Paranormal Romance & Urban Fantasy discussion

You know the tropes. You come across it in a read and instantly all your goodwill for the book comes to a screeching halt. For some the book is instantly thrown on the DNF pile. For others it just knocks off a couple/or all the rating stars.

So what makes you roll your eyes in frustration? What makes your blood boil? What just makes you go - ick - no thanks?

Now you can only pick one - I'll go first.

The magical va-jay-jay.
That instantly cures all the Hero's ills: His PTSD. His Alpha-hole-ness. His sullen silence. His anger issues. His commitment issues. An actual physical or magical disease.

What ever his problem is (no matter if its been plaguing him for centuries) her hoo-ha is the answer.


Okay - your turn. No matter how big or how small, what trope makes you grind your teeth, roll your eyes & start crossing off those star ratings?

Only one per person - please

Miscommunication tropes! Especially in third-act conflicts when the romance is wrapping up and a problem pops up out of nowhere.

When you are constantly told the heroine isn't that pretty/special and yet every man/hottie she comes across hits on her.

I agree with Allison. But I don't mind misunderstandings in the first half. But the third act breakups are annoys af!
It makes me not want to revisit the story.

The over excessive drama and I'm not good enough. every page you read is, I'm not good enough for her/him, I can't do this and I can't do that yet they one of the most powerful? that is like instant turn down and I put the book down not wanting to read further when the over drama to a blade point is so extreme. some drama I can do no worries but when it gets to that bad it's just a no for me

The blurb assures me the heroine is kickass. The author constantly TELLS me the heroine is kickass.

But the reality?

Nope... TSTL, is what she is. Curses!

Female characters doing clearly stupid things and then the male characters can rescue them. "They told me to stay here out of danger, but I'll show them!" It's annoying and not very relatable, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't put my life at risk just to prove a point. It also feels like an easy way to create a modern-day damsel, and we should be moving past that, it feels regressive to me.

allison wrote: "Miscommunication tropes! Especially in third-act conflicts when the romance is wrapping up and a problem pops up out of nowhere."
So many stories are built around a miscommunication that could be cleared up with one simple question, it drives me nuts!
"Hey I overheard you say something about me, but was there some context I missed?" Solved lol

“I can take care of myself.”

AND… she never can. Some way, some how, over and over again, every situation she’s in, she can never take care or handle herself. She gets thrown, kidnapped and/or out maneuvered. She is but an average mere mortal with a low IQ.

So the TSTL heroine is my biggest pet peeve.

The mysterious, all too convenient power-up of magic or skills, for completely no reason - that then solves everyone's troubles.

Worse, no one is worried, or asks how/why their powers changed.

miscommunication + second chance , i freakin' hate second chance romance . i love the getting to know somebody with slow slow burn .

Alphaholes who are excessively cruel to the FMC but also still possessive and seemingly get a pass for immaturity and borderline psychopathic behavior because they’re hot

savoring_pages wrote: "Alphaholes who are excessively cruel to the FMC but also still possessive and seemingly get a pass for immaturity and borderline psychopathic behavior because they’re hot"

omg - YES!

I have an alphahole line - and if the H so much as puts a big toe over it - I'm outta there.

A wizard did it. 'Nough said

Enemy to lovers book couples that are really,

I can't stand him/her but I'm sooo attracted to their stupidly handsome/beautiful face and hot bod!

and they don't like each other just because or for some shallow reason.

I want my enemies to lovers to viscerally hate/not trust each other with true battles (verbal and/or physical). And at beginning of the book they don't see one redeeming quality in each other because the reason there is such a great deal of enmity between them is a reason the reader can truly empathize with and it's a long slow burn through the book to get them to where they can even see each other as real people that have skills that other values/admires let alone feeling affection for the other person.
Some books I felt handles this troupe well are:

second chance gross

KarenMac wrote: "The blurb assures me the heroine is kickass. The author constantly TELLS me the heroine is kickass.

