Catriona wrote in the Heyer/Grand Sophy thread:
Sarah, can we do a thread on romances that we want to love, we should have loved, everybody else loves them…but that we can’t stand because something just left a bad taste in our mouths?
I like this idea for two reasons. No, three. First, we’ve done it before. But let’s do a new one. It’s been years.
Second: not enjoying a book that it seems like everyone loved or enjoyed can be an isolating experience, but as I’ve learned on the internet, you’re never alone in your likes and dislikes, no matter how outlandish they might seem. 0_o
And third: everyone’s buttons are different (woo, kinky!). What ticks me off may not bother you in the slightest, and vice versa. For example, and I’ve used this example before: there are many who are intensely bothered by historical inaccuracies in romances. I am not one of these people. The Duke can in fact drive a Porsche to Almack’s, and I’m fine with it. Whatever.
My hot button is stilted, unrealistic and awkward dialogue. If characters, like, for example, the Duke of Porsche, say things that real human beings wouldn’t say, and use cliches to the point that they don’t sound like actual people, I get really annoyed. Yanks me right out of the story and into Land of Crankypants. But the Porsche? Meh. Whatever.
I am not alone in that preference, but I do think that among romance readers, especially historical romance fans, I’m in the minority. And this is not to insult any author who busts her ass doing the research. Go on with your bad self – and your Porsche.
Catriona’s example is a bit more specific:
My example is As You Desire by Connie Brockway. Everybody is in love with this book and it always appears on people’s top romances list. I should love it – I enjoyed Brockway’s other books, I’m crazy about Egypt and archaeology and I love romances that are supposed to be funny and witty. It had everything going for it.
But I’m telling you, this book is like my own personal berserk button. To this day, I still can’t think about it or hear somebody sing its praises without my blood pressure spiking. My issue is with the way the author set up an “older” woman (I think she was in her early 30’s) to be the younger heroine’s foil. Basically, the older woman was rejected by the hero and pretty much every male in the book because she wasn’t as “perfect” as the seemingly smarter, blonder, younger heroine. I would expect this kind of ageism/blondeism in a book from the 1970’s, but this book was from 1997! This passage in particular, in which Marta, the other woman, sees the heroine at a restaurant, encompasses everything that bothers me about this book:
“I say,” Lord Ravenscroft suddenly breathed, “Now, there is a treasure worth coveting. Have you ever seen such a piece of tiny, golden perfection?”
…Marta followed the direction of everyone’s gaze to where Miss Carlisle’s progress through the room was marked by a wave of men scurrying to their feet as she passed.
To blatantly steal a phrase from you, Sarah: OH COME ON NOW AND I MEAN IT! Is this supposed to be a parody? Because it fails if it is. I ended up feeling whole lot more sympathy for Marta, while I wanted to bury Desdemona Carlisle headfirst in the sand. Normally the perfect, blonde, child prodigy, men-literally-fall-at-her-feet woman is the RIVAL, not the heroine.
Maybe I’m letting this bother me way too much…. But somewhere deep down, it grates on me that the heroine has to be this drop-dead gorgeous, “oh save me” frail young creature. I often wonder why people loved this book so much when I, who was much closer to Desdemona’s age when I read it, was so bothered by the discrimination against the older, more experienced, more capable other woman.
I got to wondering, is this just a case of me finding it difficult to relate to the heroine, and seeing myself as a rival to her to the hero? Nah, I thought Harry was an idiot too. His famous “you are my Egypt” speech just made me cringe. I would’ve heaved if anyone said anything so ridiculous to me, but apparently a lot of readers disagree judging by the links out there:
I fully expect the pitchforks and torches to come after me on this one, but bring it! Catriona “Encyclopedia Hittanica” is ready!
Ok, I’m about to come off even more objectionably: I have never read this book, but now I’m so very curious.
So, what’s your book that everyone adored, but you couldn’t enjoy it? You certainly don’t have to limit your example or response to this one. No shame and no shaming, please! Bring on your least liked books that made you feel the most isolated in your lack of enjoyment.
I couldn’t get past Daphne raping Simon in The Duke and I. (I mean, I thought Simon’s whole reason for not wanting kids was dumb, but he still has the right to not want kids, on top of the whole “she had sex with him when he was too drunk to consent and he said ‘no’” thing.) It really colored the rest of the Bridgerton series for me. (In general, I find Julia Quinn really hit or miss – she has a lot of consent issues in her books, and also a lot of “attempted-rape-as-farce.” But sometimes she’s awesome! I’m so conflicted.)
