Dishing Junk is a new feature that we will be starting on the PJV. The girls and I have realized that we need a place to vent our book & book blogger troubles. It might be something small and inconsequential that we thought was inappropriate to mention in a review – or it might be a genre-wide gush. This is going to be where we dish it out. You are more then welcome to join in on the discussion.
The characters are in love…now what?
When reading a romance I quickly loose interest after the characters declare their love…unless something else very compelling is going on in the story. Readers like me are the reason writer’s invented love triangles… 
I love reading about Romance, just not what happens after.
The Love is Gone.
One of my favorite parts in a story is the anxiety and build up of the falling in love. The interaction between the two characters and the subsequent flirting or fighting makes the read. If it is a romance centered book. I love reading about how a couple becomes a couple. Yet, if this is one of the only driving factors of the book, basically if the book is a Romance only, I quickly lose interest the moment the couple fall into bed and declare their undying love for each other…so it better be REALLY good to keep me going.
Am I that fickle of a reader? Am I a Slam. Bam. Thank You Ma’am. Type of girl? Get it on and get it over? I just might. I’m assuming that because of this, my real love is the anxiety between the couple…that tingle of like attracts like that a good writer can depict in the character interactions. And once those two magnets are securely in place…the anxiety fizzles because a connection is sealed. No more fizzles. No more reason to read. Why should I continue in a series if the couple is already together? Unless their is some really DRIVING plot that would keep me reading…something that trumps the romance…then I’m out, I’m done.
Do you feel the same about Romance Novels or romance in novels? Or are you totally different?
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Totally the same! As cliche as they have become, I really dig the love triangle. I’m wary of a book that doesn’t have one and I don’t prefer the easy declaration. If the characters start off hating each, all the better.
Yes I agree somewhat…but. I just finished reading a novel by Nora Roberts “Low Pressure” and the ultimate scene was at the end of the book, but I didn’t like the herione doing the whole…i’m frigid, I’m cold and I can’t please a man mentality either that was depicted all the way through until the end.
I like to read about the couple after the commitment. Jeaniene Frost’s Night Huntress series comes to mind. The near obsessive love that Bones and Cat have for each other is exciting. The care and love they show for one another is sweet and endearing. However, love triangles are fun if done in the right way and you truly cannot guess who will get the girl (or guy).
That’s the series I had in mind in my comment up there as well. I love Cat and Bones! Fighting together against something that is outside of their couple is great.
I agree somewhat. It’s like, okay, they’ve made a connection. What’s left? There definitely has to be more to the story for me to continue.
Agreed. A plot like that (or lack of) makes for an extremely boring read for me. I think this is why I have yet to pick up a romance book that doesnt have a paranormal twist to it. Sometimes even then they can become redundant, i.e. The Calydon Warrior series by Stephnie Rowe. The storylines are great but the the life or death love that the main characters have is declared in the beginning of the book and throughout the story. Its like, ok we get it, cant live without eachother, the sex is amazing, even on the ground in a forest and you feel the urge to battle your fellow warrior for standing to close to your love. This goes on throughout everyone of the stories… that said, it doesn’t stop me from reading everyone and wanting a Calydon warrior of my own, lol. Must be that paranormal twist to them.
I’m not much of a romance reader but I have read quite a bit of Chick Lit and I love all the angsty build-up and the love triangle,etc. but it can be a bit boring to read about a couple living their lives, happily paying bills, watching Modern Family. Isn’t that the reason to read romance? To be taken away from the everyday real life “comfortable’ love story?
You’re definitely not alone. Though if the fights are added just to create drama and don’t feel “real” then it prompts the eye-rolls. Or with Chick Lit the guaranteed “kiss and make up” within the last page or two predictability. That gets boring too. Who wants predictability in romance?
We want passion, heat, angst, heartbreak… Well, I do.
And I sure don’t want to know what comes after – arguing over brands of toilet paper, whose Bogarting the remote, but at the same time the love story can’t feel too formulaic.
Isn’t this the whole Adam and Eve thing? They were perfectly happy in the Garden of Eden, but Eve was clearly bored and tempted by the snake. Now it’s not a snake but the “triangle” guy.
Okay, I’m going off on a tangent and way off topic. I will step away from the blog comment…
I am actually the opposite! I loathe love triangles. And I love romance, but I think it’s possible to still have romance, fun and different kinds of tension between the main characters, even after they have become a couple and declared their flame.
Some of my favorite romance books are not strictly romance though, there has to be some kind of other plot going on as well, like a mystery, a murder, or something paranormal. But I love the series where there is one couple who actually stays together for several books, without much trouble between them, where they fight something else – together.
