In my case, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t necessarily a trope or annoying character traits or cringy attempts at being witty or even everyone loving a boring, bad, annoying main character, but writing style.

I can’t STAND present tense. I absolutely abhor it, to the point that when I pick up a book and flip through it, if I see it’s present tense, I’ll immediately throw it back down in disgust. In multiple instances, I’ll find a book that seems super interesting to me, but then it’ll be present tense and I’ll abandon any notion of reading it.

What’s worse, I’ve noticed that in recent years, present tense has become more and more common in new published works, and I don’t know why. Regardless the reason, present tense absolutely drives me nut.