Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Just a quick glance over my keepers and I’m kind of surprised to see that my answer is that one of the protagonist is ‘broken’.
Some kind of emotional or physical pain or abuse that the MC has to overcome to be with the other. If the story shows emotional strength and character growth then it’s a favorite.

Just as quickly I know I hate a storyline that is based on they can’t be together because one of them had their ‘wittle hearts broken by a meanie’ when they were 18. Grow up already.

Wrong side of the tracks is always good, as is the competition between two people with similar professional goals, but my favorite is the older woman/younger man.  Mostly because it’s really such a non-factor, but there’s still such a social divide there, in terms of acceptability.  Someone‘s always going to be against this relationship because they somehow think they’re something inherently wrong with it.  We haven’t yet socially gotten to a place where it’s okay for a woman to regularly be a fair amount older than a man (I’m talking ten years or more) the same way it’s accepted for a man to be considerably older than a woman.

Even the partners in the relationship can have issues with it, because of the cultural divides they have to overcome as well as any external forces trying to keep them apart.

Wow. Good question- here’s hoping I’ve had enough coffee to formulate a coherent answer!

I second the ‘damage to healing’ motif- as long as the damage is enough to be believable. Too much damage dealt with too quickly won’t work either. I can’t buy that a character who was abused for twenty years will overcome those issues in a hot Weekend Of Road Trip Wackiness. It’s all about the balance.

I like the idea that they can’t be together because the character is looking for a type. I enjoy seeing the characters grow and become open (in a realistic manner) to the fact that *this* person is the right one- not their idealized notion of who they wanted. When they realize that they weren’t looking for a person- just a thing or arm candy. Hope that made sense.

I really really dislike ones that are overly simplistic. His ex had blonde hair and she cheated on him- thus the heroine (blonde) is a filthy hooor too. It just makes me think that the hero is a moron that’s not worth all this trouble anyway. Fallacy (hur hur) of Logic need not apply.

I can’t usually buy into the Lord/peasant/hula dancer in a brothel conflict either. I have read a few books that handled this in a good way- the couple moved to America to live. That I could buy. Back then there wasn’t a lot of DMV’s so they could make up whatever story they needed to. I can suspend the reality and just go with it. It’s still a bit hard to swallow that they would be able to get along and agree on how to raise children, should they have any. Just two very very different worlds.

Last one- please dear God- No More Secret Lordships/Princesses. At the rate romance novels hand them out every single mofo alive between 850-1900 AD was a freakin princess. Was there some sort of Title of the Month club?

I’m really eager to see everyone’s thoughts on this. Good question.

I don’t think I have any “favorite” conflict in plot… almost anything will work for me if it’s well written.  I mean, even really, really good conflict can be screwed up by crap writing.

I’m getting a little bit tired of “We can’t be together because I’m a vampire, and you’re not,” in paranormal romance.  I’ve always thought there was a pretty easy fix to that, right?  And yeah, the vampire man always says, “I don’t want to turn you into a soulless monster like me,” but isn’t what he’s really saying just, “I’m not ready for an eternal commitment?”  Unless you’ve got a Buffy-esque mythos going on, where everyone changes dramatically upon being changed, what’s the prob, vampire Bob?

Basically, if a conflict between the characters is believable enough that I can go, “If I were in this situation,  I would feel the same way,” then it’s my favorite.  Stuff that can be cleared up with a conversation or just not being stupid and stubborn?  Blah, I can get that on Rock of Love Bus.

Ditto JoanneL and JenD. I like it when one or both of them has a Serious Issue or really, genuinely believes they’re not worthy or deserving of love. My favorite books to reread have that conflict and my favorites that I’ve written have it too; I like the moment when they finally become brave enough to feel or accept love, and for me the conflict is always interesting because they’re really battling themselves in the deepest way.

It can’t be something so powerful that, despite their decision to be together, it will likely ruin their lives anyway. She’s a courtesan, he’s a lord, and what do you mean their children won’t be welcomed in society anywhere they go?! It’s difficult for me to “suspend my disbelief,” to quote Jennifer Crusie, in those circumstances because the reality is harsh.

Heh.  I’ve seen this multiple times from multiple people.  I have to admit, when I first started writing it probably dissuaded me from writing what I do best—which is writing about class-mismatches.  The heroine of my novel is not a courtesan, but she sure isn’t a class match for the hero.  He is way above her—at least in the social sense—because she’s illegitimate and literally has no idea who her parents are.  (This isn’t what keeps them apart.)

But . . . you know, honestly, I don’t buy this “ruin their lives thing.”  I mean, yes, I agree there were large swathes of society who would shun their children.  But . . . so what?  The haut ton isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.  It’s not like the tippy-top of polite society was a delightful Eden, where everyone was blissfully happy, so long as they were invited to the right parties.

To put things in perspective:  Perhaps I feel this way because when my parents married back in the early 60s both sides of their family told them they were ruining their lives.  My dad’s very white parents told him that most people would run the other way when they found out he was marrying a Chinese girl; my mom’s Chinese dad said that Chinese boys wouldn’t want to marry her children, and white boys would all be too proud for them.

And you know what?  Both sets of parents were right, in a way.  When I was growing up, my father had coworkers who literally wouldn’t talk to my mother.  (And this was with a Chinese-white alliance—which these days wouldn’t even attract the slightest comment except in very isolated areas—I can’t even imagine how difficult it would be for people in even less acceptable racial pairs.)  My parents were shunned by a lot of unthinking people.

So they made friends with thinking people instead.

The fact that by marrying a courtesan, your children might lose the chance of marrying into the class of people who insist that you not marry outside the class of boring people who sit on their asses for a living?  Your children might miss the chance to marry someone who can’t look past bloodlines to the person underneath?

Dude.  That is so not ruining your life.

I think my favorite is where ethics and duty clash and/or where one will have to give up something important to be with the other—something life changingly important. What happens down the line? Does guilt start to kick in? How about bitterness? Especially if the couple encounters a rocky period. When I think HEA, my emphasis is on the EVER. What happens after the book ends and the couple travel through life together? Is their love strong enough to withstand the negative emotions? How does s/he respond when s/he yells, “I gave up everything important to be with you and now you give me shit?” That’s when my imagination kicks in and I want the author to give me enough reasons to believe the love with last and overcome.

