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.
@ Lynne
Thank you! I am glad someone else is bugged with the head-hopping by Roberts. I hate it when I don’t know whose thought it was, and I have go back to reread it. A tennis match indeed. Don’t want to read anything else by her again.
couldn’t get into the Outlander at all either… so happy I’m not alone.
non-romance “you gotta read it” was The Firm… Guy was a big jerk and got himself into his own mess. made myself finish it, what a waste of time.
Apparently, I do not care for protaganists who can’t keep their freaking pants up when already committed
anything that includes a rape scene is an automatic DNF, “old skool” or no.
Here’s my list (both romance and not)
Nora Roberts – tried reading a few novels but couldn’t finish. Same goes for Susan Elizabeth Phillips.
Mary Higgins Clark – I’ve actually read a lot of her books, but in most of them I found myself frustrated with the heroine and her attempts at solving the mystery.
Also, I just couldn’t force myself to finish Minion (1st book in the Vampire Huntress series). Subsequently I dropped the series altogether. I still don’t know why that is. But the whole thing just seemed to drag on and on and didn’t engage me. Same could be said for the Dresden Files. Although I did finish book one, Storm Front because I wanted to solve the mystery. But the world the books are set in didn’t really grab my attention enough to move on to book two.
Oh, and as for the Outlander. I wanted to read it but decided to check out the reviews on Goodreads. After reading a couple of detailed 1 and 2 star reviews with highlights on why the reviewers didn’t like the book I decided to spend my money on something else.
Jennifer Cruisie. I’ve tried a few of her books on the advice of various posts and comments on this site and I just can’t quite warm to them. I can’t even define quite what it is about them I don’t like but they’re not for me.
In non romance (although I suppose it is sort of a love story) – One Day by David Nicholls. Everyone I know absolutely raves about this book. I read it a couple of years ago and had to force myself to finish it. Hated both the characters and the plot was so predictable and just really dull.
A lot of people liked “Loves Me, Loves Me Knot,” but I could not get passed the fact that the female lead drugged her ex then had sex with him in order to get pregnant after he specifically told her he did NOT want kids. That’s called “rape”. Women complain when men aren’t honest, but when they are honest, they get selfish and push the envelope like this? Please, that plot was so bad, I just could not get passed it. Also, the friend in the book trashed her boyfriend’s apartment, his hummer and stole his dog because she thought he was cheating. Nothing loving in that woman at all.
I may have to duck a few rotten eggs, but the whole Regency era groups-of-marriage-avoiding-noblemen subset? Meh. I’m over it. If there’s a sudden surge of noblemen keen to make good matches, I’ll be browsing the pirate and medieval books.
I was born without the contemporary gene, so while I admire Nora Roberts’ career, I’ve read through her official companion twice and not found one book (summary) that sparked my interest, so I think I’ll pass.
When I was in Star Trek fandom, I gave Imzadi by Peter David a double thumbs down; it didn’t work for me on any level, but is a huge, huge favorite with others.
I DNF Outlander. Didn’t like the adultery and it just bored me. I made it about 100 pages in before I closed it and didn’t open it again.
I liked the story of the only Nora Roberts book I read, but the headhopping drove me mad, so I didn’t try any others. That’s just my pet peeve.
I did like Lord of Scoundrels, but I think you do have to take it unseriously to enjoy it. Most of what happened in that book is highly unlikely, but the characters both charmed me in their own ways, so I wanted to see them be happy and loved.
@Kerry Allen
I can understand not liking Dragon Bound (I actually couldn’t get through it myself), or not liking Gail Carriger’s Soulless, but to lose all respect for anyone who recommends them? That’s pretty damn harsh – there are going to be a lot of people who you are going to lose respect for then, including me. I really enjoyed Soulless. Not sure I want your respect anyway…
I’m glad I’m not the only one who DNF The Iron Duke. I got bored about 1/3rd of the way through. I keep trying Meljean Brook’s books because her blog postings are usually HILARIOUS. Her photochopped cartoons have me rolling. But I just can’t get into her books. 🙁
I also didn’t get The Hunger Games. Oh well.
