Saturday 12 October 2013

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 14 - What are your deal breakers?


I stumbled across the 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge hosted by April from Good Books Good Wine and it looks like so much fun that I have to take part. You can find out all about the challenge and how to join in HERE. Obviously the idea of the challenge is to take part 15 days in a row but I don't have enough time for that and since April is so relaxed over the rules I've decided  dedicate one day a week to the challenge.

The Day 14 topic is: What are your deal breakers?

I didn't think I had many deal breakers but then I started on this list and realised I had quite a few of them!

  1. Badly Behaving Authors - I will never be put off reading a book by a few negative reviews, some of my best friends who I have loads of book loves in common with have loved books I've hated or vice-versa. What will put me off reading a book is if I think I'm at risk of being attacked by the author of a million of their fans if I don't happen to like it. I try to be polite in my reviews, even ones for books that I didn't particularly like, but we can't all like everything. Even the most popular authors are going to have negative reviews written about their books so id someone doesn't like your book suck it up, hold your head high and walk away. Attacking the reviewer is just going to make you look like a fool and is going to make most reviewers wary of even trying your books.
  2. Cheating - I can not STAND books that have ongoing cheating in them, it just makes me want to punch the main characters and I'm more likely to throw the book across the room than I am to finish reading it. I can occasionally deal with cheating if it's a one time thing that they feel guilty over & don't carry on with but when they're just messing around behind their partners back with no intention of ever coming clean it's a definite no go!
  3. Insta-Love - I'm so sick of insta-love! Insta-lust is a very different thing and I can completely get on board with that but love takes time to build and I want to see characters get to know each other before making declarations. If your characters are talking love on their third meeting I'm going to be rolling my eyes and wondering if there is any point in carrying on reading to the end of the book.
  4. Boring Characters - I want characters that I can connect to, ones that make me feel invested in the outcome of the story. I don't have to like all of the characters, in fact a good author should be able to make me hate certain characters with a passion, but if I don't like anyone then I doubt I'll care enough about them to even want to know what happens to them.
  5. Spelling / Grammar Errors - I can ignore these when I'm reading an ARC because I know they haven't gone through the full editing process yet but when I buy a finished book I expect it to be edited. I'm happy to read self-published novels but if you don't use a decent editor don't expect me to bother reading your next book.
  6. Timeline Inconsistencies / Plot Holes - Small things can really bug me so if your character left the house wearing a dress but 2 hours later is suddenly wearing trousers just to make climbing a ladder easier I'm going to notice. I'm even going to flip back a few pages to double check it and if I'm right I'm damn sure going to mention it in my review.
  7. Cliffhanger Endings - this isn't a deal breaker as such because if your series is awesome then of course I'm going to read it eventually BUT if the first couple of books have painful cliffhangers and don't offer any kind of resolution then I'm not going to carry on reading until AFTER all of the books have been published.
  8. Love Triangles - OK, again this one isn't quite a deal breaker but it's not far off becoming one. Very few authors manage to write a believable triangle where I actually end up caring for all of the characters involved. Most of the time it's pretty damn obvious who is going to come out on top & I'm sick of them being added to practically every series just as a way to cause drama.
So those are my main deal breakers, I'm sure if I sat and thought about it for a bit longer I'd be able to come up with more but those are the first ones that spring to mind! What are your deal breakers? Are any of them the same as mine? More importantly, are there any I've missed?

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