I’m getting a little bit tired of “We can’t be together because I’m a vampire, and you’re not,” in paranormal romance.  I’ve always thought there was a pretty easy fix to that, right?  And yeah, the vampire man always says, “I don’t want to turn you into a soulless monster like me,” but isn’t what he’s really saying just, “I’m not ready for an eternal commitment?”  Unless you’ve got a Buffy-esque mythos going on, where everyone changes dramatically upon being changed, what’s the prob, vampire Bob?

Amen, Jennifer! That and the vampire saying, “We can’t be together because I’ve watched all that I love die and I just can’t take it anymore.”

Courtney, what a fascinating perspective.  My family has a similar history.  My grandmother, who was considered black because she was Cuban…by my grandfather’s Italian family.  For the record, my grandmother had pale skin, blue eyes and very straight dark hair…she was white as white could be.  Her family was from Spain.  But it didn’t matter—to my grandfather’s family, she was black and therefore, this was an interracial marriage that was illegal.  (My grandfather’s sisters even when to the courthouse the following day to try and have the marriage nullified.)

My grandmother’s family wasn’t even better.  To them, all Italian men beat their wives.

Needless to say, my grandparents were married for over 50 years and our family wasn’t taught such prejudices.  But it would be a great conflict for a book…because it is very real.  However, it’s not the end of the world, the characters are better off…but it doesn’t take away the pain and torture of being ostracized by the people you’ve loved your entire life.  It’s heart-wrenching when I read that kind of conflict.

To me, any conflict can work in the hands of the right author.  My favorite conflict to date was in the Kresley Cole book where the heroine was long dead and a ghost and the hero was insane and full of self-loathing.  I kept reading thinking, “how is she going to fix this?”  But she did and I loved every word!

Comment verification: youre52.  Hey!  I am NOT!

Jennifer Armintrout said
but isn’t what he’s really saying just, “I’m not ready for an eternal commitment?”

*snort*! OMG… spewing coffee all over a new keyboard!

I don’t think that I have a favorite conflict persay.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  I guess it depends on the rest of the story.  I just finished a book by Rachel Gibson (Truly Madly Yours) in which the hero doesn’t think that he is good enough for the heroine.  Usually I like this type of conflict, but not this time.  (Probably because I felt like the heroine wasn’t good enough for him.)  One of my favorites is the last book in the finding the dream trilogy, where this conflict works really well.

My uber-favorite reason for two people to be kept apart is the Buffy Factor - something real wherein if the couple does get together, one or the other of them would suffer some kind of physical issue (i.e., become evil). Remember the old show “Life Goes On” when Kellie Martin’s Becca Thacher fell in love with Chad Lowe’s Jesse and he was HIV positive? So they couldn’t be together physically for fear of her safety. I love that kind of tragic situation. However, this does present the ultimate challenge to find a realistic HEA.

Secondly, I like conflict that arises from one of the characters already being involved in a relationship with a person who isn’t a bad guy/girl. For example, the whole Pam/Jim romance in the first couple seasons of “The Office” was so great because Pam’s engagement to Roy kept Jim and Pam from acting on their obvious attraction, and Roy was a fairly decent guy, so you could understand why Pam didn’t just dump his ass immediately to run off with Jim. This set up always creates so much UST because the characters can’t act on their wants.

i like best-friends-become-lovers, and like someone else said i also like you’re-not-my-type-why-do-i-find-you-attractive? And i’m TOTALLY a sucker for single dad stories…or even single mom stories, i guess. i don’t come from a single parent household, but i really love kids and if an author writes the kids well and makes them a part of the book in a believable way and/or incorporate it into the “problem” (kid is special needs, or a teenager, or the parent doesnt want to thrust someone new upon them, etc), i love it. oh, and also i like the two high powered executives/doctors/whatevs who are competing but then…boom! attraction. hehe.
NONONO to the “you’re not a vamp and I am”, although i’ll deal with it from certain authors…also NO to “she must ask help from the very lord she’s always despised…yet found so undeniably attractive!!!” *pukes* again, for certain authors i’ll make exceptions, but rarely. hmmm, i think that’s the basics. i could go on, but nobody really wants that ;-)

spamword is europe65—close, i’m in asia (Israel) and it’s 52…

I like protagonists who already have a platonic relationship so the “can’t hop in bed because we’ll ruin what we have if it doesn’t work out” is something I am prone to enjoy. Plus I like knowing the protagonists are building their HEA on an existing—and successful—foundation of friendship. In one way it’s less of a mountain to overcome than “we’ll die if we touch!”, but at the same time I don’t always want the angsty dramas.

That being said, animosity from the past (that isn’t related to a sexual encounter) is a workable premise that can keep two people apart, too. When the protagonists have a valid reason to believe the other person is a tool (based on fact, not rumor or big misunderstandings), it is interesting to see them sort through that. It’s not as much a draw for me when they had an affair that didn’t work out, though. In fact, I am less inclined to read a former lovers story.

I pretty much only read m/m right now, and I adore the closet cases. “I can’t be with you openly b/c I’ll lose to much if I’m out” and them having to learn that, no, it’s better to be in the open. Particularly like military heroes, but not actually finding many of those, unfortunately. Got one in my own head, but he doesn’t actually want to come out and play, unfortunately.  I love it when the MCs overcome a huge internal barrier and/or a huge social taboo.  I also love bestest of all the books wherein the conflict arises during the book, comes out because of the strongly-drawn characters and their relationship. So, not antagonistic to begin with, but during the progress of the relationship, one of the characters (or better, both) does something to trip some switch the other character might not even know they had, and they have to overcome together the problems that arise as a result.  That’s the most realistic romance for me.

I like—- can’t be together due to cultural differences. People from different countries or very different ethnic backgrounds. I’ve lived it so I know what it feels like and really relate to the truth in it.

I hate—- the poor me, I’m so emotionally tortured and broken—- hero. Ugh. Get over yourself already.

For some reason it’s easier for me to say what I DON’T like, than what I DO. I get really irritated when the Hero is constantly pushing the Herione away because “He is not worthy and will not make her happy.” She will be the judge of that!

I agree with the other comments that I enjoy a well written and well handled story line involving emotional scarring or issues they have to get over in order to have a HEA, but after I watch the Hero push her away for 300+ pages, then to have a huge climactic scene near the end where he is HORRIBLY cruel to her, just to PROVE he really is undeserving and bad and she leaves in tears/heartbroken, and then in the last few pages he finds her and reconciles months later…just not as satisfying/believable to me.

