Toxic habits and tropes in "romance" novels?

[BlackBookTales]

Hey everyone!

I've been going over some reviews for what are generally considered "romance" novels and stories, and how they are so incredibly unhealthy. You know, your standard Christian Grey types, where it's only romance because they're hot and damaged somehow, ignoring the fact that whatever tragic origin story they have or whatever is no excuse for their awful behavior in the present.

That gave me an idea, and I need your help! What are some of the worst "romance" novels you know and/or have read, the kind of stories that make you scream that whatever is happening is not romantic at all? Please leave their title, their author, and if possible, specific instances that show off exactly why that story is not romantic.

Thanks so much for your responses.

 

[THBGato]

I just watched "Moulin Rouge" and thought "well that sucked for Satine, and Christian wasn't any better than the duke."

Likewise, Romeo & Juliet. Beautiful writing, awful decision making by everyone involved. That's not romance, it's delusion/teenage rebellion.

 

[alohadave]

Likewise, Romeo & Juliet. Beautiful writing, awful decision making by everyone involved. That's not romance, it's delusion/teenage rebellion.

Many aren't aware of the full title: The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

 

[MillieDynamite]

Romance stories are often rape packed as a handsome man (pirate, cowboy, outlaw), takes a beautiful woman and makes her like it.

 

[Lotus_Kitty]

book: Waiting for Her
author: Mari Carr

Oh my gosh, so much wrong with this book. It is very clear right from the start that the FMC is a r4p3 survivor (not toxic in and of itself). That's not even a spoiler although the book treats it like a big reveal. What is toxic is that her supposed "friends" just ignore consent entirely when they decide they're going to "help" her become "less shy". They physically grab and drag her, force her to go on a date with them with no option to say no, make her wear a revealing shirt with no option to say no, etc. They do this to a *r4p3 survivor*. WTF?! Even if she wasn't, it's all disgusting consent violation.

There's supposedly BDSM in the book which I would love if it were fully consensual. It's not. Thus not really BDSM. The men do things like say "I'm going to f*ck your mouth" without finding out if she even wants that. Carr really loves calling men alphas (barf!) and making a big deal of how "sexy" it is when they just take without asking. Ok, in BDSM that would be sexy for some but you negotiate what can be taken first!

I really wanted to like this author because she writes lots of MMF. With bi men sometimes. And I want that. So much. But she just botches the BDSM and several of her books have major consent issues. Some others don't have nearly enough trust building to make the BDSM later feel like there's real connection.

Some of her books are okay, but of the ones I've read, Waiting For Her was absolutely the worst and very toxic.

Fun fact, Amazon won't let me comment on books any more after I pointed this out on their site. Guess you can't say r4p3 on Amazon when talking about a r4p3 survivor.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

A certain game I play has been showing me extracts from 'erotic romances' from an app/publisher called Galatea (a bit dodgy to anyone who recognises the name from Greek mythology).

They all have various tribes of huge Alpha males, often werewolves, or college footballers, looking to take a mate, and a young woman age 18-19 who has never been interested in men but then one day an Alpha (their wording...) trips over her and growls that he's having her... and her groin flutters with novel sensations...

The tagline is "50 Shades can't hold a candle to this!!!" and indeed, the prose is such that 50 Shades actually looks good in comparison.

I've never managed more than a few pages before my brain screams it's starting to rot, but invariably there's a section where the whole plot would be resolved if two people would actually just bloody talk to each other...

On Lit and elsewhere I often nope out of a story when a Manly Stud tells the previously competent woman that he's booked a restaurant/arranged a holiday/told her boss she's taking leave - all sorts that in 99% of real scenarios would have her yelling "What the fuck?" When I was growing up it was pretty much every 'romance' I ever saw.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Noting that there is no obligation on authors to portray healthy relationships; I've read some fascinating stories about badly-adjusted people and dysfunctional relationships. That said, I get squicked when the author apparently thinks they're writing a healthy romance but has fucked-up ideas what "healthy" looks like.

I will pass on naming authors, but a few tropes I'd be happy never to see again in a romance story:

Concentration camp guard/inmate, slave owner/slave, and anything along those lines. Just no.

In fact, basically anything where the story is founded on some huge wealth/power imbalance without making an effort to consider how that might feel for the person on the bottom of that dynamic. "Oh yay, this guy loves me! And he has the power to crush me and my entire family like a bug if I say no to him!"

Stories where one of the participants is a sex worker, because the author wants to be a lil' bit edgy, but they don't want to actually engage with that aspect of the character so it inevitably turns into a narrative of rescuing them from something the author hasn't bothered to research. Often with a dose of "I'm not like all the other boys/girls in this job". And most likely from the point where the two protagonists meet, the SW protagonist will never actually have sex with anybody else.

