Ok so, I get why it’s hot when you’re 20. The sexy, mysterious older guy. The forbidden aspect of it. I ate that shit up when I was younger.

But then you get to my age (38). And you realize that all the 40+ year old single men out there 100% have baggage. And I’m sorry, but when I read a grumpy sunshine romance between an older guy and a sunny, beautiful, naive 20 year old, I cannot get into the story. All I can think about is that this guy is STOKED that he landed a girl that young and hot and no, it was not her intellect that won him over.

Honestly I have yet to have read an age gap romance (unless it’s historical or fantasy) that can win me over. When you reach my age, it’s just not cute anymore. Anyone else?

I’ve been bummed lately because I’ve felt like I totally burnt out on romance novels. None of them held my attention and they just left me feeling flat.

But, in desperation, I ended up re-read Homebound by Lydia Hope last week and it broke me out of my funk. I felt things! I was compelled to keep reading! The curse was broken! Excitedly I picked up the next book on my tbr, Knot Here For You by Tana Rose and I had a revelation:

I’m not burned out on romance, I’m burned out on bad writing and repetition. This book honestly reads like someone plugged a bunch of tropes into an AI and asked it to write a story.

Listen to the description of the FMC: “I’m thinner than I was, but in weird places. The omega in me makes my hips wider and my tits fuller, but has removed most of the softness on my form everywhere else”.

For the MMCs it’s basically written as a check list. This is the actual quote from the book: “Davis and Jackson come from a billionaire pack. Ford is the son of an NFL running back. Asher’s mom is a famous model in Korea and his father is a Nobel winning scientist”.

Seriously, it’s just listed like that in the narrative.

This isn’t a book, it’s algorithm-driven content. And it seems like the majority of the stuff out there is like that now.

The worst part is, it drowns out real indie authors. This used to be a space where authors could publish books that traditional publishers were too cautious to take because they weren’t standard romances. Like The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith, or Radiance by Grace Draven, or Contagion by Amanda Milo, or even Morning Glory Milking Farm!

Knott Here For You isn’t any worse that the 30 identical books you see on either side of it on Amazon… but that’s the problem. Same cover, same blurb, same stilted dialogue designed to lurch from trope to (poorly done) trope. Is there anyone left out there who’s really writing?

Please. I’m begging. I’m so tired of the overuse of nicknames in romance books. Like, are names not a thing anymore?

Authors will be like “He calls her PopTart, because she was eating a PopTart when they met” and then proceed to use it every two seconds. It’s annoying and feels a lot less special. Not everyone has to have a “special” nickname. I actually think it’s cuter when they call each other by their full name when everyone else uses their nickname (of an actual name). And why can’t nicknames be of their actual names? Why it always has to be such a mouthful like Wild Bird or Grey Storm or Violent Thunder lol.

Let’s bring back the ancient texts: when calling each other by their last names was considered flirting.

I'm 51. I read spicy romcoms mostly. I cannot read books wirh college age MCs. I'm sorry but if that was happening in college back when I went, I totally missed it. (OK, I was a science nerd snd probablydid, lol.) Anyway, I am so tired of books with MCs in their mid-late 20s that includes dialog with their parents (presumably my age). A book I'm reading now, the mom says things like "the google" and can't use a cell phone. Dear authors: we are not 90 years old, please stop writing us this way. And P.S, please make more books with us as MCs!

you know, the whole "he's right behind me, isn't he" awkward/quirky forced humor that authors seem to think is soooooooo hilarious. where every joke is just a pop culture reference and/or "xD rAnDoM" humor. and the FMC is ALWAYS referring to someone by their first and last name. "I can't believe Braydon Jaxon is my new boss. Braydon. Fucking. Jaxon. As in, the same Braydon Jaxon that kissed me on prom night and disappeared without a trace for twenty years." "Is Braydon Jaxon REALLY talking to me right now?" "I hate to admit it, but I might be in love with Braydon Jaxon." like oh my god we get it!!! you're a bad writer and your FMC is insufferable. ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!!

i say this as someone who is solidly millennial and used to love that kind of writing when i was on tumblr in high school. but it's made a mainstream resurgence recently and i'm LOSING MY MIND. i legit thought we left this kind of humor behind in 2012, but it feels like half of the new CRs published in the past few years sound like this.

why did this type of humor make a resurgence? who is enjoying it?? and is anyone else ready to pull their hair out over this??????

