That day I DNF'd a bestseller after 3 pages because of one sentence

I grabbed a highly rated thriller everyone was raving about last Saturday. The very first paragraph had a character 'breathing in the scent of rain on asphalt' and I just closed the book. Like, who actually smells rain on asphalt and thinks that? I put it down and picked up a 30 year old sci fi novel instead, which I actually finished. Has anyone else quit a book over a single cringey line?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_mia16d ago

Used to roll my eyes at people who quit books over one line. Figured they were just looking for excuses. Then I hit a line about a detective "listening to the silence scream" on page two of a supposedly gritty crime novel. Put the book down, walked away, never picked it back up. Sometimes one bad sentence is all it takes to know the rest isn't going to be any better.

grantnelson16d ago

That line would've killed it for me too. Best rule I ever picked up is if a writer can't get through the first chapter without some purple prose, they're not gonna magically get better by page 200. Trust your gut on that first bad sentence, it's usually a sign of more to come.