Books in recent years often share a recurring theme of romance being marketed in the wrong genre and dominating the young adult section. Through social media, marketing for books has become easier for authors and harder for readers.

Of course, books have different important aspects that are unique but social media will often only focus on a female protagonist’s love interest. Rather than focusing on the hardships and engaging plots to market the young adult books. People instead promote the book by objectifying attractive characters. Instead of making interesting plots, authors are now making more plots surrounding the love interest rather than making an interesting story.

Most of the time the books won’t mention much about the actual plot in the marketing process and instead turn the summary focus onto the romance between the characters to get readers hooked.

Many of these books ruin the reasons I enjoy reading. When I pick up a book I am expecting to see the main character go through hardships, see a new perspective on the character’s decisions and see the main characters learn and grow.

When the book is being marketed it can be marked as a fantasy and yet its major plot will be the romantic dynamic and troubles. All of this to say, one of my favorite aspects of any mystery or thriller is the sideline plot that focuses on the character relationships.

The relationships to the main character don’t have to always be romantic though, it can be platonic or familiar. I want to see the book have an interesting and unique world building that the main character has to navigate while also having a sideline relationship or friend that they can fall back on. I think every good book needs to have a side plot where the protagonist grows their relationships.

The problem occurs when the fantasy book I pick up somehow has its side plot, that is barely touched throughout the book, being the world around them and its major plot revolves around the male character they met four days ago.