The worst tropes

Last week I spoke about the tropes I’d researched that I liked the best, this? Well this is the complete opposite. These are all of the worst tropes that I hate! Some of them just annoy me, and some of them I just can not read. Let’s get into it!

Let’s start with the most innocent one, the character letting out a breath they didn’t know they were holding. This never used to bother me! And to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if other people hadn’t mentioned that it was occurring so frequently. But now I notice it when it’s in a story, and it pulls me out of the world. So it’s not the authors fault on this one I don’t think, but I still don’t like it!

One that I don’t like but I don’t tend to actually notice it until reflection? A world which never progresses. Seeing 300 years back or forwards in time and the world is static and unchanged. As I said I don’t tend to notice it while I read, but it does make my subconscious not settle fully into the world and it can tell that there’s something not quite right. Unless it’s specifically mentioned as a plot point it’s just annoying.

In a similar vain, homogenous species. So all elves are beautiful, all orcs are vicious, that kinda thing. It’s just lazy writing. If it’s a viewpoint of a character who’s never met the species then sure, that’s them being closed minded. But when we get to meet different members of the species and they’re all cardboard cut outs? Try again.

Lucky novices make sense, but it just pulls you right out of the world! And I don’t mean when someone discovers they have magic and are able to wield it a wee bit better than expected for no training. I mean my man has never picked up a bow and arrow in their life and they’re suddenly a master archer at the head of the monarch’s army. Nah. Nope. Noooo. Do not like. You can have a natural aptitude for something sure but you still have to work on it to actually reach the stage of other people who’ve trained! Come on guys!!

I’m going to lump these all in together, all the romance ones. I don’t read romance as a genre myself (just never tried it out, I will one day) so these are all from reading contemporary/SFF reads where romance isn’t the main focus of the book. The most basic is the one dimensional love interest. The only reason they’re there is to be hot and to distract the main character. They have no emotions of their own. Is this meant to make me care about the relationship? Cause if so it fails big time. Then we have insta-love. Again, why would I care about this relationship? There’s been no build up of chemistry, we don’t know one of the characters at all, it’s just… empty. Love triangles are a pet hate of the bookish internet and they’ve been so overplayed that you can’t blame people! But the name is possibly the most annoying bit. 99.999% of the time it’s not a triangle! It’s a damn V!!! For it to be a triangle the two who love the main character need to love each other as well! Now that I would read. And finally. Cheating. Can’t stand it irl, can’t stand it in books. No thanks.

And the last thing I’m going to bitch about today? The “I’m not like other girls” protagonist who “can’t see her own beauty”. I can’t lie, when I was younger I liked these. Because it made me think that this could be me. I felt ugly and if I can’t see my beauty maybe everyone else can? But not only is it used to excess, but also it’s just so annoying. “not like other girls” usually falls flat on its face cause the protagonist is exactly like so many other girls (give me a face eating pole dancer who spreads marmite over her victims before she eats them and then we can talk about not like other girls) and with so many “can’t see her beauty” main characters it’s just lost it’s charm by now. Physical appearance really doesn’t matter all that much and it just seems excessive. I can understand it more in YA literature but I see it a surprising amount in adult books too and I just *eye roll*.

And that’s it! (she says after writing an essay) Those are the tropes, that I know about, that I don’t like for one reason or another. Have a different opinion? Or even more bad tropes? Let me know what they are in the comments!! Thanks for reading!

My favourite bookish tropes

Tropes are something we hear talked about a lot in the online bookish community, but I never really knew what they were. As in, everyone would have favourite tropes and worst tropes? And I’m just sat here shrugging my shoulders in confusion. So I won’t lie, for this list I googled book tropes and went from there! Of course that means I could be missing out an absolute favourite trope but eh, it’s a wee time capsule.

First up? The lost/secret heir! I adore this! I love watching a character come from humble backgrounds and become something more than they ever expected. Am I living vicariously through books? Of course, but that doesn’t stop me from loving it!

In a similar vain, I really enjoy the reluctant hero. The one who didn’t expect any of this nonsense and just wants to go home god damn it! They don’t care about this mission, they regret ever accidentally signing up to it, but they’re here now and for [xyz] they can’t back out. I love it!!!

Often these reluctant secret heroes have to go on quests. Yes for quests!!! I adore having to go gallivanting across the the world for whatever weird reason has been decided by a magician, or a king, or whoever somehow controls our main character.

Now of course everything is going to go wrong, cause when does everything go right? And our hero can be left fighting for their survival, rations lost, off the beaten track, separated from their group. I love this! I much prefer when at least two of our characters are stuck together. I love when they’re written to realistically go from neutral, to snapping at each other, to depending on each other to survive and coming out of the situation with a much deeper bond than they had going in. It allows the characters to really get to know each other more intimately whilst still developing the plot. Magic!

And for the big finale, here comes the Cavalry!! Now whether you mean Mae from SHIELD or just a helping hand, I adore this trope. Everything is going wrong. There’s no escape. Things seam bleak. But then over the horizon who appears but backup, charging in to save the day! This can be done badly of course, but when it’s set up well, when you’ve lost all hope, when you’re cursing the day the author was ever born… this works beautifully.

And those are my favourite tropes! Like I said I’ve probably missed some out but these are some core tropes that I really enjoy! After reading this are there any books you’d recommend me? And what’s your favourite trope? Let me know!!

Eve of Man by Giovanna and Tom Fletcher| A Review

Eve of Man is a book I had barely heard about, which was kind of surprising. The authors are a married couple and Tom Fletcher is one of the member of McFly so I expected more promotion for this YA book! But thankfully for me my wonderful parents sent me a package down to uni whilst I was doing my postgrad in Portsmouth and they put this book in the box for me!

Sadly, if it wasn’t obvious, I didn’t end up reading the book for quite a while after they sent it to me. In face my MSc thesis was submitted over one year ago now (it was the 4th of October, I remember it well!) and I did that from my parents place so it’s definitely been a long time. But at least I finally got around to it! Now. Onto the book itself.

Eve is the only human female who has been born in the last 50(ish) years. All the other babies were male. And humanity freaked the hell out. When they found out that there was a girl in the womb organisations did all that they could to get her out into the world safe. And once she was born she was placed into a protective bubble, high up away from the rest of the population, and given an in depth education with the only interaction she had being from older women charged with looking after her, guards, and a virtual projection of a friend.

She’s supposed to be paired with a boy who has been selected for her. She gets a choice of three. With him they will restart the human race. But then Eve meets Bram, when she never should have, and now she doesn’t want to follow blindly anymore.

This book is a lot of fun. It is most definitely a stereotypical YA dystopian, it hits all of the beats and it does skip over some complications in order to make the story run smoothly. But I do have to say, despite this. Despite immediately gaining people’s trust, despite this being the highest security building on the planet, despite lots of little niggles that I found with this… It was so enjoyable!

I was totally sucked into this book, it was so fun, I adored the concept and also it ran at a pace which kept me inside of the story and really made me wanna keep reading. I now actually want to carry on with this series and I need to pick up The Eve Illusion which was published April of 2020. I’m looking forward to it!

Have you read this book? Have you even heard of it? Let me know!!