The female-centered Romantasy genre is a game changer for fantasy lovers and booksellers alike. It got me back into reading for pleasure after many years of mental exhaustion from my work, and booksellers sure as hell benefit from the booktok mania it’s spawned. I consume it like water because there’s plenty to love. This is not that post. This post is where I have gripes.

• the pigheaded lead: It’s so common I’ll bet you know exactly what I mean. Look, lead characters need to have flaws. But what cooks my grits is that so often, this is treated not as a flaw that her arc helps her overcome, but her saving grace because she’s always right and is a reckless, raging dick about it. You know the FMCs who won’t follow a plan, even though her teammates’ lives likely depend on it, and won’t take any advice, even good advice, because she didn’t have the thought first. These vexing characters say a lot about the author to me. Beneath these plots is the simmering, righteous rage of an author I definitely don’t want to be behind—not in the school pick up line, the coffee shop drive thru, or doing her returns at Target.

• asshole bickering = enemies-to-lovers: What do you do when you want to write enemies-to-lovers but can’t design a compelling driver for the enemies part? Make both your leads assholes with the maturity of eighth graders! This trope tells me some things about the author too: they’re either a teen themselves (hey, we’ve all been there) or they’re a drama-seeking, piss-poor communicator I’d loathe to be friends with IRL. Nobody else would find this dynamic bearable, much less romantic tension-building. 4/5 times I am DNF’ing a series, it’s for this dynamic. How do these get so popular? Oh right, most people are grossly immature and drama-seeking. That tracks.