Book Confessions: Tropes I Love

I did a couple of posts on this topic a few years ago and recently I’ve been thinking about doing more. However, I’m not happy with the quality of the previous ones, so I will archive them and start this series again. Plus I’ve just drawn a new graphic for my ‘book confessions’ posts and I haven’t known what to use them for yet.

When I first did this type of post, I never really thought about tropes and which ones were present in the books I love. But at that time I wasn’t reviewing books very often and I’d only just started venturing into genres that weren’t fantasy. Now, I’m all about the tropes, I don’t necessarily read books because of their tropes, but there are some in particular that I always want to read.

As I’ve brought back this series, I will also be bringing back the tropes I hate series, so keep an eye out for that at some point if you want to read my ramblings.

Fake Dating

I think a lot of people will agree with this one. There’s just something about people fake dating and then realising that they actually want to be together that I love. It’s that moment when they realise that they actually have feelings, but they’re convinced that the other person could never feel the same, not realising that they actually do. That gets me every time.

I’m aware that this is highly unrealistic as I don’t know if you’d actually be able to keep it up as long as the characters in these books seem to, but it doesn’t make me love it any less. If I see a book has the fake dating trope, straight on my to be read. They get extra points if they feature either friends or enemies to lovers.

I love absolutely any type of media with this trope and I really can’t get enough of it. So much so that after writing this post I’m going to search for more fake dating books. I love writing posts about my favourite type of ‘trope’ books e.g retellings, so I’m definitely going to get a few more fake dating books under my belt and then make a new series on them. If you have any great recommendations then please send them my way.

Found Family

Found family is the type of trope that pretty much everyone loves, surely? There’s nothing more heartwarming than seeing strong friendships evolve into families.

This is the type of trope that is present in a lot of books, but you don’t really notice that it’s there. I would argue that any of Cassandra Clare’s books would fall into this as every institute has its own little ‘family’ of shadowhunters that most of the time are not related. My most recent favourite case of this being in The Last Hours series. I love that cast of characters so much and seeing their little family grow with each instalment was so cute.

My favourite book with this trope is obviously Six of Crows because that’s probably most people’s right? I adore the relationships between the crows and I really wish we got more books. I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am for the next season of Shadow and Bone, I can finally see all of my crows together.

Enemies to lovers

I think pretty much everyone will agree with me on this one. There’s just something about characters going from absolutely despising each other to gradually falling in love. But let’s be clear here and note that this does not work or is at all appealing if characters go from hating each other to instantly being in love. There is definitely a right balance that needs to be achieved. I’m not out here supporting toxic relationships.

With that being said you do need to be very careful when including this trope. If it is not played out properly with no growth or remorse then it can very quickly become toxic. Nobody wants to see a book where someone falls in love with their abuser. I’m looking at you, Colleen Hoover.

Personally, I think this trope only works well in fantasy. It makes sense in worlds that are magical and cutthroat to have people trying to kill each other only to realise they are actually in love. I’m not sure if that makes sense to other people, but it does to me. I don’t want enemies to lovers where they work in an office and they hate each other because they want the same promotion. It doesn’t have the same effect and (in my opinion) these books usually lack the emotional depth that a lot of fantasy has. Obviously, there are non-fantasy books with emotional depth but I’m talking about those awful romance books with real people on the covers. If you know, you know.

My favourite example of this is definitely The Wicked King by Holly Black. I am so in love with Jude and Cardan and their love/hate relationship. I probably got a little too invested at one point, but we won’t talk about that.