Six For Sunday: It’s All About Books – Bookish Hates

Good morning lovelies! It’s the last day of this January which seems to have gone on for one thousand days! Which means it’s the last of Steph’s It’s All About Books prompts! Next month we’re on to Read It and Weep – there are some great prompts coming up!

Six for Sunday is a weekly meme hosted by the lovely Steph at ALITTLEBUTALOT. You can find a list of prompts for January, February and March here

Bookish Hates

I really struggled with this one! I think most of these would be more accurately described as minor irritations and pet peeves than full on hates.

Changing cover designs partway through a series – This is definately my number one pet peeve, I like my books to match, I still haven’t fully forgiven Simon & Schuster for switching to the US style covers 30 books into the Fearless series! The latest culprit is Usborne who released the first two The Train To Impossible Places books as harbacks first but have only released the third as a paperback!

Poor diverse representation – Switching to a more serious point, I think diversity in all forms of media is super important, part of that probably comes from being mixed race. I don’t think all books featuring diversity have to be Own Voice, although it’s important to publishing houses make space for, and promote these books, at a minimum you need to have done in depth research and had the manuscript sensitivity read. I’ve read a couple of books in the past that have felt like they’ve quickly shoved something into the book just to tick a box. I don’t think that helps anyone!

The lack of UK YA hardbacks – I think this is a difficult one, I appreciate that paperbacks are cheaper to buy generally speaking, but there’s something special about a hardback book, and all those extra opportunities for secret designs on the book itself, or art on the reverse of the dust jacket. Hardback editions seem to be far more mainstream for Young Adult fiction, whereas here publishers seem to mainly stick to adult fiction when it comes to hardbacks

Two dimensional characters – I am very much a character driven reader, I think I can forgive a lot with a book if I like the characters. Make me love the characters and the chances are I will love your book! On the flip side if I don’t like your characters the most wonderful plot in the world isn’t going to save the book for me.

First book syndrome – Important point first this definitely doesn’t apply to all books but it does apply to some. I’ve called it First book syndrome as I find it tends to happen more often in books that are the start of a series. I’m not sure if it’s because the author has built up an incredible world, full of characters and sometimes a whole new set of laws, or religion, but spending chapter on chapter introducing characters and trying to explain how your world works with no real start to the plot doesn’t work for me. You might have a fantastic four books to follow but I won’t get to them if nothing actually happens until past the halfway point of your first!

Cheating resolutions – As you may have noticed I do enjoy a good crime or mystery novel. What I don’t like is a resolution that seems to come from nowhere. Even if I don’t guess the outcome, give me a resolution that I can look back in the book and see how it happened! I wonder if sometimes it comes down to editing and not remembering a scene with some important information has been deleted but if the big reveal centers around a piece of information that’s suddenly appeared from nowhere I’ll be unimpressed!

They were my #SixforSunday! If you’ve taken part leave a link to your post below and I’ll be sure to check it out!