I run from friends to lovers 98% of the time. I much prefer the “I despise you utterly - your hands are sexy! Crap!” and it’s close cousin the “You’re not my type! Your hair is pretty! Damn! Couldn’t you have a snaggle tooth???”

Damaged heroes - internal and external - limp, scars, blindness, raging headaches from head wounds - I love them all. The boys who are beastly and think their attentions impose on the heroine, the shrapnel that could kill him with a sneeze, the headaches that make making love to her impossible or so it seems.

I love a good conflict.  My favorites are ones that stem from more than just you like tea, I like coffee.  I like conflicts that stem from a character’s promise to themselves or a code they live by.  One that really digs deep into *who* the character is and—by falling in love—challenges them to really change.  The love has risk.  The love changes them. 

I have a favorite book where both the hero and heroine have suffered horrible loses that have left them both with physical and mental scars and because of that they are perfect for each other… but it offers many challenges for them to get past in order to even try to be together.  He lost his entire family (wife and kids).  She was so injured she can’t ever have children or offer a man a future with a family.  To open up and let someone else in on that kind of pain was, to them, just… wow. 

I think my favorite conflict, though, is when you have two people who seem so opposite, so different, that they can’t possibly fit together… who do.  She’s the light to his dark.  She’s fire to his ice.  And yet they both have the same core characteristic of, say, honor or the same idea of loyalty.  If he’s lacked someone in his life who has ever stood by their word to him, then the heroine is someone who doggedly stands by him through everything because she gave her word.  That kind of thing.  I like finding the “unexpectedly the same” connection between characters because the conflicts tie directly into demonstrating why these two people would and should be together above all others.

JT

idea93.  I’d kill for any book idea at this point.  *sigh*

Wow, I was just thinking the other day that I’ve really enjoyed books where one of the protagonists is a man/woman of God and wind up questioning everything under the sun in their new found love.  Luckily AAR has a huge list of books just like this.  From “To Love and to Cherish” with the lovely Christy, and LaVyrle Spencer’s “Then Came Heaven” with a nun and the church’s janitor, it’s such a huge thing they have to overcome if they want to be together.

I also love the physically scarred heroes (the scarred heroines I’ve encountered have been something lame like “oh dear I have three pox scars on my left foot, how could he possibly ever want to be with me”) who think that they are so deformed they aren’t worthy of love.  Just started reading Zsadist’s book yesterday, and it seems like it will be bursting at the seams with this kind of turmoil.

Damaged and broken, they are my loves. I like friends to lovers and enemies to lovers. Different types, races, cultures, and species (shifters, vamps, etc.). Class miss-matches. I like the ones where one of the characters has to cross-dress for some reason and the other has feelings for them, but is freaked because they don’t swing that way. I get a real kick out of those.

I do like the “we can’t be together because I’m a vamp and you’re not” in short storied, but I can’t do a whole book.

ust started reading Zsadist’s book yesterday, and it seems like it will be bursting at the seams with this kind of turmoil.

I love that one. I like all the other books fine, but Zsadist is my fave for the fact that he is so damaged and broken. I like how, when it comes to the softer emotions, he’s almost child-like in his confusion. It reads true for someone who was damaged when they were so innocent.

How about… exes? I’m picky with this though. It has to be handled just right - so that the story doesn’t become *about* their failed relationship/marriage but that it is still a big part of the story.  I don’t want to read about their hundred heartbreaking fights they had back then. (one is fine, thanks) I want to see how they’re going to deal with each other NOW, and the issues they’re carrying around with them. Preferably when put in a spot where they are forced to deal with each other.

Yeah, I’m in the minority for this one, but I actually can’t stand those emotionally damaged/unworthy of love books. I’ve found two or three good ones, but in general, nothing, and I mean NOTHING makes me roll my eyes and throw it into the nearest wall faster. However, I had a great upbringing, so I ended up very confident, self assured, full of love, and fully accepting of love. So in my mind, anyone who rejects love, for whatever reason… it’s just too foreign, I guess. I should be very thankful I can’t relate to or understand that plot, and that’s why I don’t like it. Hehe.

As for the “we can’t be together” reasons I do love, the cross dressing plot is definitely always fun. Opposites/enemies to lovers is a safe usual as well. Class differences… eh, do or die.

I can take broken/damaged sometimes, but only if it’s handled certain ways.  Too much focus on the bad stuff makes it hard for me to believe in the HEA—it also depresses me, and that’s not why I read romance.  Not enough development of the bad stuff trivializes some important issues (child abuse, rape) and that just pisses me off.  So the balance is important to me in those books.

I enjoy stories where the obstacles are external rather than internal, where the characters recognize that they love one another, but there’s something about the situation they’re in that keeps them apart.  I guess that’s because I get more sappy “I love you” scenes that way, rather than just one big bursting emotional dam at the end of the book.

Of course I’m also a big sucker for more mature characters, so any conflict relating to that (complications from the past, being past child-bearing years, reluctance to give up one’s independence, believable reluctance due to past disappointments) all work for me.  If written well, of course—as others here have commented, and as I have said else where, a good writer can make me love a plot I normally would hate, and bad writing can ruin a favorite trope faster than fish going off in the trunk of my car.

Re-reading comments above, I have to say that I’m also tired of the “vamp/not a vamp” conflict.  And I’m picky about cross-dressing, because that’s closely related to my academic specialty, and it’s way easy to get it wrong and turn me off.  But then I just love it when it’s done well!

I luuuurrrve(TM) Forbidden Love. Katie Ann mentions LaVyrle Spencer’s “Then Came Heaven,” and I want to chime in and say I think Spencer covered almost every trope of forbidden love there is: She’s married to his brother; He’s a working man and She’s rich in the 1890s; She thinks she’s a widow—but she’s not!, etc., etc. One of my favorites is “Family Blessings”, about a 45-year-old widow whose companionship with her late son’s 30-year-old roommate turns to love. O SO GOOD!

I think the reason Spencer can play her readers like weeping violins is because she takes the time and opens up the story so you can really appreciate what going through with the relationship will cost the protagonists. Her later books straddle the line between romance and Women’s Fiction, which means she focuses on stuff beyond the H/H pairing. Frex, in “Family Blessings,” we meet the heroine’s sister-and-business-partner, her college-aged daughter, her parents, and we get a real feel for the family ties that sustain her. Then when she falls for the Hot and Sensitive and Wonderful 30-year-old, everyone around her is horrified. The start withdrawing from the heroine, to the point where she, and the reader, honestly feels she’ll lose everything if she stays with her lover.

