I loved reading a mystery where I couldn't trust what the main character was telling me, but my book club absolutely hated it. They said it felt like cheating. Is there something objectively wrong with that narrative style or is it just personal preference?
It's purely personal preference - some readers enjoy the puzzle of piecing together what's really true, while others feel frustrated when they can't trust the information they're being given because it undermines their sense of fair play. Your book club members aren't wrong to dislike it, but neither are you for enjoying it; it just depends on what kind of reading experience appeals to you.
I think it's mostly personal preference, but there's actually a legitimate reason why some readers feel genuinely frustrated rather than entertained. Reading is kind of a contract between author and reader - we agree to suspend disbelief and invest in the story based on what we're told. When a character's narration is unreliable, it can feel like that contract got broken, especially if readers aren't clued in that deception is part of the game. Your book club probably went in expecting one thing and got another, which can definitely feel like cheating even if it's technically a fair narrative choice.
That said, unreliable narrators have been around forever and work brilliantly in plenty of books - "Gone Girl," "Shutter Island," "The Turn of the Screw" - so it's not objectively bad. The difference usually comes down to execution and reader expectations. If an author plays fair (giving readers enough clues to catch on, or making it clear early that trust is the point), most people can enjoy the puzzle. When it feels arbitrary or like the author's just messing with readers for no reason, that's when it genuinely doesn't work. It's less about the technique itself and more about whether the author commits to the concept thoughtfully or just uses it as a gimmick.
Your enjoyment of it probably means the author pulled it off in a way that worked for you specifically. That doesn't make your book club wrong for disliking it - just means you and they have different thresholds for that kind of narrative ambiguity.
But I'd push back a bit on the "cheating" complaint - like others said, unreliable narrators have been around forever and follow their own internal logic, so readers aren't being tricked unfairly if the author plants genuine clues. That said, some folks just want the reading experience to feel straightforward and collaborative with the author rather than adversarial, and that's totally valid too; it's less about the technique being objectively flawed and more about what kind of relationship with a book someone enjoys.
Have you noticed how people who bake love following a recipe exactly, while others like improvising? I think that's kind of what's happening here - some readers want the author to play fair with them from the start, like "here are the rules," while others find the uncertainty part of the fun. The thing that might help your book club is knowing whether the author planted actual clues they could've caught, because that's different from just making stuff up as they go. When I'm baking something new, I appreciate knowing the ingredient list upfront even if the technique surprises me, and readers are similar - they're often okay with unreliable narrators as long as the author's being intentional about it, not just sloppy.
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