I love/hate the BDB series. Mostly hate. I only liked Zadists story. The rest, meh. All their “street” lingo is so ridiculous. All the urban culture references made me roll my eyes so much I got an eye strain! I gave up after V’s book. I’d like to see an author who can use urban culture references and language in a way that doesnt seem like they are trying too hard to seem hip and cool.
I also cannot get into Feehan’s Sisters of the Heart (or some such nonsense) at all. I bought the first book, read 4 chapters and threw it to the side never to be read again. After the horrible horrible way she ended the Drake’s series (the whole captivity and abuse was OTT) I did not want to return to Sea Haven. And explain to me how all heroines can have “eyes to big for her face” and are “so beautiful it hurts to look at her”. Really? I would think if she was ugly you’d hurt to look at her! You can find the same verbiage in every one of her books. It gets old.
A big one for me is Gena Showalter. I’ve read a few of her books and while I like the idea and some of the dialogue, something about them just leaves me dissatisfied at the end. I don’t know if it’s the writing or the characters, but her books just don’t work for me.
I read Soulless and liked it well enough, but realized that in future books the world wouldn’t be unique and interesting anymore, and there just wasn’t enough there with the characters to hold my attention.
I read the first Sookie book, the first Mercy book, the first Dresden Files, and just didn’t get hooked. Read the first two Angel books by Singh and just found the heroine intensely irritating by the end of the 2nd one. Also the contrived reason for the couple not having sex in the 2nd book was just irritating and… contrived. I love Psy/Changeling, though.
The Corrine Solomon books by Anne Aguirre started off good, but by the end of the 2nd one I realized that Corinne had become an awful cocktease and I was mostly skimming along to get back to the parts that dealt with the mystery. So I gave up on that series.
Oh, and it pains me to say this one, but Tessa Dare is a no-buy for me. I read two of her books and was so insanely frustrated by the fact that the couple falls in love and suddenly the hero expects the heroine to change completely to suit his life. Nope, nothin’ doin’.
Louisa Edwards – I hated the main character in her first book so much that I refuse to even consider buying another one. Her subsequent books have gotten good reviews, and I love the idea of a cooking-centered romance, but I can’t get over that character.
(I love this thread! It’s great to see that I’m not alone in some of my dislikes, and also nice to see the variety among what people like/dislike.)
I could not stand the books by Meredith Duran. They got such rave reviews, and I SO tried.
Laura Lee Gurhke is so hit or miss for me as well. I have liked a couple of her books, but couldn’t finished anything in her girl-bachelor series.
While I do like the J.D. Robb books, there are just too many of them. I stopped reading them several years ago. Nora Roberts, I generally stay away from.
I thought Meljean Brooks’ The Iron Duke was ok. Had no problems reading it, but have no idea why people raved about it.
This is a fascinating discussion – and I am also very tempted to read many of people’s most hated books.
Delurking to mention a book I haven’t seen yet.
To Have and To Hold was a DNF for me. I know THTH is on many folks top ten lists but it was not appealing to me at all. I tried another Gaffney, and it was the same. Something about the power dynamic between the Hero and Heroine did not appeal.
Duke of Shadows and Written on Your Skin were also DNFs. I found myself flipping through the second half of each book. The writing is fine, but the stories were just not for me, I guess.
I never read The Time Traveler’s Wife, but saw the movie and thought it was okay. If anyone is interested in a similar short story that is NOT a romance but is probably done better, try the Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. It’s truly lovely.
I LOVE this thread. It makes me happy. Let me preface my list with this: I am a 24 yr old virgin who went to a small private school that beat grammar, spelling, and vocabulary into me from a very young age, therefore I am fine with virgin heroines but I cannot stand misspellings and blatant grammatical errors. Without further ado, my list:
Nicholas Sparks – the man writes the same book over and over and over…
Danielle Steel
Shakespeare – I nearly failed senior AP English because of him. Thankfully my teacher stopped reading my essays on Hamlet and simply gave me a 75 in the hopes that I would never go near Shakespeare again.
Dickens – I HATE Dickens. I can’t even explain how much I hate Dickens, I just do.