Sometimes I have to stop reading a series after the couple has been together for one book or more. It just gets boring, especially if the love is a main focus. Even with mysteries…or crime novels like JD Robb, I found the main tension was because the couples weren’t together. I think this is one of the main reason a lot of television series will keep a couple a part for the good majority of the run…just because they know once the couple hooks up it’s all over.
On TV shows, I sometimes get frustrated with all that back-and forth between someone who I think should be together, but I see what you mean.
At the same time, I think it’s difficult to write something where there is a strong couple, and still keep the tension going – who wants to read or watch changing diapers and fighting about who left the toothpaste open?
If a love triangle is well done, if both of the love interests are ‘worthy’ I can understand that the girl (mostly, it’s the girl who has two guys she’s pining for in the books I’ve read) is having trouble choosing.
It’s very interesting to me to see how many readers actually like the love triangles, and the tension, though. It helps me understand why so many books have a more or less balanced triangle as part of the plot.
I’m the same here, really. There has to be tension, anxiety, a really good plot outside of the relationship, to make a book loveable for me once the couple is together. It doesn’t have to be a love triangle, but something has to be there to keep me on the edge.
Nothing in life is that easy, so it needs some grit to it to ring true. I may read to escape reality, but it still has to be believable.
I’m the opposite: I’d honestly rather not have any romance at all, I feel like a lot of that romantic build-up that I find in books is just the same over and over again, regardless of whether or not I switch authors. This guy is a jerk, now he’s not, now he saved me, now I have to save him, etc. etc. If someone can recommend me something different I’ll definitely give it a try.
I’d love to see more solid friendships between guys and girls in the books that I read, and sometimes being friends with a person can reveal more about them than if they were a lover. I really don’t like the build up, I just want to get on with the plot!
You make me laugh
I like the tension, but if the author can have the couple get together and keep the tension through misunderstanding or something else, I’m okay with that. What I hate is when the couple is *almost* there and something happens, then they get to that point again and something happens…don’t tease me like that!
I’ve actually always found this an odd thing about books–or perhaps really about the readers who buy them, and force the authors to write them this way. There’s a huge focus on building the romance, and once the characters are actually together, everything metaphorically dies. So the authors feel compelled to make the lovers have dramatic arguments to build more “tension.”
It just all seems so pessimistic to me. I would love to see a book that manages to make romance seem interesting after the first kiss, the first “I love you,” the first whatever–because I think actual relationships ARE romantic. We just never see them in books. (Except, perhaps in L. M. Montgomery, and this is one of the reasons I love her!)
On a somewhat related note, I do have friends I feel have had problems in their own, real-life relationships because they think it’s not interesting enough that they’re actually in a relationship. So, while this clearly is not the case for EVERY reader, I think it could do some readers, particularly teens, serious good if authors would portray solid relationships that are are still happy. Yes, it would be different from the wooing phase, but I still think there’s lots of potential in this area.
I really liked the sequel to Someone Else’s Fairytale by E.M Tippetts called Nobody’s Damsel because it focused a lot on building their relationship. They didn’t have dramatic arguments, but what I thought was real life kind of situations. I haven’t had a book really speak to me realistically like that before and i loved it. I’m impressed when authors can make me believe that two people are in love just as much after they are together than they were before they admitted it to each other.
I agree with a lot here. Myself, I love romance but when it’s well-written. Sticking to YA look at Derek and Chloe in Kelley Armstrong’s The Darkest Powers; there’s a but of a triangle there with Chloe’s brother but the overall action and supernatural part of the book is the main focus, not ‘our lives are in danger but Chloe choosing a boyfriend is so much more important’. There isn’t even real flirting, it’s all about interaction and gradual build-up.
I feel like I was so invested with the two of them that went they finally admit their feelings, and start getting together and it shows that it doesn’t make everything okay but it gives them something solid to hold on to I was just really happy and enjoyed the book; so much more than I would have if they’d just started on about how epic their love is our whatever halfway through book 2
I love the build up to romance, like you. But I’m a sucker for the what happens next part… I love to see two people who are already in love learn to work together and combine their lives and figure out how to be open with each other. All that good stuff. I don’t get that often from books, but I like how it solidifies the relationship.
In a way I do agree with you. Reading about the couple’s journey, how they go from strangers to friends to Something More, is one of the most enjoyable aspects of any novel. But I find just as much enjoyment in reading about what happens next- how this couple handle being a couple. Not many authors can pull this off. Not many try but those that accomplish it well end up writing something absolutely amazing. This is probably why I don’t like love triangles as well. I would really rather read about how their relationship develop than reading about the love interest tennis match the characters have got.