Top Ten Tuesday is hosted at The Broke and the Bookish.
This week's topic is Ten Characters I Just Didn't Click With. Most of these are from books I ended up not clicking with... which shows how important it is to have relatable characters.
Ten Characters I Just Didn't Click With:
Angel turned this retelling of a classic story into a giant *facepalm*. She's dim enough to come across as much younger than her seventeen years, and yet she spends the last quarter of the book doing nothing but making out with Captain Hook... who's now a smoking-hot, nineteen-year-old kid with a hook tattoo and the exact same speech patterns as the heroine (except he uses lots of 21st-century swears). You end up in a magical place where nobody ages, where people can fly, where fairies and mermaids exist... and all you want to do is play tonsil hockey with some guy you've just met?
Bella was almost insufferably boring for the first three books in the "saga", but I really didn't get her in this one. She's listened to Edward's moping for years about how it sucks to be a vampire (presumably because he hadn't had much luck in the last one hundred years in luring high school girls into his bed), and she's still going with the "Please turn me into a vampire!" crap. And then we get to see her as a pregnant woman, going on and on about her little "nudger" and drinking blood like it's going out of style. I don't know how any of that is supposed to be relatable for the target audience, but... whatever.
I couldn't connect to Bridget because she was just so awful. I mean, most of us have done stuff we're not proud of, or have treated people badly at some point. Hopefully, we felt some remorse or regret for those actions. Bridget, though? I'm convinced she's got some sort of pathology going on. Narcissistic personality disorder, or maybe sociopathy. I'd hoped to find a nice mean-girl-learns-a-lesson type of story here, along the lines of what we got in Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall. But Bridget never seemed to learn a thing... except maybe how to sort of make amends for her own benefit.
And I thought Bella was bad for wanting to be a vampire. This kid wants to be a rabbit. Never mind that they have incredibly short lives and she'll probably get eaten by a predator by the weekend. She wanted to be a rabbit so she could mate with her rabbit buddy. Oh, yeah... and she was twelve. I guess Basajaun the bunny was a bit of a pedophile.
I didn't click with any of the characters in this book, but Hazel was the worst because she was the narrator. I don't know of any teenagers who talk the way John Green's teenage characters talk. It's like they're all middle-aged philosophers masquerading as kids.
This cyborg just didn't make sense to me. She supposedly had some emotions -- we're repeatedly told this -- but she comes across as so flat and emotionless most of the time... and yet when she does show emotions, they're just a little off. Her thought processes also made no sense. Her parents believed that she was murdered... and yet she decides that it's best that she never contacts them again, because it would be cruel for them to find out she's alive! Yeah, Kaitlyn, I'm pretty sure your parents' reaction to your aliveness would not be, "How dare you? We want to keep believing you're dead. Go away."
Lily from Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David LevithanLily is the reason I couldn't finish this book. I hated her. Hated, hated, hated her. Seriously... what teenage girl goes around shrieking at strangers who give them compliments? Especially a teenage girl who's supposedly mature enough to roam New York City on her own. Sounds like somebody needs a babysitter.
This character was just so... blah. As I was reading her sections of the book, I kept wishing they were over so we could go back to Cinder's chapters... and I'm not even the biggest fan of Cinder, so that's saying something.
Sophie was another one of those characters whose emotional reactions made no sense. She cries for no apparent reason, then apologizes to her friend for no apparent reason. She goes to all the trouble of solving a mystery, and then withholds the information (even though it could save her friends from being lobotomized into man-serving drones) because one of the girls told her to. She also comes across as about ten... but she's supposed to be fifteen.
I really disliked Sunday's character. She was completely unlikable, and yet I think we were supposed to like her. I disliked all of her sisters, too; the whole gimmick with their personalities going along with the poem was just silly. (And I still don't get how their mother managed to time her births to the days of the week. Maybe Sunday was actually born on a Wednesday; she certainly had the whole "woe is me" thing going at times...)
What are some characters that you didn't click with?
Blue from the Alex Wayfare series by M. G. Buehrlen - I'm not holding out much hope for this particular story, as I have a feeling it would be so spoilery that it would ruin the rest of the series. If we ever do get to read about events from his point of view, it will probably be after the main series is completed.
