6 YA Tropes I Will Always Love (+ Book Recommendations)

Hello, my voyagers. How have you all been doing? It’s been a minute since I’ve heard from you, so let me know in the comments what you’ve been up to, what you’re reading, and all the important life updates!

Within the reading community, we all have our favorite tropes. Some are suckers for a good love triangle (if done correctly), some really like the women in STEM trope, and others are obsessed with every variation of The Chosen One. Since our favorite tropes are such a crucial part of any book dragon’s reading preferences, I thought I’d share some of mine today.

So, without any further nonsense, here are my the 6 YA book tropes that I will love forever and always, along with some of my go-to recommendations for each trope!

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Found Family

I don’t know if we all are just desperate for a friend group like Friends or if we’re all just terribly lonely, but found family seems like a crowd favorite on #Bookstagram.

I think what makes this trope so powerful is that your found family is also your chosen family. We don’t always get along with the family we were born into, and a lot of people aren’t born into good families to begin with. So, it means something to us when we see characters who choose to stay with each other, who want to stay with their friends, and who consistently do whatever they can to protect their found family.

My clear favorite of this trope is Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. The Dregs are a gang, but they are also a family. Kaz, Inej, Jesper, Wylan, Nina, and Matthias learn to lean on each other and to fight for each other. And, let’s be real, isn’t that what we all want?

Some other great recommendations for the found family trope are We Could Be Villains by Megan McCullough and How We Rise by Brooke Riley. Both of these books feature incredible bands of characters who come together to create some really soft, but also badass, friend families.

Brooding Sad Boy

I know this is the cliche trope, but I love it too much to not spend at least a few paragraphs talking about my brooding sad boys who are sad because Nobody Understands Them.

What has always made this a compelling trope for me is that these characters typically have survived immense trauma or darkness. They (usually) aren’t Brooding for no reason—something made them like that. These boys grew up way too fast, had to make unthinkable choices, and have done unspeakable things in order to survive, and there’s something really intriguing about that as a reader.

Of course, I wouldn’t be me if my go-to recommendation for the brooding sad boy wasn’t an exception to this “rule.” Yep, you guessed it, I’m about to shove Twilight by Stephenie Meyer down your throat again. Edward was the OG brooding sad boy for me, and while he’s not like that because of some big ✨trauma✨, he still deserves the title (because he’s big sad all the time because reasons).

Two of my other favorite traumatized, brooding boys are from City of Bones by Cassandra Clare and Bruiser by Neal Shusterman. Both of these sad boys have good reason to act like they do, and the way the authors unravel their internal conflict is both satisfying and compelling.

Enemies-to-Lovers

This trope is pretty much the bread and butter of romance tropes, but it deserves the hype. I think these work best when it’s 1) a fantasy with a romance subplot, or 2) academic-rivals-to-lovers. Of course, there are exceptions, but these are the ways I’ve seen it done the best.

I think this trope is so popular because we all want to believe that everyone is redeemable. This is also my theory for why Dramione is like, the most popular Harry Potter ship: We want to believe that Draco Malfoy can be redeemed. In the best stories, these ships are usually a pretty slow burn because redemption doesn’t happen overnight—it takes time.

Additionally, I personally like this trope because I think there’s something really powerful about the transition from enemies and lovers. In order for two people to go from “I hate you” to “I love you” there has to be an intermediary place: “I like you.” To me, this middle step is the backbone of any enemies-to-lovers story because the characters have to like each other before they can love each other.

My favorite recommendation for the enemies-to-lovers trope is, to nobody’s surprise, The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. This was my first real introduction to this trope because it’s the first one I ever read where the enemies part lasted longer than two seconds. When the trilogy starts, Jude and Carden legitimately HATE each other. They despite each other, and that hatred is what so many enemies-to-lovers stories miss out on.

Two other books that do this really well are 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons and There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones. Abbie’s story might better be categorized as “annoying-to-lovers”, but I personally want to shelf it here because it still works. Jenny’s book is one of my favorite portrayals of this trope, but recommend checking trigger warnings first.

Protagonist is Thrown Into Grief

Okay, okay, you got me: this really isn’t a trope. However, this is my blog and I get to do what I want. So, for now, I’m going to consider this a trope.

This is probably just a Bree thing, but I love stories that tackle grief from a teenager’s perspective. It’s usually their first time experiencing such intense loss and heartache, but it’s something that we need to talk about more in our stories. Teenagers experience loss and grief and the longing for people and lives and dreams that are gone. When we capture those moments in fiction, we’re doing so much more than just portraying an experience . . . We’re reminding real teenagers that they are not alone in their darkness.

One of my all-time favorite novels that does this masterfully is You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao. This was one of my top reads from last year, and what I especially love is how Dustin captures the different ways that different people respond to their grief. (Basically it’s one of the best YA books, and you should read it immediately.)

Two of my other favorites YA books with a focus on grief are Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson and I Loved You in Another Life by David Arnold. These books focus on grief around losing a family member, and they do it beautifully.

Forbidden Love

Yep. This is on the list. To the shock and surprise of nobody. But hey, it’s a good trope, okay?

I think this trope has done so well because everyone has, at some point in their life, wanted something (or someone) that they couldn’t have. These forbidden love stories show us cautionary tales of the dangers of chasing after these fantasies, but they also show us the one-in-a-million where it actually works out. We get the best of both worlds in these stories, and I think that’s a really beautiful thing about fiction: we finally get to escape into a realm where we DO get the boy or the girl that we could never have in real life.

My favorite forbidden romance story is Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead. I think she writes the forbidden love trope more beautifully than anyone else because it always lingers on the edge of destroying both characters (which just makes the tension skyrocket).

Two other great forbidden romance books are The Otherworld by Abbie Emmons and The Final Six by Alexandra Monir. These aren’t as focused on the forbidden romance, but the romance is definitely there and ready to tease you with just enough cute and hot (but not spicy/smutty) moments.

Suicide Missions

I saved this trope for last on purpose.

Most of you probably have an idea of what you think I mean by “suicide missions” but I’ve always meant it in a different way. To me, this is the “we’re probably going to die, but we have to try because how can we live with ourselves if we don’t?” trope. This is the moment in a story where the characters accept that doing the right thing is worth dying for. There’s no certainty that things won’t blow up in their faces, but there’s no other option: if they die, then they die as heroes and champions for something bigger than themselves.

This is actually my all-time favorite trope. It’s typically found in YA dystopias because those are the stories that establish life-or-death stakes for rebels. It’s the trope that has had my heart ever since I realized that it puts into words and actions what YA stories mean to me: friendship, hope, and love. We don’t rush toward death for people we don’t care about . . . for people that we don’t love. We run towards death for the ones we would do anything to protect, for the ones we can’t live without.

We run towards death if it means doing the right thing.

My all-time favorite story that portrays this trope actually isn’t a book—it’s The Death Cure film by Wes Ball. I really didn’t like the way the book series progressed, so I’m tossing in a film recommendation here instead. If you have a weekend, watch The Maze Runner trilogy. When you get to a certain scene in The Death Cure, you’ll know what I’m talking about with the suicide mission trope.

Since this is technically a book recommendation post, I’m also going to include The Giver by Lois Lowry and Our Violent Ends by Chloe Gong (this is the sequel to These Violent Delights). Both of these books embody this idea of fighting for what’s right, even when it may cost you your life.

Let’s Talk!

What are YOUR favorite tropes? Do you like any of my favorites? Do you like a good sad story, or do you need a happy ending? Let’s talk all things tropes in the comments down below!