Ten More Characters I'd Like to Punch in the Face

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's topic is right up my alley. I read a lot, and oftentimes characters manage to frustrate me so much that I would like nothing more than to punch them in their fictional faces or kick them in their fictional shins. In fact, I've already covered this topic once before. Coming up with ten more truly obnoxious characters was not even hard. In fact, my list has more characters on it that just didn't go or the win quite enough, like Fia from Mind Games.

For additional info on the books or the characters, check the reviews by clicking the book's title.

10. Will & Zoe from Nobody But Us by Kristin Halbrook
Whether or not you think this book was intended to be a romance or a depiction of the tragic effects of abuse, Will and Zoe are just so dumb. I could not handle the things they did in their attempt to run away together to Las Vegas. The prime example of their lack of brain cells comes when Zoe gets her period. Rather than pay the exorbitant cost for some tampons, she decides to steal some. Of course, this girl doesn't have a sneaky bone in her body, so she gets caught. When the shop owner starts shaking her, Will clonks him with a wine bottle. All because she wouldn't buy some tampons.

9. Pia from Origin by Jessica Khoury
Pia is perfect. She's just so wonderful and immortal and better than everyone else. She prides herself on how hot she is and disdains nerdy lab techs for thinking she would ever dance with them. Of course, when a pretty, older lady scientist arrives, Pia immediately hates her, because how dare men pay attention to a female that's not Pia. Pia's instalove after some chauvinist comments from Eio pretty much cements the fact that self-worth should only come from being hot and wanted by men.

8. Samuel & Daniel from Red Rain by R.L. Stine
These evil twins plot to take over the school, thus dominating the world, because that's how things work. Meanwhile, they call everyone "bruvver" and "boyo." I could not deal with this.

7. Jeb from Splintered by A.G. Howard
You know who's not sexy? Jeb. He's a big jerk. He dates a girl who treats his very best friend like utter crap, which is totally against the friend code. Later, you find out that he didn't even really like that other girl anyway, which makes that even worse. Plus, Jeb conspires with her father to plan out Alyssa's freaking life. NOT COOL.

6. Evie & Lend from Endlessly by Kiersten White
Well, Fia may not have made the list, but Kiersten White's characters still did. Bully for her. I kind of liked Evie and Lend up to this point, but they became unbearably cheesy in this one. They give each other perhaps the most nauseating presents ever in the history of young adult books. Lend gives her a masquerade ball (no joke) and she gives him a DVD of clips from a show he doesn't even like (fair trade). On top of all that, the big bad of the series, the evil faerie queen, curses them. Can you guess what the epic curse would be? He falls asleep if they're in the same room. Their reaction: THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED EVER.

5. Taejo from Prophecy by Ellen Oh
Have any of the rest of you seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Well, if you have, Taejo, the crown prince of the kingdom, believed to be poised to be a great warrior, is essentially as helpful to the plot as that blonde chick in Temple of Doom. Put another way, all he does is whine, mope, get kidnapped, and flail ineffectually. If I were Kira, I would have let the enemies have him, or just thrown him off a cliff myself.

4. Tris from Divergent by Veronica Roth
Everyone loves Divergent. They love Four and they think Tris is a brave, awesome badass. Well, count me out. Tris is such a bitch. She is supposed to be divergent between Abnegation and Dauntless. This girl does not have a bit of abnegation in her; she does everything selfishly. I didn't take to her from the beginning, but I wrote her off completely when she decided Al was a pansy because she heard him crying the first night, because large men shouldn't cry. So, women and wimpy men can cry, but reach a certain amount of muscle mass and crying makes you abhorrent? Shut the fuck up, Tris.

3. Adelice from Crewel by Gennifer Albin
Adelice represents the very worst things about girls in love triangles. Despite being, apparently, incredibly powerful, she doesn't use her powers to do anything particularly useful for most of the plot, though she could have ripped her freaking tormenters out of her way in like five seconds. Plus, she gets involved in the worst love triangle ever, torn between two men, who (SPOILER ALERT) just happen to be brothers. Most obnoxious, she makes out with one, then goes to make out with the other. After their smooch, the second one tells her about how he used to be married but his wife died, and Adelice is freaking jealous. Just no.

2. Zoe from Glitch by Heather Anastasiu
You know what's a really bad life choice? Befriending your several-times attempted rapist. You'd think even one attempt would be enough to get it through your skull that maybe you should stop hanging out with a particular guy. If someone repeatedly proves themselves to be untrustworthy and shown that they want to hurt you, best practice is to either report them, stop them for once and for all one way or another, or to get the fuck away from them.

1. Freaking Everyone from Of Poseidon by Anna Banks
Who should I hate most in this book?
- The heroine who completely forgets about her token black best friend, who was eaten by a shark right in front of her by the way, within a couple weeks?
- The hero with serial-killer eyes and the belief that women need to be told what to do?
- The hero's best friend who gets himself declared engaged to the hero's sister, without asking her opinion on the matter?
- The hero's sister who eventually reveals, when made jealous, that she wanted to be with the best friend all along, suggesting that no actually does mean yes?

 

So who's on your list? Did you have similar frustrations with any of these guys?