YA LGBT Books discussion

We all have pet peeves; those things that can make us stop reading, either for a moment or forever.

Some of them are personal, and may be a plus to a different reader. (For instance, on the adult group there are those who never want to read polyamory, and put a book down the second the third MC appears. Then there are those who love any arrangement of adults sharing a life. I write M/M/M so I'm in that group.)

Some things bug many readers, like bad grammar.

So any pet peeves? Things you groaned and wanted to throw away the book over? (Please avoid titles - we're not here to dis specific books.)

I recently read a book with no contractions. And that's one of my peeves - unrealistic conversations. The teen who says "I cannot come over because I am not done with my homework. He is here too early."

As a writer, reading conversation aloud helps, and I do specifically search for and insert contractions in speech for almost all characters (except perhaps Oxford dons, and foreign-language speakers.)

For the first time this month I DNF'd a book.... normally I will finish everything, but this I couldn't, partly because it hit on my two biggest "pet peeves" but also because it was supposedly a book which should have fitted loosely into the Girls Own/Boys Own genre (early 20th century school and adventure stories) which I've been reading and collecting for about two decades.

The two areas for me where it really fell down and which gets me every time are:

1. Lack of research. There really is no excuse for this if you are going to be giving your story a historical setting - especially not with all that is available on the internet for free, before you start looking at specialist books (and in this author's case just reading some other books set in the period and location would have helped)....

2. If you are setting a book in a country not your own - get your facts straight - and that includes language and spelling. Same goes if you take, say, a British character and transplant him/her to the USA.... accents, phrases and colloquialisms (particularly regional dialect - seriously - someone from Manchester sounds very different to someone from London) are important and won't just disappear as soon as they leave the country.

Finally - if a book is set in a certain time - I want to see language of the time to help with the settings - it's easy to look up what slang words were in use in say the 1920's - putting a swear word that wasn't used in that context till the 1960's (and had a totally different meaning in the 1920's) is going to grate...... In the same sort of vein - if you character is a 16 year old girl ... you don't want them to sound like a middle aged spinster


There are no topics that I dislike enough not to read - and nothing topic wise that would make me put a book down. Bad editing, grammar and spelling annoy me, but not so much that I won't read it (unlike my mother who once famously bought a "best selling" book and took a red pen to it - she's an English teacher - before sending it back to the publisher).... of all the technical things that should be picked up in the beta/editing process the one that gets to me most if it slips through is continuity....

Okay, enough ranting.......

I rarely put down a YA book, since if something is offensive, I feel the need to finish the book and write a review to let others know. So if a YA book is dripping with sexism and slut-shaming (hot button issues for me) I will finish it no matter how much I dislike it.

Bad grammar and misspelling annoy me, although since I mostly read books by mainstream publishers I don't come across them very often. And if I do, I blame the editor for falling down on the job.

Not too many topics are off limits for me in YA, although I wouldn't read a romance with group sex in it, YA or not. Similar BDSM. There's a YA book that I know of (PM if you want the name) where the hero spanks the heroine (against her will) until she has an orgasm, in front of an audience of children!

yikes! I def. don't want to read that!

I DNF frequently. And it's for a different reason every time. Mostly I can sum by saying 'it's not engaging.' But that begs the question, why is it not engaging? Some reasons: 1. too much reliance on page-turning adventure at the expense of everything else. 2. unlikable characters 3. any sort of implausibility, like children that are too savvy or poorly researched Hist. Fic. 3. bad editing/ proofreading 4. predictability.

I sometimes want to toss a book for having stupid characters. Not that every character has to be brilliant, but I hate when they act too stupid for who they are - a cop who handles evidence with his bare hands without recording it; a doctor who scoops his injured lover up in his arms without checking for broken bones; the young girl who walks into the dark alley when she gets an unsigned note that might possible be from someone she knows... Sometimes it's a positive thing to be engaged enough to want to smack a character, and it's good to have imperfect heroes, but there are limits beyond which I feel like whatever happens is now the character's own fault.

Still, I'm much more likely to skim than DNF. In fact, I avoid samples of books, because even after a bad sample, I have this urge to buy the book just to know what comes next...

