One of biggest pet peeves is selfish people. This book is filled with them.

Florentino Ariza falls madly in love with Fermina Daza when they are both young. Her father intervenes, and Fermina marries a wealthy doctor--a practical decision, but she comes to love Juvenal Urbino over the years and they have a solid marriage for the majority of their time together. As marriages go, it is filled with the ups and downs expected in a long-term relationship: loss, grief, betrayal, love, happiness, change, contentment. Through their fifty years of marriage, Florentino Ariza is biding his time through hundreds of love affairs, waiting patiently for Fermina's husband to die so they can be together once again. Yes, you read that correctly. He spends his entire life marking time for the girl he briefly loved in his youth. He is unlikeable and selfish. Terrible consequences happen to others as a result of his affairs, and he seems either not to notice, or not to mind. Either way, I hate him. He wasn't someone I was pulling for or wanted to see triumph in the end.

The saving grace of this book is the absolutely gorgeous writing style. Even though I hated the characters, I loved the writing and could picture the setting. It's a gorgeous book, to be sure, I just didn't feel the romance others rave about.