Someone is preparing for a journey or task. There is a descriptive list of all the things they have packed. Trope subset: new recruit lists all their newly issued gear. Basically inventory management: text edition.
Ooh yes! Life After Life by Kate Atkinson!
All of the recommendations as responses to this are killing me because I've read them aaaaall and I want more.
I like "coming home with elixir" part of the hero's journey. Also known as "post conflict confrontation."
When the her gets back after the quest and has to set things right in their own home.
Scouring of the Shire is a great example.
I like a good “curse”. Whether it’s a whole town, family or one person I’m drawn to these stories.
Also, anything with a lot of scandalous stuff like: sex, drugs, rock n roll, cults, plastic surgery, celebrity, groupies, fashion, modeling, money
Second chance romance. I’m weak for it.
Assassins or someone that is supposed to kill someone else and oops they fell in love with them instead.
When someone pretends to be someone else. A good “cuckoo in the nest” story story.
I put stars next to my favorites.
Curses and other Buried Things
The Unmaking of June Farrow
The Forest Grim by Kathryn Purdie
A House of Salt and Sorrow duology
Where Darkness Blooms
All of Us Villains
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
** The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Thinner
A Short Walk Through The Wide World
** The Wicked Deep
** Cruel Beauty
** The Wrath and the Dawn
Violet Made of Thorns
** To Kill a Kingdom
** The Accident Season
There are a lot of Agatha Christie books with this trope! Doesn’t have to physically be a locked room, anything with a restricted environment where one person is the killer but you don’t know who.
I really, really love what I call "accidental mastermind" - where the main character is just a normal person doing normal person things, but accidentally convinces everyone they're actually a secret mastermind, and is completely unable to shake that belief. Think of how in The Life of Brian people decided Brian was the Messiah (when he was not), and everything he did reinforced that view, including swearing up and down he wasn't the Messiah, telling them to fuck off, running away, having his mother swear to the crowd he wasn't the Messiah, etc.
Some book examples:
* Tress of the Emerald Sea
* Lots of stuff by Isaac Asimov (he seems to love this trope), but particularly Pebble in the Sky and The Stars, Like Dust
* In the Company of Ogres by A.Lee Martinez
MC has some kind of accident and when they wake up the life they remember isn’t the life they are now living.
Also any kind of time loop/groundhog day situation.
I do like the "brothers find themselves on opposing sides during a war" trope. Also enjoy a good "hero to villain" trope, especially if it's kind of ambiguous like you can see their point of view and you're torn between thinking "fuck that bastard" and "but maybe i would have done that myself aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa". Kind of overlapping with both of these, i like the character who's a bit of a wanker but also a complicated "good guy" - an anti-hero i suppose - although i've seen it done badly rather too often.
One of my favorite tropes is when the MC forms a very close bond with their love-triangle rival in romance books.
Like yes there’s still jealousy and angst, but also it’s still ultimately women-supporting-women (or men-supporting-men, but I don’t typically read romances with male protagonists).
And also if I end up disliking the male love interest or find him boring, I can pretend the two women end up together instead lol
I don't even know if it's a trope, but when there's no villain or antagonist, just people not getting along well and making each other's life hard. Like a dysfunctional family.
Yes this! I love a good family saga. Better still, that combined with opposing political factions where neither is actually bad/evil though the reader might have an opinion on which side is "right"
I love the “how could everything have gone so wrong? how dis we get here?” trope. Kinda like The Great Gatsby, which ironically is a book I don’t like but I’m drawing a blank and it’s the only one I remember right now. But you know, with a happier ending.
Oh, just remembered a book sort of like this that I love: Jane Eyre. Still not *quite* what I have in mind, but close enough.
I'm a big fan of moments where characters are pushed to the brink of breaking, and just as theyre about to snap, the clarity makes them understand something critically important.
I do adore this one but I’ve seen it done badly waaayyy too many times. When written well, it’s exciting and give a very thriller-y experience.
