The Summary For Every Paranormal YA Ever

So I've been dicking around on Goodreads for the past million hours, reading reviews and summaries and dissecting every little thing (you know, as one does) and it occurred to me that most publisher-provided book summaries sound exactly alike. There are stock phrases used in a lot of blurbs that you would probably recognize -- "dark secrets," "enigmatic strangers," "...will never be the same," etc. Even blurb construction from summary to summary is similar, and once you've been reading them for long enough, they all sound very much alike.

YA Paranormal Romance is probably the worst genre for this blurb-alike phenomenon. I swear, some days I feel so jaded that I could look at a cover and title and come up with a generic YA blurb and it probably wouldn't be that far off from the real summary. So, feeling particularly jaded and bitter today, I started to copy and paste quotes and phrases from various YA paranormal blurbs and cobbled them together into a master generic blurb. Then I amped up the silliness because, let's face it, it's just more fun when parodies are over-the-top.

So here's my Summary For Every Paranormal YA Ever. It's all in good fun, but there's a grain of edumacational goodness here, too: writers? Don't write stories like this. They are tired. Let's please write original stories. I will probably tackle other genres with generic blurbs, too, because it's fun and I'm procrastinating, as always.

Here it is!

After the tragic death of Girl’s parents, Girl hears voices and has visions. On the night of her seventeenth birthday, she meets two enigmatic strangers. Boy McNextdoor is all-American and fun, but she is instantly drawn to darkly handsome Dark McHandsome, who reveals that she's a reincarnated goddess and that he has been her protector for centuries, because for some reason powerful goddesses need protectors. He’s also mean and borderline abusive but Girl is intrigued by his brooding ways.

Now Girl must choose which male figure to devote her life to. Should she choose safe, average Boy McNextdoor, who is nice and stuff but not enough of a jerk? Or should she choose the destiny that has already been pre-chosen for her, a life with Dark McHandsome? Should she choose wrong, the entire universe could explode. For some reason.

I'm not trying to pick on any one book or author. Just expressing my frustrations with YA as a whole.