62 pages • 2-hour read
Your Fault
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, physical abuse, graphic violence, and death.
Genre Context: New Adult Romance and the Forbidden Love Trope
Your Fault is a key example of the New Adult (NA) romance genre, a literary category that gained prominence in the publishing world around 2012 and features protagonists aged 18 to 25. These novels, exemplified by foundational texts like Colleen Hoover’s Slammed, focus on characters navigating the transition to adulthood, often involving university life and intense, emotionally charged relationships. Mercedes Ron positions her characters squarely in this demographic: Noah is 18 and preparing for college, while Nick is 22 and finishing his law degree.
Their story utilizes the genre’s conventions by centering on a tumultuous romance fraught with drama and psychological conflict. The narrative is driven by the “forbidden love” trope, a classic literary device used to raise the stakes for a couple. Specifically, the novel employs the popular stepsibling variant, a trope that gained a significant following on online platforms like Wattpad, where Ron first published the Culpables series. This dynamic creates immediate conflict, as their parents openly disapprove of the relationship, insisting that “to the outside world, we would go on being stepsiblings and nothing more” (16). This external pressure forces Nick and Noah’s romance into secrecy, amplifying the narrative tension and exploring social judgment and familial loyalty, hallmarks of the NA genre.
Ron incorporates adjacent tropes popular in NA fiction, including the bad-boy love interest, the love triangle, and the family secret reveal. Sophia functions as both a workplace temptation and a rival love interest, while Briar’s reemergence and revelations at the gala inject melodrama characteristic of the genre. The explosive family secret, that William fathered Madison with Anabel, ties Noah’s personal coming-of-age to generational scandal, a move that aligns the novel with NA’s interest in uncovering how family legacies complicate young adult identity formation.
By combining forbidden romance with high-stakes melodrama, Ron situates Your Fault within the larger NA trend of using heightened conflict to dramatize the turbulence of early adulthood. The characters’ entanglement in jealousy, secrecy, and betrayal reflects the genre’s emphasis on testing the limits of first love, while the rain-soaked encounters mirror the operatic, emotionally charged endings common to NA sagas. In this way, Ron both fulfills and intensifies the conventions of the genre, ensuring her story resonates with the online readership that first popularized it.
Series Context: My Fault
My Fault, the first book in Mercedes Ron’s Culpables trilogy, introduces Noah Morgan, who moves from Toronto to Los Angeles with her mother, Raffaella, after Raffaella marries wealthy lawyer William Leister. Noah resents leaving her old life behind and clashes immediately with William’s son, Nick. Their hostility slowly shifts into a complicated attraction, intensified when a staged kiss at a party reveals real feelings. On a trip to the Bahamas, they spend more time together and begin to fall in love, though Nick’s violent temper and Noah’s guardedness keep their relationship fraught. Their push-and-pull dynamic reflects the trilogy’s broader exploration of how love and danger intertwine.
As their connection deepens, Noah reveals her traumatic past: Her father physically abused her and Raffaella, leaving Noah scarred after escaping one of his attacks at age 11. Nick comforts her and promises to change his own destructive behavior. Their relationship solidifies, culminating in their first sexual encounter. However, outside threats quickly reemerge when Noah’s father, newly paroled, conspires with Nick’s rival Ronnie to kidnap her. Police intervene, killing her father and rescuing Noah, but the violence underscores the dangers surrounding her.
In the aftermath, Nick secures a new apartment, signaling his desire for independence from his father and a future with Noah on their own terms. By the end of My Fault, the two are openly committed to each other, but their parents’ secrecy about their relationship, unresolved jealousy, and the volatility of Nick’s world set the stage for the conflicts that intensify in Your Fault. These events establish the foundation for the trilogy’s primary discussions of identity, trauma, and the challenges of building healthy relationships.
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