I know this is probably a common topic. For me, I’m not sure if it’s a “trope” or just totally misinformed writing, but it’s how many authors approach alcoholism. Some examples are Girl on the Train and The House Across the Lake, among HUNDREDS. If anyone else here has struggled with alcoholism, you know it’s not just "i woke up after downing an entire bottle of whiskey but was able to shower, down a cup of coffee, and solve a murder. "
Cliffhanger end to a chapter…then the next several chapters have nothing to do with the interesting sequence you’ve just read, thus killing the pace, and excitement.
One of the weirdest (and maybe also oldest) examples of this is “Water Margin/Outlaws of the Marsh/All Men Are Brothers” (there are a couple of different names for the novel) from around 1524.
There is a cliffhanger at the end of almost every single chapter. And these are usually absolutely useless, oftentimes silly and cheap like in some really poor soap opera. For such an influential ancient novel (the Suikoden games are (very loosely) based on it) it’s partially written almost in a modern style but also very poorly. There are even more tropes to be found in the book like plot armor for almost all the 108 main characters or very unlikely coincidences.
The only legend who would pull this off was Rocky Flintstone in Belinda Blinked
I really hate when the biggest moment in a book seems to be spread out by three chapters. I get it, we are following several story lines. I get they will intersect. I do not at all care about the 3rd most important line when the main character just uncovered XYZ!
Ah I’m reading Ink Blood Sister Scribe right now and it absolutely does this. Oh things are finally getting interesting, let’s jump to the other two POVs for a couple chapters.
Or when they do this and each chapter is a different POV, like A Game of Thrones series. So you might not be coming back to that character until the next book. Which may not have been printed yet. And may never…
I found myself skipping chapters to get back to the same characters again, otherwise I’d forget the cliffhanger.