Openings that annoy

I started reading a book the other day, and it started something like this (I don't have the actual wording because I've already returned it to the library, hence this post):

"My turn!" he shouted.
"No! My turn!" his sister shouted back.
"It's Sarah's turn," Mommy said. Sure, she sided with Sarah. What else was new. She always sided with her wonderful little pet Sarah.

Jonah stomped away from the merry-go-round. It was a stupid one anyway. It wasn't as good as the one in the theme park. Just a dumb little indoors merry-go-round in the middle of a mall. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Sarah bouncing up and down on a stupid little gray horse, and Mommy next to her, looking nervous.  She was probably wondering where Jonah went. She didn't really care. She just didn't want anyone to think that she didn't care. Sarah was her big favorite.


Etc. This was the opening of a detective novel, to judge by the cover (Another in the Detective Name Name series!). I like detective series novels, and am always looking for new ones. But  I read the first page of this and stopped.  What was wrong with the opening (in my opinion-- obviously the writer and editor liked it)?

1. I presume the son is a minor character in the story. (It's about a murder she's investigating for her job.)  Minor characters can be used effectively for opening scene POV characters, but... but there has to be a good reason {(like the hotel doorman who finds the body slumped on the luggage cart) to put the reader first into the mind and heart of someone who won't be important to the plot.

2. I confess. I probably would have read more if the minor POV character wasn't a whiny kid. I'm not saying it wasn't an authentic rendering of a whiny kid, but, uh, I've had my fill of those.  A child's whine is, by design, unpleasant.  In real life, I could have stopped the whine with punishment (or a candy bar), but with a book, the only way to stop it is to close the book.

3. There wasn't the slightest indication in the opening what the plot was going to be, what the mystery was going to be, how these people even related.  I presumed that "Mommy" was the detective to come, but maybe she was the victim. (Turns out, I guess, she's neither.) Even something hinting like "Mommy didn't want anyone to know that the big police detective didn't care about her own son," could have helped.

4. I imagine the writer wanted to "establish the characters" here, but I doubt the two kids are important characters, and all we see of Mommy is her being a fairly ineffectual but primarily uninteresting mother. I mean, really, been there done that, had my own whiny kid moments at the mall and also didn't handle them in an interesting fashion.

5. Child POV is always problematic for adult books.  For one thing, contrast the "child POV" of an adult novel with the child POV of a children's novel.  I would submit that generally the "adult novel child" sounds childish, and the "child novel child" sounds like an actual human being who happens to be quite young. I'm not saying that adult writers can't write child POV. I'm saying that creating a character is still the first (and most important) step in writing from that character's POV.  Actual children have interesting perspectives, and the really good adult writers of children respect that.  Humans first.

6. Oh, well. I was so turned off by the opening, I didn't keep reading. When I think back to why I put the book down, the main reason was that I didn't have any sense that this writer could write well.  Part of that was the choice of POV character-- but plenty of writers could have written that little boy plausibly and entertainingly. This writer very likely can write scenes with adults quite well... but I didn't hang on long enough to learn that.

I read a lot of openings, both published books and submissions and contest entries, and I often conclude that the author, for whatever reason, has fallen in love with this opening and is going to keep it no matter what. Who knows why?  I mean, opening with a whiny child... not something I'd want to do. But parents tend to think their own kids are really cute, even when they're being whiny, and so they might think replicating some whiny incident will be funny or fun.  Heck, you know, I still quote some "cute things" my kids said as little ones, and they're graduating college this year.  But just because I think this is cute doesn't mean it's the right place to begin this book.

Sometimes we're being self-indulgent, but we're the worst people to judge that, I guess.  How do you know if this is a great opening, or you're just doing the equivalent of the whiny kid argument and turning off readers?

Think about books you've put down after a few pages.  What made you decide so quickly you didn't want to read on?

Alicia