I haven’t been reading very much lately, much less writing, because my day job is very demanding right now. But I did read two books in the last couple of weeks that each had one of those headscratcher scenes. Well, one of them had a headscratcher theme.
In the one book, the headscratcher scene has the hero and the heroine trekking across a tropical island trying to get away from the bad guys. They aren’t rushing because they know they have a 12-hour head start on the bad guys. The bad guys do eventually catch up to them, mainly because they stopped at an oasis of a waterfall and pool where, of course, they want to stop and cool off/clean up. But they swam and swam and swam. They hung out in the waterfall. They sat around and admired each other. Then they hear the bad guys coming and hide in a cave behind the waterfall. THEN, after the bad guys go away (still looking for them, mind you) they swim, swim, swim AGAIN.
The heroine has two Ph.Ds and the hero, the slacker, only has one Ph.D. Sheesh. And the hero clearly knows is way around. You’d think they’d know better than to dilly dally while two guys with guns want to kill them.
The other book is the one with a headscratcher theme. It’s the third in a trilogy featuring three half-brothers and a female raised like a sibling with them. They have a colossal falling out back at, like, the age of 13 in which bad brother tries to kill the other three so he can become the duke and the three run off to London and make themselves rulers of the London underworld. Fast forward to the first two books in the trilogy and the bad brother tries to kill the other two brothers, each in turn in their respective books. Not surprising because they know he is not the legitimate heir.
THEN in the third book, the idiot heroine raised alongside the bad duke, resurfaces. Remember, he tried to KILL her. Instant attraction. He tried to KILL her and she gets all tingly and can’t look away, blah, blah, blah. Now, she doesn’t have 2 Ph.D.s, but she supposedly rose to prominence with a huge fortune in the London underworld. I finished the book because I have a hard time quitting in the middle of a series, but suffice it to say that the tingles and crap just kept overriding the fact that he tried to KILL her. Completely unbelievable and scary. Honey, you might not want to close your eyes at night for the rest of your married life.
Okay. I’m finished with this rant. Have you read some headscratcher scenes lately?
Eight Ladies Writing 
Yeah, sometimes you wonder if those characters have any common sense at all. I’m willing to suspend disbelief, but only so far. Do you think in the case where the guy threatens to kill the heroine that he’s going to say “I didn’t mean it” at the end and she’ll believe it? Impossible to imagine.
No. He legit tried to kill her and his two half-brothers when they were all thirteen (backstory). They were the only ones who knew he wasn’t the legitimate duke who could expose him so he tried to kill them. They all carry the scars – scars from stab wounds, permanent limps, etc. It was a ridiculous plot line.
I can suspend disbelief as well, especially if it’s a good character arc. Just like Elizabeth is a sucker for witty banter, I’m a sucker for character growth. But I can’t, as a female, accept another female falling for someone who tried to kill her. It is a horrible perpetuation of the cycle of abuse that causes barriers for women trying to make it in world ruled by old, rich, white men.
Years ago I read a Barbara Cartland where the villain tries to rape the heroine in a fast-moving carriage over bad roads. People used to literally breaks limbs traveling over bad Roads because the jouncing was so bad. He would have had to be a gymnast.
Also, any sex scene where they copulate on horseback.
I recently set a book down when the heroine throws open her hotel door to the villain without even looking through the peephole even though she knows he’s on the hunt for her and despite explicitly promising the hero, who has gone after the villain, that she’ll be cautious and verify who’s at the door when he returns.
Where’s the haha emoji? Those are really bad decisions.