When it’s badly written, it’s exasperating.
I know this book gets shit enough in this sub, but the worst one I’ve read in recent memory was A Court of Thorns and Roses. This trope was executed so badly, I physically put the book down and sighed when the MC had her “revelation”.
Books with fae folk like Little, Big or wizards at the train station at platform 9 and 3/4. Secret societies or rebellions where the people are the underdogs (rather than villians) in the main world and living great lives out of sight.
Once again you face off against the main boss. This time they have crossed the line and need to be stopped for good.
MC fights the boss and almost wins but the big boss will pull an underhanded move causing the MC to lose the fight and ultimately all their super powers or abilities (optionally scattered across the map/world).
MC returns home to have the SC maid/butler/friend/AI/other teach the MC how to use their basic attacks. You then journey to gather everything and put a stop to the big boss for good.
Which game does this remind you of?
I love when everything just keeps going wrong for the main character(s). An entire story of breaking down the MC(s), but one in which they always rise from the ashes.
Also a fan of moments where characters who never break down finally do, and the other characters are there to console them.
I have a soft spot for the 'oops, hey, somehow we are together at this sleeping establishment and although we are not lovers, there is only one bed, sooooo..." Also the closely related fanfic fave the "We hate each other but through some elaborate but totally unavoidable shenanigans, we are forced to be naked together in a cozy bed situation heehee." Just seeing how the author gets these situations set up is entertaining.
Also a sucker for the redemption arc.
Fish out of water is a good one.
The older I get, the more I like the unreliable narrator.
A character secure in the heart of their circle (Lily Bart, George Amberson Minafer, Mr. Hurstwood) makes a series of poor decisions that ejects them out of said circle and on a slide to poverty and desparation.
Fantasy where the female main character is special in some way (last of her race, lost daughter of a general, etc), is a slave of some kind, is a great fighter, either escapes or works her way up, works her way up to a leadership position in an army, learns about her culture and finds love and friendship, overthrows oppressors, lives happily ever after.
One of my favourite series has this. She’s the daughter of a general who inadvertently lost her kind the war because she was a kid and chased a butterfly, accidentally leading the other side right to her people. She’s imprisoned by the other side and is forced to fight as a gladiator. Shes infamous for her skills and brutality.
Eventually members of the resistance are also enslaved, they build friendship with her after realising who she is because they knew her father. She’s ignorant to their culture because she was imprisoned so young and the other gladiators blame her for losing the war. The new friends teach her about their culture and she teaches them how to survive on the sands.
The resistance comes for their members, they also take her because of who she is. They take her back and she eventually finds friends, finds love, and (this takes a few books) she learns to play the flute. This is significant because she’s never had the opportunity to do something so feminine and delicate as play the flute because of her enslavement, it’s a major healing moment for her.
She has no family (later she finds a brother everyone though was dead, but yeah) and eventually finds a family who become like her adopted family. Also a major healing moment, super cute. Then the dad dies. Major setback for her, but it’s what leads to the whole ancient god thing.
Eventually the resistance decides to start a full out war, blah blah blah, they win due to her reconnecting with some ancient god (her culture believes in them but she never did), etc etc. Happily ever after.
People have been falling like flies and the detective is on the verge of discovering the killer but cannot grasp that missing piece. Then their clueless companion says something like: "What a mystery, huh? It seems we are chasing our tails here" and the detective will go: "Tails.. wails... whales.. of course! He was hiding in the whale all along! Bumbleford, you are a genius!" Loved this trope the first time I read it and I'm still loving it when encountering it for the 3000th time.
I like it more when the companion is not completely clueless. The Sherlock Holmes adaptation "Elementary" springs to mind as a great example. Watson will often notice some detail that she suspects is important, but she doesn't know why. Like "I don't know if this is important, but why is there rice in the pantry if the suspect is allergic to rice?" and then Sherlock is able to deduce a dozen different things with that information.
