Kitty Thomas’s Reviews > The Apartment > Status Update

And because different readers judge heroines more or less harshly for their behaviors... particularly if deemed dumb, I'm sure some readers who judge more harshly have DNF'd a book of mine where I've had the heroine monologuing too much about why she did something the reader thinks is dumb. But I have I think a pretty fair judge of characters and I STILL think this bitch is dumb. WTF?!???! GET OUT OF THAT APARTMENT.

Authors often lie to themselves about how dumb the heroine is. You know that thing where the heroine is overly monologuing about why she's doing dumb shit? Yeah... that's to get the reader on board so your idea will work. I don't think I write dumb heroines, but I've definitely had a time or two where I've had to overexplain heroine behavior to try to keep readers from turning on the heroine.

The reason the "stupid heroine" trope happens is because an author has an idea of how they want a story to go but the only way they can figure out to do it is to make the heroine do dumb shit. It's self indulgent on the author's part. Either figure out a plot way to make it happen that isn't lazy or pick a different chain of events. NEVER MAKE THE HEROINE DUMB. I have zero sympathy for this character now.

I love this author and I will never leave less than 5 stars for a book so I won't be starring or officially reviewing this one because as a fellow author I'm not going to harm someone else's star ranking and potentially their sales, however, this heroine is legitimately the dumbest bitch I've ever had the misfortune to encounter in fiction. I'm finishing this book because I will take great delight in her misfortune.

I genuinely HATE this heroine. she is such an idiot. I'm so mad at her stupid behavior.