Outlander – I tried. I really did. I was excited that the book was so long until I read it. I’ve been reading long books since the 4th grade when I read Little Women for the first time.
Emily Giffins – I forced myself to read Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and Baby Proof. I will never be able to recover those hours of my life wasted on her books.
Montana Sky – Nora Roberts is hit and miss with me. Some books I really enjoyed, like the Brides Quartet, others were kind of meh and then there was Montana Sky, which I finished only because I hoped that it would get better and it didn’t.
Upon the recommendations of friends, who know me well, I have no desire to ever read Twilight. Her writing is supposed to be atrocious and I think that I would end up pulling out a red pen to edit the entire thing. Writing well is really not that hard, people.
Where is all the Nicholas Sparks hate at??? Or is it just that nobody actually likes him, so he doesn’t fit the category?
I have never hated any book as much as I hated “Nights in Rodanthe.” I picked it up because I thought it was such a lovely title, and when I finished it – I try to finish everything I start – I hurled it against the wall as hard as I could. I was so *angry* that anything so bad could be so successful – and I’ve read Twilight. It was horribly written, just the most shallow, transparently manipulative, and telling sort of writing. And the ending, because it is a Sparks novel, was disgusting. Cheap, unnecessary, and dissatisfying.
Oh, but I forgot. He doesn’t write romances, he writes “love stories”. Snort.
And was it Laurens’ Cynsters who would turn up in every book and argue with each other for PAGES and pages, all about back story I neither knew nor cared about? Yeah, I gave up on her after two books.
@DeeDee, I don’t know how I forgot Diana Palmer, but your assessment of her books was dead on. Oh if I only had the time back that I wasted reading about her heroines who orgasm simply by having their breasts touched by men who usually treat them like something stuck to the bottom of their shoe….
@Tom, I used to love the Debbie Macomber books but recently I’ve noticed that they don’t really even have romance in them. Just a sweet story in which everybody loves everybody else. UGH!!
I’m didn’t know The Outlander had Jamie beating Claire and liking it. Some “hero”. I have some of the books, but hadn’t read them yet, so off they go to the recycle. I’m not even going to donate them to the library, because I don’t want other women reading that stuff.
I have several types of books I hate, but near the top of the list are sheik books and contemporary secret baby stories.
I tried one sheik story, mainly because it was one of the three stories in an anthology with an historical by an author I love (I loved the historical). In the sheik story, the heroine has hot sex with the hero, and then quits her high-powered Washington job(dumb, dumb, DUMB) to follow him to the Mid East when he asks her to come with him. He has NOT asked her to marry him—his family wouldn’t approve. Some hero. Sounds like a wimp to me. Then the “heroine” rants on about how she is an independent woman. She is NOT a mistress. No? She lives in the “hero’s” house, warms his bed, he pays her bills and they’re not married. If she’s not a mistress, she puts on a good act. I don’t remember the title or author, but I wish I didn’t remember the story.
As for secret baby stories, I can understand them as historicals, although I don’t like them. But I cannot understand them as contemporaries with the heroine as a first-world woman who is highly educated, stands up for herself, has money, and has access to birth control. She meets a hot man and her brain seizes up so she doesn’t protect herself? Romances are part fantasy, but there are some things I can’t swallow.
I’m reading Julia Quinn’s On The Way To The Wedding right now, and holy shit I don’t think I can finish it, I want death to happen to one Miss Watson, who is lollypops and rainbows spun into one sexy package, and who can’t enjoy a males company without thinking she’s in love. What a weak willed little idiot she is to first love Edmunds neck, then the horror, to doubt herself because she LAUGHED at another mans joke, then to have one bloody conversation with her best friends brother and end up nearly boinking at a party in a conservatory.
Code: they56: I’m 1/3 through the book and they found 56 ways to kill my soul
This was like 300 comments ago BUT…
@Catriona, Bet Me is one of my favorite romances of all time. It just strikes all my chords. I get that it isn’t for everyone and that lots of people here have stated they hated it but I do want to defend the plot. The only bet the hero ever took was a $10 bet if she’d say yes to going to dinner with him. He refused to bet anything else and didn’t even want that bet but got bullied into it by a client. He didn’t keep taking bets on her, his friends kept trying to get him to take bets he wouldn’t take.