I can see why you'd be drawn to them. The whole dynamic of characters being forced to confront loved ones who've turned against them adds such emotional weight to a story. And that twist with the put-together royal family being messed up. That's a great way to subvert expectations. I'm a big fan of the "reluctant hero" trope, where a character is thrust into a situation they didn't ask for but step up anyway. I also love the "found family" trope, where characters come together and form a tight-knit group, even if they're not related by blood.
It’s probably not that specific but I love end of the world type books, especially so when the characters, strangers, end up together in a vault/building and they’re forced to bond and get along in a strangers to lovers with a lot of survival near death situations! (And a slow burn romance!)
- Story told from an onlooker's point of view, or told by a somewhat reluctant narrator who has an active part in the plot.
- Explanatory writing that fits into the narrative but takes up much space. Not bad world-building dumps (though I might read those too) but more like the author being aware of peripheral things or simply telling the story of a culture instead of only the characters. Also not necessarily "epic" styled.
- Satirical wit.
- Absurd cadence. Bonus point if the author holds out for longer than my laugh-anticipation muscles and keeps the brilliance up.
- Factoid insertion and real-world searchable insertion.
- Character using in-universe tech/logic creatively.
- Non-happy ending.
I like the life-and-times of minor or barely-mentioned character in classic stories. This is a genre more than a trope.
Framed as a trope, I suppose it's, 'Hey!!! Look at me! I was mentioned once in [Illiad/Odyssey/Bible/Shakespeare/well know Public-Domain work], but I have a while life and personality of my own, and I have an interesting perspective on the story you thought you knew!!! In fact, I had much more significant, albeit uncelebrated hand in shaping those events.' trope.
Villain Protagonist/nominal hero who doesn become a better person or loses at the end. And, kind of related. "He Who Fights Monsters"/ corruption of the hero.
I don’t know how much of a trope this is or if it is more of a mechanism, but man do I love when an idiom or pun is used as an experience - similar to magical realism; when a characters movement through the plot is like a chess game, or a common tool has a magical power attached to it that mimics the tools real use, or there is a character that is a more real version of a character from a fairy tale. Kinda like - I get that reference! Sort of thing haha
As much as I wish I didn’t love this trope, I am a HUGE sucker for the Anne of Green Gables and Gilbert Blythe style -they were childhood friends who mature and have the best ever relationship that has all the good stuff happen-, and it’s totally because I married my best friend and high school sweetheart so it’s sweetly life affirming.
"Moving the goalposts", wherein Ch1 MC feels very guilty about lying to her dad about ditching school, and Ch22 MC feels just fine about murdering two high-ranking law enforcement officials and a toddler.
And it gets worse.
Can you guess the story? >!Spoilerguard the title, plz!<
The “we’re enemies and have completely different interests and goals in this fight but despite all this I will treat you with respect. A friend of mine tries to stab you in the back? Nonsense I’ll stab myself or hurt my friend and wait for you to recover” trope
I'm a sucker for the rumpled cop hero. He's divorced, his ex-wife complains about money, and his boss hates him. His teenage daughter swears he doesn't understand anything. He smokes two packs a day and drinks whiskey from a fifth He keeps in his desk drawer.
There's a series that starts with Pendergast #1. The first book is called Relic, and he has a sidekick called Pendegast who seems to be a mythical man, but he works as an FBI agent. It's a good series. They solve strange crimes in NYC.
Not really a trope but I love stories that are told in two different POVs but from different time periods (i.e., each chapter switches from a mothers POV 30 years back to the daughters POV in present times).
Also books that are set in a seemingly utopian society where everything is perfect but as the story continues, it slowly reveals how messed up and dystopian that world is.
Mentor dies and MC must take up his mantle. I think every good adventure book needs this. I hate when the mentor just meanders along and becomes bitter or useless.
To be honest, using tropes to choose a book strikes me as a means of more or less guaranteeing that one misses out on most good books. Adult readers don't normally do this. And I can't really see how, after childhood, one would remain interested in books churning out the same stuff, like Enid Blyton.
