday coat.