It’s hard, for me, to believe a contemporary Forbidden Love (unless, like,  she’s a priest and he’s married or something) but Spencer nails it for me.

Some favorite conflicts which immediately come to mind: 

-  when the hero or heroine was previously sexually involved with the heroine or hero’s same-sex sibling,
-  when the h/h come from different socioeconomic backgrounds: for example, he’s a construction worker/she’s an heiress, or she’s an exotic dancer/he’s a CEO,
-  when the h/h have to deal with “no fraternization” rules - in a military chain of command, or in a corporate environment.

the shrapnel that could kill him with a sneeze

Ha. 

I love damaged characters who learn to heal themselves.  It’s not so much that the lover does the healing as the character is challenged by the loved one and has to rise above.  Stories like that give me hope that all obstacles (many of which we generate ourselves) can be overcome.

Insert kum-ba-ya here.

I recently finished a slightly oldie called Whispers of Heaven by the faboo Candice Proctor. Hero = Irish convict in Tasmania. Heroine = well-to-do educated miss with a fiance. Conflictamundo! If they were caught together, he would be hanged. I couldn’t breathe for how tense some of their love scenes made me feel, part sexual chemistry, part “OMG they’re SO gonna get busted!” It was great. Great great great.

I’m a sucker for a good reunion between former flames. Used to be Lovers by Linda Lael Miller is one of my faves, because it doesn’t rely on the OMFG big secret, but instead focuses on how you have to focus on staying in a relationship. Friends/Enemies to lovers and the broken soul stories when they are done well are perfection.

I love Soulmate books, but when there is a legitimate reason behind the mating. The trend of the superhot stud sniffing ass and proclaiming in he-man speak “you mine” doesn’t cut it. C. L. Wilson’s Tairen Soul series doesn’t fall into that trap.

I hate the older/younger excuse. That doesn’t matter as much nowadays unless your Anna Nicole Smith kissing a corpse.

The I Can’t Be with You Because I am a Superhuman Paranormal Creature and You are a Weak Human That I Will Break During Sex is annoying all to hell. Twilight was a huge hurdle to jump when that seemed like the only excuse/plot device Edward could find.

Damaged heroes and heroines work for me.  I’ve got some damage in my own background, so I’m a big cheerleader for their HEA.  Friends to lovers and exes - meh, can take or leave.  I just don’t buy the whole “I loved you so much when we were 15, and now we’re 30 and the first time I saw you I knew it was still there!” Abhor secret babies with a white hot passion.  Only the very best writers can pull that off for me. 

Enemies to lovers, bring it.  Because I love me some action/adventure, probably my all-time fave is when enemies (either personal or just opposite sides of a conflict) team up to fight an even worse evildoer, and discover each other during the process.  Overcoming preconceived notions and ingrained distrust because you’ve come to know the person (and can’t keep your sweaty hands off their hot bod?)  Full of win!

I read a Nora book (Seaswept, I think) where the heroine was the social worker who placed a foster child with the hero.  In real life, you’d probably get fired for even thinking of dating a client, but it was never mentioned in this story.  It drove me nuts.

I really like relationship-of-convenience stories.  We’re not in love, we got together for purely practical reasons, and may even intend to end it after a certain date or event, but over time we realize we like each other, we like living together, the sex is hawt, and hey! Is this love?  Why yes!  Yes it is!

I love damaged h/h, but I’m finding a little too much actual torture involved in a lot of plotlines these days, and it’s a little squicky for me.  Like, people being carved up in order to reveal their information to the baddies, who are a threat to world peace.  In a romance novel.  Um, no, thanks.  And if 7 out of every 10 heroes out there are emotionally traumatized from their he-man, super-elite past deed to the point of needing rescue by the magic hoohah, then it’s time for a new trend.

And while I love Harlequin Presents as mental candy (they’re like jellybeans, I tell you!), I’m so very glad that the Cruel Millionaire, Miss Understood Waif pairing is mostly a thing of the past.

I have a favourite secondary plot device too:  teenage offspring in the first throes of love.  The h/h are all well and fine, but a lot of the time, I’m more interested in what the hero’s daughter/heroine’s son are getting up to.  In Jill Sorensen’s Crash Into Me, the story that really kept me up until 3:00 am on a worknight was James and Carly? Can’t remember her name.

The trend of the superhot stud sniffing ass and proclaiming in he-man speak “you mine” doesn’t cut it.

I LOVE how you put this. I agree that some of the Fated Mate situations can work really well (Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series comes to mind) but sometimes it’s just unbearable.

I love damaged characters who learn to heal themselves.  It’s not so much that the lover does the healing as the character is challenged by the loved one and has to rise above.  Stories like that give me hope that all obstacles (many of which we generate ourselves) can be overcome.

This is exactly how I feel about tortured heroes/heroines. I don’t think falling in love can make everything better, but I like it when it inspires someone to take steps to make things better. This is how I view Zsadist, actually. Bella doesn’t actually do anything out of the ordinary with him, she’s just there for him and loves him the best she can. I also like how JR Ward gave us the novella about him coming to terms with being a father; just because he decided to try to be a better man for her didn’t mean he was suddenly healed and didn’t have any more problems. I found that to be refreshingly realistic.

I’m sure this goes without saying, but I abhor the Big Misunderstanding That Can Be Resolved in Ten Words or Less. I have read a few where it worked, but that’s it. Shove the idiotic assumptions about what he/she thinks and/or may have done and communicate already.

I also read a lot of MM romance and I actually get bored with the Closet Case conflict, the “should I/shouldn’t I come out” thing. It’s a good conflict and all, but it can be overdone; mostly I jsut want them to grow a pair and make a decision. The one I love is the Shocked Loved Ones: family/close friends are freaked at one of the heroes coming out and the other here has to deal with being the catalyst of the turmoil. I’m also a junkie for the Straight Man Turned Gay for One Man, even though I’m sure that rarely, if ever, happens in real life. I’ll happily suspend my disbelief in favor of watching a guy deal with the fact that playing bedroom games with two joysticks can be awesome, along with the accompanying social/family conflict that comes with suddenly switching.

It can be a hot mess of emotion, which, when handled well, makes the resolution utterly fantastic.

