Writer 'skims' friend's romance novel after she requested feedback, 'I wasn’t her target audience.' AITA?

"AITA for skimming some parts of my friend’s romance novel when she asked me for feedback?"

So I’m a writer who has had 2 short story collections published along with some things in literary magazines. In other words, I write navel gazing literary fiction about women in their 20s with limited appeal to the masses. It’s what I like to read, it’s what I like to write. And my friends know this.

My friend "Chelsie" is also a writer and asked me if I could read her romance novel and give her feedback. She has other people giving her feedback as well. I told her that I don’t really read romance, so I’m not her target audience, but I would give her the best feedback I could.

So about a month after I give Chelsie my feedback, we’re hanging out with some friends and chatting about books, and I happened to mention that I generally skip intimate scenes and overly romantic scenes in books.

I’ve just never wanted to read about fictional people being intimate. It’s weird to me, same as I’ve never really gotten into the whole watching adult videos thing. I skip love scenes in movies, tv, etc. It’s just boring filler to me, like someone reading off a list of numbers or something.

Anyway, Chelsie perked up and asked me what I thought about the scenes in her books, since I gave feedback. I told her that I’d skipped that part. She got offended and asked me why I hadn’t said that to her. I didn’t think I had to – I was mostly giving her feedback on the writing style, dialogue, word choice, etc.

She has taken this to mean that I skimmed the whole thing and thought her scenes were boring and badly written, and made a few snippy comments about the books I read and how boring and pretentious they are. Which, sure. I know plenty of people find them boring.

I told her that I’d warned her I wasn’t her target audience. She told me that didn’t matter and I should have told her I was only going to skim her book. Was/am I wrong?

Here's what top commenters had to say about this one:

Sure-Beach-9560 said:

Unpopular opinion, but ESH. I've been a beta reader and I've been in writing groups before. The point is not to read something for the fun of it. You've never read something you didn't like for school or work?

Admittedly, yes - this is a favor. But you agreed to do this favor. And the favor is giving up your time to read and critique this piece of text. Whether it's your genre or something you'd read for pleasure is irrelevant.

So, you could have chosen to tell your friend you didn't have time/ energy to do this. Or just didn't want to. Instead, you committed to this favor and then basically flaked. At least partially.

And then - you didn't tell her. Which you definitely should have. On the other hand, it does sound like she pressured you a bit, and then made rude comments about your books. Also not ok. So yeah, she doesn't sound that great either.

barfbat said:

YTA. Skipping portions of the book and then assuming she should know that you’d skip them is airheaded. You didn’t tell her up front that you would skip sex scenes, all you said was that you weren’t her target audience. If you can’t actually give feedback, don’t commit to it.

Ok-Vacation2308 said:

YTA. "I'm not your target audience" isn't code for "I'm not going to complete the task I promised to do." If you don't read certain scenes and can't give feedback on them, you just had to say that at the beginning.

I find all that to be cringe as hell to read and when I'm beta reading for free for friends, I tell them up front that I won't comment on those scenes and that they should ask someone who consumes them to make a pass over them instead. They all read cringey as hell to me with their language, and we move on.

OkJuice7883 said:

NTA. I go to a writer's group in my town for feedback. Nobody in that group really thinks it's a good idea to bother family and friends to read the stuff they're writing to begin with.

OGBrewSwayne said:

You were pretty up front with her when she asked you to read it, but you should have just reiterated that when you were done. Simply telling her something like "Hey, I read the book, but I skipped the romantic parts because I don't enjoy reading that stuff. My feedback is strictly limited to the story itself." would have brought that to the forefront.

ESH. Very vert soft YTA for poor communication, while your friend is a pretty firm AH and is making a mountain out of a mole hill and being way too dramatic about things...which makes sense since she writes romance novels.

RJDeeg said:

YTA you gave feedback but only read parts of the book and did not say that to her. And why can't you do that for a friend?

AdDramatic8568 said:

YTA because it's literally a romance novel. If you knew that you were going to skip certain parts, you should have just said that upfront. Why agree to do something for someone and then half-ass it, especially because those parts are important for the genre? It's like agreeing to read a military sci-fi epic and then skipping the battle scenes - why say yes in the first place?