Top Five Tropes You Hate | Top Five Wednesday

Top Five Wednesday is a Goodreads created by Lainey, at GingerReadsLainey. Every Wednesday, there is different top five topic to complete.
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This weeks topic is the top five tropes you hate. A trope is basically an overused plot device or a cliche of sorts. I should preface this by saying, I'm talking about all these tropes I don't like, but I still read and sometimes really enjoy books that include these tropes. I don't hate a lot of tropes, so this is just a kind of dislike list.  

5 The Only Thing Special About a Character is Their Power

I couldn't think of a shorter title for the trope, so just go with it. I hate it when a character is treated as ordinary and unimportant, until they learn they have some secret power and then that just becomes their defining trait or characteristic. I feel like a character can be special and important in their own way before they learn about this extra special part of them.

4 Female Main Character

This may be a specifically YA problem, and I mainly read YA, so I don't know if this is as prevalent in other genres, but there are mainly female main characters in YA. I don't exactly hate this, because I enjoy those books I read with a female POV, but I do feel like there need to be more male POV's in YA. Out of all the books I've read this year, I have only read one YA book from a male POV.

3 Instalove

Nobody likes instalove. Nobody that I know of at least. The best part of a relationship in books is many times the build-up and the tension between the characters, and a lot of that is lost with instalove. Also, instalove just feels fake and kind of like a cop-out. A good romance isn't just love at first sight. That just doesn't really happen, and if it does, then that doesn't last.

2 When All Characters Are Perfectly Paired Off

Again, I couldn't think of a shorter title for this, so just work with me. You know that moment in a book, when every character just ends up with some other significant character, and everything just wraps up nicely, almost too nicely. Yeah, I don't like that. Not every person, especially in high school, is going to be in a relationship. Some people remain happily single. It just strikes me as off when at the end of a book everything just works out too perfectly.

1 Unnecessary Romance

Like the last trope, not everyone is always in a happy relationship at all times, especially as a teenager. This is kind of a combination of the last two on the list. I just don't like it when the author doesn't want a character to be alone, so they give the character a relationship that is completely unnecessary and unneeded for the plot. I appreciate platonic friendships, I actually really like them. A character can have a friend that doesn't end in a relationship, it's okay, these things do happen, the world will not end, I promise.

Note: I enjoy romance and relationships in books way too much for the top three tropes I don't like to all be romance based. Oops.