Book Tropes I Hate

 Hiya lovelies,

This week I am back with a follow-up post about book tropes. A couple of weeks ago I shared a post about the 5 book tropes I love the most, you can read it here. So, I thought it would be a great idea to share the ones I don't enjoy reading. 

I am quite an open-minded reader, and as a result of this, there are only three tropes that I can think of that I'm not into.  I just want to state, the following is all a matter of opinion and not fact! I can simply avoid books with these tropes (which I do) but thought this would be a fun post!

Let's dive right in: 

Enemies to lovers. This may be the most controversial opinion I have, but I am not into the whole enemies-to-lovers trope at all. I don't understand how you can go from hating someone to loving them. It happens a lot in narratives where the two characters are trying to kill one another and I personally wouldn't be able to love someone who was so hell-bent on essentially killing me. I don't get it and I don't think I ever will.  

The bully turns out to be queer. I can't stand it and quite frankly don't understand this trope. You see it time and time again in YA novels, the bully lashes out in the most violent ways towards queer kids and makes their lives miserable and then they turn out to be queer themselves. I don't get it, firstly, being queer doesn't excuse your behaviour towards other queer people.  Secondly, would it not make sense that if you were in the closet you would just avoid the whole thing. I just hate that in these types of stories the bully gets away with being horrible. As a queer person myself it's offensive, it feeds on the stereotype that gay people are mean and/or bullies must be gay because they're picking on the gay kids.  This trope? Over it. 

Fat girl gets skinny. As a fat girl, it's so condescending that the fat girls in most books have to get skinny just to be recognised or loved. It's awful and as a reader just makes me feel like crap. It's not enjoyable to read and most of the time is written by a typically skinny person who has no idea what it's like to be a fat person in real life.   This trope perpetuates the idea that fat = bad or that a person can't be loved until they fit a certain beauty standard. To hell with this trope! I want narratives that uplift fat people and show how happy we can be by just accepting our bodies without the need to change ourselves for other people's acceptance. I want stories about fat people succeeding, stories of triumph and not ones just focused on losing weight. 

That's it! I felt a lot of passion whilst writing this post, I definitely didn't realise just how much these tropes riled me up. You may find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with my points and that's cool, one of the amazing things about reading is that there is definitely something out there for everyone!

Book Tropes I Hate

Friday 2 December 2022

5 Book Tropes I Love

 Hello book lovers!

This post is well overdue, in my whole seven years I have yet to actually discuss book tropes. If you're a bookworm like me, and I'm guessing you are, you'll have tropes that you absolutely love reading about. I certainly do, and I thought this week I'd share with you my top five! 

In the upcoming weeks, I may do a post about the tropes I can't stand. But right now, this post is dedicated to my favourite book tropes. I just want to put a disclaimer here, some of these tropes are absolutely overused but I just cannot resist them!

Best friends to lovers. I will lap up this storyline over and over again. I just think falling in love with your best friend is so perfect. I know sometimes in real life this can go terribly wrong if it's one-sided but I love it in a book when they both feel the same. It's divine, your favourite person in the world becoming your partner- what is not to love? This trope gives OG L word vibes, and I am here for it.

Back to my small town: I can't resist a storyline of leaving a hometown and coming back. I like feeling nostalgia with the characters, and as someone who has done this, I just like to read about other experiences of it. You can guarantee that where there's a small-town returnee there's an enemy lover arc just around the corner. My favourite back to the small town book would have to be Next Exit Home by Dena Blake. 

Unreliable Narrator: you probably already know that my favourite book of all time is The Great Gatsby, so naturally it makes sense that the trope of an unreliable narrator is one of my favourites. I like the mystery it leaves the reader, do you trust them or not? Especially with Nick, he spent most of the Summer drunk so it's not exactly certain things happened how he said they did. I just like that it leaves room for the imagination to wander. Now I think of it, it was probably this trope that inspired a lot of fan fiction writers. 

Underdog to Top Dog: I am a sucker for an underdog story. This trope is perfect for action/adventure-type books. I just love seeing the little guy come out on top, you know? Tris from Divergent comes to mind, I like the whole pushing yourself to achieve the unexpected. It's a great trope for developing character arcs. 

Multiple plot threads: when a story uses different points of view to interview multiple plot threads I live for it. When point of view switching is done right, it can be really effective. I don't always want to read complex stories but when I do, I like lots of things going on at once. A great example of this would be Juliet Llewellyn's Beneath the Waters. 

So, these were some of my top favourite tropes. Keep an eye out for next week's blog, I've been working on some creative writing recently that I'm really excited to share with you guys! Thank you for reading and I hope you have a fab week!

5 Book Tropes I Love

Monday 14 November 2022