Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we’ve got a “love freebie” in honor of Valentine’s Day coming up tomorrow. I’m going to twist this a bit to talk about the couples that a book tried to make happen but I never really bought.
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.