I feel this.
There's an 'intellectual' version of this where writers exhaust their would be critics by writing with a severe lack of clarity. I think it's what makes a lot of 'left wing' literature so difficult to contend with. The anti-communism is so deep and subtle it's a real effort just to unpack what is and isn't being said. Only then is a full critique possible.
I got something similar from Simone de Beauvoir's chapter on historical materialism in The Second Sex. It seems quite reasonable at first but something's not quite right with it. Then it became clear: she's criticising HiMat with an idealist framework but she's dishonest about it and doesn't explicitly say that. If she did it would be obviously problematic, even to non-Marxists.
As it is, anyone who reads the chapter and doesn't know Him at would come away with the impression that she's delivered an in insightful critique of the USSR and of Engels. When in fact, Engels would likely agree with her assessment; he'd just say that what she identifies is not a flaw in the way she suggests.
Anyway, this feature makes it take an hour or more to understand ten pages. Time not spent reading something that might actually result in liberation.
PS I'm not saying don't read de Beauvoir. She still makes some good points about gender. The lesson is to read first and then decide whether it is worth, and which parts are worth, a full critical analysis. Someone who criticises HiMat for not being idealist isn't really worth taking seriously on that topic. There are more important texts and segments of that text to spend the time on.