POV

There seems to be a trend with much of contemporary fiction these days, and I’m not best pleased with it. (I am using the contemporary as in published recently, not just realistic fiction set in contemporary times.) I am talking about the trend of using multiple Points of View in books. I am currently reading a book that has nine different POVs so far. I say so far because I’m only about halfway through the book and who knows if more POVs will crop up. It is making the book harder for me to read. No, it’s not because I’m getting the characters mixed up. If anything, it’s because I’m only getting bits here and there from different characters and am not invested in any of the characters because none of them seem to be developed beyond a certain point. (This is a book from a well-established writer, too, so it’s not a new writer trying something new.)

I find this multiple POV trend distracting and wish fewer authors would use it. There are some books where you need more than one POV, but so many books would benefit from the writer figuring out how to tell the story from a singular POV. One book that used a multiple POV to good effect was Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. After reading it a second time, I thought about how she could have written it in a singular POV, and I couldn’t see a way of doing it. That is not the case for most of the books I find with multiple POVs.

I know I’m not the only one who’s getting tired of this trend. Do any of you love the trend? I am hoping it is a bit of a fad, and will fade into the background one of these days.