Over the last few years, more people have started appreciating books again, thanks to TikTok. It has become the best way to propel a creative platform because it’s a quick way to reach a big audience. For example, while Doja Cat was decently known, she blew up on TikTok with her hit, “Say So,” and is now one of the biggest pop artists today. The same thing happened with popular reads and certain authors.

Essentially, an author would post an excerpt from their book with a small summary in the video’s caption. Any interested readers would then go to that account, research the book of interest, and either check it out at the library or buy it outright. This method was a great way for authors to get their names out there, like Sarah J. Maas, author of A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Coleen Hoover, author of It Ends With Us.

With the rising interest in books, readers have begun to remark on what tropes were used and obsess over them. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a trope is “a common or overused theme or device.” For example, “enemies to lovers” in romance, or “The Chosen One” in adventure.

Now, there is no book that isn’t littered with tropes; I personally don’t believe it’s possible to write a story without them. However, there comes a point when the tropes need to either pause, or propel the plot in some way. What I’ve noticed is that the tropes become the focus instead of the plot because they’re what readers see first, meaning that’s what they’ll look for first. 

In the past, readers would see or hear about a book by its plot and go into it expecting to read it; any tropes were just a fun spice on the side. Now, though, because readers are going into books solely looking for tropes, authors have stuck to capitalizing on them rather than on an intriguing, thought-out plot. 

For example, Lights Out by Navessa Allen was about a dude stalking this girl because he noticed her following his thirst trap account online. That dude turns out to be someone she knows, they fall in love, the end. The climax of the book is about the two of them accidentally killing someone who broke into her house, and then the mafia getting involved because the main character has ties to it. 

Frankly, the plot is all over the place, and the writing is mediocre. The characters have no real personality either; instead, they embody a personality archetype. The love interest, Josh, was a Golden Retriever who hacks, and Aly was a headstrong nurse. That’s all there was to them besides their physical appearances, which weren’t anything special. The reason Lights Out sold so well, though, was because the book was marketed as Dark Romance with a cater to those with “mask kinks.” Because of that, the plot didn’t matter because the book featured tropes that the readers liked very much.

Readers looking solely for tropes also leads to mischaracterization of books. The Cruel Prince, one of my all-time favorite trilogies, was originally marketed as a fantasy. It had actually been popular before BookTok; it debuted when I was in 6th or 7th grade. But when BookTok got hold of it, it marketed it as an “Enemies to Lovers” series. The problem with this is that while there is romance, it is almost a non-factor in the story. So when readers went into it expecting a romance novel and discovered it wasn’t that, they review bombed the book and turned others away from it for being a “bad romance novel” and a “boring book overall.”

I think it’s awesome that more people are reading, because when I was a kid, I was the only person I knew who did. It’s something I got picked on for, actually. Books were the only thing that could hold the attention of my little ADHD brain, so they became very personal for me. Now that I’m older and am witnessing the horrific things BookTok has instilled in new readers, it makes me kind of sad.

Libraries, for example, are no longer as prominent as they used to be because BookTok promotes buying books before you’ve read them. This isn’t new by any means, nor is it that big of a deal; however, it’s changed reading from a simple hobby to a business. There are dozens of videos of people showing their bookshelves full of books they haven’t read, or bookshelves full of books that they admit they won’t ever read again. Owning a personal library is nice, but having a shelf of books you aren’t sure you’ll even care for takes the “personal” aspect from it. 

In some aspects, BookTok has helped a lot. It’s the quickest way for any up-and-coming author to gain traction. However, I believe the bad outweighs the good. Mediocre books are making billions while masterpieces rot on some editor’s desk. Fascinating plots have been sacrificed for cheap tropes that aren’t worth being sacrificed over. Hopefully, this problem can be repaired in the future, and timeless books can make a return because I’m sick of surface-level novels.