Decker from Megan Miranda's Fracture series - Yeah, yeah... I know he's the protagonist of the prequel novella and
the sequel. But I'm really afraid to read the latter because I'm
afraid that the author will mess him up like she did with Delaney in the
first book... and I'd rather remember him as the only decent character
in Fracture. 
Derek from The Darkest Powers
trilogy
by Kelley Armstrong - I kind of liked Derek, even in the first book.
By the time I'd finished the trilogy, I was wishing it had been written
about him instead of about Chloe. There were some interesting hints
that were dropped about him in the third book, but they never went
anywhere. He's got some special powers of his own, so it's not like he doesn't have an
interesting story that could be turned into a book (or three). 
Erris from Magic Under Glass and Magic Under Stone
by Jaclyn Dolamore - He's kind of a tragic character. And yet, the tragedy was underutilized. I wanted to know more about how he ended up in his predicament, and being inside his head instead of Nimira's would have helped the reader sympathize with him a bit more. He was a far more interesting character than Nimira, and having a fairy prince as the narrator might have brought more magic into the story; for a land supposedly swimming in sorcerers, there was surprisingly little magic in the plot.
Gale from The Hunger Games trilogy
by Suzanne Collins - I was always on Team Gale, and I really did not
like his weird choices in the third book. Had the story been written
from his point of view, perhaps his actions would have made more sense.
Either that, or the author would have realized that his actions weren't
all that consistent with his character. 
Hazael
from the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy by Laini
Taylor - Forget Akiva. If we're talking seraphim, then Haz was
definitely my favourite. I'm not sure exactly what could be written
about him that wasn't already covered in the series. Maybe we could
find out what happened before his brother went off and caused so much chaos. 
Po from Graceling
by Kristin Cashore - I know Katsa is considered by many to be a
kick-ass heroine, but I wasn't that crazy about her. Of all the
characters in that book, I found Po to be the most interesting. I would
have liked to read some of that story from his point of view.
Raffe
from the Penryn & the End of Days series by Susan
Ee - We did get a little bit of Raffe's POV in World After, but I would like
to read more about his life. He's been around for thousands of
years, after all; it's not like there would be any shortage of things to
write about! 
Ty from Stolen
by Lucy Christopher - Yes, he was the villain, and yes, he was screwed up. We got some tantalizing hints as to how he got so messed up, but since the book was told from Gemma's point of view, we never really got a chance to get inside Ty's head. He was so complex and interesting that he could easily support a story all on his own.
Ziri from Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke & Bone
trilogy - I know I'm not the only one out there who feels this way, and
I have a feeling he'll make a lot of people's lists today. He's an
interesting character, and there would be plenty of material to work
with if the author ever decided to continue to write stories in the
world she created. 
Enzo from The Art of Racing in the Rain
by Garth Stein - If you've never had a dog, you're probably not aware
of this, but they make efficient cleaner-uppers. Not crazy about that
meatloaf the cafeteria just served you? Feed it to the dog.
Sam from Before I Fall
by Lauren Oliver - Every lunch table needs a mean girl! Actually, I'd prefer to have the version of Sam after the events in the story. I like it when people can learn from their mistakes. 
Howl from Howl's Moving Castle
by Diana Wynne Jones - He can be a bit of a diva... but, so what? The
dude can do magic. He'd come in especially handy if one of us were
cursed by someone from that dodgy-looking table of witches over in the
corner of the cafeteria...
Lucius from Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
by Beth Fantaskey - He'd have definite opinions on our food choices... especially if we brought lentils.
Jack from Room
by Emma Donoghue - He's a little young to be sitting with the rest of
these characters, but maybe the presence of a child would help keep some
of the others in line. You don't want to go ballistic on your enemies
when there's a kid watching. 
Gen from The Thief
by Megan Whalen Turner - Okay, so he might end up pilfering your lunch
money, but he's such a character. He seems like he'd be a fun guy to
have around.
Farhad from Tiger Moon
by Antonia Michaelis - I kind of wanted to put Nitish, Farhad's talking white tiger companion, at the lunch table, but I wasn't sure how he'd react to having to sit next to a dog. So I'll go with Farhad, who's courageous and intelligent and willing to risk everything to help a girl he's never even met. Sounds like a cool person to eat with, doesn't he?
R from Warm Bodies
by Isaac Marion - A zombie? Why not? You wouldn't need to buy him lunch. Of course, the sight of some random body part dropping off might make the rest of us lose our appetites...