Top Ten Tuesday: Ten (or Seven, as the Case May Be) Characters You Just Didn’t Click With

(Brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish)

This week’s topic is an interesting one, as I tend to easily forget books/characters that annoy me. With no investment in them, as soon as I turn the last page, I’ve moved on, so coming up with ten that I just didn’t love required me to go back to my GoodReads list and look through the books I’ve read over the last few years. I also realized that sometimes I have a hard time differentiating between plots/writing I don’t like and individual characters I don’t like. For all of these reasons, this week’s Top Ten Tuesday didn’t draw me in the way some topics do, so I never did come up with ten. This week is a Top Seven Tuesday instead!

So, who did I really not care for?

Here they are, in alphabetical order.

Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard from Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest by Gregg Olsen – As a main player in a non-fiction work, Dr. Hazzard is a character that no reader is going to “click” with as she was a terrible person, in real life! There is no writing her off as a mere character, as she lived and practiced her crazy “starvation” method of treatment in the Pacific Northwest for years, scamming rich people out of their money, preying on those who had both wealth and ill health.

Husband from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman- As far as I can remember, the husband in this story does not have a name, but he doesn’t need one to be memorable as a terrible person. Rather than dealing with his wife’s declining mental health (possible post-partum depression), he and the local doctor lock her away in an upstairs room, not allowing her books or other forms of entertainment. “Rest” is their only prescription and the husband stands by and watches as his wife descends into madness.

Job from Mr. and Mrs. Doctor by Julie Iromuanya– I really wanted to love this book. The foundation is strong, about the uphill battle many immigrants face when uprooting their lives to start over in America, but I couldn’t get past Job and his selfishness throughout. My sympathy for him quickly waned as I became frustrated with his choices and the fact that he let his ego get in the way of making a better life for himself and his wife.

Raf from Glow by Ned Beauman- Overall, I struggled with this book. I felt like I had taken some illegal substance as I tried to follow the plot and Raf’s character in no way helped clear up my confusion!  Manic is a good word for both Raf and this entire novel.

Rex Yanakakisb from The Compound by S.A. Bodeen- Unlike several of the other choices on this list, I loved this book, just couldn’t stand one of the main characters. This one was of my favorite read-aloud books to share with my students when I was teaching middle school, as the plot grabs them instantly and holds their attention until the very last page. But, with that said, the father of the story, Rex, is a terrible person who puts his family in an unthinkable position, all for his own selfish reasons. The psychological damage he causes his kids is enormous and yet in his mind, it is all worth the pain as long as he gets his way in the end.

Serena from Serena by Ron Rash-  Another horrible human being. Serena has no redeeming qualities and drags those around her into her ethical black hole. (At least her husband, who is equally lacking in morals, has moments of guilt and regret.) Serena will personally kill or command others to kill anyone who stands in the way of her logging empire. Without giving major spoiler alerts, just know that there is no one exempt from her wrath.

Susan from Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman- Horrible person! I almost didn’t finish this travelogue because I found the narrator so awful. You would think if you were given the chance to write about yourself, you’d attempt to shine a light on your positive aspects, but Gilman just comes across as selfish and spoiled, easily fulfilling the role of “ugly American” in her China travels. This book should be a perfect fit with my thesis on contemporary travel writing, but there is no way I can face months and months of delving into it again and again, so it’s cut from the list! This is probably the character that I feel the strongest about from this entire list, probably in part because she is an actual person who behaved so terribly.

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