Every Tuesday the ladies over at The Broke and the Bookish host a book related Top 10 theme.
You know that
moments when you are reading a book - and possibly loving it - and then
something happens and you throw it across the room?
Or continue
reading hoping to move past whatever that something was only to be
disappointed? These are my top ten of those "somethings".
1.
Power
grabs – I get exhausted just thinking of all the scheming that
went on in The Other Boleyn Girl. My own
life tires me out enough – I use books to recharge.
2.
Too
many misunderstandings – If every character is acting out of
some misunderstanding, cough “The Kitchen House” cough, it feels contrived to
me.
3.
Too
be continued… - In
my opinion book 1 should never end in a cliffhanger. I don’t mind loose ends or
not knowing all the details, but if book one ends with a major cliff hanger I
feel like the author doesn’t trust their own writing to be compelling enough
for me to continue reading. As a result
I don’t trust them to continue writing a story I care about. When I think of
the most successful series, the first book can stand alone if it needs too:
Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight. Examples of books where a cliffhanger made me
not want to read the sequel(s): Uglies/Pretties, Pure, Daughter of Smoke and
Bone
4.
Multiple person
narrative in first person – It’s just confusing.
I don’t notice when you put the
chapter narrorator’s name at the top of the chapter, so I’ll start the chapter
in the mindset of the previous narrator and get confused a couple pages in and
have to go back.
5.
Language that
tries too hard
- Overly
flowery (Purple Prose)
- Attempts
to create futuristic teen slang
6.
Wilting flower heroines /
controlling male love interests – Twilight, the gift that
keeps on giving.
7.
Absentee Parents/Demonizing parents –The YA trend of
absentee parents is bad enough, but certain authors make a habit of demonizing
parents. I’m aware that parents aren’t always right and teenagers are figuring
out who they are separate from their parents. But I find it incredibly
frustrating when books portray all the parents as selfish and uncaring.
8.
Wilting flower
heroines / controlling male love interests –
Twilight, the gift that keeps on giving.
- Under
explained dystopia – I am totally
ok with leaving some elements of “how they got here” to sequels, but if
the author leaves too many holes to be filled in during subsequent books I
fear they won’t fill them all in and I’ll be left with questions once the
series is over or that they’ll don’t know how to fill those holes and will
haphazardly fill them in the final book in a way that doesn’t make sense.
- Lack
of punctuation – I don’t care that they did
it on purpose and that there’s a reason for it. “Evening” and “The Road”
were just hard to read because of it. I won’t read another book that does
this regardless of how well reviewed it is.
