I hate it when books do this

[petronella23]

• start by flinging you into the middle of a conversation or action scene where you don't know who anyone is

• keep swapping between past and present

What are your pet hates?

when a moderately interesting story about normal characters with good and bad sides suddenly turns into one character being revealed to be a totally unbelievable homicidal psychopath

When there's too many characters and can't remember who is who.

Weird or unresolved endings. Where I'm expected to interpret what happened or guess. Especially the kind that stops mid story and I'm thinking where's the rest? I don't expect a predicable or neat little bow ending but some kind of ending please!!

Where one conversation or secondary storyline takes half the book before getting onto the real story.

Poorly written porn romance or celebrity written drivel, that gets published & sells millions of copies and everyone keeps telling me how wonderful it is.

When it is written in the present tense despite happening hundreds of years ago.

When characters either prevaricate for ages or refuse to speak to each other when one conversation could sort it all out in five minutes (I appreciate these are both to create content, but I would rather they sorted themselves out and then moved onto another new situation for more content).

gosh, yes- I hate books written in the present tense

so babyish

When there are too many characters with point of view and none of the voices are distinctive enough so I have no idea whose head I'm supposed to be in.

Books that end and leave cliffhangers and loads of plot threads unfinished - argh!

Novels written in ways that are supposed to mimic films (unless it's a parody). They tend to describe highly generic scenes rather than the interiority of characters and often "cut to" or "fast forward to" another generic scene.

Long books with rushed endings

When characters names are too alike like Alice or lily . Referring to characters sometimes by surname , sometimes by christian name . Just pick one and stick to it .

Books with unnecessary filler that stops the flow of the story.

@petronella23 are you referring to sorrow and bliss by meg mason? I enjoyed that book overall but hated the flicking from one period in time to another.

This was such an annoying book - especially the ‘mental condition‘ which was never specified. Made no sense at all.

When it flicks between different sub-storylines each chapter, just as you have got into one story you are forced to go back to a different one.

Agree with@bizzywiththefizzy, multiple characters with the same or similar names (one hundred years of solitude...)

No likeable characters. Why would I care to read about the lives of a bunch of people I don't like?

I hate it when all the characters are referred to by their surname only. It might just be me, but I just can't picture them or keep them in my head, so it all becomes a bit confusing. Especially is it's a 'cast of many' and the surnames are not ones that I've even heard of 😩

Well, I prefer being flung in the middle rather than interminable exposition, as with Gone WIth the Wind, where for years every time I tried to read it, I was put off by the boring opening.

My only consistent peeve is idiosyncratic English. I generally can't stand novels that try to tinker with standard English, like doing away with quotation marks.

Female protagonists who are exemplars of the current standards of conventional attractiveness, but whom the author jumps through extremely contrived hoops to make them appear to feel unattractive.

Erm, nope. You want an unattractive-by-conventional-standards heroine, make her 'too fat' rather than 'too thin'. But, you're never going to do that, are you, because no one could possibly fall in love with her then ...

And use first and then last name of the character so I forget and think it's another character

I can handle one major change like present then past then present, but not adding extra weird twists

Also hate when it takes 5 pages to say what could be said in 1

Books like the hobbit and lord of the rings, where you get a map or who’s who’s of characters before you’ve even got past the preface. I just know I am going to be so distracted flicking back and forth, that I’ll forget the plot.
Also, books where I can read the first and last chapters and work out what’s happened in the middle, without reading it. (Yes it a bad thing to do)

When the book is the second or third in a series of multiple books but doesn't say which it is!!!! So you have to do research to work out how many books came before it, to fully understand because of you read, say, the third book and then track down book one then you have to start again aaaggghhhh!!

Jean Fullerton with the (actually quite fabulous) Ration Book series 🤦🏼‍♀️

When chapters flick between characters. So Chapter 1 is about Kate and I've just about understood what's going off when we're into Chapter 2 which is about Sue so I start to understand Sue when Chapter 3 starts which is about Jane. Then Chapter 4 goes back to Kate and so on. ARGH 🤬

Another is when I am reading a non romance series of books and to start the main character is single for a few books then gets into a relationship with someone it changes the way book is written

Sure in real life I am happy for people to get together but if I reading a court room thriller series for example then the relationship bit is distracting

Or some other major change the writer seems to focus on the 'change' rather than the original point of the series

When the wife is being stalked/her life is being ruined by the husbands ex/something massive is happening and the husband absolutely does not believe her despite her being stable/not an alcoholic/not a drug addict/never lying before and the person causing the issue being awful/a psycho/a drug addict. The husband makes the whole situation worse for the wife, making her feel stupid and/or dramatic, leaving her alone, giving her no support etc and then at the end the wife is proved right by eg being almost killed or kidnapped or something and the husband is like ‘oh sorry babe, you’re right, my alcoholic ex wife who abused me for 25 years and murdered our three children and then subsequently killed every woman I dated while on day release from prison for the criminally insane, was stalking you all along - what a shock’ and then they just waltz off into the sunset together…

WTF! If I was being stalked by a psycho neighbour or whatever and my husband didn’t believe me I would see that as a huge betrayal and I wouldn’t forgive him and just live happily ever after. How can she count on him ever again!

When the cover art gives away a key part of the plot.

I had a copy of The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey where the artist literally depicted the entire plot on the front. Cheers for that.

Where the author has done no research. I'm looking at you Tom Clancy.

I attempted to read 'Patriot games'.

1. no bakeries are not open Xmas morning with people forming a 'line'
2. I doubt you could catch a ferry on Xmas day in the 1980s, you certainly wouldn't be transferring a prisoner
3. no you don't get pushed out of a London hospital in a wheelchair because the 'rules are the same' as in the US 4 no her maj and prince Philip are not going to take care of your little girl while you are in hospital.

I stopped at that point.

@SchoolTripDrama

When you are reading the fourth book in a series and the book explains something in detail that happened in book one, and was also explained in detail in books two and three.

Just put a hint for new readers, like, "she remembered a similar situation x years ago" Any new readers can go back to book one, those f us that stuck with you already know what happened.

Then in book five it is again described in detail but a different thing is described.

Sequels that contradict the other books, I first noticed this when I read Heidi. Well when I read the sequel and her her had changed colour from brown to blond.