Book Tropes I HATE | Annoying Book Tropes

hello everyone Alexa done here and today I am going to be talking about things that I do not particularly like in books I did a companion video of sorts to this I did the positive side which is things I love in books which I will link to down below but I know you're here for the juicy juicy juice and that is what do I hate it's really not hate though this is more like things that I just don't buy with some of its tropes some of its kind of set up concept stuff that if I see it in a book I might they're gonna take a Miss on it it's just kind of like a sometimes I'm just apathetic and it might mean that it doesn't rise to the top of my TBR and in some cases when these things are in books and I'm not expecting them or they don't properly subvert to my lower expectations they could contribute to me just really not quite liking a book I know it's silly to use disclaimers but when you go negative it makes you feel better and that is this is not a knock on anyone's personal preferences I actually guarantee that you like some of these things that I don't quite like that is totally cool am I not liking things is not a reflection on you or your taste or what you write or anything it's just totally down to personal reader preference let's dive right in I've got 13 of these lucky unlucky number 13 and the first one is really don't vibe with quests adventure novels adventure fiction like when that is the crux of a plot thing I just don't get enthusiastic about it this is one that I'm kind of apathetic toward so things where it's like we must band together and go on a quest to find thing is generally less interesting to me and this actually comes up and works against me a lot in a sci-fi like space stories because so many of them are like quest and journey based and I'm just a little less interested in those kinds of plots the second thing I'm just not into though it kind of has an asterisk is magical creatures I like some and then there's a whole bunch I'm just not into and this is the case of it's gonna be an auto no Fermi and a ton of these or at least such a strong barrier to entry the author has to hit it out of the park to get me into these magical creatures so examples that I'm just not into include Fae elves trolls goblins mermaids like any of that kind of like sea folk kind of thing Creature from the Black Lagoon is not for me shapeshifters kind of going into angels and demons which I know isn't quite magical creatures except they kind of are it's basically a ton of the trappings of paranormal fiction though they also come up in urban fantasy in some fantasy stories I just am NOT super into all of the creatures it's really creature fiction but under this like kind of umbrella I like vampires and werewolves and so it really depends on the lore and kind of the what goes into them and Fae is actually kind of my middle ground here sometimes I really like Fae books like I loved the quilt prints but very often I see Fae concepts and they just don't interest me the third thing is really weirdly specific and something I discovered I did like in the last year and it's just a matter of me kind of changing as a person and one of my personal anxieties but it's the legit thing that might speak to some of you and that is any kind of calorie counting or food tracking in a book the irony is is that my favorite book when I was 17 was Bridget Jones's Diary a series I loved that was really instrumental for me and I don't know if I could read it now cuz I just had a personal journey with my own kind of food anxieties and stuff where I get really anxious reading any character counting calories or tracking their food obsessively it sends me into kind of eating disorder or disordered eating territory and I also just don't like seeing characters do it because I'm worried about them even their fictional and I did see Oh a book that did this recently and I had to literally skim my eyes over those sections I I couldn't I found I couldn't read them so if I were to see a book structured around that it would be a definite miss for me now the this one is a big like stewpot of things that are all kind of related and it's it's casual misogyny unexamined or unsub verted unaware rape culture stalkers abusive romantic interest kind of that hold like bubbling stew of normalizing misogyny and abusive romantic relationships that kind of stuff so this is when in a book I see a romantic pairing where we're meant to be rooting for a couple where he's being abusive and she's being gas-lit all that kind of stuff it doesn't come up that often or as often as it used to be it was always something I didn't love in books especially in Y a and you see less of it pal but it creeps then sometimes I read Oh an adult thriller last year that really normalized at a jealous abusive romantic relationship and I couldn't get behind it and in the the deep past like honestly this is why I could never get in to certain whyyy books that were popular a really long time ago it definitely feels like it was a trend in ye the bad-boy trend where the bad boys actually abusive and it's really just not for me I think in large part because in real life I'm gonna go I'd rather be single by so I just don't really want to read that in a book if it's like a character who does it and she does kick him to the curb that's okay but I don't want it idealized as the main romantic relationship anything that kind of normalizes abuse and actually I do have another really good example where the book did subvert it and ultimately I was okay with it but I was really uncomfortable with my reading experience and that was a stranger on the beach which I read last year by Michelle Campbell if you watch my reading vlogs and wrap up of that I basically had to hate read it meaning I had to force myself through large bits of the text because I was so uncomfortable reading a character who's being obsessive and jealous and stalkery but then the book subverted it and I was ultimately okay with it but it was really hard to read so the fifth thing that just really bugs me in books is narrative cheats this is when the author basically he does something sneaky that kind of defies