The patterns I'm beginning to see in YA fantasy are the blondes with blue eyes who sleep with everyone and are reckless or the girls who have been abused in some capacity and are meek and reserved. Occasionally, I see the girl who has been through hell and is reckless because she doesn't care about dying anymore. When I think of this, I think of Celaena Sardothien. I still love that series. I love her character and her development. It would just be really nice to see YA books that don't always center around romance. I want the main character to pick themselves for once and for healthy reasons, not because of a generic x, y, z reason. The only book I've seen do that so far is the Eyes Like Stars series. I may need to reread the series to be 100% sure. I don't know, I guess what I'm saying is, please try and present more than one or two ways of traditionally doing things. Not everyone is in love and that's okay. It can be okay to choose yourself and choose not to be with someone else. There is a big normalized thing that I see, even in everyday life where, people expect that they're gonna be 100% happy once they find true love. It's okay to want it. It's okay to want someone else. However, it's important to remember that you are in charge of your happiness and love doesn't always fix that. Along with that, you can still have an interesting plot and story without there being romance involved. It's beyond frustrating to see it every single time. I've gone to bookstores and picked up random novels in the YA/Teen section to begin reading the back of the book. It starts out super interesting, giving a little background and then it jumps to when the main character (usually a girl) meets dark, mysterious (insert some random guys name here) who is going to help her somehow achieve her goal by mainly falling in love with her or coming around to eventually understand that she's the most important thing in his life and vice versa. Please. Just. Stop.
