In romance novels, readers often have personal pet peeves and deal-breakers that can affect their enjoyment of a story. These preferences can range from specific plot elements to word choices, and they are highly subjective.
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Romance pet peeves or deal breakers that turn you off
Let’s talk about romance pet peeves or deal breakers that turn readers off from enjoying a novel.
Each person has a unique limit to what he or she can or cannot tolerate in fiction. Romance novels have an unequivocal requirement for happy endings to ensure the positive escapist nature of the genre.
Nevertheless, many books contain what readers consider deal-breakers or hated tropes that may ruin or dispel a pleasurable experience that is meant to take them away from reality for a few hours.
Our Pet Peeves
Some of our negative book reviews at Sweet Savage Flame have pointed to personal pet peeves as reasons we couldn’t enjoy our reading experiences.
Stockholm Syndrome
In Nadine Crenshaw’s Captive Melody, two harmful tropes were deal-breakers for reviewer Blue Falcon. First, the heroine is a captive who experiences Stockholm syndrome for her captor. Second, the hero seeks to inflict vengeance upon the heroine, who is an innocent party.
Sometimes, there are cruelties that characters experience that cannot be offset by skillful writing or a conveniently happy ending.
Hero Still in Mourning and Madly in Love with Dead Partner More Than Heroine
I’ve stated before in many reviews I can’t enjoy a romance where the hero is mourning the death of a previous beloved. While I prefer a heroine to be the hero’s only love, I can accept a rival for his affection—so long as she is alive. A flesh and blood woman will always pale to the perfection of a saintly ghost.
For example, this trope was present in Dana Ransom’s Love’s Glorious Gamble, which made what could have been a 4.5-star read for me into a 3-star rating.
Common Hated Tropes in Romance
The Biggest No-Nos
As I’ve engaged in romance forums and websites, I’ve encountered various pet peeves readers have regarding their reading preferences. They range from the most minute issues to the most indefensible.
ABUSIVE, CRUEL HEROES
Readers of older romances might have a more “nuanced perspective” regarding the dominant, overbearing Alpha heroes. This may include the hero engaging in any violence against the heroine, be it physical or sexual.
However, among modern readers, this is a contentious issue. Most people outright despise it, yet this trope is still present in “Dark Romances,” so many readers are drawn to this car-wreck plot point.
CHEATING
When it comes to cheating, that is also one of the most common deal-breakers. Some older romances featured heroes who would be sexing it up with their mistresses on page one. He might even do so after he’s met or been intimate with the heroine.
A highly talented writer must make their audience accept and move on from this point. If cheating is the main obstacle in a romance, such as Laurey Bright’s A Perfect Marriage, some readers may not be as forgiving as the heroine.
Other Pet Peeves
TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE SEXUAL PAST
Similarly, some readers don’t want to know about a main character’s past sexual experience. A fantasy that appeals to some romance fans is for the hero to be the heroine’s one and only lover. This is a plot point that seems authentic in historical and vintage romances. For some readers, it’s unconvincing in a modern contemporary novel unless the heroine is young or raised unconventionally.
VIOLENCE
The abuse or death of animals, the elderly, or children might not often appear in romances, and there’s a good reason. Those issues can be quite emotionally upsetting to folks seeking escapist entertainment.
WEIRD WORDS OR PHRASES
Sometimes, a pet peeve may not be a plot point but a word used. So many times, I’ve heard readers state they can’t stand the word “moist” to describe how excited a heroine gets. No matter how erotic the scene, once that word rears its head, visions of Duncan Hines chocolate cake or alcohol-soaked sanitizing towelettes come to mind.
Final Thoughts of Romance Pet Peeves
What constitutes a deal break or a pet peeve in romance novels is subjective and based on personal tastes. Here at Sweet Savage Flame, we focus on vintage or old-school reads. Consequently, we may review books with”dated” tropes or “politically incorrect” behavior or beliefs that may appear strange, insensitive, or even offensive to modern mindsets.
Reviewers here provide their own opinions and, on occasion, personal insights. Our tolerance levels vary from person to person, which should be.
Whether to accept these books as products of their age or dismiss them outright is solely up to the individual reader. Everyone has a right to their own opinions or idiosyncrasies.
Your Opinion
What are your most hated romance tropes? Is there anything that can make you overlook your pet peeves, such as literary skill, or are there some things you won’t accept in a love story?
Please drop a comment, and let’s talk romance.
Just wondering if you’re aware of older romances that don’t rely on MMC to abuse the FMC. You know with rape, verbal maligning. Even acknowledging that bodice rippers of earlier times allowed mistreatment of women as a norm, just hoping that good ones existed. As a 70 year old survivor of abuse, I would have been a reader of this type romance back in the day. Fortunately, I had no time to read due to my crazy life then.
I agree with you, Jacqueline, that the human body is a thing of beauty. I also can say that I love the “Clinch Covers” of the old-school romance novels. I need to see human beings on the covers of the books I read, whether they’re paintings or photos or digital images. My reasons for loving these are:
I like seeing people on book covers.
