For That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday:
August 20: Favorite Tropes (a trope is a commonly used theme or plot device) (submitted by Andrea @ Books for Muse)
1. Mysterious school
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- A Great And Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
- Villette by Charlotte Bronte
2. Slow burn romance
3. Small towns
- Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
- Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
- Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
- Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery (well, pretty much all the books set in Avonlea)
4. Missing/Absent parents
- The Secret Garden / A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
- Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
5. Family secrets
- The Distant Hours / The Forgotten Garden / The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
- The Girl Who Chased the Moon / The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen
6. Gothic
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
- The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
- The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
7. Neo-Victorian
8. Time Travel / Time Slips
- The House on the Stand by Daphne DuMaurier
- Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
- The Doomesday Book by Connie Willis
9. Dual Timelines
- Mariana / A Desperate Fortune / The Winter Sea / The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley
- The Address / The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis
- Possession by AS Byatt
10. Fairy Tale retellings
- Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
- Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth
- The Bloody Chamber by Angela Cater
- Beautiful by Fran Laniado (apparently I’m not above a bit of shameless self promotion here!)