But the reality?

Nope... TSTL, is what she is. Curses!"

YES!
Or the FL is actually shown (not told) as a kickass, smart and independent character, in the beginning of the book, and then they become a couple and *poof* I can't find that character anywhere. There is some other FL with her name but she is now a damsel in distress (and TSTL). UGH! DNF!

Recently, Reverse Harems. No offense for those who salivate for those. It’s just I think I finally found my next book to read and get shoved off my horse when I find out the story is about multiple MC’s. Not that I’d harp on a female finding her grove that way, but it feels too ambiguous and lazy not to settle on just one soul mate. Not to mention I couldn’t keep up with each man’s separate character traits. I’d have to constantly remind myself who they were.

But, I do love Ouron High School Host Club, so maybe there’s is a RH out there that I could enjoy reading.

Leia wrote: "second chance gross"

I'm with you on this one. Immediate "Not Interested"

Leia wrote: "miscommunication + second chance , i freakin' hate second chance romance . i love the getting to know somebody with slow slow burn ."

Ditto, especially on the 2nd chance. My favorite part of the book is the first meeting of the leads.

Stalker vampires because... vampires are just stalky. If your vamps have to interact with humans and still have complex emotions/souls then this makes very little sense.

Not really troupe more pet peeves.


Author spoilers

Foretelling

It would be the last time I’d ever see him. In this life or the next.

Prologues or first chapter being a cold start in the future and the next chapter actually starts the book X number of days/months/years ago.

Billionaires

It’s like a constant cheat code. Can go anywhere, acquire anything, access everything…

Pregnancy trope....

I don't mind it at the end for the epilogue because I love happy endings, but when it happens to the FMC right before something really important and she's taken out of action because she's fragile and precious.

let the girlie be free PLEASE

I guess the one that stands out for me and my wife, is when the MCs refuse to communicate when it is clearly needed. Something that can be fixed with just one conversation takes majority of the book to work out. Meantime many things that don't need to happen, do. All because one phone call or face to face was not allowed to happen.

These things when they bother me in books, are usually due to really trivial issues that are approached or handled in the story as if they are life altering when they clearly are not. This just kills the vibe or credibility of a story for me. I see it often in books. Frustrating.

It’s not really a trope so much as a genre. The “morally grey” and abusive MMC and the woman who discovers she wants to be dominated by him. I find these offensive and worry this will reinforce the “men know what women REALLY want “ No, just no.

The virginity trope (hyperfixated on the purity of the FMC) and then she's a porn star by round two.

haremband reverse harem. it just becomes mindless smut orgies

friends to lovers bleh

Bad Romance wrote: "The virginity trope (hyperfixated on the purity of the FMC) and then she's a porn star by round two."

Haha.

MC who stumbles on secret world (magic/fantasy/crime/etc.) and manages to go from shocked to complete expert in the field by 1/2 way through the book, while all other characters "spent their entire lives" in the "secret world". Really!?!?!

I second, second chances.

Dahrose wrote: "You know the tropes. You come across it in a read and instantly all your goodwill for the book comes to a screeching halt. For some the book is instantly thrown on the DNF pile. For others it just ..."

Characters riddled with a saviour complex. A vampire? I can make him "human" again. Autism? Let me be your cure! The list goes on and on. Like, why does the heroine always have to change the very being of the others? The biggest example of this is Tohru Handa in Fruits Basket.

Time travel drives me nuts, idk why, it just irritates me.

Why are the women always kidnapped? Why are the MMCs never kidnapped, and need rescue? Worse is the reuse of it in a series again and again. As much as I love Mercy Thompson, she’s been kidnapped too many times.

BDSM, just doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t mind PNR, I need at least a 60/40 plot to sex ratio, but no bondage, thanks. 50 Shades is not my happy place.

