**I have finally completed my first October read and have since moved on to a new one. I swing the mahogany cabinet door open and search for my tea bags, a green tea specifically. I rustle about the cabinets then put the kettle on and settle into my reading nook. I read my book and watch as day turns to dusk much too early. I sip my green tea once it’s poured and take a glance at my shelves. In search of what? I could not say. My eyes snag on a copy of a book I started several months ago and did not finish. The plot was slow and the characters were not developed and . . . hmm. What books have I given up on over the years? I should think about that.

I am not someone who dnfs (did not finish) books a lot. I want to give it a chance and have the fear that the ending will be good, so I make my way through it page by page until I reach the end. However, I have dnf’d a few books over the past few years and I want to go into what books I gave up on and why. I have a few to list, so I will use bullet points and a quick reason for why I didn’t finish.

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
  • There were SO MANY characters. I understand that the point was to have that many, but I couldn’t remember who was who so I gave up listening to this one.
• Broken Hearts Fences and Other Things to Mend by Katie Finn
  • This is actually a book under Morgan Matson’s pen name. The story was fine and I was enjoying it, but I absolutely hated the main character. I don’t like the trope of “I did something so now I can’t go here again or talk to this person again,” but she does such a good job of making me hate the main character that I hated her a little too much.
• The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King
  • I made it 100 pages in and the main plot from the synopsis still hadn’t happened. The rest was background for their relationship and I was kind of bored.
• Angel Thieves by Kathie Appelt
  • I don’t even know what this was. There were several different perspectives in different times and they were all odd and had one personality trait. One girl was obsessed with honey bear jars and we got a perspective from the swamp. This wasn’t for me.
• Rayne and Delilah’s Midnight Matinee by Jeff Zentner
  • This was another case of the main plot not coming into play for a very long time. I think I made it about halfway through the audiobook and the main plot still hadn’t happened. I was also just bored with this one.
• The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell
  • There was no issue with this. I honestly just didn’t want to put the time into this book. I thought it would be slow with a good end but didn’t feel like spending time reading it.
• If We Were Villains by M.L.Rio
  • Pretentious Shakespeare thespians are not for me.
• Blade of Secrets by Tricia Levenseller
  • I loved The Shadows Between Us but couldn’t get invested in this one. I was kind of bored and felt like the characters had no personality.
• Illusive by Emily Lloyd Jones
  • I thought this was going to be similar to The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken so I picked this up. I don’t really remember why I didn’t like it but I think it just wasn’t holding my attention and I didn’t really like it.
• The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan
  • Another case of not for me/didn’t hold my attention. I felt like there wasn’t a lot going on from what I read.
• Just a Friend by Deb Goodman
  • This was an independently published book I picked up. It looked cute and the two characters had a milkshake meetup every year. I felt like the characters were immature and would have been better written as twenty-year-olds, not characters in their thirties.

There are definitely a few books I should have dnf’d but haven’t, but these are a few that I actually did. There may be more but these are just the ones that I can think of right now. Have you ever dnf’d a book? If so, what was it?

xoxo,

Just another reader