#BrutallyHonestBooks I Wish Someone Would Write

Lately I’ve been thinking about cliched plots and bad tropes in books, and this got me thinking about the plot/story ideas I don’t ever see, or don’t see nearly enough of. So I thought I’d compile a list of books I wish someone would write. Please note, if you don’t like cynicism, this is probably not the listsicle for you.

Books I wish someone would write.

#BrutallyHonestBooks I wish someone would write:

• My family is crazy and no, I don’t love them anyway, and I won’t apologize for that. My mental health and well-being are more important than unconditional love for people who cause me nothing but stress and unhappiness.
• At first I didn’t succeed, so I tried, tried again, and fifty years later, I died, still an epic failure. I am the 99 percent.
• Under “Books I wish I had read when I was younger”: A kids’ book where the rich kid has a happy family and the poor kid an unhappy one, because LIFE IS NOT A FUCKING FAIRY TALE, and this configuration is more likely according to science. PLEASE don’t be the author who repeats this false dichotomy about poor people having “something better than money” designed to discourage the poor from stealing from the rich. Instead, write the kids’ book that tells the poor kid with the unhappy family that she’s not alone.
• Two people meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after. For five minutes. Then they start fighting and make each other miserable. Then they have a kid and make a third person miserable. Then they either have the sense to get divorced, or they stay miserable until one of them has the sense to die. (Can you tell I don’t write romance novels?)

What #BrutallyHonestBooks would you like to read?

V. R. Craft is the author of Stupid Humans, a thought-provoking science fiction book series that asks the question, “What if all the intelligent humans abandoned Earth—and we’re what’s left?”