Today I wanted to talk about 10 of my Bookish Icks or Bookish Turn Offs. So things that will either make me not want to pick up a book in the first place or things that make me want to DNF books. If you enjoy these things then that is awesome! This is simply personal preference. Let me know what your biggest Bookish Ick is in the comments!
1. Long ass chapters
I’m a short chapter girl. While I don’t mind the odd long chapter I don’t find it as enjoyable when every single chapter is super long. I like the satisfaction of finishing a chapter and I don’t get that kick with long chapters.
2. When you can’t pronounce a single character name
Don’t get me wrong, I like unusual names and I’m not talking about books with POC characters that have names that are simply unfamiliar to me but are stemmed from that culture. I’m talking about when every single (clearly white as hell) character has some crazy combination of letters that no matter how hard I try I don’t even know what direction to go to figure out how to pronounce it. If there is one or two names that are harder to pronounce it’s fine because when I’m reading I just use the first letter of the name or something but when it’s every single one I lose track of who is who and find it hard to follow. It also takes me out of the story everytime I get to a name. Which is not great for the reading experience.
Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth, I’m looking at you! Here is some of the examples of some of the names: Aoseh, Eijeh, Thuvhe, Ylira, Zetsyvis, zivatahak, etc. Literally what?
3. Excessive descriptions for every new place or person
Yes, we need description but when it’s 8 whole sentences just to describe the colour of the love interests eyes. I’m out. On the same page is when everytime they mention a feature of someone they use a descriptive. So, instead of ‘looking into his eyes’ you get ‘looking into his onyx eyes’ EVERY TIME. I haven’t forgotten since the last time you looked at his eyes less than a page ago. Calm down.
4. Love Triangles
I can’t do it. I just can’t deal. I’ve only read one book where I thought a love triangle was done well. Most of them make me hate the MC that’s in the middle of it because the do some toxic shit in the process of deciding who they actually want… So I just avoid it.
5. Absent Parents
This isn’t necessarily a hard no for me but it definitely affects my interest. Funnily enough the book I just finished that I absolutely adored and is so far my favourite read of the year has this… So maybe I’m full of shit. But this does frustrate me that majority of books, especially fantasy and especially YA have the absent parent trope. Whether the parents are dead, just never mentioned, they don’t know who their parents are or the parents are just shitty human beings that don’t care, it all pisses me off. Where is the genuinely supportive parents/family at? But don’t worry one of the side characters usually have an amazing family that takes the MC in. Think The Weasley’s from Harry Potter, Bear’s Family from The Medoran Chronicles, etc.
6. Insta Love
Do you want me to care? Because if you do then you need some connection, some background and some time for them to develop their relationship. Insta Love I just don’t end up caring about the relationship, so then I’m not invested.
7. Flowery Writing
I know that A LOT of people love this but I just can’t do it. I feel like it takes me out of the story and I usually end up DNFing as I’m just not that invested because I spend half the time reading description or trying to figure out what they are actually on about. I’m more of a straight to the point kind of person.
8. When Multi POV switch perspective without warning
I hate it when POV switches mid chapter or at the start of a chapter without a name. I don’t want to spend the next two pages figuring out who the hell we are reading from. When it switches at the start of a chapter without a name, yes, some authors do it well. But a lot don’t. Unless the characters have very distinct voices then it just makes the story hard to follow. This was one of the issues I had recently with Priory of the Orange Tree. The book doesn’t have the names at the top of the chapter it has the locations (North, South, East & West) and do you think I could remember which character matched each of these? Of course not. I spent way too long at the start of each chapter trying to figure out what was going on.
9. When the MC stops being a badass because a Love Interest comes into play
This is always the female main character, of course. She’s a fierce, don’t take shit from no one type character one minute and the next minute she isn’t capable of lifting a dagger because the love interest is a big strong man. Nope. Get out. Women can continue being a badass while also having a love interest. Stop it.
10. When the author acts like a fool
Let’s end with a bang. In the age of BookTok I feel like this is a more prominent thing. Not because it’s happening more but because it’s now happening more publicly and the turn over of TikTok videos is quicker than that of Youtube, blog posts, etc. so there is more content, more often to keep you in the loop. The one most recently I’m aware of was an author who made a TikTok and called a reviewer a bitch and went off about this FOUR STAR review on her book. BookTok was obviously not happy with a reviewer being attacked by an author and called her out. This author then doubled down and claimed she was a comedian and it was all a joke instead of being a decent human. It got to a point where Goodreads actually stopped allowing reviews of her book because everyone was leaving 1 star reviews and calling her out for her crappy behaviour. But like I said this isn’t new. Crappy authors have been attacking reviews on Goodreads, Twitter, BookTube and Blogs for years. Any shit like that though, I’m not going to read your book on principle. Then there is also authors that I read years ago and it’s more recently came out that they are a shitty person where I will stop recommending their books publicly. Obviously nothing can change my previous enjoyment of a book I’ve read but I won’t actively recommend or talk about authors I know to be shitty.
This is definitely only scratching the surface. I could easily make a Part 2 of this post in the future but those are the ten that came to mind. An honourable mention though is the word ‘shaft’ used in smut. Don’t ask me why, just ick.
Dusk Angel Reads 
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