I haven’t read Outlander yet and I’m not planning to anytime soon. But the one very famous series I hate is Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series. I tried to go through the first book twice. First time I tried to read in library – it has never failed me – but I was so bored that I started reading manga I’ve already read twice. I checked out just in case but just couldn’t get through. So I returned and checked it again a month later. Same. It was so mind-numbingly boring. And this time I had it for 42 days. So I dropped it.
Second is the Succubus Diaries by Jill Myles. I managed to get through the first book but it seemed very unoriginal, nothing interesting and the lame love triangle. All in all, a fail. I’ve had friends recommending this book for ages.
This is so much fun. I also didn’t like Lord of Scoundrels, I thought the relationship was too one sided – Jessica gives and gives and he doesn’t give much in return.
Also, Interview with the Vampire. When that came out, all of my friends LOVED it and I really tried to like it. Anne Rice writes beautifully, lovely sensual language, and it really bothered me that what she was writing so beautifully and sensually about was death and murder. Ugh.
In fact, I avoid most vampire romances because I just don’t like combining sex and death – the death part takes me out of the romance. Every once in awhile I’ll try another vamp rom and I always have the same reaction.
Yes, Chelsea, yes!
“Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake books. And God knows I tried. But the early ones bored me and the later ones were all sex (which you’d think would be a good thing), I just found them gross and pointless.”
I went to school with LKH (k-12) so when I discovered her pic on the back of a book, I bought the whole Anita Blake series. How can subject matter so strange end up so boring? How can such kinky sex scenes leave me cold? Sheesh.
Also, I do not like historicals. At all. Just don’t like them. About halfway through I get itchy for something to happen that isn’t near-rape or hand-kissing or some gorgeous virgin being sold into marriage to save the family’s honor (aka, provide a comfy living for a drunken dad, uncle, brother).
Ahhhhh, that feel’s good to admit. 😉
Minion was a DNF for me after just a few pages. I might have given it more time if I wasn’t in a reading crunch, but the writing style just wasn’t working for me. I like Lord of Scoundrels ok, but it’s not my absolute favorite – I like Your Scandalous Ways much better.
For me Gena Showalter lots of reasons:
But on the research thing: if you are going to use real places by a map, look on line. If you want a real general place but don’t groove on research then make the town’s roads, and such imaginary. Don’t use a real town and then place it completely off course.
Why, if like MASH’s Hawkeye Pierce’s hometown of Crabapple Cove, Maine doesn’t exist that’s fine. They could use the general idea of “Maine.” or if the Empire Falls in Empire Falls is a fake place fine. Once you place an imagined place on a map, get the locations of the places around it right. But if the town and business names are going to be real then do some research for heaven’s sake. The people who live there can read you know. And being wrong about real places is at best funny and at worst an insult. Either way, the lack of simple facts being factual is distracting.
Think of it this way. If a person makes up a religion or even makes up a pretend sect then we have varying degrees of expectation. BUT if a person were to have a Hasidic character and then act as if he were Reformed or even Orthodox. I would be annoyed by the poor research and if I were a member of the faith I would be ticked off.
My mother and I have about opposite taste in books but I have to suffer through a lot of those listed above anyway because she insists on relating to me, in detail, about the book she is currently reading. If you hated Outlander try receiving a rather disjointed summary of it every few days. Maybe it’s just the way my mother summarizes but Outlander sounded like some sort of torture porn. I love my mother dearly, but she is no storyteller and I’m sure makes all the books sound even more opposed to my taste than they actually are.
I dislike Lisa Kleypas’ historicals. It’s mostly a style and voice thing, where her writing just leaves me lukewarm, but she also couldn’t keep her characterization straight in the Wallflower series, and that just drove me batty. Somewhere in the third book I realized that I was grinding my teeth way too hard, so I decided not to read any Kleypas anymore.