Jumping on the beat up on Outlander bandwagon. I never managed to finish it despite my best intentions. Every time I thought she was done, we started up again. And I just did NOT like Claire. It’s hard to spend all those hours in the head of a character you have no sympathy for or empathy with.
That said, I do like Gabaldon’s Lord John books.
Taste is subjective, but this is kind of unfair given that Elizabeth spends pages and pages on all the details that show her Darcy’s character in a new light (and have nothing to do with how fantastic Pemberley is).
Whoops, I del-ed when I should have quoted. Should have been
Throw me in with the folks scratching their heads at Lord of Scoundrels. I didn’t exactly hate it, it was just kind of meh. I felt like I was failing at being a romance fan when so many people put it at the top of their lists of Best Romance EVARRR!11! I wasn’t a huge fan of the perfect heroine and Dain was so incredibly unlikable. His son was kind of a plot moppet, too. I’m no expert on kids, but I’m pretty sure that a hellion with a terrible mother and a heretofore non-existent father doesn’t just instantly morph into a cute kid running around the house naked and asking questions about babies after a couple hugs. Blech.
Tessa Dare is kind of on the list for me. I want to like her books so much. Every time it seems like they have all of the right elements and then I’m left feeling kind of empty.
Nalini Singh. I liked Caressed by Ice, but the rest of her Psy stories are the same recycled couples. I think it’s because she seems to fall into the trap of ~feisty~ heroine = making the heroine annoying. Even Caressed by Ice fell into that trap sometimes, but Judd was such a well-drawn character the book overcame the other flaws.
I also agree about J.R. Ward. I cringed from second-hand embarassment from the dialogue between the dude-bros. I’m sure there are others, but those are the popular ones I can think of off the top.
It’s so refreshing to read all these posts. I agree with some and disagree with others, but what’s so refreshing is the lack of personal attack on each other! People CAN agree to disagree… yay!
I’ve actually never said it out loud, since it seems everyone around me would SHOOT me if they found out…
… but I didn’t like Jacqueline Carey’s “Kushiel’s Dart”. Since it was so hard to finish this book, I didn’t even bother with reading the other books in the series.
Another example… I didn’t like Anne Bishop’s “The Dark Jewels” series. It had a great start… I was so excited reading the first book… but then lost all my excitement reading book #2. It’s been too long for me to remember what EXACTLY turned me off, but it was a good reason.
And someone mentioned Gabaldon’s “Outlander”. That’s another book I didn’t like. I don’t even remember a thing about it, that’s how much I cared.
Elements that annoy me in a novel:
– Short, skinny, frail and CLUMSY heroine. Bonus points if she’s pretty but doesn’t know it.
– Macho hero. He’s experienced (in whore houses), rich, powerful, treats the heroine like a helpless child and holds all the power in the relationship. Bonus points if the author describes his ~awesomeness~ in excruciating detail.
– Love at first sight. If one of the characters fall for the other right away, specially if it’s only for appearances, I am immediately turned off. There has to be character and relationship development, they can’t just jump that part and describe the “panting for each other” thing.
Since so many posted non-romance I’ll jump on that bandwagon.
Life of Pi – It was okay, but it dragged on for way too long. It could have been cut in half without losing anything.
The Alchemist – This one I hated. I thought it was fine at first, if a bit cheesy, but then the Alchemist shows up and he. Would. Not. Stop. Talking. The rest of the book was just an overly long lecture on….I don’t even remember anymore. It seems the whole point of the book was to teach us mere mortals A Very Important Lesson, and if that’s what an author is going for then they should hide that fact behind a great story. Or write a self-help or text book. If I’m going to get beat over the head, I’d like to know ahead of time.
And anything by Isabel Allende. I’ve read a couple of her books—both in the original Spanish and the translations—and they suck in both languages.
Oooo, found this discussion after a friend mentioned it.
I’m so glad that I’m not the only one who hated Outlander. I started reading it because I had read and re-read all my Susanna Kearsley books and someone said that I had to read Outlander if I loved SK. No. Just no. First of all, I never even got to the beating and torture porn (though I do like me some good h/c) so I guess I bailed earlier than most. I hated Claire. I was liking Jamie until he was so wide-eyed and innocent about sex and wanted to know if “the wanting” ever stopped. You mean the guy’s never been horny? I found Claire to be too perfect, and the adultery didn’t even occur to me, sorry, and people started liking her way too easily, or came around too quickly. Blech. Sex scenes bore me and those two were humping like crazy bunnies all the time.
