QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Deal breaker…
What trope or plot twist just ruins a book for you?
Sheri
Hmmm, instantly I would shout out “incest”. It’s a hard limit I can’t push past. However, cheating is really really hard for me as well. But I would agree that stupidity is a trope of it’s very own…and not a favorite of mine either.
Gaby
Ha! This is a difficult one. I don’t know if there’s anything as a deal breaker for me. I usually avoid infidelities in books, and the lack of communication between MCs annoys me a lot, but i will rarely DNF a book for it.
In the end it all depends on how the situation is worked out by the author, in my opinion.
Susan
I can’t do cheating. I know it sounds ridiculous to make this a hardline for me. But I get emotionally attached to characters and when I read cheating…well, I feel like I’ve been betrayed myself! I take it really personally! ha! I’m a dork.
Sue
I’d choose Life After Joe by Haper Fox. It’s a surprisingly beautiful and heartfelt story. It’s also intense and lyrical – all while being relatively short. Gimme. :)
Kristie
I guess I’d have to say, if I really have to pick something, miscommunication. Or, no communication at all. I don’t know that it’s a really a deal breaker for me, but that always drops my respect for characters down a notch. So, I might not DNF a book, but I probably won’t enjoy it as much. Cheating is also difficult to read, but I won’t avoid a book because of it.
Tracy
I agree with Kristie about miscommunication. I’ll frame it as “senseless actions”, so when characters do really dumb things in order for the story to go in a specific direction or to cause drama–be it not communicating, suddenly wanting to cheat on their devoted partner, going down into the dark basement when you know there’s a murderer about, going to meet the known villain in a secluded area by yourself, etc. When you start to lose respect for the character, while at the same time you see the cogs in the story cranking forward–that’s when it becomes really easy to move on to another book.
Ilhem
What they ^^^ said. It’s not the trope itself that is a deal breaker, but how it is developed.
I agree that miscommunication and angst just for the sake of it. That is my ‘too annoyed to read on’ point. A weak plot, or poor characters, is much more likely to annoy me than any specific plot lines.
Surprisingly, I thought I would find dub con, non on, incest… and other things a hard limit. I’ve found however it all depends on the quality of the writing and the plot.
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It depends. I really really don’t like to DNF a book and even if I don’t like a surprise trope being sprung on me in a book I can still read it depending on how the author wrote it in. Surprises I don’t usually like seeing is character being forced into sleeping with a third party to make a baby (ex. A Queen’s Dowry by Aislinn Kerry, f/f isn’t my thing either but I was okay with it), cheating, hardcore bdsm with no show of aftercare, acts of violence for no reason, and menage.
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