The Bully Romance Experiment

Let me start this post by stating that I do not condone Bullying of any kind nor I romanticize it in Real Life. But when talking about fiction ( however twisted of me this might be) I love these stories… Maybe it has to do with the resilience that a person needts to stand up for herself/himself, and also with the “redemption” arc that can be pull from these kind of stories (whethere it’s worth it or not)

But we are not here to analize myself — what a daunting task that could be. And Disclaimer aside, I have recently noticed an increase in this trope… they seem to bepopping everywhere and crazy little old me thought it would be fun to read a few of them (kind of back to back) And make some comparissons in terms of story, quality and appeal..It also helps that these are cheap and I already had accumulated a few…

Let the Crazy begin.

For this “experiment” I read six books with a similar theme:

• New school (academy- college)
• Bullying
• Reverse Harem Romance (more than one love interest)

I can say that even though the main plot of most was 75% similar to one another… and I’m not kidding.. The theme was:

• A poor girl (or former rich girl who lost everything for some reason) who receives a scolarship to a rich kids school, boarding school, academy, even a college..
•  Three to six of the hottest (and let’s not forget…) ethnically diverse ( because that need to be a thing now), richest (even royals in some cases) guys — that would make any reverse harem anime envious..
• Various degrees of Bullying. From name calling and pranks to very disturbing violence. And this is what could either make or break the book for me…
• And the stereotypical rich queen bitch bee.. that¡s mostly there to annoy the heck out of the reader because they hardly have any substance… They are just mean girls to be mean..

These points pretty much sum up all that 75% I was talking about. As for the other 25% that’s where things got tricky; because it was the actual character development (that resilience I mentioned about and whether our main character will be a TSTL damsel in distress, or someone who will stand up for herself) and also deals with the add ons to the story — you know plot twist to try and make it more interesting and not just a torture fest… Some added a murder mystery and other went a more emotional route and dealt with heavier topics like rape, revenge and suicide.

The whole point of me doing this “rexperiment was to see if by reading similar books of a popular trend I would be able to appreciate more those that managed to stand out even a little or if on the contrary I would become completely jaded by tthe trope..

The end result was a mixture of the two, at one point I was so over the same angsty and ridiculous plot —  I was Particularly annoyed  with the way the relationships developped… It’s a Harem romance, so it is a given we are going to have multiple male interests… And that’s fine… (Over the top and ridiculously played out but alright — i?ll suspend disbelief) However most of the time there’s no depth to those characters at all… It’s either the porn fest (without any foreplay which is pretty disspointing) or they are just there when it’s convenient to the plot… at times you could even forget about them if you weren’t paying close attention…

So I guess I did became jaded but then I struck gold and found the diamonds in the rough, because they stood out from the sameness… with tiny little things, a good parental relationship here or there… good background story, interesting mystery plot twist… And even thought they won’t be any prizes for any of these books — because regardless of my enjoyment of them or not they aren’t that great (not that I was expecting them to… I was in it just for the fun of it)

Books read and their rating:

• The Pawn – Lucy Auburn – 3.5
• Good Girls – Max Henry – 3.5 Stars
• The Help – Callie Rose – 3
• Rich Boys, Poor Girl – Mia Belle -3
• Break Me Baby – Belladona Cunning -2.5
• Tempest – Rachel Angel – 2

Hope you guys had fun reading my rambling about this weird bookish experiment that did help me get over the reading slump I had so, I consider that a win as well… And let me know in the comments if you ever have gotten lost in the same ness of a bookish trend?

As Always

Happy Reading