I had remembered loving A Knight in Shining Armor when I read it a few years ago and eagerly searched it out. It did not fare well upon second reading. I had also bought Legend, another time travel type of story by Jude Devereaux and didn’t really care for it either.
I actually read a lot of Kathleen Woodiwiss’ books back when I first read JD and don’t think I’d go for that again so I never tried to find the e-books.
I read The Cove, by Catherine Coulter, thinking it was a crime thriller, but it turned out to be a romantic crime thriller where the heroine is abused and kidnapped more than once and the hero who is tracking her down (he’s a cop, she’s either a witness to a murder or a suspect) falls in love AT FIRST SIGHT and becomes her loyal protector and lover.
I think this would qualify as a romance, but I was so pissed off at A Discovery of Witches I actually yelled (nicely) at the person who recommended it and I refuse to read a sequel.
Non-romance, but something that made my head spin, was The 7th Victim by Alan Jacobson. The coincidences in that book were so ludicrous that when I was telling someone about it they stopped me after the third outrageous plot point, saying they got it, but I would still say “but wait, there’s more!”
I’m not that fussy on historical accuracy since I most likely wouldn’t know better. I also don’t mind if they use dialect, but funny, I hate it in fanfiction. Go figure. Actually, it’s because I know X character has a Boston accent, please don’t spell it out for me.
If a book hits me viscerally, I can put up with a lot of things, and I’m the same way about tv shows and movies.
I hate, hate, hate, women who seem to perfect, though, or are able to win over everyone or stir up their protective feelings.
Oh oh! I liked some of Ann Rice’s vampire books so I read the first book of her Mayfair Witches series. OMG, that book was so dense, if that makes sense, and the things that happened over generations were repeated in such detail that I felt like I had read 900 pages and was only halfway through the book.
trying again, stupid code word isn’t working – is it a 1 is it an l?
S’ter!S’ter! Here! LOATHE that people think he’s such a great writer.
I would also rather poke my eye out with a sharp stick than finish a Dickens. As for Thomas Hardy, I’d like to dig him up and beat the crap out of him. Really? I’m supposed to learn a life lesson from “It’s her fault I had to seduce, impregnate and ruin her, because she was beautiful. She should have known this would happen.” Yeah, big boy, I’ll tell you what you should know…
As for Heyer, I love her. But I can understand how people are put off by her language. My friend calls it High Regency, and it’s much more formal than we’re used to anymore. I read her books as if they were the geneology of romance, because, really, she did most of our tropes first.
@Lizzy, I really liked One Dance with a Duke, but the other two in the series just didn’t do it for me. I’ve been thinking about re-reading them, but it has only been a few months since I gave up on the final book, so I’m not sure I am ready for that. The sad thing is that I really wanted to like the last book, but it just took too long. I thought the heroine was interesting, but each time the hero kept saying he wasn’t good enough for her when he so clearly was made me want to hit something.
Another series that I really did not like was Alison Brennan’s 7 Deadly Sins Series. Typically, I like her stuff, but less than 5 pages into the first book had me ready to kill the girl. I wrote a blog post about it where I mentioned that it seemed like a really bad adaptation of Harry Potter into a romance novel. I also didn’t like the first book of the Lucy Kincade series. I loved all of her other books featuring that family, and I was really looking forward to seeing how Lucy adapted after being raped live on the internet. However, i just couldn’t get into it. I managed to get about 40% through before giving up.
For those people who didn’t like the ending of Jane Eyre, you might like to try Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair.
Oh, God, don’t say seduce. He didn’t seduce her. He straight-up raped her. At least the first time.
I loathe Hardy, but I confess to a perverse fondness for Jude the Obscure, b/c *spoiler* when the high point/happy ending of a novel is when the hero dies alone in a ditch? You’ve passed pathos and gone straight into bathos. Jude the Obscure is f’ing hilarious if you read it in the right frame of mind. It’s like that old Monty Python sketch about the Yorkshiremen or something.
Wow, I’m starting to feel like I’m in the minority because I love, love, LOVE Outlander. Oh well, different strokes and all that.
