Top Ten Things That Will Make Me Instantly NOT Want To Read A Book

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is the opposite of last week. This time it's the things that will make me say, "Next!" when reading through book descriptions.

1. Alternate history
This kind of goes with #8 and #10 below, but it's just so hard to do thorough and convincing world-building when you're rewriting history because of the myriad ways events affect one another. I prefer either learning about how things actually happened or immersing myself into a new world built from the ground up with all its own rules.

2. Deception
It makes me feel on edge when an entire plot revolves around someone's real identity not being uncovered or some big secret not being uncovered. (But only if I as the reader know they're deceiving other people. I love unexpected plot twists when someone else has been hiding something!) Is there ever a time when the deception doesn't eventually unravel? It's just like watching a ticking time bomb.

3. Horror genre
I just don't do well with blood and gore or anything that's going to scar me psychologically.

4. Low ratings by people I trust
If the people I follow on Goodreads say it's crap, I'm not going to waste my time.

5. Magical realism
Maybe it's because I'm a world-building snob, but everything with magical realism seems to lack any sort of internal consistency or explanation, and so it just ends up being like, "Here's a normal story except [waggling fingers] oooh, maaaaagic." And I'm like, but why? How? What's the point?

6. Recipes
I am definitely not the kind of person who reads cookbooks for fun. I am not into the "food memoir" genre that women my age seem to be all about. If a book has recipes, I will skip over the recipes, if I read it at all.

7. Romance genre
The little I've read in this genre has not interested me, and I can't justify wasting my reading time on more.

8. Sci-fi/fantasy
I will read sci-fi and fantasy, but only if it's a classic and/or comes highly recommended. The vast majority of it just does not sound interesting to me.

9. Superheroes
Nope, not my thing. The closest thing I've read is Watchmen, and the superhero aspect was my least favorite part — couldn't keep all the names and identities straight.

10. Voluntary time travel
For whatever reason, I didn't mind the involuntary time travel in The Time Traveler's Wife, which is one of my favorite books — maybe because the main character couldn't actually change any events. I get really uncomfortable when a character intentionally goes back in time to try to change things. (You can imagine how I felt about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.)

What are your book turnoffs?

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