As a writer, I am peeved when other people misunderstand what I’m saying in my book.
I try really hard to be clear. If my beta readers tell me they’re confused by something, I generally take that feedback seriously and see if I can restate something to be clearer. Hell, I’ve even begun moving more towards “telling” rather than “showing” because I got tired of readers not understanding when all I did was show (which is, by the way, one of the problems with “show don’t tell”—but that’s a larger topic for another day).
Yet, I also know it’s true that every book will have people who misunderstand parts of it, no matter how clear the author tries to be. I hate it, but it’s a fact of life.
For example, one review of The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by FC Yee nearly put me off reading the book entirely because it claimed that the love interest was a creepy stalker. Once I’d read the book, though, I felt that the review was completely disingenuous: the love interest initially tracked down the protagonist because (1) they’d known each other in a past life, and (2) he’d just jumped time periods and cultures and was acting a little as a fish out of water. But once the protagonist tells him his behavior makes her uncomfortable, he immediately respects her wishes. That’s not what I’d consider a “creepy stalker” love interest.
Today, I found an example from a book of my own.
In my book, the two main characters meet when one of the leads (we’ll call him B, with the other character being A) is in an emotionally abusive relationship with another person, and they meet under the stressful situation of A having been kidnapped and imprisoned by B’s lover, so there are hardly romantic feelings in the air at the time. There’s also the fact that when they meet, A is a vampire hunter and B (and his partner) are vampires.
In the course of the story, B intercedes to save A’s life by killing his (B’s) partner as said partner was about to kill A. Before this point, B had had a long discussion with A in which he said he felt horribly guilty for not being able to stop his partner from killing many humans over a number of decades. He repeats mention of his guilt a few other times in the novel.
What I thought was clear was that B saved A’s life because B is a decent person—er, vampire—who couldn’t bear another death on his conscience, and the romance between A and B blooms much later.
Then I read a review claiming it was “unrealistic” for B to kill his abusive partner out of “love” for A.
This annoyed me because (1) as I said, I thought I’d made B’s motivations pretty clear, and (2) it’s disturbing to say one person would only save another person’s life if they were in love with the second person.
I suppose, thinking back, that I can identify one reason for the review, which was that B’s partner accused B of being in love with A. But (1) would you really believe a statement of jealousy from a controlling abuser? And (2) neither A nor B reacted to the accusation at all, which I thought made it obvious that it wasn’t true at the time.
(Actually, to be more specific, B’s partner accused B of being sexually attracted to A—when it’s later revealed that B is on the asexual spectrum.)
So I don’t know how much clearer I could have been, short of having B state “I’m not saving A’s life because I love them, I just feel guilty after having watched dozens of people die,” which would’ve been truly unrealistic.
*heavy sigh*
Rain Symphony 