Nicholas Sparks – would rather gouge my eyes out with a spork than read that drivel. It’s the same freaking book, over and over and over…
Sophie Kinsella – Hated Shopaholic. The main character (can’t remember her name) was so brain dead it was a wonder she could dress herself without the aid of Garanimals.
LKH – I liked some of the earlier books, before they got all porn-a-rific.
Mary Janice Davidson – Snarky heroine that’s a vampire. Snarky heroine that’s a mermaid. Snarky heroine that’s a (fill in the blank). Boooooooring.
Janet Evanovich – Loved the first 8 or 9. Now it’s just fart jokes and the neverending love triangle. Enough!
Ah, I feel better now…
OMG! This sucked away an hour of my time, but I couldn’t turn away.
Thursday Next—I get it. You’re clever. I don’t care.
Zoe Archer—I just found Scoundrel boring.
An all the complaints about Tamara in Erin McCarthy—not only where was her adviser, but where was the ethics board? I enjoyed the writing but just had to turn my brain off at the sociology. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
As for the librarians who don’t read the general fiction books that ALL our patrons read, I’m right there with you. Once I’ve put the fiftieth hold on a book (The Help, for example), I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Could be magic, but I’m sick to death of it.
I run a romance book club and our two-hour conversation usually goes something like this:
“I loved the book, couldn’t put it down, but why does the author do vent, vent, vent?” We’re a hard group to please. I’ve had authors offer to come and told them it was better for their sanity if they stayed away. Even if we all loved their book, they would leave being sad after we all talked about what we didn’t like. We’ve done this with every book. Not a book has escaped our wrath.
I admit to liking Gena Showalter’s “Lords of the Underworld” series, but not for the ‘romance’ aspect. I see them as a fantasy adventure series with some porny bits thrown in. What really keeps me reading is the bromance -if not outright homo-eroticism- between the demon-possessed Lords. I’m hoping for a gay couple to form there; hetero is fine, but a little yaoi goes a long way.
Wow, I love this thread. Too late to join?
Outlander was given to me years ago as a gift and I’ve never been able to make myself read it, because the whole already-married thing really bothered me. After all these comments I’ve finally just put the damn thing in my Goodwill pile.
I can take wild amounts of historical inaccuracy, ultraviolet prose, and fleets of surprise babies, but I can’t abide reformed rake stories. The heroes don’t have to be virgins by any means, but if the hero was a complete slut, it’s a deal-breaker for me, even for authors I love (I’m looking at you, Devil in Winter).
I keep wanting to like Julia Quinn’s books, but no luck.
Wuthering Heights, my god, they’re all just such terrible, terrible people, it’s so painful. I hated it in high school, tried rereading it as an adult, and it was a DNF.
Not romances, but I also loathe Eat, Pray, Love; The DaVinci Code; and yes, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I can’t abide Shakespeare either. *joins the other people ducking*
Stephanie Laurens – If you’ve read 1, you’ve read them all. You might enjoy the 1st book of hers that you read but around the 2nd or 3rd, you realize it’s the same book with the names changed. Also, her sex scenes contain an excessive number of adjectives.
PLEASE stop posting on this thread!
Y’all have such awesome comments that I keep not doing my work! I’m way behind on an assignment that’s due today!!!
/laughing
Not sure if everyone loved it but Thigh High by Christina Dodd sticks out in my mind after several years because of how bad it was. I’ll probably never read any of her books again.
Also pretty much anything by Stephanie Laurens since most of her historicals all seem the same (Cynster series in particular)…..and
any of Catherine Coulters historicals- eek.
I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about the Plum books.
I tried but she was too much like I Love Lucy for my taste.
NOT funny at all just stupid people doing stupid things over and
over again. A little character grown never hurt anyone.
I must admit I wanted Ricky to leave Lucy at the end of the show.
I can see him standing at the door with his suitcase telling her,
“My job is not a joke, it put the roof over your head, food on the
table and the clothes on your back. You are TSTL. Have a nice
life.
But that’s just me I want my people to have respect for themselves
and each other. Also a working brain.
After lurking for a few days, reading the archives obsessively,, I am compelled to my first post – primarily because someone mentioned Robert James Waller and “The Bridges of Madison County.” Not only was it a drenchingly sappy, horribly-written, one-hit-wonder, the author was (and still is) the epitome of Authors Behaving Badly.
