I think this is a tougher question than meets the eye. We can talk a lot about stellar writing and larger than life characters and interesting plot. But sometimes it’s hard to express in words what makes a story work.
This has been on my mind a lot because I just finished reading a vampire book that I’m not going to name because I’m not going to speak in a very complimentary way about it. The only vampire book experience I’d previously had was the Twilight saga.
Here’s the thing – I love Twilight. It’s the only series I’ve taken time to reread. When I’m reading them, I become completely obsessed, can’t put them down, and can hardly think about anything else. And even though it’s been months since I touched them, I still find my mind wandering to my favorite scenes.
But I don’t know why. It’s not that it’s a genre I generally like, because I don’t. It isn’t that Edward Cullen is “the perfect man,” like I hear some girls talk about. It isn’t that the writing sparkles. I honestly have no idea what it is. But Stephenie Meyer has really hit on something with those books.
I picked up this other vampire book mostly because I have a connection to the author. Plus it hit the NY Times Bestseller list before it even released. I figured there had to be something to that.
The book was better written than the Twilight series. It had big twists, an intriguing plot, and interesting characters.
And yet, I was left with the feeling of, “This isn’t that great.” I didn’t particularly care about having time to read it, or what happened to the main character, of if The Couple wound up together. It was good enough that I wanted to finish reading it, but I was already trying to figure out what I wanted to read next. Not a good sign.
What do you think makes a book good? What is it about the books you reread over and over that makes you want to do that?