I did like one of her contemporaries, but not enough to convince me to try another one.
I just can’t get over the fact that an author so well liked, loved and admired should be a good enough writer to keep her characters consistent throughout a series.
Another one, though maybe it’s more UF than romance is the Night Huntress series by Jeanine Frost. If you write in first POV you have to make sure that POV is someone the readers can root for. I really can’t see how the rest of the world can get past the incredibly annoying stubborn obnoxious blech person Cat is. She drove me so crazy I didn’t even skip to read the sex scenes, but just couldn’t give away my copy fast enough. How anyone can enjoy being stuck in her head, it really boggles my mind.
We’ve gotten this far and nobody’s mentioned Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series?
I tried this after numerous rave reviews and within the first chapter of the first book, the heroine, WHO IS A SEX THERAPIST, says she’s creeped out by vibrators.
Girl, bye.
This one isn’t really a romance per se, but Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, which most people seem to love, left a bad taste in my mouth. First of all, I never got the sense that Janet and Thomas gave a damn about each other; I think Janet ended up a frustrated, pill-popping Seventies housewife, Thomas shagged every teen girl with a pulse, and they ended up hating each other and their child for ruining their lives. Second, I felt lectured and condescended to by the author, in an obnoxious, “I’m so clever; defer to me; if you don’t then you’re an idiot” kind of way.
And second (or third or fouth, now) for Midsummer Moon; the idea of a high-functioning autistic being taken advantage of by a rapey douchebag wasn’t funny; it just turned me off.
Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books. The first one was okay, so long as I ignored that whole part with Bubba and the using vampire blood to help heal after tearing Sookie’s hymen. I read the second and couldn’t continue with the series. Sookie constantly needs Bill or Eric to come and save her and is, apart from her ability to read minds, pretty much helpless and nothing special. And after seeing how many books there are, I just couldn’t keep up with that idiocy. Loving vampires and werewolves doesn’t mean I’ll take them any way I can get them.
And it’s not romance, but my boyfriend who usually has the same tastes as me in books tried to get me started on S.M. Stirling’s the Change series (alas, it’s not about menopause). That might not be the title of the series, but I do know the big event that happens in the first novel (fire stops working, essentially—no combustion engines, no guns, no electricity, etc.) is called the Change. Anyway, I got a hopping six pages in and had to stop (yes, I looked). One of the heroes was a complete tool. Some ex-military pilot who was ogling his client’s 18 year-old daughter before their flight, and I was supposed to like him. Then there was the pagan singer who said, “Oh goddess!” every other sentence and reminded this pagan of too many insufferable idiots she’d met in her time. And I was supposed to believe this woman was going to go on to run her own compound, but she was too much of a, as we say in some circles, “fluffy bunny.”
And my feminist self enjoyed Outland as a guilty pleasure, and I do recognize its problems. I didn’t read more than the first book though, and may not enjoy it as much on a re-read a few years later. The hate is justified and I can’t defend my enjoyment at all. I just liked it.
*whopping six pages in
Lovely typo!
Anything Nora Roberts. I’ve suffered through 8 of her novels. Story inconsistencies. All of her characters have the exact same voice, and use the same strange phrases, and WTH are LONG eyes? I always think cartoon beagle when I read that – which I don’t think is anywhere near the reaction the author intended for readers to have.
Oh, yeah, and Kim Harrison’s series—read the first one, couldn’t be bothered to pick up the rest. The heroine was too dumb to live, and the worldbuilding was just sloppy. I mean, didn’t it occur to anyone to just cook the tomatoes? Come on! And a worldwide pandemic results in a total ban on medical research? I should think it would do exactly the opposite. That one really was an eye-roller for me.
