According to the The Bestseller Code, popular themes for bestselling fiction are: marriage, death, taxes, threatening technologies, funerals, guns, doctors, work, schools, presidents, newspapers, kids, moms, and the media. Unpopular: (besides sex, drugs, rock and roll), seduction, the body (except in pain or at a crime scene), cigarettes, alcohol, the gods, passionate love, grief, revolutions, wheeling and dealing, existential journeys, dinner parties, playing cards, overdressed women, and dancing. But ‘girl’ themes are OK.
Read Jia Tolentino’s Review in The New Yorker.