I ha yt? e to DNF but I do have pet peeves. Some have already been mentioned. But I want to add a few. I can deal with small historical inaccuracies like having a Roman make sure he packed his undies before going to war (that was a Facebook moment in an otherwise decently researched book) but I can't forgive just completely missing the feel of a culture and superimposed 21st century values and morality on historical characters. At that point there is no reason to set the story in an hf environment. Make it fantasy or contemporary but leave the time period of which the author has no understanding alone.

Also poor attempts at genre fiction are also grating. If all you are going to do is place the characters on a different planet and add a few cool techy gadgets, don't bother calling it sf. If the sf (or whatever genre) doesn't add to the story, then it's just a cheap ploy of spicing up a contemporary story.

Kaje wrote: "I recently read a book with no contractions. And that's one of my peeves - unrealistic conversations. The teen who says "I cannot come over because I am not done with my homework. He is here too ea..."

Ha ha, I did that on some of my earlier writing, I tried to write my dialogue using proper grammar. Had a few reviewers bring me to task on it. Live and learn.

My biggest pet peeve is vague writing. I can't stand it when writers bog down their writing with qualifiers and phrases that don't mean anything. "He looked out the window for some reason, which was untypical for him but perhaps he heard a sound or something."
For some reason, since, perhaps, or something, unlike usual; these words don't add anything to your writing and make it appear like you are making stuff up on the fly. Okay for a rough draft but not for a published novel.

I always have to go back in my own books when I edit and remove "almost", "a little", "somehow", "just", "for some reason" ... It's so tempting to water down the prose that way. And hard to remove as much as one should.

I'm not much of a quitter. About the only way for me to put down a book is if it's grossly offensive. But even then I may finish it to see how it all plays out. I don't always like the books I read, but I almost always finish them.

I will drop a book like a hot potato if there is gratuitous violence against women, or degrading misogynistic language/behavior. I stop caring about the book, the characters, and the author at that moment.

Food. (No, but really, most of my statuses are around food xD).

The few stories I have DNFed, in all seriousness, have been due to an overload of sex without much plot at all. I get bored and irritated.

Kaje wrote: "I always have to go back in my own books when I edit and remove "almost", "a little", "somehow", "just", "for some reason" ... It's so tempting to water down the prose that way. And hard to remove ..."

I use those to more... draw out the rest of it. Somehow for me is like... despite all the other craziness, this happened, and so on.

Genta wrote: "I will drop a book like a hot potato if there is gratuitous violence against women, or degrading misogynistic language/behavior. I stop caring about the book, the characters, and the author at that..."

I don't mind that as content, as long as I feel that the author sees it for what it is and it's a blow against the characters involved. What I don't like is when the author seems not to notice that their hero is acting in a misogynistic way, or portrays that as a positive "macho" type of behavior. Like they can't tell the difference between strong and abusive, or between interest and stalking.

Predictability...there maybe a limited number of tropes and story lines, esp. within the romance genre, but there are millions of ways to make it fresh. I don't want to read the same story again. I like to be surprised.

I DNF pretty often, but in turn, I'm willing to pick up just about anything. There are some things like the book being just plain boring, unreadable, or flowing weirdly, but that's pretty normal I think.
I'm (also) super, super picky about my romances though. Like it or not, romance seems to be a big part of a lot of books, especially YA, but too often it really strikes me as being just off. Unhealthy relationships, borderline if not abusive ones, love triangles, insert-yourself-here romances, insta-romances and relationships that come out of left field, etc, etc. (I know, wow, I'm picky.) Platonic relationships being ditched, ignored, or remaining nonexistant in favor of romantic/sexual ones put me off too.

Suki wrote: "Predictability...there maybe a limited number of tropes and story lines, esp. within the romance genre, but there are millions of ways to make it fresh. I don't want to read the same story again. I..."

Concurred! A lot of people forget the fun that can be had with inverting, averting, and downright messing with tropes as well.

Well. A disappointing work from your favorite author. Also, most often in my case parents make me stop reading a book because they are concerned more about study books than fantasy books.
Otherwise, the covers from outside appear appealing but the real content inside is quite insipid.

Kaje wrote: "I always have to go back in my own books when I edit and remove "almost", "a little", "somehow", "just", "for some reason" ... It's so tempting to water down the prose that way. And hard to remove ..."

