Hi guys i'm Olivia here from Olivia's
Catastrophe and today I'm here to give
you the top ten book tropes that I
absolutely love. People are negative
about tropes but to be real, it helps me
find some books that I really really
love. And you can also take this as a
recommendations video because I'll be
recommending some of my books that I
think -- some of my favourite books -- that I
think do these tropes very well . So first
of all let's go down the romance route
because it's the obvious one, and I'm
gonna go with fake dating. I absolutely
love books with fake dating for some
reason. Whenever there is an excuse that
this person needs to date someone for
whatever reason, I am here for it. And I
think a book that did it really well
even though it was quite short, was No
Love Allowed by Kate Evangelista. This
one follows this girl who needs a summer
job and this guy who comes from the like,
upper class and is always being
pressured into having a relationship so
he needs a fake girlfriend. The second
thing that will always get me in a book
is if there is a wedding scene. It
doesn't actually have to be the wedding
of the two main characters it can just
be them going to a friend's wedding or
anybody's wedding. It just -- weddings are
some of my favourite things so if there's
a wedding in your book I'm probably
going to enjoy it to some degree. A
wedding in a book that I really really
loved was the wedding in The Upside
Unrequited by Becky Albertalli. If
you've read the book you know who gets
married, it's not the main characters,
don't worry. But the wedding was just so so sweet,
especially as it was something that was
a long time in coming if you understand
what I mean. The third thing that I
really love to read about is a loyal
side character or a loyal friendship
grou. So most of my favourite characters,
you'll find out, are side characters who
are very loyal to the main character for
whatever reason. And I think a series that
does this really well is one of my all-time
favourites, and that's The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. Gansey, just,
has this gang: the Gangsey, that are just
so loyal to him. It's so great. But they're also
such good friends. Like, if we exclude
Gansey, they're also all such good
friends. And I just really loved
that combination of the loyal friendship
and also, yeah, it just, it just works so
much for me. Another thing that I really
love to read about is seeing toddlers or
very little kids in
books. If you know me, I love working with
kids. I love kids. I think that, you know, I
believe the children are our future etc
etc. So I just really love when you see
kids being cute. Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella was
one which was really cute because the
main character has a younger brother, I
believe, and, you know, also a toddler
younger brother. And the younger brother
is just so cute. He just says the most
cutest, you know, typical, I don't know,
five or four year old things. And I
absolutely just adored it. Another thing
that I really love is when a main
character is passionate or has a hobby. I
have a video somewhere, I'll leave a link
to it up there, about book characters who I
love that have their own interesting
hobbies and passions. I can think of so
many but one of them that I'm going to
shout out here is Heartless. I've also got a
review video for that so link is up there. And in this one Cait loves baking and
it's really integral to the story. And
she mentions it so much that I really
appreciated seeing a hobby shine through
because I am someone who's very hobby
driven. Hence why I am one booktube
anyway!
Another thing that I really love, as much
as I love my romance reads, is when there
is no romance in a book at all. And I
don't know why I love it when there's no
romance but I'm like, yes, we're going to
get deep dive into like, friendships, plot,
and characters. We don't need to see any
love stor1y I don't know why I love that
but it just makes me happy. I wanted to
recommend This Savage Song but I haven't
read the sequel and have a feeling thar the
romance is gonna come in the sequel. But
instead I'm going to recommend The
Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by
Mackenzi Lee. In this one it's a very
feminist book and our main character's
not really interested in love. I believe
she's asexual and because of that, yeah,
we just have no romance. And I was
totally here for it. The next thing I
really love love love love love! I'm a
thematic reader and a character-driven
reader so if we get a character-driven
book with a plot twist I am all about
that life. It could be very hard to find
because it is very hard to make a plot
twist in a character-driven book but
More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera is a
book that does it fabulously. I'm not
going to talk about it more because I've
just gone on and on about how much I love
this book on my channel. But yes,
character driven plot twists are a must. Another thing that I really love is
texting or online romances. We're going
back to romances here. And I feel like
this is one that I don't see very often. There was once this series that
was all about this, they were new adult and
it was fantastic. However, that author
turned out to be a terrible person so
I'm not even going to mention the title
or the series because I'm not
recommending that to anybody. But I did
come up with an alternative and that is
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens by Becky
Albertalli. Yes, she's making a return on
this list because in this one I believe
it's by email that the love interests
communicate at first. And you know me, I'm
just I'm here for it. So yeah, I loved it. Then we've got our villains.
I love either a grey area villain or a
villain where you can understand their
motivations very well, and it's very very
believable. And my favourite villains all
have this in common. Mayor Prentiss in
The Knife of Never Letting Go series does this
well. And also Queen Levana
with her book Fairest from the Lunar
Chronicles by Marissa Mayer does it very well. So basically if the villain
has actually believable motivations and
we really get to see those and deep dive
into how they get to be the way they are,
whether they can change or not, yeah, or
they're just a grey area villain. That's
really hard to determine... I don't know, I
just love it. And last but not least grief in books. I
think grief is a very interesting topic. It's especially something to do with
mental health that basically nearly
everybody has to face. Almost everybody,
I don't wanna say everybody, but
almost everybody, has to face in their
life. It's really emotional. It's
difficult to push through. I've
experienced it myself and it's just
something that's really paramount to
life but we tend to overlook it and try
to hush it up and ignore it. So I think
grief is something so interesting to
read about. And I think a book that did
it very well was Sunflowers in February
by Phyllida Shrimpton. In that one we get the
point of view of the person who is
deceased. A teenage girl, and she's trying
to let go of her life and whether she
wants her family to move on or wants her
friends to move on or not. And I just thought it was such an
interesting take on grief. I want to
throw in a quick bonus round because I
just want to mention the mystery genre
very quickly. One of my favourite tropes
in the mystery and detective fiction
genre is the isolated setting trope,
where a murder happens in like, a
closed-off village, or in a house in the
countryside, or like, in a train
that has stopped because of a blizzard...
Yes, am I naming Agatha Christie novels? Yes I am! Because she is the master of
the isolated setting. And one that she
does very well with isolated setting is
And Then There Were None. So there you have
it. Those are ten plus a bonus of my
favourite book tropes. Let me know in the
comment section down below what are some
of your favourite bookish tropes. I would
love to hear from you. Please give this
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Goodbye!
