Can anyone suggest romance books that include AFTER engagement or marriage? I always hate when a romance novel ends after they get engaged. Like I want to keep reading a story about them after that. Does that make sense?
Romance is all about getting to know the other person, will they/won’t they suspense, things being obstacles in the path of love [eg Romeo and Juliet.]
Once people are in a longterm partnership/marriage – well, they’ve arrived! No more suspense, no more obstacles – which makes for a dull story.
So if there are books about ‘afterlife’, they tend to be about -ve obstacles within marriage, eg affairs, abuse, problems with teenage children, divorce etc.
If you don’t do these negative storylines, what would a book about a happy marriage be like? I can’t imagine it would be very gripping.
I can think of plenty of modern novels where there is a happyish marriage in the background – but I don’t know how you’d write a whole book about just the romance of being married.
The only one that comes to mind is Busman’s Holiday by Dorothy L Sayers, which is the last of her Peter Wimsey crime novels – in previous books, he meets and woos Harriet Vane, and in this final book, they’ve just got married; and then various crimes happen on their honeymoon which Wimsey has to solve. And the reason it stays romantic is because every time they start to get honeymoony, another body crops up…
Westanadearleader05 on
Well, since you didn’t specifically request a romane novel, I would like to recommend Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (YA fantasy I guess?). It is a series and it has 2 trilogies, in both we get to see the progressions of marriages. The marriage in the second era is pretty awesome! I also like the books a lot regardless, though I might be a bit biased since those were the books that got me back into reading after a long break.
GapDry7986 on
I think there are a lot of urban fantasy/paranormal romance that follows happy couples: Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Nalini Singh, Jeaniene Frost, etc.
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Romance is all about getting to know the other person, will they/won’t they suspense, things being obstacles in the path of love [eg Romeo and Juliet.]
Once people are in a longterm partnership/marriage – well, they’ve arrived! No more suspense, no more obstacles – which makes for a dull story.
So if there are books about ‘afterlife’, they tend to be about -ve obstacles within marriage, eg affairs, abuse, problems with teenage children, divorce etc.
If you don’t do these negative storylines, what would a book about a happy marriage be like? I can’t imagine it would be very gripping.
I can think of plenty of modern novels where there is a happyish marriage in the background – but I don’t know how you’d write a whole book about just the romance of being married.
The only one that comes to mind is Busman’s Holiday by Dorothy L Sayers, which is the last of her Peter Wimsey crime novels – in previous books, he meets and woos Harriet Vane, and in this final book, they’ve just got married; and then various crimes happen on their honeymoon which Wimsey has to solve. And the reason it stays romantic is because every time they start to get honeymoony, another body crops up…
Well, since you didn’t specifically request a romane novel, I would like to recommend Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (YA fantasy I guess?). It is a series and it has 2 trilogies, in both we get to see the progressions of marriages. The marriage in the second era is pretty awesome! I also like the books a lot regardless, though I might be a bit biased since those were the books that got me back into reading after a long break.
I think there are a lot of urban fantasy/paranormal romance that follows happy couples: Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Nalini Singh, Jeaniene Frost, etc.