Talk to Me Tuesday is a brand new weekly meme where we will discuss anything (and everything) literary-related in an open forum of honesty. Questions for the next week will be posted one week prior to the post on the Features page. If you'd like to participate in this weekly feature, simply create your post, link back to me, and add your post to the wonderful Mr. Linky on Melissa's page. Have fun, and have at it!
This week's question: Do you have any specific literary pet-peeves in the genres you read and why?
Ya lit is my heart. Seriously, I love the genre but like any love that has possession over your heart, it can break it sometimes.
I've been reading a boatload of sequels lately so here's what my biggest pet peeve currently about YA in sequels. I hate, hate, hate that the guy and the girl end up together in the first novel and then all of a sudden the two leads don't trust each other in the second. If I'm going to be fair about this then I'll say it's because love at first sight doesn't work and by the second novel, the characters suddenly find out they don't know everything about each other by just looking at each other longingly from afar and a romantic date once or twice.
But let's not be fair for a second. The reason this is happens is because the writer knows that no one wants to read about a character whose life is perfect so the writer forces the neatly tied bow of the first novel apart and the best way to do that is to make the guy go poof.
It's happened in so many different novels and it drives me crazy.
The girl finds out a sliver of truth about the guy's past and instead of just talking to him about it, they get all suspicious and angry and decide to do something reckless because of the way they feel.
One of the things I loved about Linger by Maggie Stiefvater is that Grace and Sam stayed together in the novel. They still had problems but Sam didn't go all aloof and mysterious on Grace for a plot device.
So that's my pet peeve currently. What's yours?
That's one I haven't thought of before, Amber, but you are SO right! That annoys the heck out of me! I loved Hush, Hush, but I was so disappointed with Crescendo for exactly that reason.
ReplyDeleteGreat answer :)
lol that does happen a lot! i guess you gotta spice it up, its annoying though!
ReplyDeleteYeah, that does happen alot. It didn't take me long to know I wanted to marry my husband. Three weeks maybe. He said the big L word first after that amount of time and you could have knocked me over with a feather so I believe love can happen fast, but not true love forever when you're sixteen. We were 26 and 29. We'd been around the dating block a time or two. I'd been in love with all the wrong kinds of people. So I knew the real thing. I don't think most of the characters we read about know the real thing. They are "drawn" to each other by some inexplicable force. Somehow that force disappears or they overpower it by the second book. Yeah, it ticks me off too. Where was that undying, blind faith from the first book, that force of nature, that need like you need air or water or food??? Ahem, maybe you touched a sore spot there. I think I better quit or I'll be writing my own post on your blog.
ReplyDeleteHeather
Totally! That irked me so bad in Torment!! That even starts to happen in The Iron Daughter. It's like ugh, come. I know it's a writing ploy to keep interest, I don't know. Sometimes I think the writer maybe should have just written a stand-alone instead of a series.
ReplyDeleteWow. You know, I thought that there was something going on between Crescendo and Torment that I just couldn't figure out why but I didn't like them.... And I can't believe that it took me this long to realize, that duh, its because the relationships are falling apart. It really annoys me, and I end up not enjoying the sequel as much as the first book. Hm.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I loved Linger, too, because Sam and Grace stayed together the whole novel. I hate when this happens!
ReplyDeleteOh definitely...sometimes you can tell that the author is just driving the two main characters apart to up the tension. The 'acting suspicious but not actually talking about it' thing is unfortunately all too common, and can really bug me, especially when it leads to characters acting dumb and *that* being the main force driving the plot.
ReplyDelete