Troped Out

I'm going to be slightly controversial and admit that as fun as relationship tropes can be, I'm pretty troped out. I do say this having recently participated in a relationship trope trend that's been going around; however, I've had mixed feelings about tropes since I first started writing about it (I assure you, my intent is not to be discouraging about things that *most* people enjoy just for the sake of being a contrarian).

What I'm noticing is that tropes—notably within the romance genre—are becoming shorthand for a compelling description of an author's book, and in some ways, can almost take away from the experience of reading well-crafted sentences instead. It's almost as if its overuse is causing a form of immunity against it, where my eyes have more and more started to glaze over when seeing countless tropes used to describe books. I'm now skipping a lot of these posts on Bookstagram because I would rather find a more comprehensive description of the book to determine if I will want to read it, rather than trying to figure out how all the tropes work together.

I completely understand that this shorthand is convenient for finding books within preferred topics, yet there is still something to be said about being surprised by a captivating hook in the book's messaging that draws you in, regardless of whether certain tropes are touched on. I also think that while I can usually guess what a book's overarching themes may be and use it in a review, it can be a bit simplistic and limit the book to how that particular theme is perceived, whereas the author may take readers for unexpected twists and turns beyond the norm.

Tropes obviously have value for readers, and I'm grateful that they play a role alongside book reviews (from one extreme to the other in terms of word count!). Although I more veer toward evaluating a book by its title, author, cover, past works, summary, and other criteria, there will likely be another form of marketing books that emerges to help readers determine how to spend their time. Tropes aren't really that helpful to me right now, but that's the joy of being a reader where we can all bring our discerning—and different—tastes forward.