One of the problems I have with contemporaries is that they too often rely on a “can’t be together” reason which is too old-fashioned to make sense: gays in the closet does still work to a certain extent, as does older woman/younger man, but other externals such as race, class and money make we want to say “get an education/a brain/a conscience/a discrimination lawsuit/move town” before getting your HEA. 

Also, I’m sadly judgmental about being married to the wrong person - not much of an excuse these days, to my mind.

Like others above, I’m a sucker for a wounded warrior, not necessarily a military one - there are other battles that need to be fought.

youre89 - not yet, but perhaps one day with luck.

I love the wounded person (usually hero) stories.  I agree with others that JR Ward’s Zsadist is a great example.  I also really like Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrel’s for damaged hero material.

I enjoy internal conflict more so than external reasons.  And the whole you’re a vamp/I’m not - I’ll admit it, I still like that, along with the interspecies issues that come up in paranormals.  I like the Conrad and Neomi story by Kresley Cole (can’t remember the title… Dark Nightly Needs in the Dark Edge of a Dark & Wicked Night?)  She’s got an upcoming story about an ice maiden who can’t be touched without causing the touchee pain.  Gena Showalter’s Lords of the Underworld series has a set of secondary characters who shouldn’t be able to even touch each other…  I can’t wait to learn more about them.  I’m intrigued by that kind of impossible to overcome obstacle.

I didn’t read all the comments, but I always think of what Eleanor says at the end of Sense and Sensibility, to comfort Marianne- something along the lines of, “he’s sad he didn’t marry you now, because he has money and no love and so doesn’t count the money, but if he’d married you, he’d have love but no money, and then the money would be very important. He’d blame you, and you’d try to curtail his spending and you’d both be miserable.” Sort of. It’s been a while.

Anyway, that always stuck with me as a perfectly reasonable insight, and part of why the class differences don’t always do it for me. The problem holds whether the issue is money or really anything else. I’m not saying only dopplegangers will live happily ever after, but they will certainly have fewer hurtles.

That said, my very favorite romance (Peter Wimsy and Harriet Vane) has class as a secondary conflict, which occasionally rises to the forefront, so what do I know?

I so enjoyed Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm because Christian had a stroke. Damaged, but no bad father, or other angst type problems. He wouldn’t have paid attention to Maddie otherwise, but came to rely on her to help him overcome his disabilities. Maddie, however, I could have punched in the nose for her waffling.

I like protagonists who already have a platonic relationship so the “can’t hop in bed because we’ll ruin what we have if it doesn’t work out” is something I am prone to enjoy. Plus I like knowing the protagonists are building their HEA on an existing—and successful—foundation of friendship.

I’m partial to that one too (probably why I’m in the midst of writing it—ha!) combined with a “we work together so a personal relationship would be unprofessional” storyline.  I’m also a sucker for emotionally damaged protagonists who are convinced they’ll screw up every relationship they enter into, but really, as long as the writing is good I’m good with it too.

The only plotline of this type I really dislike is the Dumb Misunderstanding, which used to be pretty common in category romance and could be cleared up in about two minutes if the characters would just get their heads out of their collective asses and talk to each other.  You know the type—she thinks he’s married/engaged, he thinks she’s a trollop, she thinks he’s working for the bad guy, he thinks she’s in love with somebody else, etc., etc.  Enough already!

I like the ones in which a mutual or familial relationship gets in the way. No no no, not incest, but these:

“...because you’re my sibling’s best friend.”

“...because you’re my best friend’s ex.”

“...because you were married to my mother.” (creepy, but it totally worked in Personal Assets by Emma Holly)

“...because you used to babysit me.”

“...because our parents are best friends, so we were practically raised as siblings.”

“...because we spent some time as children in the same foster home.”

I think “...because you’re my boss/employee/teacher/student” is kinda cool too.

And I’m a m/m romance fan, so of course “...because we’re both men” is another favorite of mine.

I just don’t buy the whole “I loved you so much when we were 15, and now we’re 30 and the first time I saw you I knew it was still there!”

Gotta love the variety of taste here.  I just love that conflict, because I lived it (okay, we were 20-something and then 40-something, but it was absolutely like that).  A good writer can make me believe almost anything—as someone has observed elsewhere, Pride and Prejudice can be see as the ultimate Big Misunderstanding That Could Be Cleared Up In One Honest Conversation story, but ohshitman does it work.

I agree that “married to the wrong person” is harder to pull off in contemporaries, although not impossible.  I think the more rigid social/legal codes are a major reason for the enduring popularity of historical romance (in addition to pretty clothes and lovely social rituals).

I get all squicky about “...because you’re my boss/employee/teacher/student” due to my own experience and training in that area.  But sure, it’s forbidden love in action, and I’m not at all surprised that many readers enjoy it.

I wish there were more f/f romance fiction.

I’m also a junkie for the Straight Man Turned Gay for One Man, even though I’m sure that rarely, if ever, happens in real life. I’ll happily suspend my disbelief in favor of watching a guy deal with the fact that playing bedroom games with two joysticks can be awesome, along with the accompanying social/family conflict that comes with suddenly switching.

This had me snickering. This plot line, no matter how well written, is the main reason why I gave up on / fanfic because in 99% of the stories it is the ONLY rationale for the m/m relationship: “I’m not gay, but you are so so awesome, I have to fuck you.” If you like it, at least there is lot of good, free material out there.

Great thread! I’m loving the diversity of answers.

My keepers seem to feature a damaged hero modality—but usually with an unexpected twist. No torture, thanks.

Connie Brockway’s AS YOU DESIRE delivers conflict with a great zinger of a secret. Plus her mild teasing of the genre as a whole with her opening scene…

Julia Quinn’s WHEN HE WAS WICKED—A very strong “I can’t be with you because you were my husband’s best friend and we were both incredibly damaged by his death” plus a secret the hero is trying to keep hidden. Plus a really really hot scene that’s branded into my brain. Hawt I tell you.

Suzanne Enoch’s ENGLAND’S PERFECT HERO—Shell-shocked vet who you just *weep* for as he battles for some semblance of normalcy.

Laura Kinsale’s heroes. Oh yes.

Give me a historical with a damaged hero and some compelling secrets, and I am SO there.