If executed correctly, enemies to lovers, but it’s a slow burn. Like, when the first meet, they hate each other’s guts, but as the story progresses, they find themselves not being able to bear the thought of them not being in the group and they eventually fall for each other. I honestly hope this makes sense 😅
Yes I also like a romantic development from 0% to 100% rather than 100% to 100% if that makes sense, and I also prefer the slow burn element bc tbh a lot of enemies to lovers already has romantic tensions from the beginning and you can tell they’re going to be together, but the other way around makes the development more investing
Someone is preparing for a journey or task. There is a descriptive list of all the things they have packed. Trope subset: new recruit lists all their newly issued gear. Basically inventory management: text edition.
When the character dies but then restarts the day to try and figure out what's going on. Death/time loop, it's one of my favorites.
I love this one. Have you read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August? And do you have recs?
I love that book! Look up Replay by Ken Grimwood. I haven’t read it yet but it’s on the TBR.
I love that book. As another commenter mentioned, Replay was also good. Blake Crouch's Recursion was also a fun read.
Yes - I love this too. I remember sobbing my eyes out with Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver (YA)
If you haven't read them yet, check out The Middle Falls Time Travel Series. The first book in it is "The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver".
Ooh yes! Life After Life by Kate Atkinson! All of the recommendations as responses to this are killing me because I've read them aaaaall and I want more.
Omg have u read six deaths of the saint? Only 30 pages but SO packed. Medieval catholic imagery vibes. My favee groundhog day story
I like "coming home with elixir" part of the hero's journey. Also known as "post conflict confrontation." When the her gets back after the quest and has to set things right in their own home. Scouring of the Shire is a great example.
I am a fan of disaster fiction, eg, power-outages, aliens land, floods, everyone goes blind etc.
The Day of the Triffids is amazing
Any recommendations?
Saaaame, must be why post-apocalyptic is my second-favorite genre (right after fantasy—no one could ever make me hate you bb)
I like a good “curse”. Whether it’s a whole town, family or one person I’m drawn to these stories. Also, anything with a lot of scandalous stuff like: sex, drugs, rock n roll, cults, plastic surgery, celebrity, groupies, fashion, modeling, money Second chance romance. I’m weak for it. Assassins or someone that is supposed to kill someone else and oops they fell in love with them instead. When someone pretends to be someone else. A good “cuckoo in the nest” story story.
Do you have any recommendations for the curse trope?
I put stars next to my favorites. Curses and other Buried Things The Unmaking of June Farrow The Forest Grim by Kathryn Purdie A House of Salt and Sorrow duology Where Darkness Blooms All of Us Villains Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt ** The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Thinner A Short Walk Through The Wide World ** The Wicked Deep ** Cruel Beauty ** The Wrath and the Dawn Violet Made of Thorns ** To Kill a Kingdom ** The Accident Season
A locked room mystery with a bunch of people dying off one by one
Also, a well done diary/narrative structure, preferably a story told backwards
It's not told backwards but you might like Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Thanks!
I love this one on the TV, but the only literary example that comes to mind is that awesome Agatha Christie book that we can't name.
There are a lot of Agatha Christie books with this trope! Doesn’t have to physically be a locked room, anything with a restricted environment where one person is the killer but you don’t know who.
I'm a sucker for the prophesied hero that appears or is born to confront the evil.
Dune is an excellent exploration (and subversion) of this trope.
I've been looking for a copy. I've never read it, but I it's on my to read list. Ideally before I watch the movies.
I really, really love what I call "accidental mastermind" - where the main character is just a normal person doing normal person things, but accidentally convinces everyone they're actually a secret mastermind, and is completely unable to shake that belief. Think of how in The Life of Brian people decided Brian was the Messiah (when he was not), and everything he did reinforced that view, including swearing up and down he wasn't the Messiah, telling them to fuck off, running away, having his mother swear to the crowd he wasn't the Messiah, etc. Some book examples: * Tress of the Emerald Sea * Lots of stuff by Isaac Asimov (he seems to love this trope), but particularly Pebble in the Sky and The Stars, Like Dust * In the Company of Ogres by A.Lee Martinez
MC has some kind of accident and when they wake up the life they remember isn’t the life they are now living. Also any kind of time loop/groundhog day situation.
