Awwwww, man. Isn’t it just the worst when you had such high expectations for a book, you finally get a copy, you crack that sucker open, and are immediately…. tepid? It’s not something that happens often for me (luckily) but this latest is a disappointment. 😦
It’s an issue I’m having with How to Make Friends With the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow. From the start, I was not that interested in the MC, Tiger. She starts the story by saying she screams as loud as she possibly can to wake her mother up. WTF? Clearly they have a difficult life and there are some love/hate aspects to this relationship, but that felt like an unnecessary escalation. It didn’t really get better for me after that, and I feel like the sympathy I should feel for Tiger is sorely missing. At best, it’s in a detached way.
Bad habits
But, if I’m honest, there is exactly one reason that this will probably end up on my “attempted” shelf shortly.
I cannot stand the constant references to things she learned in books.
Tiger has this habit of not using a word naturally, but of pointing out that she learned it from a book. Or she will describe something and then add in “as my book from Lit class would say…” and add a fairly standard description. Reading this, I’ve realized how extraordinarily annoying and obnoxious this would be in a real person. If you know the word, just use it. You don’t have to preface it by saying “I learned this from a book!” and especially not every time.
So far I’m on page 93, and there have been at least 5 moments like this. The first two were awkward, the third is where I started to feel wary, the fourth was annoying, and the fifth made me actually groan and put the book down.
The smallest biggest issues
Honestly I’m not sure why this one small thing feels so intolerable to me, but alas, it has pretty much ruined any desire I had to read this book. And since I just bought a whole bunch of books this weekend, I’m certainly not going to waste my time forcing myself to!
Is it just me, or do you think this character habit would annoy you, too? What’s the smallest reason you’ve abandoned a book before?
My Book Joy 