It’s a tale as old as time: girl meets book, girl starts to read book, girl is not all that into/pleased with the book, girl… dumps book?? Or does girl continue on, in the hopes that it gets better or ends up hate reading the book? What would YOU do?
Honestly, if you’d asked me a couple years ago, I would have said that I’d continue on in hopes that it would get better. However, after a few hate reads (and one SPECTACULAR DNF, where I tossed that fucker at 75ish percent – and I won’t name it unless asked privately), I gave myself the permission to DNF a book if I’m not feeling it. It doesn’t mean that I’ll never try it again, but so far… it has meant that. That also doesn’t mean that I won’t hate read a book, but it does mean that those books are few and far between. I will admit to the last hate read: last summer I read Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas because it had such great reviews from podcasters I love and it seemed like everyone loved it… as I was reading it, I legitimately had to wonder if I was reading the same book. I knew I was, but my reaction was the polar opposite of everyone else’s. But that’s the beauty of readers; we have so many different opinions on the same thing and hopefully, we have enough grace to understand that. While I hated the book, I knew that some people whose opinions I admire and trust loved it and I wanted to continue to try to see what they did. And while I didn’t share any of those views, I did see what they saw, just not in the same way.
When it comes to actually DNFing a book, I generally will not rate or review it unless I’ve read the majority of it AND have a strong feeling about it. (I rated The Book That Shall Not Be Named, but I did not write a review for it because I knew that it would be scathing and just upsetting to me to relive it. There are enough of those out there already.) I will admit that it always breaks my heart to DNF, but life is too damn short to read a book I don’t like. And on the bright side, if there are books I don’t like, it means that my TBR gets a tiny bit shorter, right? So, what do you do when it comes to DNFing?
Bookish, Nerdy, and Curious 