This time, it's The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby by Ellery Lloyd. In theory, this is right up my street. A murder mystery, set in the art world and university, but told in three different timelines (one of which is the artist of a mysterious missing painting). And yet, at 44% and me audiobooking this over the course of several weeks, I decided to cut my losses.
Why, I hear you ask? Because of two reasons.
Why, I hear you ask? Because of two reasons.
First, I never felt an urge/need to pick it up. I could listen to a good 20/30 minutes on my drive to work, but would feel no urgency to listen on the way home or at the gym (don't! I have a membership now and I have no idea what I'm meant to be doing there! I'm not one of those buff bookish people who I drool - FOLLOW on social media...). I want stories that I want to rush back to. I want to return to that world and its characters, and if I don't feel that, then we're in trouble.
The second reason: I found myself not caring. I was really excited to discover what happened at the start, but over time, I found myself losing interest and not caring about the characters or the situation, before I started questioning why I should care.
I think, what made it worse was the fact, over the past two months, I've been reading When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson, and I cared. Even though I made myself take my time over reading this (nearly two months), I cared about the characters, the situations they were in and needed to know what happened next.
But this made me wonder about DNFing as a whole: when should we quit a read that's not bringing us joy or pleasure?
With TV shows, I find that I am quite ruthless (my partner still isn't happy that I quit SWAT halfway through season 1 - the subplots were irritating and am only now willing to begin considering trying again), but books and audiobooks, I seem to be more stubborn and willing to give a shot (though I have become far more willing to put the book down much sooner than I use to in the past).
This comes from the person who, when I started book blogging over 14 years ago, I felt I couldn't quit because kind publishers/authors/PR people have given me this book so I should try my best to finish. Oh, how times have changed.
But it's interesting hearing people's thoughts on this over the years and on different platforms (Booktube, bookstagram/BookTok [I don't have TikTok, but some content creators share same videos on other video platforms], Book Twitter, Goodreads/Storygraph/etc). Some people DNF really early in their reading (within the first 50/100 pages), others are more flexible (within 25% to 50%), and there are those (like me, I sense) who vary. Sometimes it's early doors, other times it's much later. I chatted to someone via Twitter years ago who quit a book around the 80% mark. I have, sadly, forgotten the reason why, but quitting a book or audiobook shouldn't be a bad thing and am glad more people are openly talking about it.
But back to The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby by Ellery Lloyd. Yes, I DNF due to me not warming/caring about the story. I've now seen a review on Goodreads describling the book as a mix of Donna Tartt's The Secret History meets the movie Saltburn, and if I had seen this, I would have been more wary as I have tried Secret History multiple times and I never get past page 100.
Maybe this is a sign that while I love dark academia, the subgenre doesn't love me...
The second reason: I found myself not caring. I was really excited to discover what happened at the start, but over time, I found myself losing interest and not caring about the characters or the situation, before I started questioning why I should care.
I think, what made it worse was the fact, over the past two months, I've been reading When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson, and I cared. Even though I made myself take my time over reading this (nearly two months), I cared about the characters, the situations they were in and needed to know what happened next.
But this made me wonder about DNFing as a whole: when should we quit a read that's not bringing us joy or pleasure?
With TV shows, I find that I am quite ruthless (my partner still isn't happy that I quit SWAT halfway through season 1 - the subplots were irritating and am only now willing to begin considering trying again), but books and audiobooks, I seem to be more stubborn and willing to give a shot (though I have become far more willing to put the book down much sooner than I use to in the past).
This comes from the person who, when I started book blogging over 14 years ago, I felt I couldn't quit because kind publishers/authors/PR people have given me this book so I should try my best to finish. Oh, how times have changed.
But back to The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby by Ellery Lloyd. Yes, I DNF due to me not warming/caring about the story. I've now seen a review on Goodreads describling the book as a mix of Donna Tartt's The Secret History meets the movie Saltburn, and if I had seen this, I would have been more wary as I have tried Secret History multiple times and I never get past page 100.
Maybe this is a sign that while I love dark academia, the subgenre doesn't love me...
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