Book icks

[butimamonstersaidthemonster]

I love hearing peoples biggest book icks.

I hate when plot holes are explained by characters being so rich that they have access to technology that doesn’t exist.
I hate when a character is paralysed and then it turns out that they were faking it - you can’t fake it for months or in some books years!
I hate when books are described as ‘the next gone girl’ like it isn’t a major spoiler.

I'm sure I have loads more I can’t think of right now.

Book covers at the moment! Every other psychological thriller has a photo on the front of a house which is dark with one light on in the window

Also Lisa Jewell books. Love the stories but she is always describing the characters as she “narrowed her eyes” - once you notice it is hard not to. If me and my daughter mention Lisa Jewell we scrunch our eyes as we say the name

Diaglogue apparently written in an accent but its just gibberish.
We want to read the story not solve a cryptic puzzle.

"Historical" fiction that cant get basic history right. My worst example... the husbands/sons being in France throughout WW2 and all being demobbed in time fir the VE day celebration.

Which is why it has to be multiple characters to wind me up. People have unpopular, unfashionable or ahead of the curve names as individuals. I had a colleague in the very early 2000s who insisted that caller had to be young as 'no-one was called Kylie before the 80s', except there was a Kylie in my sisters class who would have been born in 1970 or 71, and of course Ms Minogue herself.

So if a contemporary novel about 50 somethings had a Tiffany or a Kylie fine, as long as it also had a Sarah or a Claire, a Michelle or Jenny, a Mark or a David, a Gary or a Paul and at least one Steven/Stephen.

But if they are called Alfie, Evie, Oliver, Lily, Mabel and Jaxon it's unbelievably grating just at it would be if a group of pre-teens in a novel set in 2025 were called Beverly, Maureen, Terry, Ken, Gemma and Barry. You might have one of those but the odds of a whole gang who's names were well outside of the top 100 when they were born?

I hate this too! It is true to say that pretty much all of these complaints are about crap books. I have very catholic reading tastes but good literary fiction generally doesn’t make these errors - it’s the penalty of reading mass market stuff. Also publishing has fashions - this leads to lots of poor copy cat novels.

For me, it's the super-twisty villainous scheme in which the hero deduces his way through layer after layer of subtle clues, only to fall into the villain's final trap...

...where he would never have ended up if he hadn't worked out the first bits. I mean, what kind of wasteful villain rests their whole, expensive, evil plot twist on the off-chance that the hero will brilliantly deduce where to go from two old postcards, half a crossword and a chance encounter with a retired professor?

Random, implausible lesbianism to punctuate a character’s life changes. Looking at you Elif Shafak, but you’re not the only one.

I'm out as soon as a character is introduced as a they/them. It is too confusing and distracting as I am always trying to work out who the other people in the scene is and then I realise that there is only one person. I think it was mandatory a few years ago to appease the young, ultra-woke publishing staff who would otherwise reject the manuscript.

In shit-erature I have a peeve for "overstuffed armchairs". What even is this? Why didn't they stop stuffing the armchair when it was stuffed enough?

In literary fiction I loathe and detest the American post-grad creative writing nonsesne of "so much x" - e.g. "The snow fell like so much white frosting", "the sun shone like so much golden honey", "the plums hung like so much hairy bollocks".

On the subject of covers why do loads of recent novels have 'A novel' somewhere on the cover? I've manged to identify 1000s of novels in my life without it being spelled out on the cover.

I call this the Scooby Doo effect for books and films. If you need to explain everything in the last chapter or few minutes you've done a very poor job.

Person falsley accused of a crime. Goes on the run. Commits actual crimes clearly their name.
Faces no consequences for those crimes when original criminal caught.

See also - someone being the victim of mysterious, obscure, puzzling events that seem inexplicable - then it turns out they are completely bonkers and none of the events actually happened.

An unreliable narrator, done well, can be brilliant but as a lazy way of explaining an impossible plot, it's a 'throw the book across the room in annoyance' device.

The glowing book reviews shown on the cover attributed to other authors of the same genre....I have noticed that they all have either the same publishing house. So they just fawn over each other's books.

Men writing badly from a woman's point of view. Makes me furious.

I can't remember the author but she said "... in his orbit" every other chapter. 🙄

You may recognise who it is. I had to stop reading her books.

When you've read the whole book guessing who the villain is for it to turn out to be the postman. He delivered one letter in Chapter two but has never been mentioned since and for whom there is no reasonable rationale for his villainly.

Sloppy editing/proof reading

Thoughtless stereotyping

Brand dropping

I hate reading “she padded through to the kitchen” padded - once you focus on it…grr Another is male writers always using breast size as part of the description of female characters. I enjoyed Sarum but even the Neolithic women’s breast size was remarked on!

Or the Stephen King reverse version of this where all his modern day teenagers are called things like Patty and Bob and Ken and Mary 🙄

I always ALWAYS skip any poetry or songs in books

I hate it when book 1 is a single pov - and for a random reason book 2 or 3 etc is suddenly another pov.

I hate growling men, simpering girls, padding (as above), watery bowls, biting lips, world sworn enemies to lovers, 8ft tall men paired with 3ft women, who are tiny and breakable

I just finished an audiobook where every 3 minutes the protagonist had an imaginary conversation with her dead mother. I actually wanted to toss my phone out the window at one point, such was the annoyance.

Stopping reading commercial fiction would solve most of these.

This one, and I will add when people 'mouth' or 'breathe' rather than just whisper or talk or whatever!

An alcoholic / divorced detective returning to their home town and solving a cold case from when they were young 🥱

I read a book recently where the author kept stating "of course he did" over and over again. Like "Jason had a top of the range BMW, of course he did". "Jason lived in a multi million pound house of course he did" It would have been ok to use once but it went on throughout the book.