According to those who've gotten an ARC of Sophie Lark's upcoming "Sparrow and Vine", the MMC makes an offensive and racist comment that no one bats an eye at or calls him out on. I'm sorry but with the current political climate, these type of comments aren't clever or cute and has no place in romance books.

I'm currently reading {The Wingman by Stephanie Archer}, and the two main characters repeatedly say that they're not going to have sex yet. We're 80% of the way through the book! Meanwhile, they're having oral sex, dry humping, fingering, and using sex toys. How is all of this not considered sex? Is only penis-in-vagina penetration considered sex?

I could overlook the fact that they don't consider any of these acts to be sex, but they repeatedly say that they haven't had sex yet. It's really starting to irritate me.

I know there are many characters in other books who have this mentality, but I've never seen it taken so far.

Hi yall, I’m usually a silent viewer in here but I had to share my critique of this book, {Lady Luck by Kristen Ashley}. It was recommended to me in here, and I went OFF on StoryGraph when I finally DNFed at 46%.

Here’s my review if you’re interested. I wanted to share so that other minorities/people who don’t want to read micro aggressions know what’s going on in that book. I was misguided by the positive reviews :) Harsh, I know.

spoilers below in the form of quotes, vocal plot is mentioned by me-

This book is racist towards Black people, is filled with harmful fetishization tropes, & stereotypes . And the author is a white American lady. Recipe for disaster.

I’m sad that this book was recommended to me and I’m sad that it grated my gears so much. The male main character is a biracial man from a small town full of white people. His mom was the white parent and his dad was Black. It’s worded as a Romeo and Juliet kind of love, with the feud against their love being racism. Everything, literally everything in this book regarding his choices relate to the fact that he’s some type of Black unicorn. And every time we come across another Black figure it’s “brother” this and “sister” that. What do you know about Black lingo Kristen Ashley? Not enough to imitate AAVE/BAE (African-American Vernacular English/Black American English). Linguistics matters.

Even the initial description by the female main character is her fetishizing our MMC as soon as he walks out of prison: “The shape and the eyelashes had taken all my attention so I missed that they were light brown. This was a little surprising considering his skin tone said he was a mutt and that mutt definitely included African-American. There was Caucasian in him, I was guessing, but no more than half. His skin was as perfect as the rest of him but dark-toned and not with Italian olive undertones but definitely black.” Excuse me, MUTT?

I think we’re supposed to be attracted to the fact that he grunts out two word sentences no matter what. The FMC has be Captain Save a *** and translate his grunts into sentences.

Example from book., They’re trying to be sat in a diner:

"Two," Ty Walker repeated when she didn't move then he added, "Booth." Then he finished, "Back." She kept blinking.”

FMC just swoops in and translates his caveman English to a normal sentence. Constantly.

But the sentence that really made me Google “Kristen Ashley racist” :

“…Therefore Walker could pull him up but not much except the fact the brother was lean, tall and black. How he got the last name Rodriguez, Walker didn't know. Then again, Shift had the last name Martinez and he, too, was black. Maybe it was some Texas thing.”

You’re not gonna believe this, dear author, but Afro Latinos exist. The transatlantic slave trade was TRANSATLANTIC. It passed through Spanish colonies. The Spanish colonies were actually one of the most important customers of the Atlantic slave trade. But, also, given that the book has so much about biracial people in it, why would the name be odd? I don’t think last name should decide one’s race…. Very one-dimensional.

