I was browsing through Pinterest the other morning, on the prowl for new books, and I came across this.
Decent title. Cover looks promising. But upon closer inspection…
I promptly took the Nope train all the way to Screw-That ville.
Why are you announcing your plot twist on the front cover? Why do publishers DO this? It’s not even as if this is an isolated incident. In fact, it seems to be a growing trend throughout the mystery/thriller genre.
See the pattern? Why would anyone advertise the surprise plot twist at the end of the novel? It completely ruins the surprise of the surprise plot twist at the end of the novel!
Am I the only one who is annoyed by this? If I am reading a book where I am aware that there is going to be a crazy plot twist, I’m not going to enjoy the novel. I’m going to spend all my time over-thinking everything in order to try to figure out the plot twist before it happens. And half the time, the “shocking” plot twist is going to either be a) visible from space or b) something completely nonsensical involving a character that wasn’t even involved in the main plot to begin with. Either way, my enjoyment factor is low.
Why does this only seem to happen with books? Movie producers get it. No one went into The Sixth Sense expecting Bruce Willis to have been dead the entire time. So when we found out that Bruce Willis was dead the entire time it was actually shocking. Which is also why by the time The Village rolled around and the entire planet had figured out that M. Night Shymalan was a one-trick pony, the fun was gone. Because the surprise was gone.
It’s irritating because it’s lazy. Can’t find anything interesting to say about your upcoming book? Say it’s the next Gone Girl because people liked that book! Except part of the reason why people liked Gone Girl was that the twist hits you out of nowhere with the force of a bullet train and doesn’t stop hitting you for another two hundred pages. That’s what makes it fun! Advertising your plot twists on the front cover is click-bait for novels. Next the blurbs are going to start saying things like “You won’t believe what happens in Chapter 16!” or “Women be sure to avoid this character’s failure on page 229!”.
Which is too bad. Because those four books up there might be highly enjoyable reads. But it’s unlikely that I will ever read them because they’ve had all the suspense sucked out. Let’s hope in the future that book publishers can find a slightly more subtle way to draw our attention to the upcoming novels. At this point, a baseball bat to the head would show more nuance.
Happy reading everyone!
One Year, One Hundred Books 