Give Me a Trope, Any Trope, If It's Romance

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What was a popular theme or trope in books and movies a few years ago has waned in popularity by the time 2022 rolled around.

As 2023 is on the horizon, I thought I’d take a look back and see what was the top 10 Romance Tropes a few years ago.

Now, don’t get me wrong. These may still be popular, but there may have been other tropes that have surpassed them in popularity because the social mores and attitudes of people have changed too.

Your favorite will still be your favorite, but others may have become popular with more numbers of readers. Here we go.

1. The Fake Romance (To get her mom off her back or to show to someone at some event that she’s not a loser in the romance department, the heroine gets a guy to pose as her boyfriend/fiance/husband. Guys can set this fake romance up to for similar reasons. My friend Bonnie Edwards has a great romance that uses this trope. Check out Fake Me.)

2. Friends to Lovers (They have always been friends, but one or both secretly is in love with the other but afraid to ruin their friendship by making a move.)

3. Stranded Somewhere Together (Survival at its most romantic.)

4. Snowed In (similar to #3 but the coziness of winter because it’s a lot easier to rationalize cuddling skin to skin when survival depends on it.)

5. Small Town Romance (I personally love these and write them like Last Christmas, Brianna’s Season for Miracles, Jane (I’m Still Single) Jones, The Trouble With Love, Romeo and Judy Anne, etc. You can look on my Amazon Author page for these and more.)

6. International Travel Brings Romance (My friend Mona Risk is expert at this kind of romance.)

7. Action Thrillers/Spy and Espionage (I’ve written one of these too, Dead Heat.)

8. Capers or Heists (like Oceans 11) 

9. Books and Romance (book shop owners, author heroines, reading characters. My friend Lucinda Race has a book available for pre-order now that’s the first in a new series. Books and Bribes: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery)

10. The Plain Jane Romance (She’s not a looker or doesn’t think she is, but she ends up with the studly hero. I wrote this in Cinderella Blue, a Romantic Comedy.)

Romance is eternal, but popular themes/tropes do go up and down in popularity on the Top 10 list. 

If you’d like to know what’s most popular in 2022, be sure and drop by Smart Girls Read Romance on Tuesday, October 18.

That’s my blog day on Smart Girls, and I will be posting a list of the 10 Most Popular Romance Tropes in 2022.