As a white author writing about a biracial Black man who is dark skinned, please have a care. I tried to force-feed myself reading this book because I knew that my review would be harsh. But I just could not finish it. It’s that bad. I got to the part where the FMC’s ex-boyfriend’s mom gets to talking about her son making bad choices because he didn’t have a father figure and her knowing racism more than the male main character before I got too pissed off. At the end of the day, it’s a white woman writing about two Black people sizing up who experiences the most racism. Just no.

They put all of the tropes into one harmful, harmful book.

Yall, it’s hard enough finding books as a black women into begging pegging characters, so I’ve taken advice: pretend the characters are black, imagine in your head that FMC isn’t (usually) white.

Well, you know how HARD that is when they are emphasizing her pale, white, perfect flawless milky beautiful pale skin on every fucking page???

I started {The Poisoner by I.V. Ophelia} and have recently enforced a strike system. The pale skin is about to be all three of my strikes cause the MMC just can’t stop bringing up how perfectly white she is.

They always emphasize how unusually pale she is, “I’ve never seen such flawless white, pale, untainted skin in my life.” Every damn FMC is pale so atp, is it really that uncommon??? Does the sun not exist or something? Do they all live in a sunless world??

(I’m of course not saying don’t write books with pale FMCs, it’s good rep for people. I’m saying it’s all I see and is usually used to enforce a sort of purity culture.)

Like yes, pale women rep, we love to see it!!! But I think we’ve seen it enough, it’s legit just a metaphor for purity/goodness at this point because everyone knows white is right and black is wrong!! It’s like that one family guy scene.

I feel like it’s one side of the vaguely racist coin. And the other side is the animalistic description of black men in novels or the over emphasis on the “African American”-ness of a black woman.

Lemme add that that book came out this year. We’re still doing weird shit like that in the year twenty twenty four??? Guys I’m tired, it’s hard enough to find good books and FURTHERMORE I have to sit through 350 pages of “he didn’t want to taint her perfect whiteness”.

Let us leave this is 2024🙌🏾

This rant brought to you by the description of Sarah Mclean's new contemporary.

Despite the fact that I love a Duke and Billionaires are merely the Dukes of Contemporary romance, and despite the fact that I love the idea, in theory, of escaping for a few hours into a world where literally no one ever has to worry about money ever, I have walked away from every billionaire romance I've ever tried annoyed and unsatisfied. At some point in all those books, the real-life billionaire-ness of it all (the rapacious, harmful, exploitative resource hording) horned in on the fantasy and I stop rooting for anyone, ruining the story.

Until I recently read Lucy Score's The Worst Best Man, which I went into mostly blind and had a billionaire MMC. Now, I hated that book. But of the many, many, many (seriously, if you'd like to see a book dragged for 4000 extremely petty words, check my profile) things that bothered me about it, the fact that the MMC was a billionaire was not one of them.

This surprised me. When I sat down to figure out why, I realized it was because Score never tries to make him a "good" billionaire. Besides some handwavy stuff about 3rd generation family business and a few very vague, "I went to the Stock Market today. I did a business." sections, we have no idea where his wealth comes from. Score never attempts to engage with the ethics of having that much money or even much with the power dynamics (beyond the FMC occasionally feeling conflicted about him paying for things because he can't reciprocate or their lifestyle differences). Billionaire was just a shorthand for, "He can pay for anything and gets invited to fancy parties."

My problem has been that I had been reading "Ethical Billionaire" books, like Nikki Payne's Pride and Protest. The ethical billionaire books twist themselves up in narrative and philosophical knots to try and convince me as a reader that this Billionaire is Not Like Other Billionaires (NLOB). They have to participate in the morally awful parts of being a billionaire you see. For reasons. In Pride and Protest it was displacing low income folks in the US so he could continue to fund his mom's global anti-poverty charity like some weird gentrification Trolly Problem. But the second the author made me think about the ethics of being a Billionaire was approximately 3 seconds before I figured out it was all bunk. Billionaires don't have to do shit...if they're willing to not be billionaires. Pride and Protest guy could have dissolved his company, given the folks being displaced enough money to live wherever they wanted, sent staggering amounts of money that charity, and still had more money than generations of his decedents could be spend.

