Unpopular Book Opinions: YA Ships

We’re starting a new series on the blog where we share our unpopular YA book opinions. For this one, we’re sharing our opinions about ships we loved, but the couple didn’t end up together or ships we think are overrated.

Let us know your unpopular YA romance opinions in the comments!

1. The Secret Circle Love Triangle 

The Secret Circle series by L. J. Smith follows Cassie Blake as she moves to New Salem, Massachusetts and discovers her mysterious heritage. Cassie is a witch and she joins a coven, who needs a 12th member to complete the circle. Something sinister starts happening in New Salem when a group of witch hunters show up.

Cassie has two love interests in the book series, Adam Conant and Nick Armstrong. Adam and Cassie are supposed to be soulmates. Except, we don’t like Adam. He doesn’t treat Cassie well and tends to take his ex-girlfriend’s side more than Cassie’s. Nick is the bad boy with that heart of gold trope and we couldn’t love him more. He is so sweet to Cassie and proved more than once he would do anything for her. We think she should have chosen Nick in the end! They made such a cute couple. But sadly, their romance didn’t last long. 

2. The Something Strange and Deadly Love Triangle

We love the first two books in this series, but Strange and Ever After, the third and final book, left us so disappointed. Eleanor Fitt didn’t get the happy ending we waited for in this historical thriller. We shipped Eleanor and Daniel (a spirit hunter) together from the beginning of the series. Which…didn’t happen. 

While it’s been years since we read this series, we remember being so angry when Susan Dennard killed off Daniel at the end of the final book. Then, it seemed like she was pushing for Eleanor to end up with her demon friend Oliver. The ending felt so rushed and made no sense, considering the pacing of the first two books was done beautifully. When an author kills off a main love interest, we never forgive them. Sorry, but we need our HEAs. 

3. The Last Hours Love Triangle 

Okay, so Chain of Thorns won’t release until next year. However, our opinion that Matthew Fairchild is superior to James Herondale is already unpopular. We ship Matthew and Cordelia Carstairs together. While James got better in Chain of Iron, we still don’t think he’s right for Cordelia. 

We don’t know how Cassandra Clare plans to end this series, yet we hope Matthew gets a happily ever after. He deserves it. We wish Chain of Thorns would be released sooner than March 2022. 

4. Camille and Lazare in the Enchantée Series

Nothing is wrong with Camille and Lazare in All That Glitters, they just didn’t have convincing chemistry. We found the book and their relationship overwritten. We love romances, especially in international settings. Unfortunately, we found their relationship a bit boring. We could not connect with their characters, and their relationship was very surface level.

We haven’t read the sequel, Everything That Burns, so maybe it gets better. However, they were one of our least favorite YA couples in 2019. We’re open to reading Gita Trelease’s future books though. Despite the disappointing romance, we did love the setting of Revolutionary France.

5. The Love Triangle in Frankly in Love

While David Yoon’s Frankly in Love is a great story about first loves, heartaches and what it means to grow up, Frank Li didn’t treat his two girlfriends very well. He dates two smart and cool girls in the book, Brit Means and Joy Song. Honestly, they could both do better. We get it, Frank was going through a really difficult time with his family, but we felt he could have been candid with both. 

He broke Brit’s heart when he left her and then he and Joy didn’t even get a sweet ending. The love triangle had too much heartache and unhappiness for us. Hopefully Frank had better luck romantically in college. 

6. Andrew and Sophie in Maybe This Time 

Andrew was too good for Sophie. There, we said it. We typically love Kasie West’s books. Maybe This Time was easily our least favorite because Sophie was mean, judgmental and whiny. And, Andrew put up with it for most of the book. While they did have some banter, we just didn’t see the chemistry. 

Don’t get us wrong, hate to love is a favorite trope of ours. Except, it didn’t happen naturally. It went from hate to love practically overnight. Even when they did get together, it didn’t seem like Sophie really let Andrew into her life. We felt bad rating this book so low since we usually love West’s romances. 

7. The Divergent Series Ending

We may never get over this series ending. Seriously, we ranted for days. The first two books were amazing only to have everything ruined in the third. Some people believe that Tris needed to die, but we disagree. It was such a stupid way to end the series. 

Then Four (Tobias), the love of her life, is sad and depressed. Veronica Roth alluded to Four and Christina (Tris’s BFF) ending up together and pursuing something in the future. That cannot happen. Four and Tris should have gotten their happily ever after considering all the drama they survived. We haven’t read another book from Roth since Allegiant released in 2013. 

8. Kat, Frosty and Camila in Alice in Zombieland

This is not really a love triangle because in the third book of the series, The Queen of Zombie Hearts, Kat dies. This is partially Camila’s fault. Then in book 4, A Mad Zombie Party, Kat reaches out to Frosty from beyond and wants him to work with Camila. Okay, so we didn’t like the fourth book all because the original trilogy ended well. Gena Showalter should have left her series as is with keeping the writing from Cole and Ali’s POVs. 

Showalter’s fourth book made no sense because why would Frosty fall for the person who led to the love of his life to be killed? Camilla had a redemption arc, it just did not work for us all. 

9. Sydney and Jackson in I See London, I See France 

What we expected: a cute YA romance set in Europe. What we got: unlikable characters, unnecessary drama and zero swoon. Sarah Mylnowski wrote 10 Things We Did, an adorable romcom about living with your BFF without your parents knowing, so we couldn’t believe the same author wrote something so dull. We couldn’t ship a couple who treated each other and their friends so terribly. There are so many better Europe YA romances. 

10. Lola and Cricket in Lola and the Boy Next Door

For two people who love Stephanie Perkins’s Anna and the French Kiss and Isla and the Happily Ever After, we couldn’t stand Lola and the Boy Next Door. Lola fit the stereotype of manic pixie dream girl by dressing in costumes every day and everyone should find it adorable. First, her original boyfriend in the books was creepy and too old for her. She whined when her dads didn’t like him. Then Cricket moved back to the area, which has Lola caught off guard. 

Lola and Cricket’s relationship felt lackluster. They secretly pined for each other years ago and it was meant to be that they found each other again. Zero swoon for us. We were sad because Anna + Etienne and Isla +Josh are two of the best couples in YA