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 am anti-Wuthering, pro-Jane, but I have in fact met at least one person who is very attached to them both. I think it’s a mistake to try to read the Brontes as pure romance. (It’s also a mistake to expect Jane Austen and the Brontes to be the same.)
Some of this discussion has reminded me of something I heard recently about plot spoilers enhancing the reader’s enjoyment of a story. I was going to disagree with these findings on the grounds that they couldn’t be universal because I have often had books or movies ruined for me because I already knew something that was going to happen and spent too much time anticipating that one thing to the detriment of the actual story. However when I heard the details it sounded like what actually enhanced the enjoyment was having a fitting expectation for the tone/genre, so if you go into a book thinking it will have a HEA and then it turns out to be Wuthering Heights, you will not be happy.
@Psychbucket – I actually bought An Echo in the Bone, but have never even opened it. I did not like A Breath of Snow and Ashes particularly well, and I think I will leave it at that. It must be a hard thing for an author to know when to bring a successful series to an end. As this thread is evidence of.
I was hugely disappointed in a A Discovery of Witches
– the world-building is really interesting, I love the scholarly setting and history of alchemy but I can’t connect to either Diana or Matthew. She annoys the crap out of me with her endless cups of tea and slices of toast. The chemistry between them is non-existent. I actually skimmed the last part to be done with it. However, I am strangely compelled to read the sequel when it is published.
frack, sorry, messed up the italics. Fixed now.
@Amanda There actually is never any mention of predestined mates in Mercy Thompson series. There was stuff about matebonding but that came from a ceremony and was likened to a wedding but with magic.
Meanwhile can I just add my voice to people who don’t get Susan Elizabeth Phillips? I don’t think I’ve ever read one of her books where I didn’t want to re-write the ending.
Wuthering Heights. UGH.
Cathy deliberately marries a man she doesn’t love [but who has money], Heathcliffe is an ass and pretty much everyone in the books spends years brooding over each other and biting their lips at each other. Hated it.
I can’t read medievals for about the same reason I can’t really enjoy pirate romances. OMG people stank and had rotten teeth and even the nobility had to do their business in holes in the castle and then hang their clothes there so the stench would de-louse them. Just ew.
What I hate most about GWTW, after all the racial WTF-ery, is how moralistic the book is about “punishing” Scarlett for supposedly being this terrible person when she’s basically just a kid who got married and had a baby too young, lost her mother, crushed on a married man, and then delivered his wife’s baby knowing absolutely nothing about what she was doing and then dragged all their asses out of burning Atlanta and back home where she had to support everyone. She wasn’t much older than Bella in Twilight, for crap’s sake.
And Rhett marrying her under false pretenses and then belittling her every chance he gets, raping her, never telling her that he actually does love her, and then in the end abandoning her because she didn’t figure out his game SOON ENOUGH. The book should have ended with her shooting him in the face.
@ Jill
This is totally a pet peeve of mine, too!! I did horseback riding when I was younger, was obsessed with everything to do with horses growing up, and I grew up in the “Horse Capital of the World.” When I read books that involve horses as part of the central plot and they get basic things wrong it drives me CRAZY!! I read a story once where the “hero” gave a little girl a “pony” for her birthday or Christmas or whatever. But immediately after saying that they gave her a pony, the author described how the horse just lost its mother so it would need lots of attention, and then started talking about the little girl riding it. I was like, wait a minute this isn’t a pony it’s a FOAL, and that kid better not be riding it, idiot! There are also other things that authors do, such as sex on horseback. That would be some of the most uncomfortable sex I can think of, if you could even achieve it…but I’m pretty sure no horse is going to stand idly while two people do the dirty on its back, all that movement and those pheromones flying around and all.
Spamword: Research47: Author’s should do their research before writing books.
Word.