*  because the hero is too broken (I like it when she fixes him.)
*  because our species don’t get along (only for a PNR/UCF fan)
*  because her responsibilities get in the way (I love watching him help her)
*  because he has kidnapped her from her own time/place, they don’t speak the same language, and she has hopes that some day she may be reunited with her husband who was left behind (dibs on that one—it’s my next UCF series)
*  because he’s responsible for her (mmmmmmmmm… a favorite)
* because he’s too old (shoot me—another favorite)
* because we’re both guys!  (shoot me again—another fave!)
* because my power may actually destroy us if we ever have sex (i.e. “The Superman Excuse”)
* because her friends are conniving bitches who think he’s not good enough for her (oddly enough, I’m not a fan of that one)
* because women weaken a man and he has SERIOUS WORK to do (i.e. “The Rocky Excuse”)
* because she has kids and he’s not ‘father material’  (this is a combination platter of the ‘he’s too damaged’ and the ‘she has too many responsibilities’ and sometimes it’s very tasty)
*  because he has a BIG IMPORTANT JOB and she’s too insecure TO UNDERSTAND (i.e. “The Spiderman Excuse.”  Still not a fan.)

and that’s all I gots right now!

I’m also a junkie for the Straight Man Turned Gay for One Man, even though I’m sure that rarely, if ever, happens in real life. I’ll happily suspend my disbelief in favor of watching a guy deal with the fact that playing bedroom games with two joysticks can be awesome, along with the accompanying social/family conflict that comes with suddenly switching.

This had me snickering. This plot line, no matter how well written, is the main reason why I gave up on / fanfic because in 99% of the stories it is the ONLY rationale for the m/m relationship: “I’m not gay, but you are so so awesome, I have to fuck you.” If you like it, at least there is lot of good, free material out there.

I actually don’t like slash fanfic at all; what I read is just regular MM romance that is 100% fiction from small press e-publishers like Torquere, Samhain, Loose Id, etc. (a lot of the pubs on the DRM-free list, actually) When the But I’m Straight conflict is done right, it doesn’t have much to do with sex or lust, just like a man and woman getting together for their HEA doesn’t have much to do with it either. It works best when the “straight” guy has had the occaisional sexual thought about another man, otherwise the complete switch is not really believable. It can also work when a guy has always been gay/bisexual all his life but hasn’t gone to the “dark side” because of something or other, usually family pressures.

If all you got from the /fanfic was that rationale for the relationship happening, I totally understand you giving it up. I would have, too. But yeah, for those who like it, it’s nice that they can get it for free.

One of my favorite conflicts is old lovers that are trying again. I think Kelly Armstrong handled it extremely well in Bitten.

Wow, such diversity of tastes!  Here are mine:

Can’t STAND:
-Big misunderstanding that is easily cleared up by ONE conversation (Judith McNaught, I’m lookin’ at YOU… I can deal with complicated misunderstandings or secrets, like Linnea Sinclair’s books… but not with like, A SINGLE CONVERSATION WOULD FIX THIS)
-Heroine is so feisty!  Hero is so domineering!  Sparks fly!!!  I just can’t deal with anything where they can’t STAND each other at first sight—generally if I hate a guy on sight because he’s a JERK, I’m not going to later be overcome by how incredibly HOT! and MANLY! he is… Stephanie Laurens, this one has your name on it…
-Hero or heroine has a special power… and thus a special complex about being “normal” or that the condition is somehow “bad” so that he or she is unworthy/dangerous/defective… (this can be done well, ex., Lilith Saintcrow, or poorly… a multitude of vampire books)
-Super duper alpha males, especially when they initially “force” the woman to do anything causing hatred that is somehow later healed by luuuurve (e.g., Catherine Coulter oldies).  These are hit-the-wall books for me.

LOVE:
-Damaged heroes and heroines who have good reason to be and learn and grow—I like this best as expressed through learning to trust someone (as opposed to the Magic Hooha… like Dain and Jessica… what takes him so long is really, truly, trusting and believing that anyone could love him).
-Friendships that blossom into love, because that’s how mine went!  Julia Quinn is at her best with these, and these are often the funniest romances.
-And of course when the hero or heroine has some responsibility/destiny/threat to face that really truly *will* prevent the HEA without a clever workaround/sacrifice… these are the BEST, when done right, because they present the stuff of true tragedy/really scary plots since the obstacles are REAL and can’t be solved even by personal growth, learning to trust, etc.  These are the ones to read when you feel like crying buckets!  I find these more in sci-fi/fantasy than in more “traditional” romance.  (A favorite—Emma Bull’s Falcon).

Ok that got long!  =)

The fact that by marrying a courtesan, your children might lose the chance of marrying into the class of people who insist that you not marry outside the class of boring people who sit on their asses for a living?

But in past times, yeah, that would ruin your life. Because it would ruin your network, your connections, your line of credit. The few times it did happen, the couple was totally isolated, not wanted by his side or hers. They were the equivalent of the CEO, the Chairmen of the Board. Marriages were a business arrangement, although very often they ended up happy. By marrying a courtesan, the duke would lose his position in society, he’d lose the family networks, the influence, and so he would imperil hundreds, probably thousands of employees. So to me, it’s putting self above duty, which I don’t see as very heroic. They did anything but sit on their asses for a living. So the courtesan/duke thing is so laughable, unless you are very very careful with it, that it just bears no relation to how people thought, acted and the way economics worked then.

To what I like - love the Romeo/Juliet thing, especially the Tony/Maria variation. And I love physically damaged heroes who either have to learn to live with their condition or fight their way through and can’t do it without her.

Wow, I can’t stand the “straight man turned gay for one man only” or the “two straight men who turn gay for each other.”  oddly, I’m into fantasy, but I just can’t suspend my belief that much.

I love the whole frenemies and the good friends to lovers

I dislike the “I’m a cop and I’ve seen all of my co-workers go through a divorce and I don’t want to put you through that, or have you wonder if I come home alive every night”

I secretly love the “secret” trope, unless the secret is really stupid, like one of Johanna Lindsey books when the hero was a bastard and it didn’t seem like much of a secret. 

I also love the, two young people in love, He doesn’t have any money so he leaves and earns his fortune and comes back filthy rich and She’s destitute and He wants to punish her but ends up still being in love with her instead (I’m sure Wentworth never wanted to quite punish Anne, but I love Persuasion - Jane Austen- with a passion)

I have to admit I love ones where the heroine is a single mom and the Alpha Male Hero is afraid he’d accidently hurt the kids. I like it because they’re being caring, and so stupidly male at the same time. I also like “I’m not worthy of her” as long as he has a legit reason and the heroine actually has to decide whether or not that does, in fact, not make him worthy of her. Not something ridiculously small. “I jaywalk; I am not worthy” is no fun.