HAHA, I used just a lot in my recent book and had to go back and remove about half of them. GAH!

I can't stand stale or unrealistic dialogue, overly shy characters that NEVER improve throughout the book, even with their own family or love interest, words that NO teen would ever use (huge pet peeve of mine), and my biggest pet peeve? When authors do not go back and repair their characters once the book is written. I find my characters as I write that first third, and going back over that first third is so important to me, but I do write character driven stories.

The other big one for me is editing, and not your normal peeves. I have read a lot of books lately where the last third reads as if it wasn't even edited. This, to me, is lazy on the author's part.

I haven't yet come across anything that kept me from finishing a book once I started. There are situations and personality types I don't care for, but just because a book contains elements I don't like doesn't stop me from reading it. I have read books where I didn't like the main character. I can't stand the idea of a man beating his wife/girlfriend, but I've read books involving acts of domestic abuse. Historical fiction is not a genre I care for, but I've enjoyed a few historical novels. Three or more people falling in love with each other and forming a group relationship seems highly unlikely and impractical to me, but I've read a few W/M/W and M/M/M romances. I do think it would be difficult for me to finish a book that's poorly edited and filled with misspellings. Fortunately, I haven't come across such a book yet.

Fortunate guy :)

I read one recently full of homonym confusions and malapropisms. Sometimes it was funny - "baited breath", "feet heavy as led", "bailed the hay", but it made me itch for a red pencil.

Kaje wrote: "Fortunate guy :)

I read one recently full of homonym confusions and malapropisms. Sometimes it was funny - "baited breath", "feet heavy as led", "bailed the hay", but it made me itch for a red pen..."

That sounds like fun!

Sometimes, because humor isn't a bad thing. But it's hard to get into a tense, emotional scene when the good guy "preyed" he'd survive... I've been surprised by bad editing from some small presses, though, and excellent editing from some self-pubs, so it's worth checking a sample before buying.

I agree with a lot of the points already posted, so I won't rehash those. For me to actually not finish a book it usually takes a combination of things, but two that will throw me out of the reading experience are bigoted authors and OMG DRAMA!

I read a story where the author used a homeless person as a throw-away plot stressor, and it ruined the whole thing. It made me so angry I only slogged my way through to find out if the rest of it was so horrible.

Then there was a YA/NA work that was looong (I thought I was getting a bargain when I bought it) and the characters were so excitable, everyone was always screaming, yelling, shouting, throwing things, and god knows what else. There were exclamation points for nearly every line of dialogue. I got about halfway and I couldn't do it anymore.

I agree with getting a sample first, it really helps weed out the absolutely bad editing, and for me, the too dramatic writers.

A spider that needs squishing. :-)

Paul wrote: "A spider that needs squishing. :-)"

And not much else, eh?

Work. Mowing the lawn (ugh). Occasionally sleep.

Actually I can count on two fingers the numbers of books I've DNF'd. The first was The Catcher in the Rye. I don't remember much (it was over thirty years ago except the whiny little jerk just got on my nerves. The other is Wraeththu. I started the series and read book one and two. The third was out of print and by the time I got it I couldn't muster the interest to pick it back up.

Most everything listed above annoys me but not enough to really stop. If the blurb sounds interesting and the shelves aren't any of my turnoffs (menage, heavy bdsm, etc) then I plow through.

There are a few however I wish I hadn't finished or even started in the first place!

Paul wrote: "A spider that needs squishing. :-)"

That's what husbands are for! (or a shotgun)

Michael wrote: "Paul wrote: "A spider that needs squishing. :-)"

That's what husbands are for! (or a shotgun)"

My husband makes me deal with them. I usually try to finish my chapter first.

I hit another book with typos and homonym confusion, although I did finish it. I was particularly fond of "their wonton behavior"

Kaje wrote: "Michael wrote: "Paul wrote: "A spider that needs squishing. :-)"

That's what husbands are for! (or a shotgun)"

My husband makes me deal with them. I usually try to finish my chapter first."

Oh no, no, no! Daryl knows if the spider disappears we are either going to have to seal off that room or depending on the size of the spider, move!

LOL - I admit, mine hovers nervously until I get the job done.