Yes, yes, yes, on all the Outlander votes! The one thing that first peeved me off about this book was that ‘Jamie and Claire had to have sex.’ I mean, fine, the author wanted them to get it on, which I had no problems with (the adultery thing not bothering me over-much because of the time-travel and all). What bothered me was that the author felt the sex needed to be justified by the whole pretend-marriage scenario and in order to make no one suspect anything, they had to have sex. I just couldn’t see how anyone couldn’t have found out whether they had had sex or not, seeing as no one was watching and Claire wasn’t a virgin. I guess it just bothers me in general when an author wants their character(s) to get to a certain point, but the explanation why they have to get there are just too convoluted or not logical. It’s a fun coincidence if two characters from New York end up holidaying on the same Greek island. It’s contrived if you need to drag two misunderstandings, a re-routed flight and a millionaire’s secret baby into the whole affair.
Then, Outlander came with the whole rape/almost-rape, justified beating and the over-the-top torture scenes and I just gave up on it, because that bothered me even more than the lack of logic.
One book I haven’t yet seen mentioned that everybody raves about but I couldn’t make myself like, was The Golden Compass. I hated the whole animal-soul affair, especially how it was used to stereotype people and was disgusted by the brutal violence in what was supposed to be a children’s book. I never bothered to read the sequels.
Ditto on Lord of the Flies. I hated the characters, the plot, everything. I get that it was sort of the point to be disappointed by the characters, but I found it over-done and unappealing.
Quite another thing (and I’d love to hear other people’s experiences of this) for me is Books You Know You Shouldn’t Like But You Do. Mine is Regency Buck. I read so much ranting by people how it’s badly plotted, how the hero manipulates the heroine and is just a complete git, etc etc and I see it all, and yet I can’t help it, I love the book.
Coming in extremely late:
Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. I was a reader of the original Oz books (Baum’s and the authorized sequels) from toddler-hood; when I was finally persuaded to try the Maguire book many years later for a book group, I boggled. And when I finished, I made sure to throw the book (gently) across the room, purely so I could truthfully say that I’d done so. I then promptly went down and sold the book back to Powell’s, resolving never to buy a Maguire book again.
My trouble with Wicked is not that it riffs on the Oz books. I liked Philip Jose Farmer’s A Barnstormer in Oz, and there’s an obscure but fantastic comics story called The Oz-Wonderland War that crosses Oz, Carroll’s Wonderland, and a set of funny-animal superheroes with each other. My problem with Wicked is that it doesn’t riff on the Oz books; it lifts the names and setting and uses them for a story that has not one thing to do with the original works. (I have a private theory that Maguire initially wrote the book as an original novel, then filed the Ozian serial numbers on in order to sell the manuscript.)
Note that I reserve my antipathy for the novel as opposed to the stage musical, which I haven’t seen. My impression is that the musical differs sufficiently from the book to warrant being considered separately.
Brief notes on other books/series mentioned upstream:
Hunger Games: Like Wendy, way up near the top of the thread, I got stuck on the lack of convincing world-building—there’s just no plausible way to get from today to that future, and no rational way for Panem as it’s described to actually work on a socio-economic level. I’ll give Collins credit for effort; the storytelling is good enough that many to most readers will take the setting as given, but those of us used to better-developed SF are likely to bail.
Soulless: Tried it, didn’t finish; my recollection is that I thought Carriger was somewhat overselling the setting, and that I had trouble buying the relationship between the heroine and hero.
Wheel of Time: Read the first three or four and drifted away—but my expectations were never very high, because the first thing I noticed is that the opening of the first book (The Eye of the World) almost exactly reproduces, beat for beat, the opening scenario of Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara. It’s purely structural—and therefore NOT plagiarism of any sort—but the similarity is just eerie.
There have been a few that I’ve read and loathed.
I can’t remember the name, but there was a romance novel that had glowing comments on the back cover, and I just… The Heroine worked as a shopgirl selling hats (I think – or maybe clothing?) and had a little apartment that she paid for herself, btw. The ‘Hero’ was sneaking about at night,, sneaks into her room to use it as a shortcut/duck out of sight until they go – except that Lo! she has rearranged the furniture (how dare she!) and he trips, causing a rukus. Now, her rent is being raised because she’s obviously entertaining men in her bedchamber, and everybody in the book is convinced that she’s a whore, and pushing her towards entertaining strange & horny men! It gets tot he point where the Guy’s family/friends are all ‘shame on you for ruining her life’ so he marries her, thinking that he’s doing her a favor, because hey – the last guy keeping her had he stashed in this little flat, and he’s actually marrying the gal! Yeah, he had his issues and sad backstory, but I still felt like he was a jerk, not any sort of hero, and someone should have slapped some sense into him. Do nto remember title, not sure I want to…
Twilight… I… gahhh. I read the book (#1 only) to make up my own mind after hearing so much fuss. She’s as unrealistic a Mary-Sue as you can get, Eddie-boy is a controlling brooding, stalker, and the rest of the cast are rough-cut cardboard props to help the story of their Speshul Wuv limp along…. but the movie had beautiful landscapes.
