10 Things that baffle me about YA paranormal romance books

Sunday, April 8, 2012

  1. Why is the male love interest always hundreds of years old but looks seventeen? I think that's wrong. I think it would be less wrong if the love interest was seventeen but looked one hundred. No one will ever write a book like that.
  2. Why is the love of supernatural creatures always so profound? Can supernatural creatures ever just casually hook up with folks? I mean, I get that it's a romance book, but it doesn't always have to be true love forever and ever, does it? Maybe it does, I don't know.
  3. This is in wider YA romance as well: why do all of the male love interests have eyelashes like a girl's? This comes up in every vague romance book I read. Is this a sign of ultimate hotness? 'Eyelashes like a girl's' is not a good descriptor, because I am sure there are females who have short eyelashes. Sure of it.
  4. Why does everyone always have such special eyes? They're always impossibly blue or green or purple or silver or I don't know, something impossible. No one ever just has normal brown eyes that stay the same irrespective of their mood/whether they are hungry for human flesh.
  5. Why is there always a protagonist who is all 'oh my gosh I'm so skinny and unattractive!' when, you know, the character is supposed to live in the modern Western world, where skinny is a body type that the media is pretty consistently urging young women towards? It's odd.
  6. Why is there always a busty best friend? Busty is not a personality trait.
  7. Why is it okay for the supernatural creatures to be incredibly creepy and stalkery and possessive and physically attack the protagonist? And then it's romantic? I think I'm overitalicising here. I used to overuse semi-colons, and then it was em-dashes, and now it's italicisation. But this is a serious issue. 
  8. Why is the female protagonist always Caucasian? All of the book covers have these pale, pensive-looking, dark-haired girls on them. Are these books solely being written by Caucasian people? Do all book cover designers think that supernatural creatures have a special love for pasty brunettes? Do these covers equal good sales or do all YA paranormal romance writers imagine their characters look like Kristen Stewart? How uninventive, guys.
  9. How do the families of these characters manage to keep their angel/faery/werewolf ancestry secret from the protagonist until they're sixteen/undergo their transformation/get kidnapped? I would so know if my mother was secretly descended from a supernatural beastie that I was going to turn into at the age of seventeen. They have ancestry.com now. They could easily find these things out.
  10. Why are the various groups of supernatural creatures always at war with each other or off trying to find their true loves? Why don't they all team up, stop seducing underage humans, and take over planet earth from these fools? Because that's what I'd do.
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