Tasteful Side-Tot

I printed out my manuscript as a book (Barnes & Noble is cool for that) to give to my volunteer high schoolers to beta read for me so I can check out just like, is this vibing with them, is the pacing where it needs to be, do I explain the right amount of stuff in the right amount of time for them etc etc

Anyway! Day one, we're meeting together to talk about expectations, what I'm looking for, and then they're like "let's read a chapter together!" and I was like amazing fantastic let's go!

And so I opened the prologue and start reading, and one of them immediately raises their hands like "Are you expecting readers to actually read the prologue?"

And I was like 😶...yes?? It sets the vibe and gives you some background information that's good to know, but isn't from the main character's perspective, like sneakily giving you information that the main character doesn't know.

ANYWAY TLDR the students that like to skip prologues were NOT usually fantasy readers (mine is a high fantasy) and one went totally with it afterwards like okay cool I'll read the prologue in the epilogue, but the other was like "honestly I'll probably still keep skipping them, because I would want to learn all these things the same way that the main character does."