On Book Infidelity + the Dreaded Dueling-Narrator Question

In about a month I’ll be ready to start line edits for my second novel, which means two things:

1.) I’m getting all panicky and misty-eyed about releasing it to the public, and

2.) I’ve already started cheating on it.

It feels so good, cheating on your WIP. I never mean to. It just happens. Like I’ll be minding my own business, squeezing peaches in the grocery store or whatever, and I’ll bump into this alluring and mysterious new book idea that smells of fresh ocean breezes and has curves and twists in all the right places. And I take it home with me and stare at it in secret when I need a little thrill, because it hasn’t disappointed me yet, hasn’t thumped on my forehead at four a.m. going “heyyyyyy so introducing the guy with the yams in Chapter 3 basically throws Lucinda’s arc into total chaos four chapters too early, but I’m sure you know what you’re doing. RIGHT?”

I cheat respectfully enough. I won’t rendezvous with New Idea on the main laptop; our trysts are relegated to Post-Its, Hershey bar wrappers, and secret documents on my iPad, which is quickly becoming a curio cabinet for weird book ideas that should probably be exposed on a mountaintop.

This latest one might be a keeper. I plotted it out this weekend on a two-hour drive that stretched into five thanks to traffic that was like the major-city-evacuation scene in every zombie movie. It’s got all the ingredients that make me excited enough to stick with a manuscript to the end, and I can even see it selling enough to keep me in Ramen noodles for eight to ten months. I’m still a little worried, though, and here’s why.

This story needs DUELING NARRATORS.

“Eyes up here, Doctor.”

Back in the olden days of two years ago, when I never went on Goodreads and my “writing career” was the rough equivalent of me shouting stories into a pneumatic tube that led back to my own damn ear, I would’ve been all “bfd, dueling narrators. Let’s go!” But now I read book reviews all the time (though not my own, ‘cause THAT WAY DANGER LIES), and lately I’ve been seeing a lot of statements like these:

I took a chance on this even though it had dueling narrators, which usually makes me toss a book in the nearest receptacle and kill it with fire.

I was sitting around all depressed today, bickering with New Idea even though it’s way too early in our relationship for fights about What This Thing Is. “You don’t really need dueling narrators, do you?” I said. “Just one POV is plenty, right? Why can’t you be more like HTRAMH?” And the dueling narrators grabbed me by the lapels (like, each of them grabbed a lapel, and it kind of hurt), and they were all “LISTEN UP: the story totally depends on each of us revealing things to the reader that the other narrator doesn’t know about,” and I was like “well okay, but how ‘bout alternating third-person-limited POVs,” and they were like “bitch, please. You’re not George R.R. Martin,” and I was like “fine but you’d BETTER have good voices,” and they were all, “We promise.”

So after this discussion, which probably attracted some weird looks in Subway, I’m working my way back to a “bfd, dueling narrators” mindset. But it got me thinking: Why do so many people seem to dislike stories with chapter-by-chapter alternating POVs? Maybe it’s not as widespread as I think it is, but I feel like I see that opinion thrown out there a lot, and I’d like to get some perspectives. Some of my favorite YA books switch off between the two main characters, so I’m not sure what it is about that type of story that turns some readers off.

What about you—do you love a dual-narrator novel, or are you wary of them? And if you’re wary, will you usually give the book a chance for a couple chapters if the story sounds good, or do you steer clear altogether? If you have a sec, please weigh in below; any and all insights are wanted, considered, and treasured.

*scuttles back into editing cave*

If I don’t come out of here by Christmas, you guys will send help, right?