Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! Today is Valentine’s Day, y’all, so this week’s topic is All About Romance. Since I’ve actually never done just a straightforward list of my favorite couples in the books I’ve read, I figure that’s a great thing to highlight on the holiday of loooooooove.
Anne and Captain Wentworth (Persuasion): Persuasion was actually my first Austen, and I’ve never lost my fondness for this tale of love found, and lost, and then found again. Anne and Wentworth are a lovely couple and that they come together again after they’ve lived enough to really appreciate each other makes it sweeter.
Scarlett and Rhett (Gone With The Wind): Both bold and brash and so perfect for each other, although by the time Scarlett realizes how perfect he is for her, she’s already pushed him away. I admit, the onscreen portrayals of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable bias me towards them because they’re so amazing.
Jay and Daisy (The Great Gatsby): The kind of all-consuming love that makes someone devote themselves to becoming the kind of person they’d need to be to win the object of their desire is hard to argue with.
Elphaba and Fiyero (Wicked): This incredible take on The Wizard of Oz gives the green woman a full backstory, including a sweet and powerful love story.
Henry and Clare (The Time Traveler’s Wife): I’m not big into “chick lit”, but this story about a woman and man who love each other through a unique blend of space and time was powerful enough to overcome my biases.
Lyra and Will (The Amber Spyglass): I just finished going through this trilogy again on audiobook (which I highly recommend, Pullman narrates his own novels beautifully) and the scenes where they have to part broke my heart all over again.
Sabriel and Touchstone (Sabriel): I’ve always loved the way that Nix wrote Sabriel, so strong and independent, and that her love story feels like what love is in the real world: an addition, not the end-all-be-all of either person’s existence.
Daine and Numair (The Realms of the Gods): I loved this series as a teen, and even though I now look a little more askance at the age difference between the young woman and her teacher, I like the way Pierce paces it. No insta-love here, rather a changing and deepening relationship between two people, which makes the payoff even better.
Alobar and Kudra (Jitterbug Perfume): I really enjoy Robbins, and the centuries-long love that he draws between a Bohemian king and an Indian widow is just one part of an epic about the power of smell and the quest to live forever.
Bridget and Mark (Bridget Jones’ Diary): It feels like sacrilege to say that I didn’t have especially strong feelings about Pride and Prejudice, but this modern take on it gets me much more invested in the relationship between our Lizzie stand-in and her Darcy.