Spiders are cool, usually harmless to us, and usually death on flies. Give me a spider over flies any day. Haven't you folks read Charlotte's Web?

Cheryl in CC NV wrote: "Spiders are cool, usually harmless to us, and usually death on flies. Give me a spider over flies any day. Haven't you folks read Charlotte's Web?"

I adored that as a kid, and my own daughter makes me put the spiders outside, not kill them. Spiders don't worry me at all, but they make my husband so twitchy that they have to go out.

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes and 10 gazillion mosquitoes, so spiders have a job to do.

Kaje wrote: "Cheryl in CC NV wrote: "Spiders are cool, usually harmless to us, and usually death on flies. Give me a spider over flies any day. Haven't you folks read Charlotte's Web?"

I adored ..."

OK I have to admit.. I do believe it is wrong and cruel to kill spiders, so I only ever kill the ones in my house, never outdoors. Normally I suck em up with the vacuum cleaner and generally feel bad about it afterwards, for about a minute. I also get hubby to empty the vac when it's full.

I kill other bugs in the house - that's my space. Plus I want the hubby to actually sleep at night. I grew up spending summers in a cabin with knotholes in the walls and bats in the attic - wildlife doesn't bother me, but it makes his skin crawl if he knows there's a bug around.

I actually got the gist of this question wrong. I assumed it to mean what would make you put down a GOOD book.

I DNF Gulliver's Travels recently because all he did was compare sizes CONSTANTLY it got right on my nerves.

Paul wrote: "I actually got the gist of this question wrong. I assumed it to mean what would make you put down a GOOD book.

I DNF Gulliver's Travels recently because all he did was compare sizes CONSTANTLY..."

LOL. Yeah, a good book pretty much takes an earthquake, a screaming kid, or being late for work.

My tastes change - there are book I loved once that now seem so creaky to me I don't know if I'd finish them. I don't remember Gulliver well enough.

Kaje wrote: "I kill other bugs in the house - that's my space. Plus I want the hubby to actually sleep at night."

I agree but since moving to the country 14 years ago, I got a bit more brave with creepy-crawlies, now its just earwigs and spiders that freak me. I trained my last cat to chase and eat them... the cat I have now eats grasshoppers but not spiders.

Kaje wrote: "LOL. Yeah, a good book pretty much takes an earthquake, a screaming kid, or being late for work.

That happened to me with "The Hobbit" and the "Lord of the Rings Trilogy". When I was in my teens I was waiting for my BF to pick me up to go shopping. It was the Thursday before Christmas. He was always late so I picked up "The Hobbit". By the time he got there I told him to go home. I read The Hobbit and went straight into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Didn't stop for anything including reading in church through the Christmas service.

The biggest reason why I DNF books is the writing style pertaining to sophistication and realism; especially when it comes to how the characters are written. I can't stand moronic characters that do things (for the sake of creating drama by the author) that sensible RL people wouldn't do. Or if they are given an occupation and the author fails to write said occupation realistically. Another reason is too much internal thinking (over thinking)/angsting on the part of a character. Drives me crazy which makes me start to skim to get back to the actual dialogue. Usually by this point, the author has lost me and I quit the book.

There's not many reasons for to stop reading, spelling errors and grammar errors I can deal with. But I will put down a book if all my favorite characters die, and I hate books are to judgey ( I can't spell I'm sorry).

I rarely will put a book down, but I may not buy another book from an author that constantly has their characters dealing with unhappiness or rather never getting the chance to relax and have ANY happiness. There is one author that has a series of books that I like the concept of, the writing is good and the characters are well thought out, but the in the books they never get a moments peace. Honestly it's exhausting to read, every chapter and sometimes every page, just as one problem gets resolved, something else goes wrong. I like a HEA or at least a HFN, I realize that you need to have some adversity to get to the happy ending, but to CONSTANTLY read about the hardships is tiring and will stop me from reading anything more from them.

Jack wrote: "I rarely will put a book down, but I may not buy another book from an author that constantly has their characters dealing with unhappiness or rather never getting the chance to relax and have ANY h..."

Yeah, I agree. I'm an angst lover, but there has to be a range of emotions. Especially so if the crises begin to seem soap-opera, like too much for the original set-up. If it ends on a cliffhanger I might get really irritated. And if I'm already in a sad mood, I will set it down.

