Suspension of Disbelief – Write on the World

There’s a very specific kind of thriller setup that immediately hooks me: an intense romantic connection that feels just a little too perfect to trust. Man of My Dreams by Olivia Worley initially seemed poised to deliver exactly that kind of story. Ivy Harcourt, a bestselling romance author unlucky in love, meets Liam—an attractive British architect who eerily resembles the male lead from the novel she’s currently writing. What follows at first feels like the beginning of a glossy psychological thriller in the vein of the 1995 film Never Talk to Strangers, with mounting suspicion, romantic tension, and the creeping sense that something underneath the fantasy is deeply wrong. Then the book swerves hard.

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About a third of the way through, Man of My Dreams reveals what kind of story it actually wants to be, and that pivot will likely determine whether readers end up loving or hating the novel. For me, the transition didn’t entirely work. I didn’t feel like there was enough groundwork laid to support the shift, and several developments later in the novel left me questioning the internal logic of the narrative. By the end, there were enough loose ends dangling that I found myself more distracted than shocked.

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Inconsistent point of view (POV) in fiction can significantly affect the reader’s experience, often in a negative way if not handled with care. For example, readers often find William Faulkner’s novel, The Sound and the Fury, difficult to read because of its inconsistency in POV. Readers are forced to actively engage with the text, filling in gaps and reconciling differing perspectives.

Inconsistent point of view in a novel can disrupt the reader’s experience of the story as well as causing reader fatigue.

While this lack of consistency isn’t necessarily “wrong” when done with purpose, it is important for the writer to consider just how hard they want their reader to have to work to understand what they have written. You must consider your intended audience: do your readers prefer to read a novel that makes them work to tease out its meaning? Or does your target audience consist of readers who want to be fully immersed in a story without having to pause regularly to think outside of the story?

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