Skip to main content

Book Tropes I'm Not A Fan Of

Hello Everyone :)


I hope you're all doing well, and I want to thank you all for joining me today on The Preppy Book Princess.


I feel that anyone who's a bookworm probably has certain tropes that they find really irritating, especially when they're present in books over and over again, and I'm definitely no exception.


While I've talked many times on my blog about what some of my favorite tropes are, including the "famous or royal person falling for the regular person" and "a romance that develops from a friendship", I've yet to truly do a post on my least favorite bookish tropes, and I decided today was definitely the day to rectify that.


Insta Love:

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of insta-love in novels, and this is primarily because the romance never feels real or authentic when it develops like this Instead, it starts to feel more like insta-lust or insta-attraction. I'm not a fan of books that the whole relationship occurs over a timeline of a few days, as it really feels like the character's can't possibly have developed anything real in such a short period of time. Of course, there's always the rare exception that will catch me off guard like Jennifer E Smith's The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, but for the most part I'm just not a fan of this trope.


There was nothing special about her, and yet he couldn't get her off his mind:

Ugh! Currently, this is my least favorite bookish trope, and it's so overused, especially in the romance genre. Over and over an author will describe how a woman is plain, with nothing special about her, and yet the guy can't get her off his mind, and keeps being drawn to her. To start with, I hate this stereotype. There's something special about every woman, whether a man thinks so or not. Secondly, if there's nothing special about someone, why would you be drawn to them? If it's strictly attraction, there would have to be something about them that stood out to you? And if it's more than that, then they would have had to have revealed something about them self  that appealed to you enough to be intrigued by them. This trope just plain irritates me, and I've read way too many cases of it over the last few years.


Love Triangles:

I'll admit that a well developed love triangle can often add another dimension to an amazing novel, but only when it feels authentic and real. Too often with love triangles it feels like the one romantic interest was only added in as an afterthought by the author to provoke tension between the main couple, and that the extra character has no real point to the story. So many times I'm left wondering how on earth the main character could be even remotely interested in the new love interest when they've literally had no interactions, and this seems to becoming an abundant occurrence, especially in Young Adult books.


Abusive Tendencies Being Marketed As Romantic:

This is one trope that annoys me so much that I've actually devoted an entire blog post to it, that you can find here.  Our world nowadays is impressionable, especially the younger generations, and it's scary just how often in books, movies, music and TV Shows abuse is being marketed as romantic. If someone is controlling and abusive, you're not lucky for snagging yourself such a catch, you're actually beginning on a road you really don't want to travel, and it sickens me how often this is eaten up as romantic. In our current society, where women are fighting to be heard and to overcome the generations of male oppression we've been forced to live under, it seems odd how well movies like Fifty Shades of Gray are doing at the box office. While obviously none of us are perfect, we need to be better at recognizing how women truly deserve to be treated in a relationship, and separating abuse from romance.

and lastly,

Absentee Parent's/Family Issues:

The world's not perfect, and it makes sense that character's often have come from messed up family homes, with or without absentee parent's. However, I don't think this needs to be the case in every single book out there, and that's why books where the protagonist has great family relationships have really started to stand out to me.


And those are my current least favorite book tropes guys! I'd love to hear which tropes you're not a fan of in popular fiction!


Thanks so much for reading! And have a great rest of your day :)


This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

First Line Friday: Carolina Breeze

Happy Friday Everyone :) I hope you're all having a great week! Mine has actually been pretty good. We've had some really nice days, and my husband and I were finally able to put our garden in, and various flowers and the like. We've also had a couple of lovely, rainy days as well, and I love how green everything is looking in our yard right now. For today's post, I'm excited to once again be linking up with the lovely Hoarding Books  for another edition of First Line Friday. This fun weekly meme simply consists of sharing the first line of the book you're currently reading. For this week's first line, I'm going to be sharing from Denise Hunter's recently released title that I ended up absolutely loving. Carolina Breeze by Denise Hunter: About The Book: A jilted bride. A struggling innkeeper. And a romantic mountain getaway that changes everything. Rising Hollywood star Mia Emerson is looking for a safe place to land in the wake of a public breakup a...

First Line Friday: Courting Mr. Emerson

Happy Friday Everyone :) Since it is Friday, I'll once again be participating in First Line Friday which is hosted by Hoarding Books .  For this week, I'm going to be sharing the first line from Melody Carlson's newest book, Courting Mr. Emerson. About The Book: When the fun-loving and spontaneous artist Willow West meets buttoned-up, retired English teacher George Emerson, it's not exactly love at first sight. Though she does find the obsessive-compulsive man intriguing. Making it her mission to get him to loosen up and embrace life, she embarks on what seems like a lost cause--and finds herself falling for him in the process. A confirmed bachelor, George vacillates between irritation and attraction whenever Willow is around--which to him seems like all too often. He's not interested in expanding his horizons or making new friends; it just hurts too much when you lose them. But as the summer progresses, George feels his defenses crumbling. The quest...

First Line Friday: A Sweethaven Romance

  Happy Friday Friends :) I hope you're all enjoying the last little bit of summer. Are you sad to see summer come to an end, or are you looking forward to fall? I personally love fall and it's my all time favorite season. However, I always find the changing of the seasons a tad bittersweet, although I'm very much looking forward to all the wonderful things fall brings with it. For today's post, I'm excited to be linking up again with Hoarding Books for another edition of First Line Friday. First Line Friday is a fun, weekly blog meme that simply consists of sharing the first line from the book you're currently reading. For the last little while, I've been trying to focus on reading the many books I've added to my kindle over the last couple of years that I'd never got around to reading, and I've discovered many amazing books in the process. Today's first line comes from the book I most recently started reading on my kindle. A Sweethaven Rom...