I love these discussions, in part because it’s always interesting to see people who love the tropes I despise and who despise the tropes I love.

As for real conflict, one of the best was in Penelope Williamson’s The Outsider.  She’s a member of a religious sect that does not allow marriage outside the sect.  He’s an outlaw.  She retained her faith (if she had not, the ending would have not been nearly so believable), but nonetheless you knew what it cost her to choose him over her community.  This was a beautiful book.  Williamson is Candace Proctor’s sister.  There must have been some powerful Good Writing genes in that family, or else something in the water where they grew up.

I have a question for everyone. 
Are Dmaged and Bad Boy two different things to y’all or can it sometimes be the same?
Personally I love the Bad Boy/Good Girl conflict. I even love the musical Guys and Dolls. I think I’d even like the other way around although I don’t think I’ve ever really read that. 
It seems logical to me that damaged and jaded can easily equal made some bad choices.  But I’ve read comments on other blog threads saying thinks like “I couldn’t read a hero that’s ever cheated or that’s ever ...”  I don’t get why a hero couldn’t have done a bad thing and see the error of his ways by the end.

I love angst, so I like conflict where either the hero or heroine (or both) are so emotionally broken that it takes some major soul-searching/healing/tragedy/whatever to get the couple together. I love emotional pain!

@Noelle: For me, damaged & bad boys are 2 totally different things. Damaged=Something awful happened & now I have, not just issues, but a full subscription.  I love these.  A bad boy is just an immature ass, which usually shows up as acting like a drunken ‘ho.  I’m totally over that.

That said, I don’t really have a favorite conflict.  Almost anything can work if it’s presented correctly and written well.  There are 2 that I don’t read any more because the hit percentage is so low & I just don’t have that much time to read.

First: The secret baby.  This almost always make me hate the heroine.  As far as I’m concerned the only excuse for keeping a baby secret from it’s father is if said father is dangerous to the child.  If the guy was that bad I probably don’t want to see him as a hero. 

Second: Cross-dressing heroines. I just can’t suspend enough disbelief to buy the idea that some sloth strips wrapped around her boobs and a pair of pants are going to convince anyone with two brain cells that she’s a guy.  I have friends who a small-busted, have “ruler” figures and wear pants pretty much ever day of their lives.  No one mistakes them for male.  There’s also often more than a little homophobia that shows up when the hero starts to get interested and is weirded out by the attraction.  For me that’s instant FAIL.

YMMV (you mileage may vary) is always the rule. 

Speaking of that.

I just finished a book by Rachel Gibson (Truly Madly Yours) in which the hero doesn’t think that he is good enough for the heroine.  Usually I like this type of conflict, but not this time.

I feel like I’m the only person who read this book and didn’t dislike either Delaney or Nick.

* because he’s too old (shoot me—another favorite)

Yum! Give me Spencer’s Years any day of the week.

Easier to say which I hate than which I love:

* I think that a really awful message is sent by the majority of plots where he raped or beat the heroine but then years later she forgives him and they get back together

* Really dislike where one character is religiously observant or adherent but falls in love with someone outside the religion or non-religious and True Love Conquers All when the story portrays the religious observance as annoying or superficial in the face of True Love (TM) instead of as a real dilemma. (Don’t get me started on the movie “Keeping the Faith”)  For a very sensitive portrayal of what happens after, I highly recommend William E Barrett’s The Wine and the Music about a priest who falls in love with a parishioner, leaves the church, and marries her.

@Lori I get what you’re saying and I think yours is the majority opinion on the subject.

@The general discussion - The thing I love the most about all forbidden love is that it makes the conflict about the h/h and their relationship and not some outside bad guy. I really got tried of reading paranormal with too perfect ppl whose only issue was the common enemy. That not really romance to me.

But I still love bad boy/ good girl the best. And I think there are books out there with bad boys heroes that have well written motivation behind why they do the things they do and that can ultimately be redeemed. A damaged guy that doesn’t act out badly and rail against the world just seems sad and pathetic to me. I don’t want a hero that has to be fixed that doesn’t have the balls to fight for himself.

One of my favorite characters in all of literature is Shakespeare’s Henry V. In the most simplistic sense, he’s a bad boy that when he must becomes the hero.

@Lori - Oh yeah to both of yours.
Secret baby - she has to believe that the father is a violent pig, or maybe believe that he’s dead, or she’s tried to get in touch and he won’t take her calls. There has to be a valid reason, because the father has a right to know and keeping it from him deliberately doesn’t make her heroine material.

Chicks in pants. Hate it, too. I just can’t believe it. I’ve seen pictures of women who did masquerade as male, and believe me, they would not pass as a romance heroine.

some sloth strips wrapped around her boobs

Just for the record, I do know that sloth =/= cloth. 

Feel free to mock my inability to type.  I know I’m getting a lot of enjoyment from the mental picture of our intrepid heroine running around with a couple of slow-moving mammals strapped to her chest.
That would create some interesting conflict.

Call me a sucker for Beauty and the Beast type stories, but I love plots that feature a once-handsome-now-scarred hero.  “Poor me!  No woman will ever love me, scarred as I am!”  I will!!! (raises hand enthusiastically)  It sort of fits in with the damaged hero plot, because the hero has to get over himself and realize that whatever accident disfigured him didn’t change his inherent studliness.

I have been reading a lot of category recently, for work, and I’m getting really sick of flimsy-ass excuses for why they can’t be together. Excuses like:

—Her parents and sibling were killed by a drunk driver and he’s a race car driver, so she’ll always be afraid he’s going to die in a crash. So he just bulldozes her objections!

—They come from neighboring made-up islands that are basically Protestants and Catholics!

—She’s having his accidental baby (OH MY GOD IF YOU LIKE IT THEN YOU SHOULD’VE PUT A RUBBER ON IT) and he thinks she only wants him for his money!

—He’s a prince and the royal council has to approve his bride (NO REALLY).

Basically I’m sick of obstructions that can be cleared away with a single, simple conversation. If it’s keeping you apart for more than a hundred pages, it should be complicated. The only thing I disliked about Nora’s Rising Tides was that Ethan’s problem with marrying Grace was that he’d been abused. That was really complicated and required more than one simple conversation, but if he’d just used his words! Romance characters are sometimes such three-year-olds.

