I started a book today.
It was well written, and had a characters I cared about, right from the start. World building was superb. And yet … I couldn’t keep going with it.
Too many bad things happened to the point-of-view character in the first two chapters. Nasty, horrible things. Beatings, starved, torture, being branded on the face with a hot iron. Worse, the world he lived in was the sort of place where that could happen to anyone except the truly rich (and sometimes even to them). Where the people in power treated those outside their circle as lesser beings, and did really nasty things to them.
I stopped at the start of chapter three.
I couldn’t read any further.
It’s starting to feel as if I live in that world already. I don’t want to read about it too.
I think it’s human nature to want to read positive stories when the world around us seems quite depressing. I certainly do, anyway.
I picked up another book, more light-hearted, and read that instead.