Jayne: Oh god, I read Dark Side of the Moon and barely finished it. The heroine was a former investigative journalist who won some prestigious award before her reputation was damaged beyond repair and she was stuck working for some Weekly World News-esque tabloid. I know this because it was brought up at every given opportunity again and again. Oh, and the goth chick who used deadjournal, though I’m still not sure the author or editors knew that’s an actual website (or was). Oh, and finally, the heroine was allergic to the hero, but only if his hair wasn’t pulled back (see, he was a cat shifter and she was allergic to cats).
Yeah, I couldn’t bring myself to read another Kenyon book after that.
How about Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught? So many people rave about that book—it was even re-written and re-issued a few years ago—and I hated it. The hero rapes the heroine. That’s really all I need to know about a book.
Jennifer Crusie and Kristan Higgins really don’t do it for me. Also I loathe and despise Julia Quinn’s books with a passion.
I can quite see that Outlander wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste, but I’m surprised to see so many people citing adultery as one of the reasons they didn’t like it. If your husband isn’t alive, how can you be unfaithful to him? And second, if you think it’s adultery, then presumably it would actually be bigamy rather than adultery.
@Jade: Oh, see, I like the Change series—though Sterling seems to write one love interest per trilogy that I cannot stand OMG SHUT UP SIGNE AND MATHILDA HAAAATE—but Juniper’s swearing just bugged the living hell out of me. Sterling, dude, I love you, but profanity doesn’t work that way.
@RebeccaJ: Ewww. I haven’t read the book, and now never will. Cheating as justification for physical harm or property damage is an instant DNF for me, now that you mention it.
What else? Historical inaccuracy doesn’t bug me except in language—if your Regency hero sounds like a California surfer dude, it grates. (And I’m pretty sure “boyfriend” and “bimbo” did not come into common use before the 20th century, so please avoid.) I don’t hate vampires, but I’m not that interested in them either. And I cannot read about were-anythings as heroes. Too much time in too many corners of the Internet; the associations are either comical or icky.
No rape. At all. Ever.
60-odd posts and nobody’s mentioned The Name of the Wind yet? Okay, it isn’t really a romance, but I feel like the only person on earth who isn’t over-the-moon in love with this book. Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay, but terribly repetitive, not much of anything really happens, and the characterizations, especially of the supporting players, are weak. It’s really a 200 page novel crying out for multiple rewrites and a ruthless editor.
As a writer, I am finding this thread a complete delight. If people can dislike so many best-selling authors, then if someone doesn’t like my books, I’m in good company. (Just incidentally, I loved The Grand Sophy – every book has its fans.)
I’d actually be better able to create a list of books I do like, rather than don’t. It would be shorter. So I’ll just toss in the things that make me want to throw the book across the room:
* head-hopping, yeah. Love Nora, but there’s a good reason for the writing rule that says to maintain a POV through a scene!
* historicals that pour every bit of the author’s considerable research upon your head, at the cost of such unimportant things as pacing and characters.
* historicals where the characters speak in “accurate” dialog. May be accurate, yeah, but it’s also incomprehensible, which makes it a tad difficult to get involved with the characters.
* bad grammar. Commas do exist for a reason.
* inaccuracies of common sense. I can handle the Duke of Porsche, but I can’t deal with being able to tell a person’s eye color in the dark, or someone yelling out a long narrative explanation while running.
* obvious attempts to engage my sympathies. Don’t kill off someone just to make me feel sorry for the hero.
* heroes or heroines who are continuously persecuted. (Dorothy Dunnett, I’m looking at you.) This is even worse when the persecution doesn’t bring out any strength or action in the character.
* …then there’s the usual. Cardboard characters, poor pacing, unlikely plots, the dreaded deus ex machina, etc.
Lord of Scoundrels doesn’t bother me because at least the heroine has some verve but I could not stand Last Night’s Scandal. Everyone was raving about how perfect the couple was for each other when all they did was bicker and act foolish for the entire book. They didn’t even seem to like one another. The whole book was a big silly waste of my time.
