I recently read a novel I’d define as chick lit—first person, hapless heroine who eats and drinks too much and then berates herself, comical plot in which heroine at first seems headed for personal and professional disaster but where she ultimately triumphs, and perfect boyfriend.

That last one may come as something of a shock, but I assure you most of the chick lit I’ve run into has a perfect boyfriend waiting in the wings. He’s handsome, supportive, wealthy (or at least solvent), and totally nuts about the heroine. In fact, the only thing keeping the heroine from bliss with Mr. Perfect is her own reluctance to embrace him.

And here we have my own personal problem with chick lit. If you create these perfect heroes and then create a heroine who perversely refuses to be satisfied with perfection, then you also create a heroine who comes across as a moron. Yes, I know, she’s supposed to seem flawed and human, but there are flaws I can live with and flaws I can’t. Rejecting Mr. Perfect falls into the latter category, give the heroine’s desperation to find true love.

Frequently, these heroines are also tempted by somebody who is demonstrably Mr. Wrong—think the Hugh Grant character in the Bridget Jones movies. So here you have Mr. Perfect and Mr. Flawed, and here you have a heroine who seems to be leaning toward the latter. Trust me, it’s not a good reading experience if you have an overwhelming desire to kick the heroine in the butt.

Now romances, as opposed to chick lit, frequently play with the Mr. Perfect/Mr. Flawed theme. However, when this comes up in a romance, you can be pretty certain that Mr. Perfect will turn out to be hiding some pretty big personal problems, while Mr. Flawed will turn out to have a heart of gold and physical attributes to match. In other words, the heroine will have turned out to have instinctively deduced that perfection is actually a façade, much to her credit.

But this usually doesn’t happen in chick lit. Mr. Perfect really is perfect. Mr. Flawed really is a rotter. And the heroine really is a moron for not being able to figure this out.

Since Chick Lit is closely related to romance, the heroine does figure it out eventually, after almost losing Mr. Perfect (who nonetheless puts up with infidelity or other not particularly admirable behaviors on the part of the heroine). But there’s an equally troubling development in a lot of these books. After the first book succeeds, the sequel has to find some way to set up the situation all over again, and that usually involves breaking up the heroine and Mr. Perfect. Sometimes the two are reunited, but sometimes the heroine ends up with Mr. Flawed after all. And believe me, this is not a happy occurrence, at least for readers like me.

Look, if you go to the trouble of creating the perfect hero, you can’t then toss him out the window just to keep the series going. Or you can, but you can’t keep me as a reader if you do.

I want my heroines smart enough to recognize perfection and determined enough to hold onto it once they do.