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.
A couple pages in. It was An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks. I nearly rage-quit on page one, but I forced myself to keep going for a bit longer. Very quickly I realized it wasn’t going to get better and I should have probably just rage-quit on that first page.
What specifically did it (the first time) was a paragraph about people who did bad things, but what if they did those bad things because of -insert stupid reason here-. The one that did it specifically was basically “maybe the man cheated on his wife because she was frigid and didn’t put out”.
Not only were the other excuses poor and failed to apply any personal responsibility for one’s actions, but that one? Ugh, made my skin crawl.
It was a selection in my local book club, and, surprisingly, that didn’t bug anyone else (all women). Yet I can guarantee you if that was real life e or even another book they didn’t love otherwise, it would have been a big deal. The inconsistently of that situation also bothered me, but that has nothing to do with the book.