There's more to telling a story than just telling a story...

All I wanted was something lightweight and undemanding. The Da Vinci Code was both of these. However, as I compulsively turned the page to discover what incredible nonsense might happen to Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu next—incredible but gripping—I could not help noticing that the book was exceptionally poorly written. You go to a thriller for its thrills, not its poetry, but this was distractingly bad. ...

To be clear, Dan Brown knows how to tell a story—but there is more to telling a story than just telling the story. Stephen King understands this...

Andy Miller, The Year of Reading Dangerously

Andy Miller manages to be incredibly fair to Dan Brown while pointing out the very reason I never read The Da Vinci Code. I'd heard it was terribly written and that can be such a point of distraction for me that I'll not be able to read a book sometimes.