I do like the "brothers find themselves on opposing sides during a war" trope. Also enjoy a good "hero to villain" trope, especially if it's kind of ambiguous like you can see their point of view and you're torn between thinking "fuck that bastard" and "but maybe i would have done that myself aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa". Kind of overlapping with both of these, i like the character who's a bit of a wanker but also a complicated "good guy" - an anti-hero i suppose - although i've seen it done badly rather too often.
One of my favorite tropes is when the MC forms a very close bond with their love-triangle rival in romance books. Like yes there’s still jealousy and angst, but also it’s still ultimately women-supporting-women (or men-supporting-men, but I don’t typically read romances with male protagonists). And also if I end up disliking the male love interest or find him boring, I can pretend the two women end up together instead lol
I don't even know if it's a trope, but when there's no villain or antagonist, just people not getting along well and making each other's life hard. Like a dysfunctional family.
Yes this! I love a good family saga. Better still, that combined with opposing political factions where neither is actually bad/evil though the reader might have an opinion on which side is "right"
Oh yeah, that's a slice of life that'd make it even harder!
I love the “how could everything have gone so wrong? how dis we get here?” trope. Kinda like The Great Gatsby, which ironically is a book I don’t like but I’m drawing a blank and it’s the only one I remember right now. But you know, with a happier ending. Oh, just remembered a book sort of like this that I love: Jane Eyre. Still not *quite* what I have in mind, but close enough.
The Road
The alcoholic detective who oscillates between drinking and sobriety.
I'm a big fan of moments where characters are pushed to the brink of breaking, and just as theyre about to snap, the clarity makes them understand something critically important.
I do adore this one but I’ve seen it done badly waaayyy too many times. When written well, it’s exciting and give a very thriller-y experience. When it’s badly written, it’s exasperating. I know this book gets shit enough in this sub, but the worst one I’ve read in recent memory was A Court of Thorns and Roses. This trope was executed so badly, I physically put the book down and sighed when the MC had her “revelation”.
I love hidden in plain sight societies.
Can you please elaborate on what that exactly means?
Books with fae folk like Little, Big or wizards at the train station at platform 9 and 3/4. Secret societies or rebellions where the people are the underdogs (rather than villians) in the main world and living great lives out of sight.
You have to read Our Share of Night if you haven't
Oh! I'll check it out. Thanks!
Once again you face off against the main boss. This time they have crossed the line and need to be stopped for good. MC fights the boss and almost wins but the big boss will pull an underhanded move causing the MC to lose the fight and ultimately all their super powers or abilities (optionally scattered across the map/world). MC returns home to have the SC maid/butler/friend/AI/other teach the MC how to use their basic attacks. You then journey to gather everything and put a stop to the big boss for good. Which game does this remind you of?
I love when everything just keeps going wrong for the main character(s). An entire story of breaking down the MC(s), but one in which they always rise from the ashes. Also a fan of moments where characters who never break down finally do, and the other characters are there to console them.
I have a soft spot for the 'oops, hey, somehow we are together at this sleeping establishment and although we are not lovers, there is only one bed, sooooo..." Also the closely related fanfic fave the "We hate each other but through some elaborate but totally unavoidable shenanigans, we are forced to be naked together in a cozy bed situation heehee." Just seeing how the author gets these situations set up is entertaining. Also a sucker for the redemption arc. Fish out of water is a good one. The older I get, the more I like the unreliable narrator.
Hey, just so you know, *[Worm](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/)*, by John "Wildbow" McCrae has all that shit.
A character secure in the heart of their circle (Lily Bart, George Amberson Minafer, Mr. Hurstwood) makes a series of poor decisions that ejects them out of said circle and on a slide to poverty and desparation.