I read and loathed Wuthering Heights and some short story by James Joyce for a literature class in college, and started trying to repress them away as soon as the Final was done with.
Anything by Steinbeck – just a hint, that cute animal? Dies horribly at the end, possibly with the MC having to shoot it themself.
A fantasy novel by a widely selling author that I am NOT naming – my husband could only make it to the half-way point, I couldn’t get through the first two chapters – the MC guy was a JERK, and my husband said that he only seems to go downhill… ick.
Elric of Melnibone, supposed to be a fantasy classic – I tried, it was a Did Not Finish due to the title character being 73 kinds of ass – in ch2 he’s contemplating seducing his cousin just to ensure that one of his political rivals can’t be the one to deflower her… just ick, ick ick.
veriword mother73 – no, I wasn’t a mother in 73, and my mother didn’t warn me about having to read at least 73 awful books.
Oh yes, joining the Jodi Picoult hate!! LOATHED My Sister’s Keeper – way to punish the uppity little sister who objected to being used for spare parts! Dan Brown – “ooh, I’m this book’s interchangeable brilliant and beautiful expert in whatever, but now I’m going to let you explain everything to me, you Wonderful Man!” plus clunky prose. (Clunky prose in general will turn me against a writer very very fast.) Which brings us to Twilight – clunky prose PLUS “ooh, he wants to kill me, isn’t it romantic!” – although there were places when Smeyers did give a good imitation of the mind of a teenage girl, god help us.
OTOH, Amanda, I’m glad to see somebody besides me loves Hob’s Bargain! That sneaky tail of his is tres sexay.
And joining the hate for all the dreary books about a bunch of middle class sisters or childhood friends – somebody gets divorced, somebody gets cancer and dies slowly, and it’s all so uplifting, blarrggh.
And one more very late addition now that I’ve finished reading the comments – Mari, I totally agree about Golden Compass! The ending, in particular, was so sour it disgusted me. But unlike you, I did push myself through the rest of the trilogy, and let me just say that it doesn’t improve.
@ Lu – that first one sounds like The Shadow and the Star by Laura Kinsale – think it’s been mentioned several times in the comments.
@ everyone who doesn’t like Jodi Picoult. Totally agree. I read My Sister’s Keeper – or rather I read through it – and I so angry at the ending. I just don’t understand the tearjerker trend.
Really late to the thread, so I’ll keep it short.
While I remember enjoying Bet Me while I was reading it, a few days later I’d almost forgotten what happened, so I really don’t get the hype.
I like the J.D. Robb books I’ve read, but the couple of Nora Roberts I tried didn’t really click with me. I’ll probably try again eventually.
Twilight doesn’t really count, since I knew going in I’d hate it, and really just read it due to morbid curiosity.
Despite loving vampire books, or maybe because of it, I’ve yet to find a vampire romance that doesn’t suck.
Read The Flame and the Flower. I was expecting the old school rapiness, but I really wasn’t expecting the basic writing to be so bad it was downright funny at times. (WTF was up with the pairing knife in her bedroom?)
As a long time fan, part of me is sad at all the mentions of LotR, but I fully understand it too.
I have a thing about Historical Romances and genital hygiene – due to the lack of frequent bathing in those times.
When I come across an oral sex scene, my nose starts to twitch and I have to flick back and check when the Hero/Heroine last bathed.
The worst: A couple who had been on horseback for two days, with not so much as a dip in a stream, or a top ‘n tail with a handkerchief.
And if made me gag to read that his head was now under her petticoats and he was rolling down her stockings.
