Top 5 Book Tropes I Avoid

Hi guys!
Happy Tuesday 🙂 How are you feeling? I’m feeling super productive today so I’m in a great mood. I’ve been meaning to do this post for ages and just haven’t gotten around to it yet so I thought I’d get it done today whilst I’m riding this productivity high. I always love doing these Top 5 posts and when I saw Kirsty’s Book Reviews do this I just knew I had to do it too. I think we might have quite a bit of overlap because she made some incredible points in hers that I definitely agree with. So if you like mine you need to check hers out too. Anyway, let’s get started on the list. (They’re in no particular order)

1. Pregnancy

I thought I’d start with the two that overlaps with Kirsty’s list. No matter how many books into a series I’ve read, if the next one focuses on Pregnancy then I’ll stop. I did this recently for the One Night With Series. Maybe it’s just the life stage I’m at but I literally couldn’t care less for the pregnancy plot line. The couple of times I have read it just left me feeling cold.

2. Gore

This is the other one that overlaps with Kirsty. But I am not a fan of gore in any medium, book, film, TV and especially real life. If there’s going to be gore then I avoid it like the plague. Blood makes me feel super queasy and I have no idea why so if you’re the same please tell me below so I feel less weird haha.

3. Overly Philosophical Characters

I didn’t really know how to preface this point since I don’t know a name for it. I was chatting to my friend the other night about the kinds of books we enjoy reading and I was rambling on and she said a couple of books she liked and there descriptions and I just knew I wouldn’t pick them up. Why? Because they all had a deeper meaning or outstanding moral or philosophical point to the book. And I know that some people (like my bestie) love reading this kind of thing, where the character reaches an epiphany and their whole world view changes but for me I just literally couldn’t care less. Most of the time I want to read a book to escape reality in a way and throwing things like this at me is not an enjoyable thing for me personally. I don’t feel like I’m describing this very well so I think I’m going to put this on my Let’s Get Chatting List and have more of a proper ramble about this one and try covey my point better.

4. Special Snowflake Syndrome

I did a whole post on this before. If I can tell from the blurb that the main character is going to be like this then I run in the opposite direction. I understand that sometimes it’s necessary for the flow of the plot, but you can do it in a way that seems less forced and less like the survival of the human race is down to the 16 year old with the sparkly hair or whatever.

5. Girl can Fix her Man

This is one that drives me up the wall. You see it so often in books where a girl meets a guy who is great but he has a dark side…he’s a boxer in an underground ring and she wants him to stop fighting. That’s a pretty tame example that I’m still not a fan of but it’s not that bad. Then you get ones where he’s a drug dealer or a crime boss or a murderer! But it’s okay because if she loves him enough then that washes away ever sin and changes him to be a better man. Having copious amounts of sex with these horrible examples of human beings can’t make them change, they have to want to change themselves. God forbid the girl threatens to leave if they don’t change their ways because 1. you knew what you were signing up for when you started and 2. that’s emotional abuse! This horrible guy might love you, but he also might love being a sadistic serial killer…you can’t force him to choose. I have read way too many novels like this, cause despite hating them I always want to pick them up and see if maybe there’s just something I’m not getting and suddenly it will click and I’ll like them? Not yet…but I’ll probably keep trying.

That’s all for this post, I hope you liked my list, even if it did get a little ranty towards the end. I want to know the tropes you avoid most and if we had any overlap…or maybe these are some of your favourites and you can enlighten me to the greatness of them! Anyway, have a great day!