Stories that treat violent jealousy and boundary violation as a way of expressing love. I read one written in the last few years where the female MC only comes to understand the male MC's feelings for her when he keeps sending flowers to her work (even after she's broken off with him) and then punches out some other guy who's interested in her.

I just watched "Moulin Rouge" and thought "well that sucked for Satine, and Christian wasn't any better than the duke."

I will give Moulin Rouge this: it's honest about why catching the eye of a duke is not necessarily a good thing.

But it's also one of those stories I mention above, that seeks the exoticism of "she's a courtesan" while shying away from actually having her do any courtesan-ing at any point in the entire movie. She pretty much has to be killed off at the end of the story, because what's the alternative? She quits her job, which is unpleasant but pays the bills, for a guy who isn't going to be much help with paying the rent, and a lifetime of "you know she used to be a prostitute!"

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Pretty much every YA romance from the 00s and 10s is built around red flags. At least the authors made money with them. In those days I was very surprised by the market, but nowdays, not so much. Not much has changed around these same people, but the new ones that are in that age range are no longer looking for romance.

My only concern is with The Hunger Games. To my eyes the romantic plot felt shoehorned. It seriously didn't need to have that, but it was the trend during the era, so it was put in. I was told Collins didn't mean for a romantic plot in the book, but I haven't confirmed that to be true or not.

A certain game I play has been showing me extracts from 'erotic romances' from an app/publisher called Galatea (a bit dodgy to anyone who recognises the name from Greek mythology).

They all have various tribes of huge Alpha males, often werewolves, or college footballers, looking to take a mate, and a young woman age 18-19 who has never been interested in men but then one day an Alpha (their wording...) trips over her and growls that he's having her... and her groin flutters with novel sensations...

The tagline is "50 Shades can't hold a candle to this!!!" and indeed, the prose is such that 50 Shades actually looks good in comparison.

I've never managed more than a few pages before my brain screams it's starting to rot, but invariably there's a section where the whole plot would be resolved if two people would actually just bloody talk to each other...

IIRC Galatea is part of Inkitt. The majority of those type of romances are written by Wattpad refugees when they started cracking down on NSFW content, or one of those hundres of times that Wattpad got hacked; I honestly have no idea... But I know that Inkitt is pretty much the place where the Wattpad refugees go.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Paperback romance is a toxic trope all in itself.

 

[AG31]

I just watched "Moulin Rouge" and thought "well that sucked for Satine, and Christian wasn't any better than the duke."

Likewise, Romeo & Juliet. Beautiful writing, awful decision making by everyone involved. That's not romance, it's delusion/teenage rebellion.

Maybe that was Shakespeare's point.

 

[THBGato]

Maybe that was Shakespeare's point.

Perhaps. My point was that love-at-first-sight, enemies to lovers, jumping to (false) conclusions, and suicide pacts (all at the core of R&J) are romance tropes I'm not especially fond off.

 

[LitBella]

The whole "After" series of books by Anna Todd did depict scenes of massively toxic and abusive relationships. The protagonist falls in love with this extremely toxic guy (whose origin story is a traumatic childhood) who basically rapes her in a very manipulative/creative manner, in the guise of taking her virginity, to basically show off her blood soaked sheets to their common acquaintances as an evidence of his achievement; and she like most girls in these types of novels tries to change him, be the reason for him to turn into a good person etc. The series ends with this guy changing himself as a person, marrying her and having kids with her and they live happily ever after but....in my opinion, such happily ever afters hardly exist in reality and these kind of young adult novels set a wrong example and unbelievably unachievable scenarios in real toxic relationships. These novels often lead to teens believing more in the lie set in their fantasies than the harsh truths of reality, and they suffer more.
So, yeah. That's my take on this.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

The whole "After" series of books by Anna Todd did depict scenes of massively toxic and abusive relationships. The protagonist falls in love with this extremely toxic guy (whose origin story is a traumatic childhood) who basically rapes her in a very manipulative/creative manner, in the guise of taking her virginity, to basically show off her blood soaked sheets to their common acquaintances as an evidence of his achievement; and she like most girls in these types of novels tries to change him, be the reason for him to turn into a good person etc. The series ends with this guy changing himself as a person, marrying her and having kids with her and they live happily ever after but....in my opinion, such happily ever afters hardly exist in reality and these kind of young adult novels set a wrong example and unbelievably unachievable scenarios in real toxic relationships. These novels often lead to teens believing more in the lie set in their fantasies than the harsh truths of reality, and they suffer more.
So, yeah. That's my take on this.

The whole "you can fix him" aspect of many romance novels is INCREDIBLY toxic, and all too common.

