When to DNF? Behind BookTok Hype
You know me. I am notorious for staying quiet about books I do not finish (DNF). But today? Today, I cannot keep in my bookish rage, and it is about to boil over with my unfiltered thoughts!
I am unleashing my honest thoughts without any intention of deterring readers from these books and celebrating the authors.
First things first, what does it mean to not finish a book?
- Give a rating of 1-3 stars (yes, you can still enjoy a book and have bookish rage for it).
- Disconnect with worldbuilding and the characters.
- Strong punctuation, grammatical, and sentence structure errors.
- Purely, not in the mood for the story (mood readers).
Thankfully, Goodreads gives us a handy digital shelf to DNF these stories. Digging through my bookish graveyard is a trip down memory lane. One glance at the ratings and I immediately remember why I walked away from these titles.
Yes, a DNF can be rated 3 stars. In particular, the Filthy Wicked Psychos series brought on some “I can’t keep reading this” frustration because of the FMC, Willow. Readers? You know what I’m about to put down!
Excerpt from Goodreads review:
“I did DNF as I just cannot stand the FMC. I don't understand why Eva wrote Willow like this as her other FMCs have been very strong and decidedly made rational decisions. It might be my pet-peeve when it comes to the FMC making dumb decisions kind of trope.
I recommend this because Eva is a great writer, but I strongly recommend reading her other series.”
Simply, I couldn’t connect with the FMC, and I did not understand why these strong dangerous men were so obsessed with her.
Time for a curveball. I picked up a short story by Eden Blackwell with every intention of featuring it on Bookish Bedroom Reviews until I started digging. Look, I will never ever accuse an author of being an AI bot and using AI to write their book unless it is undeniably true. I initially rated the story 3 stars. But after uncovering a massive bookish scandal, that rating tanked to 1 star.
Excerpt from Goodreads review:
- This is the most confusing story I have ever read.
- The dialogue does not progress the story, it honestly makes the story harder to read.
- The FMC keeps bleeding and I am not sure if this is a constant metaphor or a literal action.
- My biggest pet peeve is characters whispering constantly especially if they are supposed to be a fierce/strong persona. Why are you whispering?
- The writing is janky and in short sentences that never get to the point. I'm not even sure that the end got to the point.
You won’t believe what I discovered! Blackwell published 10+ books on the same date on Amazon. I’ll just leave that there and move onto my recent DNF by Laura Holly.
Laura Holly’s sentence structure resembled the jankiness and disjointed energy of Blackwell’s story which immediately made me very suspicious. The word “blood” was overused in weird context, repetitive wording about birthright, and very confusing dialogue that didn’t drive the story and the plot at all. The characters felt like they were devoid of emotion on one page and then overflowing with it on another.
My bookish rage is about these books infiltrating the indie space. Indie authors already face an uphill battle to get their books in front of readers. They shouldn’t have to fight twice as hard to get ahead of books like these.
Like I said earlier, this isn’t about gatekeeping and telling you who to avoid. Everyone’s reading tastes are different. I just wanted to lift the curtain and tell you my reasons why I DNF books. When I do DNF, it isn’t a reckless decision.
Well, it all comes down to this: These are stories and the authors behind them are real people. DNF does not mean that I dislike the authors. I just couldn’t connect with their stories.