Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly feature over at Bionic Book Worm.

This week’s topic is tropes I’ve had enough of. While reading, there are definitely a few tropes out there that make me roll my eyes so hard, they might eventually get stuck like that. Some are overplayed, some are unrealistic, and others are just a mentality we really need to break out of in 2018. Read below to see my five picks.

1. Girl-on-girl hate
This is one of the tropes that grinds on my gears the most. The way women treat each other in books can be so cruel. A sub-genre of this trope is the girl who thinks she’s “not like other girls” and then proceeds to hate on every other girl to somehow make herself seem superior. The only thing she’s really doing is making herself look bad. Also when girls get super catty with each other over nothing. Ladies, we need to be building one another up, not tearing each other down!

2. Slut shaming
This ties into the first topic because women definitely do slut shame one another, but men in books are also so guilty of this, which makes my stomach churn. It is absolutely no one’s business who a woman may or may not be sleeping with, how many people she’s slept with, if what she’s wearing might be too revealing, etc.. In books, no matter which character is saying it, it’s usually a comparison to the main love interest as well. Just compliment the main girl and leave other women out of it.

3. Insta-love
NO. NO NO NO. Anyone who knows how much I read and blog hears me bitch about this one a lot. This is not a thing in real life oh my god. You do not meet someone and fall in love with them in the span of a week. Sure, you can like them a lot and be so attracted to them it hurts and have this connection you’ve never felt with anyone else before, but you know nowhere near enough about them to fall in love. Experience a real hardship first. Live together for a bit. Do more than bang each other every moment you see one another. My god. Repeat after me book characters: I am not in love after a week.

4. The never-present parents
This is one that YA contemporary novels are so guilty of. I don’t understand how characters can just take a road trip to anywhere at a moment’s notice or stay out all night all the time. I grew up with pretty chill parents, and every time a 15 or 16 year old is out at a 24/7 diner by themselves at 3am it blows my mind. Like why are you not in bed? Or at the very least in your room in your PJs watching Netflix? Go home.

5. How every single guy in a contemporary romance is loaded
This is a half-complaint because don’t get me wrong, if a guy who had a face and body that looked like it was hand-carved by the Gods, owned his own company, and had the greatest personality ever was trying to get into my pants and make me his wife, I wouldn’t be turning him down. That’s for damn sure. Like please, hit me up and let’s get married. I just don’t understand how almost every single guy in a contemporary romance novel falls under this category. I get it, it’s hot. I agree. But sometimes it’s just a lot.