I live in Iowa, and NO ONE here claims RJW as a hometown boy. My brother had him as a college professor, and let’s just say the tenure system was his only salvation as an academic. I would LOVE to see him in a smack-down with real Iowa authors like Jane Smiley and/or Marilynne Robinson. Or even Dorothy Garlock – even at almost 70, I’ll bet she could still kick his ass. And then serve everyone cookies afterwards. She’s a very nice lady.
ALSO (I thought I was done with this rant, but apparently not) I sincerely believe if Bridges – or any Nicholas Sparks book – had been written by a woman, they would have been blockbusters. The whole “OMG a MAAAAAN is writing about LOOOOOVE, isn’t that SWEEEEEET” thing really pisses me off.
I have more, but I’ll put them in another post, so beware the oncoming newbie spam.
Kelly
Newbie spam, part 2: Anita Blake is getting her own separate post.
My biggest literary embarrassment after getting my Kindle was the autobuy of LKH. After reading the first two, my OCD kicked in and I wound up buying and attempting to read them all. The Gleaming (Glistening? Glowing? Glittering?) Magical Vagina of All-Knowingness and emotionless sex were bad enough, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STFU WITH THE VAMPIRE POLITICS AND GBTW ALREADY. I almost italicized and underlined that too. No one cares, LKH. Trust me, no one cares.
Every goddamn chapter had numbing paragraphs of philosophical ruminations on which kind of vamp or werewolf or witch had power and why, and how they lost it, and what they could to do get it back, and what would happen if they lost it again. It’s the equivalent of listening to my 8yo explain the backstory and intricacies of SuperMario during a five-hour drive to a family reunion.
I was so disgusted by about book 15 (or maybe 12, or 17, who the hell knows because they’re interchangeable), I permanently deleted them off my Kindle and out of my Amazon archive, because after I die, I don’t want any lingering LKH electronic footprints contaminating my online persona.
Also in the WTFery department: Wereswans? REALLY??? Ick. And maybe the wererats, but I kept envisioning muscle-y ballet dancers in lovely tights from The Nutcracker, so that wasn’t quite as bad.
I also gave up on Sookie And Her Multitude of Manly Men, but only because I got tired of trying to keep track of all the characters, which happens with every long-running series.
Kelly
@LMG-I am SO with you on the JAZZY VEST in, I believe it was, Jewels of the Sun. I spent the next several pages picturing Danny Terrio sweeping her off her feet for a leg dip.
I also have to admit, and I don’t believe that I have seen her here yet, but Dara Joy is so not there for me. Knight of a Trillion Stars and Rejar were both so highly recommended to me that I pretty much knew that I wasn’t gonna like them.
I am completely with Cleo on the ending of The Shadow and the Star. It bothered me very much that Samuel didn’t tell her what was going on. That took me back to the ending of Flowers from the Storm, where Jervaulx can’t make Maddy understand how his finances work. I don’t remember whether he really tries and she just can’t overcome her own biases, or whether he writes off her ability to understand, but that there was this extreme gap between them at the end of the story bothered me very much.
Of course, I still haven’t figured out why Leda marries Samuel anyway. Normally, if a historical heroine is marrying to address a scandal, it’s because she has some family/community ties that shouldn’t be severed. Leda doesn’t. It’s a great big world, and there is nothing to stop her from turning up in York or New York or San Francisco or someplace and starting fresh. Surely that would be better than marrying a man who thinks he’s in love with someone else.
I didn’t like Bitten, either. Or Midsummer Moon. I’ve never read Outlander, but I kind of like the Lord John books. I couldn’t finish the first Black Dagger Brotherhood book I read (I’m not saying it was the first book in the series, because I don’t know.)
I have grave misgivings about any book in which the hero refers to the heroine (or indeed, any woman) as a “chit.”
I liked the Lymond books after about the first hundred pages, and once I became convinced that Francis was a basically good guy, I was firmly on his side. He and Philippa are awfully high-strung, though, and really I like his brother Richard at least as much as I like him.
It’s interesting that more than one person doesn’t like Bet Me because they think Cal actually took the bet. Could you like Bet Me if you believed that? Could you like the guy Sidney Carton dies in place of if you thought he knowingly let Sidney do it? Did I mention that I only like Dickens in small doses, and unfortunately he mainly comes in very large ones?
It would never have occurred to me that the heroine of Soulless was in any way like Amelia Peabody, but now that it’s been mentioned . . . Huh.
