Recently I read “Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang and I’m part way through “Caging Skies” by Christine Leunens. Obviously in these books the characters are meant to be unlikable since they are racist/anti-Semitic and it would be problematic if they were written in a better light. So is it wrong to give the book a lower rating if you didn’t like a protagonist who was supposed to be unlikable?
Yeah, that’s not right. Hamlet is quite a dick, it doesn’t mean that ‘Hamlet’ is a bad play 🤦🏻♀️
To me, it depends. I love books with unlikable characters- but it’s not as easy as saying “but the author intended for them to be disliked”. There still has to be something enjoyable and engaging about the story to make people want to read.
It also depends on what way you disliked the characters. Did you just think they were unlikable for the intended reasons, or did you think they were unrealistic or poorly written? That kind of thing.
A deliberately annoying character is still annoying. It takes skill and finesse to include them without dragging down the narrative as a whole. Otherwise you get a Jar-Jar.
If you didn’t enjoy a book, you didn’t enjoy it.
I think it’s wrong to give the book a lower rating because you don’t like the characters. To say that you disliked the book because of the characters but that it’s well-written would be fine
Books with unlikeable characters are not meant to be unlikeable books.
Just rate the book based on if you like it or not, there are plenty of books I rate highly even though some characters aren’t unlikeable. Doesn’t almost every book have unlikeable characters?
Ultimately rate books however you want as long as you’re not a professional critic/reviewer/influencer…
But I think if a character is intentionally unlikeable then you shouldn’t be taking the book down for that. The author did their job well.