But what about those others? The doozies. After reading romances for years, you learn what makes you tick, and what makes you sick. You are walking through the book store. A cover jumps out at you from the shelf to your left. Mantitty, low riding pants, some mysterious landscape in the distance. It lures you over with visual promises of smexin goodness. Picking up the novel, you turn it over to peruse the back blurb. What you see there send chils down your spine. With shaking hands you replace the book on the shelf and slowly back away. It was a close call. You avoided disaster by a hair's breath. You almost bought a book containing an element so horrifying it would throw you off your readin game for weeks. Oh, I don't mean a TSTL heroine or some other element that you wouldn't know about before reading. I mean the big canon ball that will sink you pleasure cruise of reading. It's the opposite of auto-buy material. It is the Dealbreaker.
For me it's cheating. A book where the heroine is engaged and meets another man who makes the earth shift beneath her (and her naughty bits quake)... Oh. Hell. No. I know for some people this isn't a problem. For me it is a dealbreaker. Doesn't matter who wrote it, I just can't read the book.
So what kills it for you? What element will make you back away and run in the opposite direction?
