Booking Through Thursday: Pet Peeves

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

What are your literary “pet peeves”?

This is an easy one for me.  I have a couple of them, that I encountered in the last two books that I read (a good and bad example).

1.     Pop Culture References
       
          I believe it dates a book.  For example in The Replacement Wife, there are references to iPhones and Burberry to indicate economic status.  I feel there are better ways to do that.  In 20 years, some of these reference may mean nothing to readers and just go completely over there head.  Or send them to the internet to look it up.  The only time this works (for me) is to indicate a time period, for example a Walkman reference in the 80s or early 90s.

2. Epilogue

          When I see epilogue, it normally means that the author is about to tie everything up into a HEA scenario.  In my opinion not every books needs a HEA, sometimes there are no happy endings.  Just leave well enough alone.  Do I need to see ten years into the future and know that a character has moved on and now married with 2.5 kids, a house with a picked fence, and a dog? No.  Sometimes it is okay to keep the reader guessing.  Which is one of the reason why I liked Silver Sparrow so much.   There was an epilogue but not one that tied everything up with a nice little bow.