logic and reasoning defies the books own logic or just kind of like messes with the reader like this was here all along but I chose not to reveal it to you you have to be really really careful doing those kinds of things where the reader doesn't feel cheated and I don't like when authors do that the best example I had that that was a Charlotte pana book I read years ago it was multi POV and the crux of the entire suspense thriller like the the what happened like blowing the case wide open was a character who was there the whole time and the author withheld her POV and it felt cheap to me so it's that kind of thing that I don't really like and relate it to that the sixth thing I don't like is unearned twists endings and kind of villain reveals I don't like it when a thriller this is really a thriller thing usually when it's building up to something building up to something building up to something and then the thing happens and you're like no it's endings and twists that just feel a little too convenient that haven't been properly foreshadowed or just kind of executed in a way that kind of Rob's the story of tension excitement path and a really good example of this for me personally was The Lying gamer Ruth where an author generally I love who's a five-star author for me but that particular book I felt really bungled to the twist didn't earn its twist and it's literally told to the reader via dialogue and internal monologue in a scene where a bunch of characters are just sitting in a diner talking about the thing and you as the reader are never given the opportunity to sit dramatically narrative Lee in like a showy way verse is telling in anything that led up to it so you just get this scene where it's like this is what was going on all along I don't like that that's almost also a narrative cheat so I just don't like it when the ending isn't earned on my things I love in books lists I had that I love sociopaths and abnormal psychology and this can fall into things I don't when that's done poorly when you're just like surprised sociopath and you're like where what and nothing that came before in the book kind of lines up with the twist slash reveal really bugs me it can grow in a book for me basically so the second thing that I really don't like in books this is kind of expectations versus what a book is kind of thing it could come down to marketing which sometimes isn't the author's fault but it can also be an author misleading the reader and this is just a personal preference where if I go into a book and I am told it is a romance that I'm told it's a juicy romance UST so unresolved sexual tension a slow burn I expect there to be a big romance payoff in that book it's the moment where the reader gets what they want and I definitely read books that advertise themselves as romance this has happened in Y a where it's like it's a great star crossed lovers book and then it's not and that's really disappointing for me and it can totally change the way that I feel about a book if I'd gone into the book knowing oh it's kind of low-key romance there's not a lot of romance the point of the book isn't the romance cuz I also like books that don't have romance and that's almost my preference and thrillers for example but if I go in expecting a certain kind of romance and then the book really Peters out on it that's gonna be a disappointment for me I don't like that I think that an author needs to understand what romances and what romance readers want and don't give me false expectations if you're really not gonna bring it home with the romance this really is something I seen way mostly where it's either the author or the publisher being like it's a romance and then it's not and I don't like that so the eighth thing I mean I don't like this and I feel like no one should like this but it's very prevalent in literature including award-winning literature so I'm just gonna throw it out there really not a fan of disabled people being used as a plot device slash inspiration porn for everyone else this is the crux and or plot of a lot of books and I'm just never going to pick them up personally they also kind of cross pollinate with cichlid just another thing that I'm I've never been into cichlid has never really appealed to me going into a book knowing that people are going to be sick dying and probably someone dies at the end is generally not something I've gravitated toward which means I haven't read a ton of the super-famous why a cichlid books but very often there's also this disability kind of crutch trope of like she's so inspirational she died for everyone or I'm the hero of the novel cuz I was nice to the disabled person and this I've never really liked that but it's also strongly influenced by fact that I have disabled people in my life and I know how it makes them feel so I've like I've gone from like not gravitating towards those books in the first place to actively dislike them so yeah that's just something that's a real miss for me when I see it in the premise including books where a character becomes disabled and is magically cured if that is the plot of your book I'm probably not going to be into it so the night thing I don't really like in books this is also popular when plenty of people don't like this either so I'm not alone and that is the I'm not like other girls contrasted with the super evil evil completely unknowns girl it's always the contrast between the main character who's not like other girls she's a cool girl or a nice girl and just unrepentant who doesn't get to have any nuance I mean ultimately neither of them really have any nuance and I just I like my characters like I like my humans a lot more complex than that and I think that it's a they're really damaging ideas of people but specifically tropes about women the Madonna versus kind of dichotomy I'm just really not into it if I'm gonna have a girl who's quirky or weird yeah she's not like other girls but it's not like a weapon that she wields against them like I'm cooler than you you all suck I'm a hipster girl and I'm I definitely tried to avoid to just like total black and white evil girl character especially as an antagonist I have them in my books