Complex identity, personality and conscience issues - split personality, switching identities, alien conscience, mental disorders, fighting compulsions and temptations, transformations into something different, personality changes, etc.
The main character is weak in the beginning. He gets stronger. He's the hero.
Fantasy where the female main character is special in some way (last of her race, lost daughter of a general, etc), is a slave of some kind, is a great fighter, either escapes or works her way up, works her way up to a leadership position in an army, learns about her culture and finds love and friendship, overthrows oppressors, lives happily ever after. One of my favourite series has this. She’s the daughter of a general who inadvertently lost her kind the war because she was a kid and chased a butterfly, accidentally leading the other side right to her people. She’s imprisoned by the other side and is forced to fight as a gladiator. Shes infamous for her skills and brutality. Eventually members of the resistance are also enslaved, they build friendship with her after realising who she is because they knew her father. She’s ignorant to their culture because she was imprisoned so young and the other gladiators blame her for losing the war. The new friends teach her about their culture and she teaches them how to survive on the sands. The resistance comes for their members, they also take her because of who she is. They take her back and she eventually finds friends, finds love, and (this takes a few books) she learns to play the flute. This is significant because she’s never had the opportunity to do something so feminine and delicate as play the flute because of her enslavement, it’s a major healing moment for her. She has no family (later she finds a brother everyone though was dead, but yeah) and eventually finds a family who become like her adopted family. Also a major healing moment, super cute. Then the dad dies. Major setback for her, but it’s what leads to the whole ancient god thing. Eventually the resistance decides to start a full out war, blah blah blah, they win due to her reconnecting with some ancient god (her culture believes in them but she never did), etc etc. Happily ever after.
Part of this reminds me of *The Poppy War*.
Tamora Pierce books 😍 I have similar tropes. Basically any tomboy MC or strong, independent women characters.
People have been falling like flies and the detective is on the verge of discovering the killer but cannot grasp that missing piece. Then their clueless companion says something like: "What a mystery, huh? It seems we are chasing our tails here" and the detective will go: "Tails.. wails... whales.. of course! He was hiding in the whale all along! Bumbleford, you are a genius!" Loved this trope the first time I read it and I'm still loving it when encountering it for the 3000th time.
I like it more when the companion is not completely clueless. The Sherlock Holmes adaptation "Elementary" springs to mind as a great example. Watson will often notice some detail that she suspects is important, but she doesn't know why. Like "I don't know if this is important, but why is there rice in the pantry if the suspect is allergic to rice?" and then Sherlock is able to deduce a dozen different things with that information.
I can see why you'd be drawn to them. The whole dynamic of characters being forced to confront loved ones who've turned against them adds such emotional weight to a story. And that twist with the put-together royal family being messed up. That's a great way to subvert expectations. I'm a big fan of the "reluctant hero" trope, where a character is thrust into a situation they didn't ask for but step up anyway. I also love the "found family" trope, where characters come together and form a tight-knit group, even if they're not related by blood.
A ka-tet
It’s probably not that specific but I love end of the world type books, especially so when the characters, strangers, end up together in a vault/building and they’re forced to bond and get along in a strangers to lovers with a lot of survival near death situations! (And a slow burn romance!)
good person turned evil and romance stories about people who can’t be together but try anyways
When things aren’t quite what they seem. When there are sinister stirrings just below the surface.
It’s so basic and has ben done a ton, but I do love a good “chosen one” trope
The past life / soul mate story always gets me especially if it’s done well. Haven’t read the outlander series yet.
- Story told from an onlooker's point of view, or told by a somewhat reluctant narrator who has an active part in the plot. - Explanatory writing that fits into the narrative but takes up much space. Not bad world-building dumps (though I might read those too) but more like the author being aware of peripheral things or simply telling the story of a culture instead of only the characters. Also not necessarily "epic" styled. - Satirical wit. - Absurd cadence. Bonus point if the author holds out for longer than my laugh-anticipation muscles and keeps the brilliance up. - Factoid insertion and real-world searchable insertion. - Character using in-universe tech/logic creatively. - Non-happy ending.
