...smiling as if she were happy

I recently read a book where the author used the words "as if" an awful lot. The problem is not the words themselves, but how he used them.

"He grimaced as if he were in pain."

"He screamed as if he were angry."

"He shook as if he were scared."

"She smiled as if she were happy."

Ugh, after the fifth time in the first chapter, I rolled my eyes. I did a lot of eye rolling while reading this book.

The problem is that this author wasn't using "as if" to create a metaphor. He was using it to tell what he had just shown as if we couldn't figure out that smiling meant happiness and shaking meant fear and grimacing meant...

You get the idea. Rather silly really.