Another pet peeve is “After The Night” by Linda Howard. I love 99% of what she has written but this book makes me go ballistic. The “hero” tosses the 14 year old heroine and her mentally challenged brother out of their home because their mother is a hussy who dared to fool around with his father. (Lord knows it’s all her mother’s fault- they’re poor!) Then he harasses her to leave town again as an adult because he cannot have his Mom and sister upset by gasp, seeing her! What a prince!! And people *LOVE* this book. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
I’ll limit myself to three main themes!
1. I’ve never been able to like torture porn, and I’m astonished how well it seems to sell. Karen Rose, anyone?
2. Blood is not sexy. Vampires are not sexy. Perhaps we women are too accustomed to parasitical men?
3. No-one who lies for their own advantage deserves a happy ending as a result of that lie. As well as Too Stupid To Live there is Too Selfish To Like.
I used to love Stephanie Laurens, but lately she is grating on my nerves in a big way. Her heroines are all the same damn person and I absolutely can not relate to that person. Same for the hero. It’s like she has the same set of 3-4 characters and she just gives them different names, hair colors, and problems and then writes the same damn book over and over and over again. I feel the same way about Nora Roberts. I tried, really, really tried, but I just can’t do it. I just can’t get in to the stories and I don’t like most of the characters.
I really love historicals, but I can’t stand when authors try to write accents/dialects. The occasional bit tossed in occasionally or whatever is fine, but when I’m reading a book set in Scotland and it is all “dinna” and “lassie” and “och” all the time I get irritated (and it is almost always Scotland that authors do this to, rarely anyplace else). Inaccuracies don’t bother me too much, so long as they aren’t horribly, horribly blatant. Honestly, I find that I’m a lot harder on contemporary romances than I am on historicals. I can put up with a lot in a historical romance and suspend my disbelief quite a bit, as far as being able to relate to characters or details of the setting and what not, but in a contemporary everything has to be more or less perfect or I get yanked out of the story and that is just frustrating.
But the only thing I really, truly hate in a novel (romance or not) is telling the story in the first person. I just can’t read any fiction written in first POV—it takes me right out of the story. Drives me batty every single time.
Hmm chalk up another vote for Sherrilyn Kenyon – I liked some of the first books, but then it was just the same thing over and over again (Acheron’s early life sucked – I do not need being told about it over and over again in mind numbing detail.)
Jane Eyre pushes my buttons – I hate you Mr Rochester.
And so I learned (or re-learned) today, because I wasn’t going to post about having previously been dogpiled for my dislike of Outlander, and here I find I’m not alone. I thought it was far too long, with the plot propped up a seemingly endless series of attempted rape scenes. It reeked of homophobia (I’m told Gabaldon made up for this in later books, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to read them). And the final chapters were straight-up torture porn. :shudder:
I really didn’t like Kinsale’s Midsummer Moon but I was so irritated by the rampant historical and cultural (for want of a better word) inaccuracies that the creepy aspects of the romance other people are pointing to slipped right by. I read it way back when it first came out (and while I was a graduate student in history of science and technology—which undoubtedly made me more sensitive), so my memory of details is not great, but I do remember the annoyingly cutesy-poo hedgehog. It’s the only book of hers I’ve never re-read.
I read much less historical romance than I used to, and one major reason is that in the vast vast majority these days the heroes are dukes and earls and lords and enough already! At least in books written twenty years ago and more untitled members of the gentry occasionally got to star. I think my brain interprets this as a genre-wide historical inaccuracy—there were really very few members of the nobility, back in the day. When I pick up a book and the hero is the Earl of Wherever or the second son of the Duke of Whathaveyou there’s the little voice in my head saying “Oh, come ON! Not again…”
@Isabel C – Oh, thank goodness! I’m not the only one who can’t stand the Virginal paragons in Garwood’s stories. I had a lot of problems with her books, beyond the NFVH, but that was always my biggest issue. I hated her book, Honor’s Splendour , which got rave reviews all over the place and is on, like, 10 national lists for being awesome. NO THANK YOU. My review on my blog turned out to be more of a rant than anything else.