 

[BlackBookTales]

The whole "After" series of books by Anna Todd did depict scenes of massively toxic and abusive relationships. The protagonist falls in love with this extremely toxic guy (whose origin story is a traumatic childhood) who basically rapes her in a very manipulative/creative manner, in the guise of taking her virginity, to basically show off her blood soaked sheets to their common acquaintances as an evidence of his achievement; and she like most girls in these types of novels tries to change him, be the reason for him to turn into a good person etc. The series ends with this guy changing himself as a person, marrying her and having kids with her and they live happily ever after but....in my opinion, such happily ever afters hardly exist in reality and these kind of young adult novels set a wrong example and unbelievably unachievable scenarios in real toxic relationships. These novels often lead to teens believing more in the lie set in their fantasies than the harsh truths of reality, and they suffer more.
So, yeah. That's my take on this.

Oh yeah, these ones.

I also heard he wrote a book about said awful relationship without telling her, hung out with other girls to make her jealous or hurt her intentionally, and did everything he could to wedge himself between her and her boyfriend when they met, and then when they finally broke up, he forbade her from speaking to literally any other dude.

 

[LitBella]

Oh yeah, these ones.

I also heard he wrote a book about said awful relationship without telling her, hung out with other girls to make her jealous or hurt her intentionally, and did everything he could to wedge himself between her and her boyfriend when they met, and then when they finally broke up, he forbade her from speaking to literally any other dude.

He wrote the book about every detail of their life and published it without her permission, yes. And, yes to the other things as well. Ugh!

 

[Cali_Love]

Whew. I read this thread through gritted teeth, hoping none of my stories would make the “worst” list on here.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I recently found a fascinating video essay on YouTube by an author criticizing the amount of porn in supposedly "mainstream" romance and especially in romantasy. For anyone who's interested, here's the link.

 

[HordHolm]

They all have various tribes of huge Alpha males, often werewolves, or college footballers, looking to take a mate, and a young woman age 18-19 who has never been interested in men but then one day an Alpha (their wording...) trips over her and growls that he's having her... and her groin flutters with novel sensations...

Yeah, that whole werewolf thing is a world unto itself, and whilst I don't want to pin it as fascist fan-fic exactly, a lot of it does seem to mix up very creepy right wing tropes about purity of blood and the like, along with a 'woman's proper place'. There are what we used to call 'TV movies' in abundance as well. Strange Aeons over on Youtube has a wonderfully catty take-down of the whole genre.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Yeah, that whole werewolf thing is a world unto itself, and whilst I don't want to pin it as fascist fan-fic exactly, a lot of it does seem to mix up very creepy right wing tropes about purity of blood and the like, along with a 'woman's proper place'. There are what we used to call 'TV movies' in abundance as well. Strange Aeons over on Youtube has a wonderfully catty take-down of the whole genre.

The world of Twilight (drippy virginal girl Bella falls for a sparkly sexy vampire and then a hunky werewolf) made marginally more sense when I found out the author was a Mormon.

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

My usual dislike in romance novels is the 'special snowflake' effect of the main character.

I want to read about a realistic woman, not a burnt out genius or an down on her luck sport star or someone who's destined to be a CEO if only the right man would come along and recognise her. I don't especially mind if the bloke is a bit of a fantasy but please spare me the hundredth undiscovered sparky spare-time author who'll make it big if only she bumped into the boss of a major publisher in the gym...

 

[AG31]

What about whole other categories, like BDSM? It seems to me that calling erotica "toxic" is inappropriate.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

My usual dislike in romance novels is the 'special snowflake' effect of the main character.

I want to read about a realistic woman, not a burnt out genius or an down on her luck sport star or someone who's destined to be a CEO if only the right man would come along and recognise her. I don't especially mind if the bloke is a bit of a fantasy but please spare me the hundredth undiscovered sparky spare-time author who'll make it big if only she bumped into the boss of a major publisher in the gym...

It reminds me of something Terry Pratchett wrote:
“If you trust in yourself…and believe in your dreams…and follow your star…you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I recently found a fascinating video essay on YouTube by an author criticizing the amount of porn in supposedly "mainstream" romance and especially in romantasy. For anyone who's interested, here's the link.

She sounds a bit opinionated, and she seems to hold on to some stereotypes, but there are also some valid points there. Interesting content.

 

[Trionyx]

Stories where one of the participants is a sex worker, because the author wants to be a lil' bit edgy, but they don't want to actually engage with that aspect of the character so it inevitably turns into a narrative of rescuing them from something the author hasn't bothered to research. Often with a dose of "I'm not like all the other boys/girls in this job". And most likely from the point where the two protagonists meet, the SW protagonist will never actually have sex with anybody else.

So I take it you did not like Pretty Woman?

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I just watched "Moulin Rouge" and thought ...

One of the few movies I turned off midway ... just too unpleasant.


I tried to like The Good Witch series of films. The first one was OK, but after that, they just got too sappy. The stories got all muddled up.