Let’s Talk Bookish: Fictional Romances

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted with Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Book Nook Bits has hosted since April 2022.

What a great topic for this week! If you’ve followed for a while, you’ll know I’ve been reading more and more romance books, and I definitely think believability is such a key factor in my enjoyment of them, so this is going to be a really fun topic to talk about.

Let’s Talk Bookish February 16th:
What Makes a Fictional Romance Believable?

Prompts: In honour of Valentine’s Day, here’s a romance related topic! What makes romance in books believable and compelling? What makes fictional romance feel fake? Who are your favourite bookish couples?

There’s some tropes that work well in fantasy/paranormal/etc romances than contemporary – and maybe historical – romances, which if they were to appear in more realistic books would make it feel less believable. A suspension of disbelief in a world different to our own (because it’s a different world completely, or our world with vampires/werewolves/fae…) is much easier to sustain, and in those kind of books, things like instalove, fated mates, even enemies to lovers feels more believable than if we came across instalove in a contemporary romance.

Instalust is different, and I think can work well to spark the initial attraction between two characters. Believability comes from how the characters act and interact around each other – if the dialogue feels natural, and if we can get to know what the characters see in each other. I’ve read books where characters act in a way that would have us all yelling “red flag!” if it was real life, and you never quite get into their love interest’s head enough to understand what they might actually see in them. A talented romance writer will show you (not tell!) that these characters are in love, in the way they treat each other, act around each other, act towards external and internal circumstances.

It’s also in the thoughts of the characters – characters can act one way but if we’re in their POV, we can see their logic and reason as to why they maybe accidentally insulted the love interest, or we can see that their cold, standoffishness is because they’re attracted to the love interest, and we can understand their reasoning for doing so. However, if we don’t get the POV of the ‘standoffish’ character, we need to see something more through the other POV to understand why our character is so determined to keep trying with them.

So, believability comes down to how a character acts towards and thinks about the other person. As for what makes it feel fake, in contemporary I feel like when the characters have only known each other a few days but act like their whole life is over when they hit the third act breakup. Or when we don’t actually get to see much of the characters together – I’ve read a handful of books that spend a lot of time focusing on the two characters’ lives outside each other, which is fine, but sacrifice the reader seeing the relationship develop, or time-skip too much after a handful of dates and suddenly the characters are together but as readers we’ve actually only seen them meet and go on one date, so it feels like there’s a chunk missing.

Showing and telling is important here, too – a romance feels less believable if what we see doesn’t match up to what we’re told; we can be told the hero is very kind, but if we never see his kindness in action, it makes you wonder how the love interest even knows this. This is especially important in those subgenres that require a larger amount of disbelief – you can have your characters fall instantly in love or be bonded/fated together or one turns into a wolf at the full moon or one’s a fae or vampire or anything else you want, but the relationship itself still needs to be believable. Here, the focus needs to be more on characterisation – even in a world totally different than our own, we need to understand the choices the character makes. We shouldn’t be asking why he would sacrifice his kingdom for this character, or why she would throw herself in front of a dragon to save her love interest – we should know he’s doing it because when they met there was a magical spark between them and they felt their connection because they’re fated but also they seem to like spending time together so when she’s kidnapped he goes feral searching for his mate. And we know these two over here have been thrown together by circumstance, and braved many storms, and have grown ever closer, so when one looks like they’re about to lose the other, of course she’s going to do everything in her power to stop that.

It massively comes down to characterisation, no matter the subgenre. Fictional relationships feel believable when we know the characters well enough to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, and because we see their loved one directly through their eyes, we kind of fall in love with them a little bit, too. Relationships are realistic when the characters are realistic, and they start feeling fake when the characters don’t feel very fleshed out.

And, some of my favourite bookish couples (and I did a Top Ten Tuesday on this last year, actually, so I’ll try and keep this to books I’ve read in the last 12 months) are – Persephone and Hades in Girl, Goddess, Queen / Alessandro and Aisling in #Sweets for Love / Mika and Jamie in The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches / Ziggy and Sebastian in If Only You / Eden and Anna in Stars Collide / Dani and Zafir in Take a Hint, Dani Brown.

Looking at these couples, one thing stands out about their relationships – they support each other. They work together to tackle the challenges that come their way, and when once faces the obstacle, the other is there to help them through it. In essence, they’re all partners, and the authors for each do a great job at showing that through the events of the books.