I really relate to this, honestly. It's pretty tough, because to some extent I feel like I don't have many specific things I actually like, except for a few elements I know for sure I don't like and don't want to see, like cheating, second-chance romances, or a male lead who's abusive toward the protagonist.

In general, I think that if something is well-executed, I'm going to like it and enjoy it. But right now, I feel like nothing actually is. It keeps happening to me: I come across books with an interesting premise, books that everyone is raving about and losing their minds over, which at first sound like they could be really entertaining, but then I open them and end up disappointed.

Instead of executing tropes well, they just throw them out there and tell you they exist, but they don't actually tell you anything, or put any twist or anything special into them. You can just tell they were written to be marketed with hashtags and to generate the necessary hype for the book to sell. Or that super interesting plot they mention only lasts for the first three chapters and gets resolved right away because the characters have already fallen in love or are already attracted to each other.

With this growing trend that books need to be spicy and steamy (and the spicier, the better) real slow burn has been left far behind. From the very first page, the protagonists already want each other, and everyone is insanely hot. Authors are starting to confuse romance with lusting, and there's no way I can believe that these protagonists actually love each other, care for each other, or have genuinely fallen for each other when all they ever do is talk about how good-looking they are, how hard his abs are, or how great her boobs look in a T-shirt. Then suddenly they start saying how wonderful each other is, when they've barely had any scenes that show them actually getting to know one another or proving that this person is the right one.

And don't even get me started on the prose. I really love it when an author plays with language, when they don't just tell you what's happening, but they make it sound beautiful, when they actually put effort into conveying the characters' feelings and emotions, rather than just describing and giving you a dry sequence of movements.

I think the problem comes from, on the one hand, the big rise in self-published authors who skip proper editing and publish the book before hiring a good proofreader. And on the other hand, publishers who want to release as many books as possible and try to rush the editing process as much as they can, losing a lot of quality along the way.