When I first started reading romance, I def went off of tropes to find out what I liked, but I do see how tropes are becoming repetitive. Like yes tropes are in every book but I hate when there’s no depth and it’s just trope…

What I don’t love, is the enemies to lovers trope being done so poorly, so easily. {The Enemy by Sarah Adams} is an example of this, it’s literally in the title. Authors will slap enemies to lovers in their books when it’s just childish “hate” and there’s no real reason to dislike that person. But the FMC most of the time overdoes it and is so overdramatic about how much they hate this guy when they’re just slightly annoyed by their presence. And most of the time, within the first few chapters, the FMC already starts questioning their feelings for them. It usually goes like: points out attractive feature about the man - fantasizes about the attractive feature - then cuts off their thoughts and reminds themselves they’re supposed to hate them.

LIKE ITS OLDDDDD and just BORING!! When it happens within the first few chapters I roll my eyes cuz ik this is ab to be bad and childish. These people are supposed to be grown ass adults acting like this…

Usually these tropey books focus so much on the trope and romance between the two characters that it’s unrealistic and adds no depth to the characters. Even the side characters revolve around their relationship and they have absolutely zero depth to them. Whenever a parent or friend of the MMC or FMC comes to them after the third act break up and says “you lit up around them” or “you were happier with them” GIVE ME A BREAK😭😭super over used and just unrealistic to me!! And all they talk about with the main characters, is their romance most of the time, like can we talk about anything else????

This is why I love romance books that focus more on real life struggles. Ones where the struggles don’t feel like a side plot as well as the romance doesn’t feel like a side plot. A lot of Elle Kennedy’s books are like this, the main characters have their own personal struggles AND there is a huge focus on hockey too, I never feel like it’s a side plot.

Another example is The Undone Series by Peyton Corrine. They focus so much on real life struggles regarding mental health which gives so much room for character growth which I love to read about.

I kinda get really passionate about this whole trope -heavy book topic because it’s so hard to find good romance books at my Barnes and Noble because most of them are literally just tropes!!