Yay. Sweaty crotch cheese . Hope he had blocked sinuses.
See, this is why I keep all the SBTB posts until I have time to read them, even if it nearly 2 weeks later. So glad this thread is still open for comments. I hate:
Dickens (except for Tale of Two Cities)
Austen (except Persuasion is sort of okay)
Wuthering Heights (wanted to smack them both)
But my all time hated it, gagged and finished for book club was Eat, Pray, Love. What a stinker of a book. Then I saw the movie, loved it, and realized the reason I hated the book so much (still do, BTW), was that she was trying so hard not to be unfair to her tool of a husband that we never have a clue what an asshat douchebag he was, so she comes off as all whiny and self-absorbed. She should have left him sooner. So essentially the book is completely dishonest.
I used to like Outlander but am tired of all the rape and torture. So far Roger is the only one who hasn’t been raped, and he should watch his back. This series is rapidly running out of steam, but I’m hanging on in hopes she will wrap it up in my lifetime. I’ve invested too much of my life to quit now.
Except for Outlander, I am no longer willing to waste my time on crappy books when there are so many good ones to read. I used to be compulsive about finishing a book once I started to read it. No more. It’s too easy to hit the delete button on my Kindle and move on to something I love.
Thank you Smart Bitches, for giving me the opportunity to vent. I am now 3 hours late for the work I am supposed to be doing, but it is totally worth it.
Historical inaccuracies do bug me, and some bother me more than others. For example, unrealistic travel times in Elizabeth Mansfield’s regencies pull me right out of the story. I recently read Miscalculations – aptly named! The heroine “borrows” the hero’s carriage, with the connivance of his staff, as she is compelled to go and confront someone about A Big Misunderstanding. However, she is in London, and the confrontation is in Devon (generic unspecified town). She leaves London late in the day, travels to Devon overnight (at least approx 200 miles), does her confronting, and travels back to London (another 200 miles or so), arriving home before breakfast so that the hero won’t notice that his carriage is gone. Another character travels from Chester to London (again, approx 200 miles) in an afternoon. Perhaps a small detail, but enough to really annoy me!
@Lucia – I know what you mean, I really try (but sometimes fail) to ignore that aspect. On the other hand it annoys me when there is too much bathing going on, as that was obviously not the case in those days.
People weren’t as dirty as you imagine. The medievals (all thousand years of it) had public baths, and there are pictures and references to them washing a lot. Clothes that couldn’t be washed were “dry cleaned” with Fuller’s Earth, a natural substance, and every house had its laundry day.
One of the pieces of evidence is “negative evidence,” that is, people noticed when other people were dirty or smelled bad. If they were all dirty and they all smelt, nobody would notice, would they?
So your lady who has the fortune to have her beau go muff-diving probably washed that morning.
What puts people off is the lack of baths and bathing. You don’t have to do total body immersion to be clean. In the period I write about, the Georgian, respectable people had washstands in every room and hot water was delivered to the bedrooms every morning. They would have a complete wash-down, sometimes with the help of a servant, who would do the bits you can’t reach. Baths came in just before decent domestic plumbing was developed. Beau Brummel in the Regency era was obsessive about it, to the point of OCD.
And until the Victorian era, the world was a lot cleaner. Industrialisation made everything much more dirty.
There are so many ways you could take that…and all would probably be right.
@Lynne Connolly,
I hear you. I had to google a bit, ‘cause I am sure that all the history I have read has not suddenly become void.
I am sure that people tried to keep clean, but fact is that it was difficult, obviously. Medieval cities were cramped with no sewage systems and butchers and tanners a lived and worked right in the middle of where people were living. I realise that in periods washing (& bathing) was not unheard of, but every bath had to be filled by the bucket and first heated on a stove. I read that one of the kings of England was fortunate to have a bath every month! After the black death people believed that sickness got into their bodies through their skin. If they bathed, their pores opened and let in more sickness. Thus, if they didn’t bathe, they wouldn’t get sick as easily. Bathing, thus, became less common. The French court under the Roi de Soleil, Ludovic XIV was very dirty. The king’s courtesan Madame de Pompadour was one exception, insisting on regular baths. Maybe in that way she became so popular with the king 😉