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?

I agree with this. If characters have names starting with the same letter, especially in foreign books, I get very confused.

When an author plots a story as a trilogy and never gets round to the final book.
Looking at you Patrick Rothfuss. I read Name of the Wind in sodding 2007, second book published 4 years later and now its been over a decade and the final book has still not been published.

When the book is a sequel and they spend ages explaining what happened in the previous book. I doubt anyone who wants to read the Harry Potter series is going to randomly start on Book 3.

When there isn’t actually a plot. It’s just a series of ‘charming’ characters going about their lives.

When you can work out the love interest at the start of the book but the protagonist hates him. Then there’s a “perfect” man, who she chases, who turns out to be a horrible.
Then all of the bad things about the first man are explained away and he saves her. Leaving her to fall in love with the bastard/now perfect, man.

I know I should stop reading these types of books but every now and again one catches me out and I start to read it.

I think books flitting back and forth is the fashion at the moment or at least it was for a while like on TV.

I don’t like it when authors chose similar names for characters too. There are so many names to chose from, it’s completely unnecessary.

Books that end too quickly.

I liked my year of rest and relaxation but it ended so suddenly!

Sorrow and bliss was so frustrating- if you are going to write about a mental illness- name it!

I didn't like the no punctuation in girl woman other.

I tend to not read books by men because they almost never pass the bechdel test- 2 female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.

i love Kate Atkinson but her recent one had a trillion characters and consequently I still don’t know who was killing people or why.

Books written by men when there’s a perv object young female character who really has a thing for older men and inexplicably starts an affair with our main character. Yes dear I’m sure that happens to you constantly in porn.

@MermaidMummy06 totally agree on ambiguous endings where ‘the reader’ is supposed to make up their mind what happens. Very few authors are good enough to pull this off imo and it just comes across as lazy.

When someone has a 'secret' and they draw it out through three quarters of the book by cutting off the chapter when someone is about to find to out The Secret.

Books that have one of those scenes from the murderers point of view at the beginning. 'they pulled on the leather gloves and ran a finger across the blade. They would enjoy this tonight'

Where someone finds a clue as to who the murderer is and instead of phoning the police/intended murder victim, they put the clue aside and go shopping/do the washing up/go to bed and end up getting murdered themselves before they can let anyone know.

Where a female character examines herself naked in the mirror and describes herself for the benefit of the reader and is obviously gorgeous but has a tiny flaw that isn't really a flaw i.e 'she stood in front of the mirror and let the towel drop, running her hands over high pert breasts. She didn't consider herself beautiful. She had a heart shaped face, brown curly hair down to her full, round bottom, clear green eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across her small nose, but it was ruined by her full generous lips which always made it look like she was pouting. She was so ugly, she couldn't get a boyfriend'

I remember reading a book as a teenager with Joey and Zoey. I was confused for ages if this character was make or female, until I realised there were two characters.

I personally hate the 'car crash moment' where you can tell something bad is going to happen for pages. Usually along the lines of knowing someone will overhear a conversation or see something and misconstrue the situation e.g. walk in at the exact moment someone tries to kiss the other character totally out the blue. They will then spend chapters not discussing the issue and avoiding each other.

When they kill off a child in the book. Same when they do it in movies too. I am okay with the death of a fictional child character that has died before the story starts - and characters are reacting to child’s death or adjusting etc.. But if a child dies during a story I’ll stop reading.

🤣🤣 - the ‘ugly’ female examining herself in the mirror.

I'm not a prude (I don't think!) but I hate sex scenes being shoehorned into books that don't, in my opinion, have any call for them. I like listening to audiobooks while I do stuff around the house or when I'm driving and I prefer books that don't require too much brainpower, like psychological thrillers and crime novels. Most just get on with telling the story. But there is a small but significant number where suddenly I'm confronted by badly written sex (while I'm peeling the spuds) and it is excruciating. It's usually the psychological thrillers rather than the procedural crime novels I must admit. Just get on with the fecking story why don't you?!

When a character has a dark secret in their past that causes them to act strangely towards all the other characters and messes up their relationships etc. Then when the dark secret is revealed it turns out to be completely dull and not embarrassing, and leaves you wondering why they didn’t just mention it in the first place. Anything less than a mad wife in the attic with a penchant for arson, just won’t do.

Poor geographical research
I read a book where one of the characters could see the lights of Lyme Regis from North Devon
That's some.pretty good eyesight!
Didn't read another word

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

Ugh. I spent the whole of The Four Winds willing someone to finally die so the book could end. I disliked the lot of them.

When the main characters who are clearly not suited get together. I can’t read anything where the intelligent, witty, attractive, thin, young woman gets together with the fat, balding, sexist, lazy, unclean, very unremarkable much older man.
I agree about flicking between using surnames and first names.
Rushed, lazy endings where the writer can’t think of an interesting, plausible ending.
Descriptions of female characters being obsessed about appearance or imaginary flaws such as weighing 9 stone. Then no such ‘flaw’ in male characters.
Maps at the beginning of books. No, don’t read if I need to refer to a map. The writer should be able to either describe in enough detail or let the reader imagine the scene.

Sorrow and bliss was so frustrating- if you are going to write about a mental illness- name it!

That was the whole point. Not to centre the illness, but to allow the reader to fill in their own blanks. I thought it was great.

When the author is so obviously hoping that the film rights will be picked up that the whole book reads like a screenplay. Over-description of locations, wordy dialogue but shallow characterisation. You can spot them a mile off.

I loved Sorrow and Bliss.

I love a flawed character. Great writers can make the reader empathise with a flawed character and dislike the likeable characters. Poor writers can’t.

When they have a mahoosive great plot hole that never gets dealt with. Just been reading a book about someone fitted up for a supposed murder. One piece of evidence against him was that he was seen burning his clothes, some were found unburned and covered in blood. Elsewhere in the story it's revealed that none of the accused's DNA was on the victim. Yet not once does it occur to anyone to test the blood on the clothes he was burning. As it turned out, that would have revealed that none of it was the victim's blood. I mean, I know that would have meant there was no story because the man would never have been charged, but it's up to the author to get round that one.

I hate when timings are unrealistic.

Eg I read a book recently where a character woke at 8am after a long, deep sleep. She went for a 10k run, came back and had a long bath, washed her hair, had breakfast and read the papers, and then met someone at 9am.

Yep.

I read the start of a post apocalypse novel. The main character went from Paris to Quimper in Brittany for dinner and then drove back in a couple of hours.

That's a 700 mile round trip.