Since it is literally impossible to be an ethical billionaire, unless the writer is also writing actual, capital F Fantasy, the introduction of moral and ethical justifications for the NLOB is always going to be doomed. The internal logic of the narrative is always going to eventually fall apart, taking the stakes and conflict with it.

So from here on out, I will only read billionaires that are written like those Dukes of yore: they have unlimited resources, we're never going to discuss where and how those resources were acquired, and we'll mention it as little as possible, and at no point will we try to justify or make them "good" billionaires. They just are billionaires.

What say you all? Do Ethical Billionaires work for you? Or do you also have to not engage with beyond short hand for, "unlimited money" to maintain your suspension of disbelief?

I am fat, and so obviously I love reading books with fat characters. But there's basically always a scene (or five) where the fat FMC finally stands up to the bully's and gives a long speech about how she's beautiful and the bully is a trifling loser and then everyone claps and the FMC and the miraculously fat wives of every man introduced in the book form a coalition again body shaming and everyone lives happily ever after! What? Why? Why can't she be fat and bullied and just move on from it like a normal person? Why does she have to "get back" at people? Why does she have to become an online celebrity who hosts talks about fat bodies? Why can't she just be a normal fat woman who like, is loved and goes to work and that's that? Why do all the stories about being fat have to also have inspiration porn in them?

I saw a post where someone was saying they decide what the FMC is wearing because every time there’s a description it’s like the ugliest millennial fashion ever. I wish I had that ability! I’ve been distracted by this whole date scene because I can’t get over this stupid outfit!

In {Ideal Man by Julie Garwood} the FMC thinks she’s getting dinner with two FBI agents, not a date. If one of them is hot, it makes sense that she’d wear something a little cute, but probably not a dress.

Also,

• sundresses are not evening attire in my opinion they are for when the SUN is out
• ew ballet flat funk smell
• a full skirt? What is this, your first communion?
• black and white sundress… you just KNOW the “cool jewelry” was going to be a teal or coral statement necklace 💀

I am fighting for my life trying to reimagine the outfit but I just can’t get over her coming to the door dressed like she’s ready for Sunday church with grandma, and trying to pay it cool like “oh this ol thing, I would’ve worn it to casual dinner interrogation totally not a date right?”

One more thing, this was printed in 2011 written a bit before that. If she’s a late-twenties millennial woman she’s not wearing middle school dance attire on a date. That woman is wearing those ugly ass ballet flats with skinny jeans and a teal blazer or some semi-sheer button down as a “going out top”. Maybe a peplum and a heinous statement necklace. That would be dated for sure but not like completely inappropriate for the scene to make sense???

What are your silly little outfit nitpicks?

Because why do these characters never get to know each other IJBOL. They always have me scratching my head whenever they get to saying “I love you” because… EYE, the reader, don’t even know who YOU two are as individuals. What the fuck do you two love about each other?? BECAUSE YOU TWO NEVER FUCKING TALK TO EACH OTHER 💀

All they do is:

1.) think the other person is the hottest and most beautiful person in the world,

2.) lust after them,

3.) snark (if it’s ‘enemies’ to lovers)

4.) but they feel CONNECTION, you guys!

5.) have sex,

6.) “I love you”.

Like. Can we PLEASE be serious.

Shout-out to Melanie Harlow tho. Most of her books (so not all) are ‘proper’ romance—in the sense that she actually makes the main couple get to know each other through proper dialogue, not just fade-to-black scenes.