It makes the book feel less like a boring treatise of words on a page or screen. When there are people on the cover, tt feels more like a book about real people.
I won’t throw out a book with a “respectable” cover, but given the choice, I will always go for an original cover.
Hi, Jacqueline and Iris:
You both bring up another one of my pet peeves in romance; the MUCH younger heroine/older hero trope. In books published in the 1970’s/80’s, it was pretty much the standard to pair teenage girls with 30-something heroes, a situation I find very creepy. The biggest age gap I’m comfortable with-based on personal experience-is about 10 years; any further than that feels uncomfortable to me.
Jacqueline, you also brought up another pet peeve when you posted my review of “Sweet Savage Heart” by Janelle Taylor. That pet peeve:authors/publishers who change the covers of their books. My copy of “Sweet Savage Heart” has the original cover, but later Zebra/Kensington changed the cover and it is…nothing. If I weren’t familiar with Mrs. Taylor’s work, I would not even give the book with the second cover a thought, as there is nothing about it that draws my attention.
I find it a bit sad when I hear romance authors lament how their books were saddled with dreaded “clinch” covers, preferring instead a respectable one with flowers, a castle, or something in that vein. Janelle Taylor had some beautiful covers for her books. I know Taylor was friends with Elaine Duillo, who painted a few for her, both with Zebra and other publishers.
Let them say what they will about the campy nature of heaving bosoms and naked men’s chests and thighs, but the human body is a thing of beauty to admire. There was a special artisan value about hand made covers. Certainly, the advancement of digital photography has resulted in many lovely covers; I simply like the old ones a bit more.
Considering that my biggest peeve is the imbalance of power and experience between MCs, meaning I’m not thrilled with virginal, undereducated teens, I’m probably spending too much of my reading time with vintage Harleys–but I like to look for needles in haystacks. Mainly I just relish the moments where the author pushes ever so slightly against the conventions of the genre.
I’m relatively forgiving about insensitive word choice, definitely for classics but even for fairly recent books, though I’ll generally acknowledge it as unappreciated in a review. When it’s a viewpoint or entire ideology that has aged badly I will sometimes wade into the murky waters of guessing the writers intentions but that rarely goes well so if it’s egregious I’ll DNF the book.
Hello Iris! Yes, the pairing of 17 – 20 year-olds with >35 year old men in vintage contemporary romances is a trope that’s uncomfortable and awkward, to put it mildly. Yet, as you said, it is exciting when a skilled author puts a unique spin on it or test the boundaries of what’s acceptable. I recommend Charlotte Lamb’s Crescendo for that reason: the heroine is young and inexperienced in love, but is mature of mind, far more than the emotionally stunted, older hero.
As for judging the mindsets of characters who lived during times long ago, I’m fairly lenient when it comes to certain aspects. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,” does hold some truth. But there have been books where I wonder, “Was that really necessary?” Sally Wentworth’s The Lion Rock was set in Sri Lanka and had a very bizarre, colonialist attitude that wasn’t pleasant to read. I wasn’t sure if it was the author’s own perspective or simply her attempt to underscore the heroine’s elite upbringing. Either way, it was off-putting.
Great post, as usual, Jacqueline.
As you mentioned, my views of “Captive Melody” by Nadine Crenshaw was brought low by wo of the many issues I can occasionally have in books: Stockholm Syndrome (where the heroine falls in love with the male who kidnaps her) and revenge-by-proxy, where the “hero” gets revenge on an innocent woman for something someone else did.
I often struggle when I write my reviews of older books, which I tend to focus on at this time, to decide whether or not I should view the books through the prism of focusing only on the time they are written, or viewing them through the lens of my current sensibilities, which are quite different than they were when I first started reading romance novels when I was 8. In an ideal world, I would use the former worldview. I’m still struggling with this.
I haven’t read many books where the hero has a mistress before meeting the hero or commits cruelty to elders or animals, so I’m probably lucky in that regard, but I have read many books where the hero is cruel to the heroine and she accepts it and falls in love with him, another issue I struggle mightily with in my reviews.
Dear Blue Falcon, Good morning!
You bring up some interesting points wrt reviewing older books. How can one reconcile escapism with barbarity? For me, and I know it seems wishy-washy, it all depends. Was the book written in a serious tone? Or is it so OTT that I “check my brain at the door”? When it comes to historical romances, I’m far more accepting of behaviors or mindsets that in contemporaries I’d find offputting, take adultery for example. There’s a certain amount of historical authenticity I expect, but I also view the fictional past almost as a dark “fantasy” setting, where reality was semi-civilized.
I don’t believe I’ve read about a hero who was violent towards the elderly or animals, either but have come across bad guys who were that wicked. Some may consider such villainy gratuitous.
In the hands of a gifted writer, a cruel hero can be a fascinating character study, both he and the heroine who falls for him. Cruelty demands a certain reformation or humbling, however. The power of love should be able to transform a semi-villain into a man of integrity. Of course, in reality, that stuff is nonsense, but again, I view it all as fantasy.