The Book Ick: Common Pet Peeves That Ruin a Good Read

One of the best parts of reading is getting immersed in a completely different world so you can forget what’s going on in your real life for a little while. That makes the following pet peeves even worse because not only are they annoying, but they also break that immersion and pull you out of the story. Some of these may seem like small details, but it’s a big deal if they break story immersion.

These are some common pet peeves (some of which are particular bugbears of mine) that should serve as a warning to authors of what not to do in their books.

#1: Insta-Love

Ah, yes — boy meets girl, they lock eyes across the battlefield, and before you can say "lack of emotional development," they're willing to die for each other. Building a believable relationship takes time, even in fiction, and if two characters are declaring eternal devotion after one awkward coffee date or after knowing each other at school for a week, then that pulls me right out of the story.

Some people may enjoy this, and many probably do because it keeps showing up in books, but for me, it’s a particular pet peeve. Character development is an important part of a story, and insta-love just doesn’t give me a chance to get to know the characters on their own, let alone start to root for them together. Without the tension and buildup, the payoff feels unearned and hollow to me and leaves me wondering why I should care.

#2: Unnecessary Miscommunication

We’ve all read that book where the protagonist hears a snippet of a conversation, misinterprets it wildly, refuses to ask any clarifying questions, and spends half the book brooding over something that could have been cleared up in five minutes. Conflict is vital in storytelling, but when tension is built on characters willfully refusing to have an obvious conversation, it feels cheap. Miscommunication can be realistic, but it should feel natural, not manufactured to drag out drama. Plus, it can make characters who are otherwise intelligent people seem like idiots.

There are plenty of times when miscommunication, or a failure to communicate, works well as a source of tension. A situation where they’re on opposite sides of a conflict and the stakes are high if something goes wrong. Or they’re friends trying to navigate more-than-friendly feelings without ruining the friendship they’ve already got by saying the wrong thing. If it’s a situation like that, where there’s a risk that talking things out could actually make things worse, then a character hesitating to have that conversation absolutely makes sense.

But if they’re just being stupidly stubborn for seemingly no real reason, then no thank you.

#3: A Villain With No Motive

Villains are characters too, and deserve the same amount of attention and character development as the heroes. Great antagonists have motivations that, even if twisted, are at least understandable. Maybe they seek power out of fear, revenge out of loss, or control because of trauma. A layered villain makes the story richer, challenges the hero more deeply, and sometimes even makes us uncomfortable with how much we sympathize.

Take Black Panther from the Marvel Cinematic Universe as an excellent example. Killmonger was a fantastic villain because he had a point. Was he going about it the wrong way? Maybe. But it made sense why he was doing what he was doing. He wasn’t just evil for the sake of it, and it could be argued that he wasn’t really evil at all. Just disagreeing with the hero on how to solve a problem that they both agreed needed to be addressed.

#4: A Protagonist With No Flaws

Nothing makes a character more forgettable than making them flawless. When a protagonist is stunningly beautiful, effortlessly talented, morally unimpeachable, and universally adored by everyone they meet, it's hard to root for them — or even relate to them. In fact, they feel like a Mary Sue from a fanfiction. Perfect characters aren’t aspirational; they’re boring. The best protagonists struggle, make mistakes, doubt themselves, and grow. Watching a character evolve is half the joy of a good story. If the main character starts at 100% perfection, there's nowhere for them — or us — to go.

That said, they should have some redeeming qualities, too. Unless they’re going to be the villain (at first), then I do also want some reason to root for that character. A good villain redemption arc can be extremely satisfying (Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender comes to mind). But if they’re presented as the protagonist, then I’d like to have something I can like about them and some reason to cheer for them right from the beginning, even if they’ve got a lot of room to grow.

#5: Walking Stereotypes Disguised as Characters

Stereotypes exist for a reason: sometimes they come from something that’s real. But if a character feels like they were created by checking a few boxes, “sassy best friend,” “stoic warrior,” “dumb jock,” or the “nagging wife”, they seem like flat, lazy copies of each other. With any complexity stripped away, these types of characters can make the story feel predictable. Worse, they can unintentionally reinforce harmful assumptions about entire groups of people.

Stereotypes Can Undermine Diversity

When writers lean too heavily on stereotypes, especially when portraying marginalized communities, it not only weakens their characters — it undermines diversity itself. Real diversity in storytelling isn’t just about including a character of a certain background; it’s about giving them depth, individuality, and agency. People are messy, contradictory, and surprising — and so should be the characters who are supposed to represent them. Authentic representation means moving past tired molds and letting every character, no matter their background, be fully human.

I don’t want to read about characters whose entire personality is that they’re female or Asian or gay. Those things do impact the experiences the characters will have, but they’re not personalities; characters need to have something more to them that makes them feel like a real person.

