Book tropes list: 76 tropes explained, from romance to mystery

A trope is a pattern a story uses that readers recognise: two rivals who fall in love, a found family, a crime in a locked room. Tropes are not clichés. A cliché is a pattern done lazily; a trope is just the shape, and the same shape can be done brilliantly or badly. Readers look for books by trope because a trope promises a feeling: Slow burn promises the wait, Found family promises belonging.

These are the 76 tropes Storyfeel uses, each explained in one line, without spoilers. They are grouped by the genre where you meet them most, but most travel: there is plenty of Found family in fantasy, and plenty of Dark secrets in romance.

Romance tropes (35)

• Enemies to lovers — Two people who start out openly against each other, and slowly find out the fight was the attraction.
• Friends to lovers — Long-time friends who realise, usually late, that what they have is love.
• Rivals to lovers — Competitors for the same prize, job or title, whose rivalry turns into respect and then into more.
• Forced proximity — Circumstances keep two people in the same space, a snowed-in cabin or a shared flat, so they cannot avoid each other.
• Only one bed — The hotel, inn or tent has a single bed, and two people who are not together yet have to share it.
• Grumpy x sunshine — One is gruff and closed, the other warm and cheerful, and each softens the other.
• Slow burn — The romance takes most of the book, or the series, to happen. The waiting is the point.
• Fast burn — The attraction is immediate and acted on early; the story is about what comes after.
• Instalove — Two characters fall in love almost at first sight, with very little build-up.
• Meet-cute — A charming, funny or awkward first meeting that sets the tone for the whole romance.
• Mutual pining — Both are in love, both are sure it is one-sided, and the reader can see it long before they do.
• Fake dating — Two people pretend to be a couple for a reason, a wedding, a family or a reputation, and the pretence stops being pretend.
• Second chance — Former partners meet again years later and have to face why it ended.
• Forbidden love — The relationship breaks a rule: of family, class, kingdom, faith or job.
• Secret relationship — Two people are together but hide it from everyone around them.
• Touch her and you die — A protective love interest who will not tolerate anyone threatening the person they love.
• Marriage of convenience — A marriage made for practical reasons, money, a visa or an inheritance, that becomes real.
• Arranged marriage — Families or rulers decide the match, and the couple have to build something from it.
• Love triangle — One character torn between two love interests.
• Fated mates — Two characters bound by destiny or magic, often in paranormal and fantasy romance.
• Age gap — A significant age difference between the two love interests, and what it means for them.
• Workplace — Love between colleagues, a boss and an employee, or business rivals, with the office as the stage.
• Single parent — One of the leads is raising a child alone, so every choice involves someone small.
• He falls first — He is the one who falls first and hardest, often long before she notices.
• Why choose — One heroine with several love interests, and she does not have to pick one. Also called reverse harem.
• Bully romance — A love interest who starts out as the cruel one, often at school. A divisive, usually dark trope.
• Brother's best friend — Falling for a sibling's closest friend, with the loyalty problem that brings.
• Opposites attract — Two people different in almost every way, who are drawn together by exactly that.
• Childhood sweethearts — A love that started in childhood or school and returns, or never went away.
• Unrequited love — Loving someone who does not love you back, at least for now.
• Bodyguard romance — The one paid to protect someone falls for them, against every professional rule.
• Billionaire romance — One of the leads is extremely rich, and the money shapes the power between them.
• Mafia romance — Love tangled with organised crime, usually dark, with danger and loyalty at its core.
• Small town — A close-knit small town where everyone knows everyone, often with a newcomer or someone coming home.
• Holiday romance — Love set around a holiday, most often Christmas, with snow, family and a deadline.