because I like exploring complex relationships between women which are thing and I like to read about those as well but they're just to be some nuance in there and real character development to both sides the temp thing that really bugs me in books this is just like pet peeve I don't like it when you read why buck and the teens sound and feel like adults they base the clear 2535 and no real effort is made to make them sound like a real teenager and ground them and what it actually means to be a teen I guess this boils down to some people aren't as good at writing teenagers and other people are better at it but when I pick up a book especially some of them are popular and I'm just like I'm reading a 25 year old on the page this isn't really a teenager it kind of takes me out of it they're real pros and cons to writing a properly Voisey teenager but generally if you gravitate toward why you want the prose part of it or you don't mind the cons so it's just a thing I don't like when a writer just really loses track of what an actual teen sounds and feels like the eleven thing I'm just not into in books this kind of informs my reading taste with thrillers specifically cuz this is a specific thing I'm just not the reader for most not all but most like military thriller FBI thriller CIA thriller like thrillers where the character is an investigator type like that's their job and you kind of get into the like the nitty-gritty of the military world or the law enforcement world nine times out of ten I'm not going to gravitate toward that premise there are exceptions at least unlike the FBI CIA law enforcement side but it's pretty rare there has to be a strong high concept otherwise you got to kind of slide me into those books but I definitely don't gravitate toward military thrillers at all it's just like a personal preference thing I tend to like the layman character the or the person who has some knowledge and expertise but isn't that character so like I'll read a journalist main character in a thriller the kind of former law enforcement or rookie law enforcement I think is a little bit different than experienced law enforcement or if it's a law enforcement officer there's something else to the concept that is gonna like get me interested in the procedural nature of that POV so the tall thing I just don't like in books I hinted at in my loves video I mentioned that I really love hyper specific hobbies and niche interests where I can get like deeply ingrained in an interesting and specific world and I said that there was one major exception to that this is that exception I don't know why I cannot nine times out of ten to get it into books about music or the music world where the character is a musician or a songwriter or really into a specific musician like going to concerts it's just usually a miss for me I find that I'm not interested in it most of the time this is partly because I think so often with music music is so subjective and like what we like and plus when you're reading a book you can't hear the music so if I'm not familiar with the music it's even less fun but also find a lot of authors enforce their own hipster music tastes into books like these and they feel a little twee and pretentious I think that's what really turns me off and it does vary I personally like a man interested in musical theater and classical music so books that really go deep into that world could be interesting to me but honestly I cannot tell you the last time I read a book that was set in an immersive music themed or music inspired world I they're gonna go to the bottom of the TBR if I pick them up at all just personal preference and last but certainly not least lucky number 13 it kind of ties to the first one I just cannot get into rag-tag teams who solve problems go on quests do heists it's just not my preference these are not Nevers they're just they do slip to the bottom of the TBR if I pick them up at all which does suck in like the sci-fi space realm because I recognize that most certainly Wi-Fi space books are comped a Firefly a thing I don't care about and I'm not into a doll yes I've seen it because I was a Buffy diehard so of course I watched Josh's new thing but the only parts of Firefly I liked were the virus plot so I liked - the movie serenity and the cannibals I liked nothing else about it and so many things that come fit and do the ragtag team and do like the heists the quest the like quirky cast of characters and like they're doing the thing just doesn't particularly interest me as a main propulsive plot so I'm just very unlikely to pick up those books in the first place Never Say Never of course I have read those kinds of books it's just a very steep uphill climb for me as a reader as it just I just don't gravitate toward them the thing about the dislikes list is you're always like justifying your reasons cuz you feel bad because people get very defensive when you don't like the thing that they love I know why people love these things they just don't personally pull me in as much so really that is it those are 13 things that just don't do it for me in books it's apathy most of the time that I'm just kind of meh about them a few I actively dislike what I say hate some of these border on hate but we're gonna go with strong dislike or just incredible apathy let me know down below in the comments I mean this is a fun one what do you dislike in books what is an auto reject for you or a thing that will always make you dock a star or two from a book if it has it let's talk about the things we don't like in books give this video a thumbs up if you liked it I will make more bookish content I post bookish videos two to three times a month and I post videos two to three times a week if you want to subscribe if you do be sure to hit that notification bellow so you know when I post a new video I've always guys thank you so much for watching and happy reading let's read things we love positivity

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 112,886

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, booktube, book tropes, bad book tropes, tropes i hate

Id: chzZ2DONssM

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020