My Favorite and Least Favorite Book Tropes
Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog! Today, I wanted to touch on book tropes. A trope is a common plot twist, theme, character trait, etc that is used in writing. Each genre has certain commonalities to it that readers pick up on. For romance novels, the more common tropes are friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, love triangles, faking dating, forced proximity, etc. Let's talk about my favorite and least favorite tropes!
Ever since Tiktok, reading has become more popular as bad as it is to say that. Even a little trendy if you will. But hey, whatever keeps the bookstores around. I love being on Booktok and listening to reviews, hauls, ratings, etc. One of the big things people talk about though are book tropes. Like I said above, it could be a theme or a character trait. A literary thing (character trait, theme, plot device) that each genre of book tends to have at least one of.
The friends-to-lovers/enemies-to-lovers are the more popular tropes that people tend to talk about on the internet in regards to romance novels. Or at least those two are the ones I see the most. I think the romance novel tropes are the best/are the easiest to identify.
Certain tropes appeal to different people and some sell way better than others. Personally, I don't like the whole fake marriage thing, but I absolutely love the fake dating trope. There's just something about faking dating and then the characters actually falling in love. Back in the day, circa Twilight Saga Era, love triangles were all the rage. Nowadays, I haven't read a single book with a love triangle in ages.
I created a list below of my favorite to least favorite tropes (this will encompass tropes for different genres):
- Enemies-to-lovers
- Unreliable narrator
- Fated mates
- Fake relationship
- Protagonist is a suspect
- The innocent and the experienced ;)
- Forced proximity
- Dark family secret
- Detective w/ a haunted past
- The chosen one
- Side Quests
- Cursed objects
Most of these pertain to the genres of romance, fantasy, and thrillers. I have to say the top two were really hard to decide between. I LOVE an unreliable narrator, and I don't think its used enough. However, I do think the "dark family secret" is overused. The amount of book I read last year that involved that trope was insane. I get it; everyone's family has secrets.
It's also interesting to look back at the books we grew up with the see those common tropes then aren't really used as much anymore. I gave the example of Twilight and love triangles. We can also count Werewolves vs. Vampires as a trope too. Now, I don't really see much of that. I can't even remember the last love triangle I read about.
Alright folks, that is all I have for this week! Come back next Wednesday for another blog post! As always, thank you for reading:)