Speaking of the 60/40 plot to sex ratio, when the MCs are in massive danger, or running for their lives, but stop to have sex? Uh…dumb.

Illogical nature like how in many werewolf stories are pregnancies are only 4-6 months long but the baby is born like a human infant, and then it takes to puberty for them to wolf out and then have a life expectancy of like 500+ years. There would be -so- many werewolves if those were the premises.

Werewolves where the main characters are described as nothing but pure, the best there is, on top of the world etc. But they have a color that suggest dog genetics were introduced somewhere in the pedigree. Such as solid white with blue eyes or solid black. That can make a "really wanted tbr" into a "yeet and never read" really fast.

reverse harem/ why choose or any smut over plot period

I’ll second reverse harem. Smacks of cheating, and I don’t like cheaters. I know it’s consensual, like poly, and to each their own, if that does it for you. Doesn’t do anything for me though, so if I see reverse harem in the description I don’t read any further.

Zoi wrote: "Time travel drives me nuts, idk why, it just irritates me.
I agree with you on that one, it usually make the story either confusing or completely unrealistic.

Dahrose wrote: "You know the tropes. You come across it in a read and instantly all your goodwill for the book comes to a screeching halt. For some the book is instantly thrown on the DNF pile. For others it just ..."

Fear of commitment or taking a chance on a relationship. This may work if the main character is young and has no experience, but with older people, unless they were hurt badly by someone in the past, it seems kind of old (pardon the pun) that their reaction is like a teenager's. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think older people give into doubt and fear as much.

the “she’s so teeny tiny/small and i’ll mention it multiple times in the book but yet somehow she’s super strong and can take down anyone!”

Insta love especially when it’s supposed to be like enemies to lovers and they just immediately meet and are in love with each other 😭

"Bad guys" coming out of nowhere just to start a bar fight for no goddamn reason except to "spice up" the action. I can almost burn a book every time I come across it.

The "perfect" man who just falls out of the sky and loves the MC for no apparent reason, no questions asked.

I'm starting to really hate the angry/angst/I keep secrets from everyone fmc and kind accepting mmc. They just fight the whole book but then also have sex? it's confusing and dumb

I love a special snowflake heroine - BUT - when it is done badly I find it one of the hardest tropes to stomach.

Problems with the trope occur -
- when every male is attracted to our supposedly average h suddenly
- when she is punished because no one bothers to tell her the rules
- when the H acts smug and is secret keeping from the h
- the h makes sudden and unexplainable leaps in deduction
- amnesia
- massive clunky info dumps on the h and the reader


I could go on. It's a very hard trope to get right. But when an author does it can be amazing.

It drives me up the wall when the MMC is a bully to the FMC. I love enemies to lovers, and I don't mind if he's a bit mean at the beginning, but not when there is a domestic violence situation going on; like girlie pop, you need an intervention, what are you doing type of thing. This is literature for women, why would you like to vicariously experience that? We have enough of that crap in real life.

3rd act break up is my least favorite and it's usually coupled with the miscommunication trope which is also annoying

Arielle wrote: "The "perfect" man who just falls out of the sky and loves the MC for no apparent reason, no questions asked."

Well, it IS called "fantasy" for a reason! Hahahaha...seriously though I just died laughing at this one!

Rachel wrote: "haremband reverse harem. it just becomes mindless smut orgies"

It really does.

I was listening to a bookish YT video the other day as background noise and she called it reverse ha-REEM instead of hair-um. The rest of her English was spot on so I just think she really had no idea WTF she was saying and it made me laugh. Don't know why but that just made me think of it.

I have started recently to hate soulmates and mating bonds, especially in books where are werewolves or vampires. "There is just this string that they feel pulling them together, this unbreakable bond, this one touch that changed everything in their lives and now they cant breathe without the other person and they become instantly moraly gray " i think its lame and the characters just lack personality. And its usually that the MMC knows about the bond "before it snaps in place" but FMC is clueless about everything.