Every now and again, an imaginative newer author announces online that they’ve read too many romances with a happy-ever-after ending and they want to publish something different, something original, something memorable. They’re publishing something new: a romance that doesn’t have a happy ending.
It usually takes around three microseconds before two things happen:
- Someone points out that the happy ending is obligatory in romance. Without a happy ending, it’s a love story.
- Someone comments how many times this topic has been discussed before, always with the same outcome.
The person who made the original comment may double down on their comment. Perhaps they’ll say it’s time someone shook up the genre. Perhaps they’ll claim that books by a certain other author (often Nicolas Sparks) don’t always have a happy ending.
Never mind Nicolas Sparks, reply the romantic purists.
Nicholas Sparks may have sold more novels than there are stars in the sky (or maybe not. I don’t know how many novels he’s sold or how many stars there are in the sky), but Nicolas Sparks does not write romance novels. He writes contemporary fiction aimed at women, often with a romance element. But they’re not always romance novels.
Why not?
Because Romance Writers of America define a a romance novel as a novel where …
the love story is central to the plot, and the story has an emotionally satisfying ending.
Readers expect this happy-ever-after ending and won’t be happy with any other kind of ending … especially not a story that’s classified as a love story.
As any romance reader will tell you, “love story” is code for “someone dies”.
As readers, we often look down on these love stories as not being true romance.
I’m a long-time romance reader who has engaged in this debate myself, yet I have to acknowledge it’s only telling part of the story.
While the romance might be the start of the story, it truly is only the beginning.
As Christians, we fall in love and marry, vowing “until death us do part”.
Our lives are love stories, not romances.
So here’s a question:
Why are all the books romances?
Why aren’t there any love stories – books or series that show marriages, not just romances?
Some do exist.
Janette Oke got this right with her bestselling Love Comes Softly (the story of Clark and Marty, and their many children) and A Prairie Legacy series (the story of one of Clark and Marty’s grandchildren). The long running story of Clark and Marty’s romance and life lasted through their children and grandchildren, with Oke finally finishing the saga saying she couldn’t write any more because Clark and Marty were old, old enough that they should be dead, yet she couldn’t have them die on the page because readers wouldn’t want that.
I’m not the only reader to agree that was the right choice.
Despite being an avid romance reader (and one who would not think kind thoughts if a book classified as a romance didn’t have a happy ending), I would like to see more novels that focus on life beyond the romance – marriage, raising a family, juggling a career, getting old together.
Love this. Thank you, Iola!
I sometimes read love stories. But I do prefer romance … simply because I often read for escape, so looking forward to a HEA is satisfying.
I prefer romance. I like the getting to know you, falling in love, wondering if the other person likes you back, and all that jazz. I’m less likely to pick the book up if they are already engaged (hence why I questioned myself over writing one of those stories!). Or if I know it’s going to take a few books before the couple ever get together, than I won’t read it. That’s just too long.
Erica Vetsch’s latest series is the exception to that for me. I was willing to wait for hers, but she’s building a slower relationship that still has the right elements to keep me reading through the series. I get my ‘oh yay, happy moment’ in each of her books, and it still follows the exception ARC, just over 3 books instead of one.
Also, if I know they are already married, I normally don’t want to read it. Partly, because there isn’t the ‘falling in love’ moment, and partly because I wonder if I’m going to have to contend with a bedroom scene or even a closed-door mention, when I don’t like either of those in my book. Plus, they just don’t interest me.
I do however like it when the couple appear as secondary characters in a continuing series.
Yes, Janette Oke did this well overall, but some of her books also had another romance running alongside Marty and Clark’s story. That kept me reading.
But I also had less choices back then. Nowadays, I’d probably skip over some of her books in favourite of a romance. Personally, I think it’s just taste, and what I’m looking for as a reader.
But then, I read less women’s fiction, and love stories sound more like women’s fiction to me. So, I think it depends on what your reader is looking for, and if you can give it to them. For me personally, it’s a harder sell if it’s not a romance. And I will be very, VERY annoyed if there is no happy ending.
You raise a lot of great points, especially about Marty and Clark: there were always other relationships, and there weren’t nearly so many options around what to read!
I have to admit that if I pick up a romance where the couple is already engaged, I wonder what’s going to split them up and who the heroine is going to end up with … because surely it’s not her current fiance.
I would definitely read a love story! And this made me think of something my critique partner Rachael Bloome does very cleverly in her Blessings Bay series.
Each individual book is still a romance, with a new couple and the expected satisfying romantic ending, but alongside those romances she carries forward a long-running story involving the couple from Book 1 and a little boy they foster. So the original couple’s romance arc has finished, but their love story hasn’t. We get to see them living out their HEA as life continues to happen to them, without their relationship having to be thrown into crisis to manufacture another romantic arc.
I think it’s an ingenious way of giving readers both things: the complete romance they expect from each individual book, and the longer story of what happens after a couple have chosen each other.
I should add that I think this requires a pretty high level of plotting skill to pull off. The books have four POV characters: the two people falling in love in that particular book, and the established couple whose ongoing family story with their foster son continues across the series. So Rachael is simultaneously developing a complete romance and another couple’s continuing love-and-family story, while weaving the threads together so they belong in the same novel. Having critiqued two of the books while they were still unpublished manuscripts, I’ve been impressed by how deftly she handles it.
Maybe that’s one possible answer to your question. We don’t necessarily need to replace romances with love stories. A series can contain both: a complete romance in each book, and a longer love story unfolding across the series.
And another answer as to why we don’t see more of it: it’s very hard to do it well.
Thanks for a very interesting article.
Thanks, Milla 🙂
I haven’t read Rachael Bloome’s Blessings Bay series, so thank you for the recommendation. I can see that would be difficult to write well, as you don’t want readers skipping chapters to get to their favourite.