Romance is a huge part of today’s society, occupying the minds of many teenagers and adults alike. This phenomenon is translated into the abundance of romance media. Specifically, romance books. In 2016, romance made up 23% of the total US fiction market, ranking just below the General Fiction category. That’s a wildly high amount for a single subsection of books, but it’s understandable due to the high amount of romance in real life.
My problem isn’t with romance books in general, but the books that aren’t romance-centered, but still include the topic of romance. Now, of course, romance on the side could never be the root issue, as it can add additional relationships that the main characters need to navigate, but focusing the plot on romance when the book is not a romance book can get annoying.
For example, the book Come November by Katrin van Dam. I recommend reading it, despite my harsh, perhaps, critiques. This book is about a girl named Rooney whose mother joined a doomsday cult. This is a good plot, a solid plot. However, it also happens to have a sideplot where Rooney falls for her best friend, Mercer. It’s not necessarily a bad sideplot, but the way it’s handled in big situations is unsatisfactory. For example, at the very crux of the story, where ‘doomsday’ had passed and Rooney found out her mother wasn’t paying the rent for their apartment, causing them to be evicted, all the while, her mother is in the hospital from not eating days before and after the ‘doomsday’ date, Rooney chooses not to go live with her dad in New York with her little brother because she’d miss her boyfriend.
Unfortunately, she’s not even punished for her poor decision-making skills. Her newspaper teacher steps up to take her in for the time being, or while high school progresses. This, I believe, is an absolutely awful plot device to make sure Rooney and Mercer are still near each other while everything else heals immediately for no reason. In my opinion, her bad decision should’ve come back to her in the form of it going wrong in one way or another.
Another book, or book series, that I believe did romance poorly with the topics it was handling is the well-known book series, The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. While I’m addressing the entire series, I’m going to narrow my scrutiny to simply the first book in said series. The plot of this book is about one girl and one boy from each of the 12 districts being put into a survival game for the masses’ entertainment.
The romance story within this book is between the main character, Katniss, and Peeta. I believe the way they handled this romance was needlessly creepy, with Peeta claiming he was in love with her in an interview before they were sent off to the games. Love cannot happen unless you are already in a romantic relationship; before that, it’s simply interest or a person making up something in their head that’s not there, or might not be there. It reaches a point where Peeta becomes overly obsessed. What would’ve happened to him if she had not matched his affections?
Prior to the games, Katniss had no evidence of seeing Peeta in a romantic light in the slightest. She only began showing clear signs of liking him romantically during the games. This is a case of trauma bonding, and if you’re still going through what’s traumatizing you, then it can become incredibly codependent, feeling like you need the other person to stay afloat.
Not only that, but during the book, they have no chemistry whatsoever until it “develops” during the games. In an actual relationship, crazy things aren’t going to happen every second that you need to get through, and their interactions when big things aren’t happening are incredibly awkward. Their romance feels extremely forced, with their personalities clashing in such a way that makes them incompatible.
While these are only two examples, I believe they paint a pretty good picture of how novels will focus on romance even when romance isn’t the main focus. It gets obnoxious how so many authors do that, especially when everything goes alright for the main character when everything is set against them.