OMG this thread.
My head is spinning.
Kushiel’s Dart skeeved me out quickly and thoroughly. A Lolita calibre skeeve. A child in a house of prostitution seen by the hero who buys her future use.
I stopped reading.
Outlander I stopped reading when she was with her hubbie at the bed and breakfast and he waggled his eyebrows at her and I thought “What a sweet guy.” I realized then I didn’t want to read about her cheating on him. So I didn’t make it to the Jamie parts. I’m sure they’re fabulous.
And this last one is recent and still hurting. Nalini Singh’s Kiss Of Snow. Did anyone else feel they were reading a fan fiction tribute to Wolverine and Dr Jean Grey from the XMen 3 movie where they get to cross the line and have each other?
Watch the movie and especially the final war scene and compare the book. I dare you.
I’m completely pissed her editor didn’t catch that one.
Back to lurking.
Last newbie post, thank you for your kind indulgence.
A huge pet peeve is entire plots that center entirely on the Willful Misunderstanding. I am inventing a new category for characters who are Too Self-Involved To STFU And Just LISTEN Already (TSISTFUJLA?). Examples from otherwise favorite authors include “My Lady’s Honor” by Julia Justiss, “His Lady Mistress” by Elizabeth Rolls and “Potent Pleasures” by Eloisa James. All three have “rakish” (aka man-whore) heroes obsessed with viewing their virgin brides as sluts, despite all evidence to the contrary. All have stupid titles too, now that I think about it.
Adultery is usually a huge wall-throwing trigger, but I actually loved Outlander because I was dying to see how she resolved the bigamy/pregnancy thing. Also because I mentally cast Kevin McKidd as Jamie and he can say “och, wee lassie” as many times as he wants, preferably whispering it in my ear as he takes off his kilt.
I found all the adultery in Eloisa James’s Desperate Duchesses and Duchess Quartet series extremely uncomfortable, and hated most of the selfish, whiny characters. The only one I liked was Eleanor in “A Duke of Her Own” – I wanted to grab Lisette’s hair, drag her outside and kick her skinny little ass into a slow carriage to nowhere. However, I loved James’s Essex Sisters and love love love the new Happily Ever After series.
Never read any Nora Roberts, but after reading some of her comments here, I want to buy her a drink. No wait, she’s buying, but I’d still love to hang out with her.
A big fat DITTO on the “Wuthering Heights Is NOT a Romance.” Wuthering Heights is, was, and always will be, 400 pages of boring, whining sociopaths. Thank god for the rest of England they were stuck on the stupid moors and not inflicting their angst on the general populace. Mr. Rochester, on the other hand, is the tortured and redeemed hero against whom all other are measured. (Toby Stephens in the BBC version, yum).
Wow, that was cathartic. I love reading everyone’s hilarious, passionate insights, and being able to use grown-up words any-fucking-time I want. You guys are my new BFFs.
Kelly
(aka the smart bitch who is going to bust open the good bottle of wine tonight and snuggle in with the new Tessa Dare and newish Lisa Kleypas, thank GOD my kids are old enough to get to the bus without my help in the morning)
Captcha: single69 – HAHAHAHAHAHA
that’s the closest I’ve come to sexual fulfillment in YEARS (don’t ask, it’s a long story).
Typo, dammit! ….if Bridges – or any Nicholas Sparks book – had been written by a woman, they would NEVER have been blockbusters.
Kelly
Holy Shit! I can’t believe I didn’t catch that! I was anti-Hawke/Sienna since Slave to Sensation, and I read KoS for everyone and everything but the main romance, so I didn’t read into those two very closely.
I know I went into it biased as hell, but I really do think that Hawke/Sienna’s story was poorly done. Pages and pages and pages of angst over nothing. Nalini made it clear throughout the books that not all changelings find their mates, and that many people, even those whose mates had died, find happiness in unmated long-term relationships, so why did it matter that Hawke’s mate had died in childhood? Especially because, a)he was a CHILD when his “mate” died so he needs to get the hell over it already* and b)it’s a Psy/Changeling book, so we already know that they’re going to be mates. I kept thinking “Oh shut the fuck up” during their scenes. Such a waste of time.
*I really hate stories where characters have been “in love” since childhood, so pardon the insensitive “get over it” bit. It’s why I dislike Clay/Tallie’s book so much.