Fantasy and speculative tropes (17)

• Chosen one — An ordinary person destined to save the world, whether they want to or not.
• Prophecy — A prediction drives the plot, and someone tries to fulfil it or escape it.
• Magic school — An academy for magic, with classes, houses, rivalries and secrets.
• Hidden powers — A character discovers abilities they never knew they had.
• Hidden heir — Someone who grew up ordinary turns out to be the heir to a throne, a house or a legacy.
• Court intrigue — Plots, alliances and betrayals among nobles fighting for power at court.
• Deadly trials — A series of dangerous tests or a tournament that the characters may not survive.
• Quest — A journey with a goal, an object, a place or a person, and trials along the way.
• Portal fantasy — A character crosses from our world into another, through a door, a wardrobe or a book.
• Fae — Fairy folk, often beautiful, dangerous and bound by bargains they cannot break.
• Vampires — Immortal blood drinkers, as monsters, lovers or both.
• Shapeshifters — Characters who can take the form of an animal or another person, wolves most famously.
• Dragons — Dragons as enemies, companions or mounts, sometimes as the heart of the story.
• Witches — Witchcraft and the people who practise it, from cosy to dangerous.
• Gods & myths — Gods, demigods and old myths retold or brought into a new story.
• Time travel — Characters move through time, and have to live with what they change.
• Rebellion — A fight against a tyrant, an empire or an unjust system.

Mystery and thriller tropes (10)

• Whodunit — A puzzle mystery: the question is who did it, and the reader gets the same clues as the detective.
• Locked room — A crime that seems impossible, committed in a place nobody could have entered or left.
• Amateur sleuth — Someone with no police badge, a baker, a librarian, a retiree, who solves the case anyway.
• Unreliable narrator — The person telling the story cannot be fully trusted, by accident or on purpose.
• Dark secrets — A family, a town or a character hides something terrible, and the past comes back.
• Twist ending — A late revelation that changes how you read everything before it.
• Cat and mouse — A hunter and a hunted, each trying to outthink the other.
• Serial killer — The investigation of, or the mind of, someone who kills again and again.
• Haunted house — A house with a presence in it, and people who should probably leave.
• Cold case — An old, unsolved crime that someone reopens years later.

Tropes for any genre (14)

• Found family — Characters with no family, or the wrong one, who choose each other and become one.
• Morally grey — Characters who are neither good nor bad, and do questionable things for reasons you understand.
• Secret identity — A character hides who they really are, and the reveal is waiting.
• Coming of age — Growing up: the passage from childhood or youth into adulthood, and what is lost and found.
• Redemption arc — A character who has done wrong works, slowly, to become better.
• Revenge — A character who has been wronged sets out to make someone pay.
• Heist — A crew plans and pulls off a theft that should be impossible, and something goes wrong.
• Underdog — The one nobody expects to win, against much stronger opponents.
• Anti-hero — A protagonist without heroic virtues, selfish or ruthless, whom you follow anyway.
• Reluctant hero — Someone who never wanted to be a hero and is dragged into it.
• Fish out of water — A character dropped into a world, a culture or a job where they do not fit.
• Dual timeline — Two stories in two times, often past and present, that slowly connect.
• Multiple POV — The story is told by several characters in turn, each with their own view.
• Road trip — A journey by road where the trip, and the company, change the people on it.

Using tropes to choose your next book

• Notice which ones you come back to. After ten or twenty books, your favourite tropes say more about your taste than your favourite genre does.
• Combine two. One trope is a category; two are a recommendation. Grumpy x sunshine plus Forced proximity narrows the shelf to the books you actually want.
• Note the ones that make you put a book down. The tropes on your DNF books are as useful as the ones on your favourites.
• A trope is a promise, not a grade. The same trope can carry a masterpiece or a book you forget in a week. How it made you feel is the part worth writing down.
• Check the spice too. A trope says what kind of story it is; the spice level says how explicit. See what each chili level means.

Tracking your tropes in Storyfeel

Every book in Storyfeel has a Tropes field. Pick from the 76 above, grouped by genre in your language, or type your own. In Stories, the Trope filter shows every book you have read with one, and Stats shows your Most read tropes, so the pattern in your taste becomes visible over a year. Tropes also make good squares for a book bingo: see our reading challenge ideas.

To write down how a trope landed for you, try the reading journal prompts. Or start your reading journal free: it is private and encrypted end to end.