You wanted to read the book, you were excited to crack it open, you came into it with good faith and anticipation… but you ended up dnf-ing it. Which book and why?
Mine was The Maid by Nita Prose. It was for my book club and looked like a fun murder mystery. Instead I got instant manic-pixie-dream-neurodivergent-girl vibes, and I noped out before the crime scene was even found.
The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy. In the first chapter, he makes up words with no context and refuses to use quotation marks, so it’s impossible to follow the conversation. Quit after 3 pages.
McCarthy’s belief was that you didn’t have to use quotation marks as long as you made it clear who was talking.
He was plain awful at making it clear who was talking. (Read and loved The Road; decided No Country for Old Men couldn’t possibly be worth the bother.)
You didn’t miss out on much. I was fairly excited to read that one, as the blurb on the jacket suggested that the novel was about the mystery of a missing passenger in a sealed plane that crashed into the water. Come to discover that this plot is basically only explored for one chapter and then totally abandoned, in favor of essentially no plot at all for the rest of the novel.
I pushed through in the hope that there’d be some redeeming story by the end, but there really wasn’t. Two stars for me.
Had the same experience with The Road.
This whole thread is the best motivation for anyone who wants to be a published author but doesn’t think they’re good enough. Even with an all time great like McCarthy, there will always be those who think they’re bad at writing.