#i am begging on my hands and knees for booktok girlies to branch out into other genres

[starswallowingsea]

another post inspired by the bad books book club but it's kind of concerning how a lot of popular YA books these days feature a huge power imbalance and don't like. make it clear that it's unethical and because these are popular with teenage girls it makes me concerned that they're internalizing these messages.

like the love hypothesis for example, which i have actually read and hated so fucking much, the main romance is between a phd candidate and one of the professors at her grad school. while they make it clear that he's not her advisor and can't be on her doctoral advising committee or whatever, he's in the same department first off and can still hold power over olive and in real life that could very very quickly turn sour because of the power imbalance. he very much still has power over her in ways she might not realize yet.

and then you look at......... well everything coho. like in verity the main character is sleeping with her agent which is UNETHICAL and could very very easily lead to a lot of business problems!!!! like you cant fucking do that and there's a reason why its looked down upon for agents to be romantically/sexually involved with clients. because the agent has power over the client. and while i think a fully grown 30 something adult can tell when something is just fantasy, younger adults are much much more impressionable to this kind of stuff. i'm saying this as 22yo college undergrad and i'm not immune to this either, but i'm aware of when i need to step back and ask myself what a text is saying and what it wants me to think because i've cultivated those skills. fresh 18yos who are still in high school and have had most of their high school career online or completely fucked with because of covid might not.

you can have books aimed at young adults that don't involve this type of harmful messaging romanticizing the power imbalance between characters. i see the way people talk about colleen hoover romantic leads and relationships and it's so worrying because nothing in any coho book is romantic and the romantic leads in all these books are like the brooding bad boy stereotype dialed up to abusive and people find it hot and attractive when it should be a massive red flag instead. young adults deserve better books.

#shay speaks #bookblr #anti booktok #anti coho #anti colleen hoover #anti the love hypothesis #this is v much a publishing problem letting these books be published in the first place #but also the people who popularize specific interpretations of characters to make like. abuse look okay bc the abuser is hot #they have a responsibility for this too #i am begging on my hands and knees for booktok girlies to branch out into other genres #i will compile a list of every book i have on my shelf in my apartment to give you ideas if thats what it takes #its okay to branch out its okay to read other genres #read books you know you wont like so you can find what you do like about them and look for that #in genres you do like!!!!! #read clockwork heart idc (that book was good though actually i stand by that) #you deserve better. #dont settle for mediocre