I know authors are SO bad at writing jobs they don't know anything about, like medicine, but the inaccurate portrayal of Office life sticks out to me like a sore thumb - especially in boss/employee romances. The biggest offender is the USE OF MR. AND MISS AMONG COWORKERS! Nobody in a real life office is saying crap like "Mr. Smith wants to see you in his office". I work for a fourtune 500 and have been at law and finance firms my whole career, which are SO conservative, and even the CEOs go by their first name. I can't imagine the HR nightmare that would stem from bosses demanding people address them so formally.

I have several other corporate girlie complaints, like projects being redone overnight (have these people never experienced bureaucracy) and boards of directors insisting the new CEO be married, but I understand romance requires suspending some disbelief. Still, it's not the 1950s, and your executive assistant probably isn't making last minute dinner reservations for you at the city's hottest restaurant, either.

Any other corporate cogs relate??

Editing to add what inspired this post: I'm in marketing. The branding consultant FMC in {Camera Shy by Kay Cove} kept referring to "click traffic". A) that's not branding and B) clicks and traffic are different things :)

Editing again: my villain origin story was realizing that the reports I write for work take much more time and go through much more review than some of these KU books 🙃

Is it only me but books are becoming too smutty nowadays and lacking in the falling in love aspect. Nothing is wrong with smutty books but if I’m reading a ROMANCE book where is the romance why am I just reading straight p0rn?? I swear I’m not even reading dates or stupid cute romantic moments anymore they literally go

from meeting each other to falling in love when all they did in the book was have s*x. Where are the moments in the book where the mmc brings her flowers on their first date, where they spend all day texting each other and making each other laugh, or just falling in love through moments and actions between the fmc and mmc. It just feels like I’m not reading actual love stories anymore and I’m just reading about two characters who are just horny for each other but yet it equates to love .

I’m not sure why there have been soooo many authors having their characters acknowledge tropes.

I’m not sure if it’s authors making fun of the fact that they’re using tropes? Thinking it’s comedic? Making their characters quirky readers?

In several books now, I have read characters acknowledge tropes.

Characters saying things like “only one bed trope? Really?”

“We have to make rules, that’s how it always works for fake dating tropes”

We can see the trope for what it is! The character doesn’t need to acknowledge it! There is no circumstances for which this works. I don’t care if the MC is a novelist or is doing research on book tropes. It is so annoying to have any of the characters mention.

The MMC is riding his own horse. But as they climb up a trail, he squeezes the horses haunches with his thighs. My dude, you’d not only have to have slipped behind the saddle, but you’re about to fall off the back end with the horse’s next step.

I would think a quick google search would have helped the author identify that haunches was definitely not the right word.

I have already known this about her writing. I’ve read all of her Colorado Mountain series so I’m very much aware how… violently misogynistic… her writing can get. Especially when you look at how her (pretty much all of) male characters (so not just her MMCs) view women. Hell, not even just the male characters—pretty much all of her female characters have very severe internalized misogyny too.

You’d think I would have learned my lesson and stayed the fuck away from her writing altogether, but {At Peace by Kristen Ashley} showed up on my TBR as my next read a few days ago (I go through my TBR in order) so I thought, you know what? What the hell. Let’s dive in.

Boy, oh boy, should I not have dived. In.

There’s a scene where the MMC tells the FMC that he literally threatened to bodily harm a female neighbor of theirs into keeping her mouth shut just because she caught the FMC sneaking out of his house and he (and the FMC) don’t want anyone to find out about them sleeping together. The FMC at first is horrified by this and asks him why he would do that… only to laugh when he goes “‘Cause she’s a bitch.”

Then when the FMC goes, “You shouldn’t threaten women.”,

You know what the MMC says? ”She isn’t ‘women’, she’s Tina.”

A MAN threatening bodily harm on a WOMAN just because she did something he didn’t like… 🤡

I don’t know. This post might get taken down by the mods so whatever. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

Like why is it that whenever I read a book with a CEO MC, there is always some kind of “what about the press?”. What about them? WHAT ABOUT THEM??

