Anna Steele and Christian Grey (50 Shades of Grey): Yes, I read these books. Yes, all three of them. And I never quite figured out what was supposed to be especially romantically compelling about them. I think most of us have had enough good sex with bad partners to know that just banging alone doesn't make a relationship.
Tess Durbeyfield and Angel Clare (Tess of the d'Urbervilles): It's supposed to be tragic when he learns about her past, and instead of understanding because his own past isn't spotless, ditches her. But he basically never saw her as an actual person in the first place. She was always an object. Not romantic.
Romeo and Juliet (Romeo and Juliet): Two teenagers who've known each other for like a second and a half but then of course they get married and then kill themselves over each other. That's not love it's hormones.
Madeline and Leonard (The Marriage Plot): The love triangle in this book has a weak third leg, but honestly even the central relationship didn't really work for me. They never seem suited to each other at all...I know that early-20s-mistaking-drama-for-passion but I couldn't understand what either of them thought they were getting out of their relationship.
Sookie Stackhouse and Quinn (All Together Dead): Sookie has plenty of boyfriends over the course of the Southern Vampire Mysteries, but Quinn was my least favorite. Maybe because their relationship never really gets off the ground? I'm not sure, it just never really worked for me.
Marianne Dashwood and Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility): I love this book for the relationship between the sisters, but it felt kind of crappy for the lively, intense Marianne to end up with this much-older, buttoned-up dude. It felt like he was a better match for Elinor, actually.
Rachel Chu and Nick Young (Crazy Rich Asians): For two people super-in-love, they barely seemed to talk about anything important. How can you be dating someone seriously enough to be living together and just never really talked about your family?
Elise Perez and Jamey Hyde (White Fur): Despite some good quality prose, this book fell flat for me because I never really bought into the desperate, crazy, take-no-prisoners love affair that's supposed to hold everything together.
Anne Welles and Lyon Burke (The Valley of the Dolls): These two just want such different things out of life. Also they're both pretty boring.
Natasha Rostova and Pierre Bezukhov (War and Peace): Pierre is such a nerd and Natasha is such a delight and she can do so much better than him I hate that they end up together.
I unfortunately also read all three 50 shades book and I never got what people see in this 'romance'... Also so agree with Romeo and Juliet - it's just ridiculous, not romantic. :)
ReplyDeleteMy excuse to myself is that I was studying for my legal bar exam at the time, so I needed something that required as little thinking from me as possible to read!
DeleteIn defence of Colonel Brandon and Marianne - I think they kind of suit because they're both such drama queens. Brandon's a real romantic, more so than Willoughby who ended up just going after the money, and he likes music and poetry and things. I think he would have been lively enough once he was married to Marianne :) Totally agree about Romeo and Juliet though, and fifty shades. And I HATE Angel Clare, haha
ReplyDeleteMy TTT: https://basedonthebook.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/top-ten-tuesday-love-freebie-favourite_13.html
That's a good point...now that I'm thinking about it in a long-term kind of way, I could see them maturing into a solid partnership. She definitely needed someone more grounded than she was, but I wanted someone younger and more "fun" for her. We can all agree that Angel was the wooooooorst, though!
DeleteHa ha thank you for putting how I feel about Romeo and Juliet into words! Why do people think that play is romantic? It's a flippin' tragedy!
ReplyDeleteMy TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/top-ten-tuesday-146/
Maybe so many of us read it when we're teenagers so we think it makes sense? Thinking about it as an adult, though, yikes
DeleteBahaha - love your 50 Shades comment!! I never bought that either. How she'd all of a sudden tolerate S&M and how he'd be attracted to someone apparently so average. He seemed way to egotistical for that. But, I do think the guy playing him in the movie is hot!
ReplyDeleteI did buy White Fur though...the whole "wrong side of the tracks" attraction thing.
Jamie Dornan is pretty fine, but I watched the first movie and he had NO chemistry with Dakota Johnson (who I thought did really good work making Ana into a character worth watching because the script gave her NOTHING)
DeleteYES to Romeo and Juliet. I've never seen the romantic appeal of that story, even though so many people adore it. It's weird. Quinn was also my least favorite Sookie boyfriend. Or maybe Bill, to be honest. I can't quite remember from the books, but the TV show fostered my dislike for Bill. Love your list!
ReplyDeleteBill was THE WORST in the show, but he basically faded out after the first couple books so he wasn't that bad?
Delete