Conflict

I like books the hook me in the first few pages with a conflict that you MUST keep reading to find out what happens.

There is lots of different kinds of Conflict. The image from Writingfix.com shows a couple simple examples.

Alfred Hitchcock liked to establish conflict early and crank up tension. Show the ticking bomb under train seat and then the boring baseball conversation the people sitting on the bomb is suddenly something else.

I have actually read books where the conflict was not clear or present and I usually dislike them. Other stories have a conflict but a weak protagonist that does not resolve the conflict.

I like protagonists with heavy conflicts, striving to resolve it, going after the wrong resolutions, suffering setbacks or full reversals, or maybe even full failures.

--For me, as a reader, the bigger the conflict the better.