Like I’m sorry but it’s.. the CEO of a fucking company. No one cares who they fucking go out with 😭. “It’s splashed all over the tabloids” and I’m like WHAT tabloids?? Are the tabloids in the room with us right now?? What tabloid would report on the fucking activities of a regular fucking schmegular CEO in real life?? Like, can you as a reader honestly name FIVE CEOs in real life who garner THAT much interest in what they do outside of work capacity?

I guess if the CEO is like, someone who’s active on social media like Elon Fucking Musk (and I know he’s not exactly a CEO but bear with me here), then I guess it would make sense that the public would be ‘interested’ in who said CEO is with at some galas. But these CEO characters are NEVER on social media.

Also, why are models always catching strays in these books?? It’s always “this CEO always has a model on his arm and it’s a different model every time” and I’m like can we please leave the models alone. They’re too busy working multiple jobs to pay rent while their agents are on the hunt for modeling jobs to book; or if it’s a supermodel like Adriana Lima, she’s usually either TOO BOOKED AND BUSY to be on the arm of some CEO at some gala, or already fucking married.

This is why I typically avoid books with CEO (or even billionaire) main characters. These authors always make it hard for me to suspend my disbelief with the way they characterize these CEOs with illusions of celebrity grandeur. And always demonizing models in the process like… please leave them alone.

Okay, rant’s over. Feel free to downvote if you disagree, but I said what I said <3

What is going on you all? Why is literally EVERY FMC some ridonkulously young age? Like BARELY 18 and doing something or being something that realistically just would require more time and experience to do or be. It’s as if every FMC is Doogie Howser. I don’t mind this sometimes, especially in historicals. But it feels pervasive and frankly troublingly retrograde. Especially in fantasy with a political aspect or even worse contemporaries where career is a big deal.

It’s making impossible for me to suspend my disbelief. I’ve DNFed so many books bc the FMC is 19 and taking over her shifter pack (how?! Why?!) or by some strange magic has become a senior partner at a law firm by age 26. Or stories set in high school that are just galaxy brain impossible for so many reasons. I mean maybe it’s just me but I need some realism here, some level of feasibility. Some attention to verisimilitude.

Also! I resent the implication that only very young women are desirable or deserve adventures. I’d love to see more FMCs in their 30’s who aren’t divorced, who aren’t single moms, who aren’t in a second chance romance. But honestly I’d settle for everyone just aging up their FMCs by 4 to 6 years. Because I just cannot believe that an 18 year old has that level of skill for anything because I know how long it takes to learn and master oh say the sword or Microsoft Excel.

I just dont understand why plus sized romanced can't just be body neutral. The focus on body positivity just brings attention to something that shouldnt matter in the first place. Fat bodies should be able to exist in the same way thin bodies do.

It just comes off as preaching and othering to me, and I really wish I could feel comfortable reading romances with fat main characters. But thats kind of difficult when every time I try their weight somehow becomes a major part of their personality or plot. It feels more insulting than if someone just called me unloveable honestly.

Like why does a college freshman in their first year weekof college have to be starting a body positivity club of all things? In their first year of college? Really?

I haven't enjoyed many of the books I've read lately, and I've finally realised why.

Where are the connections? The moments of deep understanding, the soft glances and gentle touches?

Every romance book that I open these days is just glorified smut and they all have the same knock off pride and prejudice plot:

A girl hates a stoic guy for no reason but oh no he so sexy I must sleep with him, they fuck and say I love you and that's it

I'm tired!! Recommend me something, please! I've just re-read The Rose by Tiffany Reisz and I almost cried because where are the August's?? Fuck the Alphaholes!

Give me polite, respectful but simultaneously dirty minded. Give me manly, handsome and cheeky but so, so, so in love! (And rich)

Give me a personality that isn't just sarcasm. Give me strength that doesn't just come in the form of "Fuck you, asshole." Give me beautiful and clever, reasonable and head over heels!