#6: The Male Gaze

There’s a certain kind of writing where you can immediately tell that the female character was crafted by a man — and not in a good way. She’s often described in lingering detail (especially her body), even when it has no bearing on the plot. She might “forget” to wear a bra for no reason, trip adorably into the arms of the male lead, or think incessantly about how cute she looks instead of literally anything else. Worse, her motivations often revolve solely around how she affects the male characters.

This kind of thing makes me wonder if the author has never met a woman in his life (and it’s always men–I’ve never come across a female author who’s done this to female characters–I’m sure we make mistakes with male characters, though) because the female characters read like they’re walking pairs of breasts instead of actual people. When female characters are treated like real human beings with their own agency, ambitions, and complexities, the story — and the readers — are infinitely better for it. Fortunately, there are plenty of books by both male and female authors that make all of their characters actual people. The trick is finding them.

#7: The Passive Damsel in Distress

There’s nothing wrong with a character getting captured in a book. It happens to even the strongest, smartest characters and can be a great way to move the plot forward or to create more tension and conflict. The problem is when they sit there and passively wait for rescue without showing any kind of agency at all.

Agency doesn’t mean they have to break out and slay all their captors single-handedly (although that’s always fun). It can be smaller: trying to pick a lock, negotiating with a guard, secretly gathering information, or even plotting revenge. Characters who stay active in some way (mentally, emotionally, and strategically) keep the story interesting. Otherwise, what’s the point of including that character’s POV if they’re not going to do anything?

I don’t even mind if a character gives up after a while because the process of getting to that point is a mental and emotional journey that would be more interesting than just sitting there waiting, robbed of everything that made me like them in the first place.

#8: There’s No Reason for a Character’s Choice

Another pet peeve of mine is when there doesn’t seem to be any reason for characters to make the choices they do. It reads like they’re just going through the motions of the book’s outline. If I ask the question “Why?” and the answer seems to be because the author said so, then that can pull me out of a book. It makes me think that a little bit more character or plot development could have helped.

This comes up the most often (in my experience, at least) in books with a Chosen One plot. The Chosen One pretty much always resists the call, but doesn’t always have a stated reason for it. If there’s something in their character or their background that makes them hesitant to accept amazing magical powers, that can be an interesting roadblock for them to overcome. The reason could be anything from having a traumatic backstory to just being happy with their lives now and not wanting to change that. Without a stated reason, though, it can make the character seem whiny and/or lazy.

#9: Fake Dating (Without a Good Reason)

Fake dating is a really popular trope for some reason. I personally don’t see it, but I think that may be because most of the time I’ve come across it, there’s really no good reason for it to happen. So often, the setup is paper-thin: “My boss might think I’m sad.” Or “I need a date for this one random dinner.” The best versions of this trope give the characters real external pressure and then let the emotional complications build from there. When it’s done lazily, though, it just feels like the author wanted the trope without doing the work. If your characters are going to fake-date, make it matter.

That being said, a great example of this done well is in the Tokyo Ever After series by Emiko Jean. There’s a fake-dating arc, but it actually makes sense because Izumi needs to convince the Imperial Household Agency that she’s taking the whole princess thing seriously in order to help out her mother, and part of that is having a better public image, which means dating someone super appropriate…thus the fake dating.

#10: Rivals to Lovers (That Feels More Like Bully to Doormat)

Rivals to lovers can make for a fun story as the two characters bicker their way into a relationship. But far too often, especially in stories where the main pairing is a man and a woman, it stops feeling like rivalry and starts feeling like one character is just a jerk. If the “rival” is constantly belittling, undermining, or emotionally damaging the other person (especially if the woman is just passively taking it), it stops being fun and starts feeling uncomfortably familiar — like that old, harmful idea that “he’s mean to you because he likes you.” That’s not love. That’s just poor communication and bad behavior being romanticized. Rivalry should feel like equals clashing — not like someone getting stepped on until they fall in love. The Hating Game is a good example of this trope done correctly because they’re both assholes to each other and give as good as they get.

#11: Tiny Girl, Massive Guy

You’ve seen it a hundred times: she’s small, delicate, bird-boned — and he’s built like a mountain with hands the size of her whole head. It’s not that opposites can’t attract, but at some point, the size difference becomes so cartoonish it raises more questions than it answers. How does he fly on airplanes or go through doorways? How do they even kiss without her climbing him like a jungle gym? Can he hug her without cracking a rib? And why is it always this pairing? It starts to feel less like character design and more like a weirdly specific fantasy that got stuck on repeat.

I really want to like Ali Hazelwood’s books because they involve women in STEM, but most of them fall into this trope, and every time it’s mentioned that he’s huge and she’s tiny, I start picturing the Hulk standing next to Black Widow in The Avengers, which breaks immersion for me.

What Are Your Bookish Pet Peeves?

Do you share my dislike of unnecessary miscommunication and insta-love? Or do you find something else abominable in your books? Let me know what breaks story immersion for you when you read!