Understand that most of the advice you get on this subreddit is from male 18-29 redditors

Because reddit is a male-dominated platform, i have noticed many comments on subreddits about reading and writing that are very critical of authors and books who write for primarily female audiences. The typical redditor would have you believe that series like A Court of Thorns and Roses, or Twilight, are just poorly written garbage, while Project Hail Mary and Dune are peak literature.

If you are at all serious about your writing, please understand that you are not getting anywhere close to real-world market opinion when discussing these subjects on reddit. You are doing yourself a great disservice as a writer if you intentionally avoid books outside reddits demographic that are otherwise massively popular.

A Court of Thorns and Roses is meant for primarily young adult women who like bad boys, who want to feel desired by powerful and handsome men, and who want to get a bit horned up as it is obviously written for the female gaze, while going on an escapist adventure with light worldbuilding. It should not be a surprise to you that the vast majority of redditors do not fall into this category and thus will tell you how bad it is. Meanwhile you have Project Hail Mary which has been suggested to the point of absurdity on this site, a book which exists in a genre dominated by male readers, and which is compararively very light on character drama and emotionality. Yet, in the real world, ACOTAR has seen massively more success than PHM.

I have been bouncing back and forth a lot between more redditor suggested books like Dune, Hyperion, PHM, All Quiet on the Western Front, Blood Meridian, and books recommended to me by girls i know in real life like ACOTAR, Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, A Touch of Darkness, If We Were Villains, and Twilight, and i can say with 100% certainty that both sets of books taught me equal amounts of lessons in the craft of writing.

If you are looking to get published, you really owe it to yourself to research the types of books that are popular, even if they are outside your preferred genres, because i guarantee your writing will improve by reading them and analyzing why they work and sell EVEN IF you think they are "bad".