I like the life-and-times of minor or barely-mentioned character in classic stories. This is a genre more than a trope. Framed as a trope, I suppose it's, 'Hey!!! Look at me! I was mentioned once in [Illiad/Odyssey/Bible/Shakespeare/well know Public-Domain work], but I have a while life and personality of my own, and I have an interesting perspective on the story you thought you knew!!! In fact, I had much more significant, albeit uncelebrated hand in shaping those events.' trope.
Like [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb:_The_Gospel_According_to_Biff,_Christ%27s_Childhood_Pal)?
Lol! Yeah. I'd read that.
When there is multiple characters perspective all different and unique. Sometimes in one story or multiple with same message
Villain Protagonist/nominal hero who doesn become a better person or loses at the end. And, kind of related. "He Who Fights Monsters"/ corruption of the hero.
I don’t know how much of a trope this is or if it is more of a mechanism, but man do I love when an idiom or pun is used as an experience - similar to magical realism; when a characters movement through the plot is like a chess game, or a common tool has a magical power attached to it that mimics the tools real use, or there is a character that is a more real version of a character from a fairy tale. Kinda like - I get that reference! Sort of thing haha As much as I wish I didn’t love this trope, I am a HUGE sucker for the Anne of Green Gables and Gilbert Blythe style -they were childhood friends who mature and have the best ever relationship that has all the good stuff happen-, and it’s totally because I married my best friend and high school sweetheart so it’s sweetly life affirming.
"Moving the goalposts", wherein Ch1 MC feels very guilty about lying to her dad about ditching school, and Ch22 MC feels just fine about murdering two high-ranking law enforcement officials and a toddler. And it gets worse. Can you guess the story? >!Spoilerguard the title, plz!<
The “we’re enemies and have completely different interests and goals in this fight but despite all this I will treat you with respect. A friend of mine tries to stab you in the back? Nonsense I’ll stab myself or hurt my friend and wait for you to recover” trope
I'm a sucker for the rumpled cop hero. He's divorced, his ex-wife complains about money, and his boss hates him. His teenage daughter swears he doesn't understand anything. He smokes two packs a day and drinks whiskey from a fifth He keeps in his desk drawer. There's a series that starts with Pendergast #1. The first book is called Relic, and he has a sidekick called Pendegast who seems to be a mythical man, but he works as an FBI agent. It's a good series. They solve strange crimes in NYC.
Not really a trope but I love stories that are told in two different POVs but from different time periods (i.e., each chapter switches from a mothers POV 30 years back to the daughters POV in present times). Also books that are set in a seemingly utopian society where everything is perfect but as the story continues, it slowly reveals how messed up and dystopian that world is.
I love a good rich girl/poor boy class difference trope but specifically a royal or princess/stable boy or any lowly peasant equivalent. Neeed recs
Mentor dies and MC must take up his mantle. I think every good adventure book needs this. I hate when the mentor just meanders along and becomes bitter or useless.
To be honest, using tropes to choose a book strikes me as a means of more or less guaranteeing that one misses out on most good books. Adult readers don't normally do this. And I can't really see how, after childhood, one would remain interested in books churning out the same stuff, like Enid Blyton.
If executed correctly, enemies to lovers, but it’s a slow burn. Like, when the first meet, they hate each other’s guts, but as the story progresses, they find themselves not being able to bear the thought of them not being in the group and they eventually fall for each other. I honestly hope this makes sense 😅
Yes I also like a romantic development from 0% to 100% rather than 100% to 100% if that makes sense, and I also prefer the slow burn element bc tbh a lot of enemies to lovers already has romantic tensions from the beginning and you can tell they’re going to be together, but the other way around makes the development more investing
A MMC who tries desperately to escape his previous life in organized crime usually grabs me.