I don't need a real romance-happy ending, especially for a series book, but I do want some respite, a moment in time when the characters can just breathe, and a reason to close the book with some optimism.

Kaje wrote: " Yeah, I agree. I'm an angst lover, but there has to be a range of emotions.

Exactly. While I usually read to escape the drama of the real world I understand that a book without crisis, conflict or angst would be boring. Not giving the characters a chance have a couple of happy moments turns me off. And as a rule I'm a romantic so I like my happy endings, or like I said at least a happy for now.

what makes me put a book down is over excessive eroticism .Some books will focus more on that, rather than the story being told. Sometimes it becomes too much.
I also don't enjoy reading forced chemistry . I am a romance lover and I love when the connection feels natural. I have read short stories and books where there have the structure of the connection is set up but it doesn't happen. (Ex. I read one book where the two main characters were supposed to be inseparable(coming out together,sharing their first time) it was being stated over and over again but as soon as they bumped heads it was like they never were. Also One of the character's school friends stepped in and did what any friend should do ; just be there . These two characters had an instant connection without it being said ; even though the author tried to persuade us different.


I will surely put a book down and never think twice about it for these reasons

Kaje wrote:"LOL. Yeah, a good book pretty much takes an earthquake, a screaming kid, or being late for work."

I am not lying when I say that even a combination of the three has not stopped me from reading a great book. My 4 y/o cousin was over, I was running late for work, and a 4.3 quake did not stop me from finishing the last book in Brent Week's fantastic Night Angel trilogy (18+ warning for this series)

There are a slew of books that I've put down for a lack of need or a lack of time while in the grasp of schooling, but there is only one book I've ever put down and stopped reading permanently. Bad books, I will finish begrudgingly (and if it was a recent release, I usually go out of my way to find the author's or editor's email so I can comment on what I thought could be improved). I sometimes even seek out the books author's say are their worst works, just so I can see how they have improved as a writer. So I'm not averse to weak plots, poor structure, transparent characters, or overused tropes.

But this one book... It was so blatantly sexist and contradictory about itself (one of the characters directly says "I'm not sexist" then two pages later does something painfully sexist and offensive) that I could not read another page. It wasn't that the character was written intentionally with such a character flaw; it wasn't a social commentary about sexism, either. It was just bad.

I'm sure I would put down books for similar reasons: sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. If a book is filled with hate and contradicts itself in painfully obvious ways without being a well constructed social commentary, or being a useful engine for character development, then I'm dropping the book on my list of shame and never reading it again.

I do hate to see books accept or even glamorize attitudes like that. Like the ones where a girl is treated like dirt by a guy, borderline abusive, and she is written as finding him all forcefully masculine and wonderful. If she never comes to her senses, and it seems like the author agrees with the sentiment, I won't keep reading.

I agree, Kaje, absolutely.

Other things I've recently seen people say, that I agree with: if there are foreign words or phrases used wrong or poorly translated. Or if there's a particular setting and the author doesn't know what it's actually like there (ie, never mentioning the summer heat in Minnesota, because, gosh MN is cold, right?).

Poor research in general is a problem, but at the same time having written enough books to know how hard it is sometimes to even realize you should have researched something you thought you knew (like "I know this name is that ethnicity" and finding out later you should have double checked...) I cut authors some slack for that. But not where it's clear they made multiple errors because they didn't bother to check something they clearly didn't know a lot about.

I very rarely don't finish a book. Even if I'm hating it and am completely bored. That being said, the times I haven't finished a book it's been because I couldn't connect and/or relate to the main character, because the writing style was boring, because it was very long and I just knew it wouldn't get more interesting,because I didn't care about the plot at all. Some more pet-peeveish reasons to why I wouldn't finish a book: a relationship that I saw as instalove was featured, a previously likable main character became unlikable (why I never finished the second book in the Iron Fae series), and/or the book is completely different to what I expected and not in a good way.

Kaje wrote: "I always have to go back in my own books when I edit and remove "almost", "a little", "somehow", "just", "for some reason" ... It's so tempting to water down the prose that way. And hard to remove ..."

Hm... now I have to go and check that!!