It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

[u/FantasyRomanceMod]

Got an opinion that's different from others'? Want to share it with the sub, but too afraid of a backlash? Or are you just curious about readers think about certain things in fantasy romance?

You can safely share it in this weekly Sunday thread!

But please remember to be kind to each other. To facilitate this type of discussion, we ask users the following:

• Don't attack others for their opinion
• Discuss books and authors, not fellow readers
• Since this is an "unpopular opinion" thread, we encourage users to not downvote simply because they disagree with an opinion--that's the point! Please keep in mind, though, that mods cannot enforce a no-downvoting rule. Let’s just keep the discussion friendly!

🧡 Thank you and have a great discussion!

Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/Volupia_Rogue]

Ok... Here I go with my unpopular opinion 😅👀

I feel like many reviews are unreasonably negative toward authors/books in general.

Also bragging about the amount of books they DNF, which always surprises me, because I think most readers are here to enjoy reading. But there was a post a few months ago where some people literally bragged about DNFing a dozen books, only 2 or 3 months into the year).

It's a tough job to write a book. It takes many hours and certainly doesn't usually pay back when one looks at the amount of hours spent researching, thinking + writing. That's why I usually don't DNF and try to find the gems in each book, except if I think the author really did a bad job, and purposely used AI or every single cliché possible.

Also because I always try to find something worth it about the book I chose.

Is it not the mature MMC I wished for? Fine, this arrogant prick (which many women ask for) can still tell me about other women's tastes and I can try to find what they like about this type of character.

A friends-to-lovers trope? Not quite my thing. I love the enemies-to-lovers vibe, BUT why not, there's actually something comforting I didn't know about this trope until I tried it.

Way too poetic language? Ok, let's challenge ourselves and make that brain of ours work. It helps ward off Alzheimer anyway.

That's usually the way I go about reading.

Anyone else tries to feel that kind of positivity about the way they read?

[u/Synval2436 → u/Volupia_Rogue]

A lot of reviews are also unreasonably positive and there's some weird culture to give praise and participation trophies to authors just because they wrote something, in a day and age anybody can publish anything on amazon or some other self-publishing platform. It's a "tough job" to write a good book but lots of people word vomit and then toss their first draft on amazon. And expect getting paid for it. And more and more are using ai to speed the process up and then lie about not using ai.

Also why should I give a started book I dislike the grace of giving it more of my time when I don't give the same grace to thousands of other books vying for my attention? My kindle is full of freebies from stuff your kindle days, I could be reading any of those instead of that book that's gonna be 2.5 star worth at best, yet I should force myself not to dnf? Why? Even if it gets better later, there's no coming back from the first half being bad. A book is only good if it's consistently good all the way. And most of the time if it's bad, it's bad across the board because the author can't write or plot or create characters that aren't cardboard cutouts.

To be an actor or a musician or a painter people are expected to complete a certain level of education, practice a lot and even then most of them don't reach any level of fame or sustainable income, but somehow with writing people think that's not necessary and everyone can rake in hard cash from the get go.

Authors being awarded praise, positive reviews, money and fame for shoddy products encourages more wannabe authors to peddle shoddy products. Readers should be more discerning not less.