I recently made a post about the tropes that i actually really enjoy in books, surprisingly, there are some that i really do enjoy. Tropes are incredibly cliched, and in some ways, every single book has some kind of trope in it. Because i’ve already talked about ones that i actually like (and because this list is probably longer), i wanted to talk about the ones that i hate.
Just because i don’t like a trope doesn’t mean that i won’t ever read a book that has that trope involved in the plot. Sometimes, there are times when i do actually enjoy these tropes, if they’re done well, or to be honest i don’t really notice them in the plot. However, if one of these tropes is incredibly obvious from the get go with the book (aka summary), i most likely will not pick it up and avoid it at all costs!
That being said, lets talk about the tropes that i really cannot stand.
Men incapable of looking after children – this is quite specific, and it’s relevant more to adult or women’s fiction, but there are so many stories that have a man that happens to be left with a child and he has no idea what to do, thus a new woman comes to save the day. These usually end up with the couple in a romantic relationship and they raise the child together and so on, and i find it too cheesy and way to cliched. I’ve never found a variation of this trope that i actually like.
Insta-love – When i was a teenager, i could get fully on board with insta-love, and i’m talking right the second they meet they’re in love. However, as i’ve reached my twenties i’ve found these stories so incredibly hard to read. Admittedly, there are becoming fewer YA novels that have this trope, but i find it so incredibly dull and makes all the characters fall a little flat. It’s also for the most part, incredibly unrealistic!
Love cures all – This one is most prominent in mental health related novels for me, and i absolutely hate it. There is nothing good about the ‘love cures all’ trope, because in reality, it cures very little. As a person who suffers with a lot of mental illness issues, i can guarantee that love complicates things massively in those situations, and it’s not all sunshine like some books make it out to be.
Parents are conveniently absent – Another trope that i have quite some issues with is anything happening slightly too conveniently, most of all in YA novels when the parents are absent very conveniently. I’ve not come across it so much in recent years, however there used to be a lot of parents being away and the kids able to run wild. When you’re trying to write a realistic contemporary novel, it just doesn’t seem to work, and really bothers me when there’s a bad excuse for them being away!
Token diverse character – If you look hard enough, near enough all books have a token diverse character. I was shocked reading recently because i found that there was no token diverse character, until it was later explained that one of the characters had to have her arm amputated, thus turning her in to the one that was ‘different’ from the rest. It’s frustrating in 2019 to have to put in a diverse character to make a story relevant, it should be packed with diversity, because that’s how we live and it’s wonderful.
Everyone’s friends after a car accident – This is a trope that probably infuriates me the most. I will tell people to stop reading a book if this is present in the plot. It happens in so many YA books where there is a friendship group being torn apart of an argument in a relationship, and everything is magically fixed because someone has been hit by a car or in a car accident. Whereas i fully understand that you probably would forgive someone if they were potentially near death, please authors, think of a better way to do this!
Those are all the tropes that i really cannot stand in books. There are probably more, i can guarantee, however without making this post ridiculously long and full of complaints, this is what i have.
Let me know in the comments some tropes that you can’t stand in books!
The Little Contemporary Corner 