Personally, I loved Loretta Chase’s LoS, but I think it’s because I saw it as a fantasy setting. I was so caught up in the mini-world Chase had built that I was ready to believe anything she wrote. I really liked that story, but I can see how it could be less-than-perfect when looked at from a realism POV.
Other books I haven’t liked that everyone else seemed to enjoy? Stephanie Sloane’s Devil in Disguise was awful and I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy How to Marry a Duke by Vicky Dreiling either. I haven’t read Outlander and I’m not planning to now (jeesh, it sounds horrible!) but I think I may pick up Iron Duke just for kicks.
As for me I hated Lois McMaster Bujold “the sharing knife” don’t get me wrong I love love LOVED the whole monster plot world building thing and if I ever go back it will be for that but I hated the romance between Fawn and what’s his name, it just screamed “daddy issues” at me and Fawn was so helpless and sweet and just ugh… it annoyed me how she was so stupid. I really like stronger heroines.
I really liked Sharon Shinn’s Archangel books but except for Archangel I had problems with the other books, I couldn’t finish Angel-Seeker because I keep feeling really uncomfortable with the way in which Rebekah and her people kept reminding me of the Islamic faith and how Sharon was showing it in such a negative light. I also got kinda pissed with the way everyone seemed to have casual sex all the time LOL but that’s just me 😛
Quizzabella:
I thought I was the only one. I absolutely could not stand Jane Eyre when I read it (admittedly as a teenager, but still). I hated that so very much that I now have an irrational dislike of all the Bronte sisters and I can’t bring myself to read any of the others’ books either. I know that isn’t fair to the them, as my sisters and I wouldn’t write similar books either, but I just can’t get over it.
Meljean Books Demon Moon. I had zero idea what was going on. A friend suggested i start from the begining…nope. The world building in the series is odd and disjointed. EVERYONE is full of angst. Reading them just makes me sad. On the other hand, I enjoyed The Ion Duke and the previous short story featuring Mad Madchen. Ms. Brooks does steampunk really well IMHO.
Another clunker for me was Drink Of Me by Jaquelyn Frank. It was just awful. The dialogue was almost laughable, and I never figured out why the heroine was so awesome. She spends most of the book not knowing who she is, but the hero doesn’t care because she has magic va-jay jay. I’ve read the authors other books & really enjoyed them. Proof that sometimes it’s not the writer but what they write.
My people! I thought I was all alone in my deep abiding hatred of the Outlander books. It’s not just me, then! Though, the beating didn’t bother me as much as I sincerely, thoroughly hated Claire. To the point where I lost respect for Jamie for loving the nitwit. I forced my way through the first few books – everyone told me that it’d get better – before finally calling it quits in the fourth.
I do have a serious Hate On for the Southern Vampire books as well. I can’t say Sookie is the worst heroine ever (see: Claire), but her naiveté is breathtaking. And annoying. And, yet, I keep “reading” the books. Don’t know why I torture myself that way.
Laurell K. Hamilton. Anita Blake and Merry Gentry. I loved it at first but then then… it devolved into a fuck-o-rama. I couldn’t get past a single page without something SPILLING somewhere. They needed more Bounty than a pre-school classroom.
Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse – just lost it after awhile. The protagonist was never shown as growing but more just changed, INSTANTLY. Plus the guy hopping. Irritating.
I’ve read one Nora Roberts in my lifetime. And I hated it. The POV hopping made me hate every character equally.
There are stories that didn’t press the rage button but just faded. Which I think is far more sad than the rage button. At least with that you get an emotional response. With the fading all you feel is indifference where you once felt something more. That makes you wonder what happened to the author.