Should You Finish Audiobooks You’re Not Enjoying?

I’m 8 hours into a 12.5-hour audiobook right now, and… it’s hard to continue. Every time I’m about to open the app, I find reasons to do literally anything else. Turn on music. Read the news. Dwell in silence.

Four and a half hours left. That’s not even that much! I could finish tomorrow. But… but… do I really want to?

Do I finish this book because I have come so far, or start something new that will more easily hold my attention?

When “Just Finish It” Doesn’t Make Sense

I know many people who push through books they aren’t enjoying. The reasoning seems solid. They already invested time and money, the book had great reviews, everyone else loved it. Surely if you just got to the end, it would all click into place.

But does it really?

I’m thinking, why spend hours of my life half-listening while wishing I was doing something else. And for what? So I could say I finished it? That’s not why I listen to audiobooks.

I listen to audiobooks because I love stories. Because I love being transported somewhere else while I’m folding laundry or packing the dishwasher. When an audiobook stops doing that – when it becomes a chore instead of a joy – something’s gone wrong, and it’s okay to address that.

It’s Not About the Book Being Bad

What I want to be really clear about: the audiobook I’m currently struggling with is not bad. The narrator is talented. The writing is solid. The story is well-constructed.

It just kind of lost me, at some point. Maybe the story slowed down too much for me, or maybe my head was just too full of other stuff, or I just wasn’t in the right headspace for this precise kind of book (anymore).

Authors and narrators pour incredible amounts of work into every audiobook. I have enormous respect for that work. But respecting that work doesn’t mean I have to force myself through it when it’s not connecting with me.

I like to think about it this way: there are thousands of audiobooks out there. Literary Fiction and Rom-Coms. Epic Fantasy and Cozy Mysteries. True Crime and Self-Help. Single narrators with warm, intimate voices. Full-cast productions with sound effects. Celebrity Memoirs. Books that make you laugh, books that make you cry, books that make you think.

All of that exists because different people want different things. What doesn’t work for me might be someone else’s favorite book of the year. What doesn’t work for me today, might work for me in two weeks. The Thriller that bored me to tears? My friend couldn’t put it down. The Romance I adored? My sister thought it was too slow.

That’s not a problem. That’s how it should be!

How I Usually Decide

Most of the time, I decide in the first chapter if I want to invest time into a book. I need to be intrigued, I want to be pulled in early. I very often DNF after the first or second chapter if something’s just not quite clicking.

My early warning signs are:

Am I actively avoiding hitting play? That’s a huge red flag.

Am I getting genuinely annoyed with the narrator’s voice, the pacing, the characters? (Not “this character made a bad choice” annoyed – that’s good storytelling. I mean “I’m irritated every time I listen” annoyed.)

Did I finish the first chapter and have absolutely zero memory of what happened or who was introduced?

Is this a “me” problem or a “book” problem? Sometimes I’m just in a weird mood, and nothing sounds good. In that case, I might set the book aside and come back to it later. But if I’m happily devouring other books while avoiding this specific one, never being quite in the right mood for it? That tells me something.

I never feel bad for DNF’ing a book I just started because there are too many others waiting on the sidelines.

The Tricky Middle Ground

But this 12.5-hour audiobook? This is different. This is the rare case where a book loses me after the middle, and those are harder to decide.

I already invested so much time. And I had to ask myself, do I want to know how this story ends and why it ends the way it does? Or do I genuinely not care at all?

So after wrestling with it for a while (and deciding to write this very article about it), I realized: I was actually too intrigued by this specific book. I did want to know how it would end. I was invested. The struggle wasn’t “this book is bad”, it was “my attention span is shot right now, and this book deserves more focus than I can give it”.

So I finished it. And I actually fondly remember the characters still, days later.

But that decision to take a short break and then finish it felt completely different than just grinding through on autopilot. I wasn’t finishing it because I’d come too far to quit. I was finishing it because, after considering my options, I actively chose to engage with the rest of the story.

What You Can Take Away

I think, if you want to take anything away from my little anecdote, it’s not really about “should I DNF or not”. It’s about knowing you can DNF, and then making an active choice about what you want.

Think about it this way:

What am I actually getting from this audiobook right now? If it’s genuine curiosity or enjoyment, even if it’s slower-paced than you’d like, that’s different than getting nothing but stress or boredom and that “I actively don’t care about any of this” feeling.

Am I avoiding it, or genuinely busy? There’s a difference between “I’ll listen when I’m doing dishes later” and “ugh, I really don’t want to open that app”.

Is this obligation or interest? Ask yourself: if you could snap your fingers and know exactly how this book ends without listening to another minute, would you? If yes – if you just want it off your list – that’s something to think about. If no – if you actually want to experience the journey – that tells you something different.

What would I rather be listening to? If you can immediately name three other audiobooks you’d rather be listening to, you know what to do. But if you’re in a weird reading slump and nothing sounds good, that’s a different situation.

Life’s too short, and our to-be-read lists are too long, to spend hours on audiobooks that aren’t a good fit! But it’s also okay to struggle through a rough patch if there’s something on the other side you genuinely want to reach.

The beautiful thing about audiobooks is that there are so many of them. For every book you DNF, there’s another one waiting that might be exactly what you need. And for every book you almost DNF but decide to finish anyway, that’s a choice you made for yourself.

After I finished that 12.5-hour book, I turned to some short audio plays as a palate cleanser. That was desperately needed! And that’s okay too, knowing when you need something different.

Eline Blackman (pronouns: she/they) fell in love with books as a child – with being read to and reading herself. 11 years ago, she bought her first Audible book. It was love at first listen! An average of 200 audiobooks per year has become the new normal, and you will rarely see Eline without a wireless earbud. Romance and Fantasy are the go-to genres for this audiobook fan.

Audiobook Culture /