No TSTL, no smut with no real romance. I want to kick my feet and giggle again!! (Of course, smut is still welcome, just take me to dinner first).

I’m sorry, but her vagina doesn’t taste like apple pie on a hot summer’s day. Her sweaty skin doesn’t smell like peaches and mint…after she ran a literal marathon. His morning breath doesn’t smell of sandalwood and pine trees. His cum doesn’t taste like your “favorite flavor”.

Where are the realistic scent descriptions in CR? It annoys me so much and sometimes takes me OUT of the spice when they are just so unrealistic. I’d rather the author say something general like “it smells like sex” or “like her and I mixed together” if it means that they don’t describe it like “Jasmine and leather”.

I feel like authors can and should be able to describe intimacy and/or scents in certain scenes in a certain way. It’s fine if you’re describing their perfume upon meeting them. But actual intimacy scenes or smells when they CLEARLY are unrealistic like after workouts is so off putting to me. What happened to musky or salty? COME ON.

Sorry if this rant does not resonate with you, maybe some of you do taste like “my favorite song” and “mulled wine”. 🙄 (if you do, please share your secrets for real)

EDIT: y’all are cracking me up 😂😭 if we don’t see doctors because of our scents not smelling like silky Capri Sun or something, we should probably seek professional help for our brains 😂😂

I was looking for recs about mmc being obsessed w fmc but in a non toxic way and this book was in a rec I searched. I’m barely in the first chapter and already rolling my eyes at the fmc. I’m tired of the fmc thinking of themselves on a high horse and criticizing other women by their appearance. My middle school self would’ve definitely ate this shit up and I cringe just thinking abt it. Like if your going to have the fmc criticize the other women let it be on her personality (like in this one the fmc could have gone more into the fact that this girl was acting a bit delulu for wanting to marry a man she’s been seeing for 2 weeks and only been on 3 dates w/). I’m not very articulate as is notable but I just hate this “not like other girls” vibes given. Anyway, I just wanted to rant 😭. Book was {Kiss Cam by Anie Michaels} for anyone wanting to know.

If this has already been said, my bad but it wouldn’t hurt to hear it again.

I am going to LOSE MY MIND if I read another book where Black people are written up as practically alien, or some sort of different species. I’m sorry—do authors not realize how insane that is???

I feel like most non-black—but specifically white authors seem to fight so hard not to come off as racist when writing their books, but then completely contradict that when writing about these, “foreign chocolate beauties”

It’s so fucking dehumanizing in some ways, damn near fetishizing. It makes me hate this genre and many others a lot of the time. It reminds me that I’ll always be seen different by non-black(mainly white) authors.

We’re not some fetish that you decided to throw in your book, we’re not the diversity character that you kill off at the beginning of the war, we’re not caricatures that are watered down to seem non threatening.

We’re PEOPLE, just like you. You don’t need to emphasize that that character is African American just like how you didn’t describe the “tall dark and handsome” male lead as White American.

People swear up and down that we make everything about race, but yall seem to point out our race in every book I come across.

It’s 2024!!! The fact that this is still happening is RIDICULOUS!! It’s not enough that I am not in the mainstream, but on top of that I have to flip through 400 pages of, “he was almost like a calm animal, so non threatening☺️did I mention he’s also black?”

I’m praying for all of these authors to just make a quick search on Reddit, read books written by Black people, I don’t know: use their heads!!!

Obviously I’m aware of how some authors are afraid of writing Black people because of how people react but here’s a trick! That character is still a human! You’ve written about other humans, right? Okay, then do the same thing☺️!

Anyone who’s made at that point is just ridiculous. And it doesn’t take a lot to do minuscule research on the character you’re writing, hell don’t you do that when you’re writing pages and pages of worldbuilding🤔hmm something is not adding up here…wait! I know you just don’t want to write about us!

It’s just a heartbreaking reminder that most authors do not and will never give a fuck about us. We’re just doomed to never see ourselves represented properly in mainstream media.