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?

References to messy eating. They make me feel sick, they’re not necessary and unless I’m really, really enjoying a book I’ll normally put it in the charity shop pile at that point.

On the back-cover blurb, questions like ‘Will Jane and John ever overcome the barriers to their love?’ or ‘Will Mary find the key to the mystery?’ where the answer is quite obviously Yes.

It would also be refreshing to come across just one book where the heroine doesn’t ending up falling in love with the man who she initially dislikes on sight.

Basic research. If your book is set in England, get kids school starting age, shopping opening hours and the motorway network correct. I probably wouldn't notice it so much for a book set in New York for example, but I'd expect it to be right.

Pointless detail. I'm currently reading a book which is describing the scenery on a person's drive to work....

Also... if the characters go out for dinner, sharing a bottle of wine then an aperitif, dont make them drive home!

I hate when she's don't work. I read a book recently where the female leads describes her life, she went to university, trained as a teacher, met her husband at work, they married and had a son, then they split up. All good, except when she is 36, her grown up son moves to London for work! Just made no sense and it would not have changed the story if she had been ten years older

I find maps and lists of characters at the start of a book really helpful, I'm always glad to find them.

Agree with lots of the above though, another one for me is adding contemporary real
life references, especially brand names "she checked her Iphone" just say phone. I found The Thursday Murder Club to be an exception to this as it is full of them and I liked that about it, but it was irritating in other ways (too many threads and characters, things not explained)

That should read characters ages!

Basic research. If your book is set in England, get kids school starting age, shopping opening hours and the motorway network correct. I probably wouldn't notice it so much for a book set in New York for example, but I'd expect it to be right.

I read a novel about Elizabeth I’s court where married female characters were including their maiden names as part of their full names, Hilary Rodham Clinton style, and it just looked weird. Also random use of Americanisms - on what planet would a born-and-bred Cumbrian living in London say ‘faucet’ instead of ‘tap’?

Hate books where too much happens to the characters. Like they have had every possible dramatic event happen in their lives. I lose all sympathy and don't care what happens to them next.
And l loved Sorrow and Bliss.

Books that the author only wrote in the hope it becomes an ITV drama.

When each chapter is a different character and there's 5-6 characters reading the marriage act at the moment which is like it and it's put me off reading their other books.

I nearly bought a book like this the other day, luckily I read the entire description first. I forget exactly what happened but it was basically ‘Jane loses her job, then John leaves her, her mother dies, then she starts being stalked, her child is kidnapped and then she is kidnapped by someone else. Will she escape her kidnapper and her stalker, rescue her child from the other kidnapper, get over her mothers death and johns infidelity and find a new job? Read on to find out’. I felt stressed out just from reading the cover!

Also when they keep being begged by their wife/mother/best friend to tell the secret and they just won’t. They keep saying stuff like I wish I could explain but don’t or I want you to understand but they don’t tell them anything to help them understand, just stop mentioning it in every bloody chapter then!

keep swapping between past and present

i am not up for it, either.

The zillionth book that is set around a group of 3 female friends. More likely than not one or all of them Irish.
I swear there must be a creative writing course somewhere that states you have to have 3 people to develop a plot.

Constant foreshadowing, the ‘Little did I know this would be my last day of happiness…’ drivel at the end of practically every chapter.
Agree with the lack of research, incredibly rushed endings, huge repetitions of plot lines from previous books in a series etc.

I also hate when authors do this:

”Two people having an important conversation.”
”But the author decides to stop say who is speaking.”
”Carlotta said, Dave said etc.”
”And the conversation goes back and forth.”
”It does?”
”Yes.”
”Are you sure?”
”Yes.”
” And by this stage, you’ve completely lost track of who was saying what.”
”Who was asking the question?”
”And you have to go right back to the beginning of the conversation…”
”… to find out who the very important thing happened to.”

Yes! And you literally have to count down the lines to work out which line should be assigned to who.

Series which start off so well that I get attached to the main characters, but then the author just keeps churning out a book a year having lost interest/starts making the characters do annoyingly implausible things and the quality of the writing deteriorates. Mr Rankin, please just kill Rebus off now.

When books are set in real places using real place names etc, then they get a small detail wrong.
For instance David Nichols' One Day was set in a place I know very well, one of the characters travelled on a bus along a local street (named) but the bus number was incorrect. It wasn't like they were saying anything bad about the bus or anything libellous. So why not say they're on the number 25 when you know that they are?! Why pretend it's the 178?

Such a little thing but when it's repeated use (the bus journey was a regular occurrence) it just niggles me.

And similarly, where a romantic plot is introduced into a thriller. Cue pages of tedious stuff about the romance where you desperately hope the bloke might actually turn out to be a serial killer, but no, it's just a romantic plot where a romantic plot has no place to be.

When inconsequential details are repeated from one book to another, unrelated to the first, novel.

When each book in a series deals with some unfinished business in the protagonist's life. One person cannot have so many issues that there's something relevant to the happenings of every few months of their life.

When the same twist occurs at the end of each novel however much it needs to be shoehorned in, without the backstop to the twist ever being resolved. It was clever in book 1, marginally less so in book 2 but boring and bloody annoying in books 3 and 4!

Authors who have a character who speaks another language but they have not got the basics of that language.

I read one where a Deaf ASL using American went to Paris and was learning French, which is OK, but ASL is based on French Sign Language so why didn't she seek out any LSF users who she could communicate fluently with?

You get this in TV / films too.

I watched one where the mother of a deaf boy was explaining something about his dad. She signed , "your dad wants to see you" but the sign she used for 'see' is only used in the sense of to look at someone / something, so what she actually signed was, "Your dad wants to look at you" when she meant, "your dad wants to meet you"

Agree with @PuppyMonkey and @petronella23 .
Also mistakes and implausibilities due to lack of research For example buying swimming trunks from a supermarket in Britain in the early 1950s.!
Female protagonists who are obviously the author's ideal woman. Incredibly beautiful and the best at everything they do but not at all realistic.
Overused words. "Spooling" seems to be everywhere in current fiction.

I've just finished Irvine Welsh's The Blade Artist & it ticks all your boxes!

The main character is called: Begbie, Frank, Franco, Francis & Jim! There are 2 other characters with the name Francis/Frances.

@PuppyMonkey re the lines of dialogue I swear I had one recently where even the author had forgotten who was saying what so it ended up with the lines the wrong way round. I counted it about 5 times and couldn’t make it make sense. Sometimes I think these authors have two hand puppets on their desks and just use dictation software to record conversations they make the puppets have.

Haha I'll avoid that one then!