penwalla | DNFs 2023

I DNFed more books this year than I usually do, which was probably to my benefit, since I ended up reading so many books. I figured it'd interesting to list all the books I DNFed and see if there were any trends!

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You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince	Timothy Janovsky	DNF because fuck spoiled rich kid protagonists. Society has evolved beyond the need for spoiled rich kid protagonists.
To Have and To Heist	Sara Desai	DNF because the first ten pages were incredibly cringe. Why do I want to read about adult women who behave like teenagers on Disney channel comedies?
The Bone Shard War	Andrea Stewart	DNF because I kept making excuses to not read it. I feel bad about this one; I enjoyed the first two books, but this was just not working for me.
The Marriage Auction	Audrey Carlan	DNF because of how cringey and stereotypical the first three chapters were. I can't imagine having to read an entire book in Ruby's first person POV.
Red Moon Rising	Ezrabet Bishop & Gina Kincade	DNF because it's unreadable. Cringe. Very cringe. The narrative voice is trying very hard and failing utterly.
Beast's Mercy	Rebecca Massey	DNF because the writing is so dry and uninteresting that I couldn't bring myself to slog through. Never have two love interests had less chemistry. To say nothing of the Vaman, who appear to be vaguely racist magical Roma analogues.
Count Your Lucky Stars	Alexandra Bellefleur	DNF for boring writing and too much astrology.
The Dragon and Her Thief	Ariel Marie	DNF for very clunky writing. Sorry but there's a baseline level of quality a novel has to reach before I'll read it.
A Christmas Promise	Mary Balogh	DNF for having the hero fuck the heroine so hard she bleeds in what is not a consensual encounter and then have the audacity to reflect on it as erotic. Fuck him.
Washed Up (With a Kraken)	L. E. Eldridge	DNF for mediocre writing and a heavy reliance on cliches.

These are my notes from my 2023 book spreadsheet. (Quick legend: purple = library book, bold = book that I own)

Most of these I quit reading because I didn't like the writing, either the prose style or the narrator themselves. A couple of them I dropped because of a plot element I disliked. I tried to pick up more independent and self-published romance this year, with mixed results -- 2 of these are from a storybundle I bought, and another two I bought based on recommendations from r/fantasyromance. (Another thing I've learned this year is that my taste does not align well with the average r/fantasyromance reader's.)

Overall I think it's character growth for me to feel comfortable DNFing things, something I've had trouble with in the past. Life is short and I don't need to slog through books I didn't like, even if I paid money for them!