That said, I just read Claudia Dain’s two Courtesan books, and I am totally okay with the courtesan-lord stuff. As a wise lady once said, they could drive a Porsche through the Regency and I wouldn’t care. Just keep humping in closets! I love that! I also love when the H/H are brought together by something like murder, giant global conspiracies, or whatnot, something temporary, and then once the something temporary is resolved they have to decide if they want to be together. Like Elizabeth Lowell’s Donovan series. GODDAMN I love those books.

Ones that stick in my mind ....  These are all contemporary category, some of which date back to about 1985.

“I can’t have a relationship because I’m never home”.  He was military special forces of some sort, while she was FBI.  There were the additional complications of him being her instructor in a class she was taking and the fact that she was the fourth or fifth generation to be born to a single teen mother, and she didn’t want to risk being yet another statistic. 

“I promised I’d never leave the farm”.  She inherited a farm from her grandmother which had promised she would never sell.  He was a widower who didn’t want to leave the house he had shared with his late wife, in a different area of the country from the heroine.

“My father bought you off.”  In high school, they had dated.  His father didn’t think she was good enough for him, and dad lied about money her family accepted (sign-on bonus for her inventor father).  30 years later, dad does it all over again, but this time they both know better.

“You lied to me about your son getting my daughter pregnant”.  Long-time friends. His daughter, her son.  Fireworks ensue when he finds out she knows that they’re going to be grandparents but hasn’t told him.

I’m a sucker for the “girl grew up with a crush on older brother’s friend, they get together when they are older” plots.  They are completely cliche, but I still enjoy them.  I tend to like romances when the two characters have a long history with each other, and these automatically do, as well as sometimes having interesting, awkward path towards admitting that the relationship has changed.

Ooh, me likey this topic.

I really love class differences, or the kind of thing you see in North & South where the H/h have completely different ways of seeing things and end up finding common ground as they get to know each other.

I’m also a fan of historicals where one party is engaged to someone else, although the author loses points if the someone else is completely wretched.

And I totally fall for beauty and the beast and taming of the shrew plots every damn time (although I’d like to find a book where the man is the shrew being tamed, just for a change of pace).

My ultimate hate is the so-called conflict where the hero can’t marry because he and his six besties from his Oxford days have all taken a vow to remain bachelors. Give me a BREAK. Any story where the conflict stems from the simple fact that the hero has decided not to get married drives me up the wall. It’s just not very interesting to read about.

I have a harder time believing the conflicts in contemporaries, I think. In this day and age, if two consenting adults meet and like the looks of each other, I can’t think of too many reasons why they shouldn’t or wouldn’t get together. I feel like a lot of contemporary authors fall into hate at first sight plots for that reason, or give one of the characters some bizarre hangup that prevents the relationship from going to the next level until the characters conveniently decide to get over it.

I so enjoyed Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm because Christian had a stroke. Damaged, but no bad father, or other angst type problems. He wouldn’t have paid attention to Maddie otherwise, but came to rely on her to help him overcome his disabilities. Maddie, however, I could have punched in the nose for her waffling.

AMEN.  The book was beautifully written, but I threw it against the wall more than once, and I still want to hit Maddy for being such a hypocrite. 

As for what I like and don’t like…I think good writing can overcome almost any unbelievable plotline.  It’s fascinating to me to see an author take a tired plotline—Terrible Misunderstanding, Secret Baby, My Ex Cheated Therefore All Women Suck, to name a few—and write it so that you don’t realize that it’s been done before.  As long as the story is so good I’ll stay up until 3 AM to finish it, I’ll read any plot the author wants to write.

I looked at my book/movie shelves and apparently I really like external forces—ruthless enemies (Psy/Changeling books, Farscape, Freedom and Necessity), previous commitments (Firelight), colossally bad timing (The Time Traveler’s Wife). I’m not a big fan of the ethical dilemmas because I usually end up wanting to smack one of the protags upside the head (usually the supposedly “ethical” but really just judgmental one). I like feeling that the couple will actually be able to live with each other after the story ends, so personal dysfunction doesn’t usually do it for me (exception: The Price of Desire).

I looked at my book/movie shelves and apparently I really like external forces—ruthless enemies (Psy/Changeling books, Farscape, Freedom and Necessity)

This is interesting to me because it’s another form of YMMV.  I always felt that the pairings on Farscape were really kept apart by their personal crap, not by outside forces.  Those folks had some issues, which is why I loved it so much. It was always hard to explain that to people who got distracted by the fact that it was scifi and there were puppets.

I love the trite and true, “You’re way too old/young for me,” but I like it to have something more to it. I.e. In “Admiral’s Bride” by Suzanne Brockmann, it was “Your way to young for me” + “I feel disloyal to my dead wife, whom you are nothing like,” + “I never sleep with subordinates” + strong personal moral compass.  In “Suddenly You” by Lisa Kleypas, the heroine *gasp* might be older than the hero, which is only one of the many things keeping them apart.

In addition to the May/December pairings, I also love it when a job keeps the two apart. In “First Lady” by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, he’s a journalist in desperate need of scoop, she’s the former first lady in desperate need of privacy. I love when the hero/heroine are forced to choose between avocation & HEA.

Are Dmaged and Bad Boy two different things to y’all or can it sometimes be the same?

Yuppers. I see damaged as something that takes time to work past, and a commitment. Bad Boys can be in that vein, but it usually a lot more superficial (ex. One Summer by Robards, he’s both, but has a genuine reason for being damaged).

—She’s having his accidental baby (OH MY GOD IF YOU LIKE IT THEN YOU SHOULD’VE PUT A RUBBER ON IT) and he thinks she only wants him for his money!

*Snort* Kinda like Cherry Adair’s Take Me with hero as a post-vasectomy super-selfish asshole that proceeds to knock up his wife. Wallbanger.

“I promised I’d never leave the farm”.

*Double snort*

My ultimate hate is the so-called conflict where the hero can’t marry because he and his six besties from his Oxford days have all taken a vow to remain bachelors. Give me a BREAK.

HELL yes. Oh noes, I must stay a whoring asshole because my buddies all think getting laid =being a man. This plot device is ofcourse followed up on multiple times until every-single one of the former whoring assholes has found his twu luv.

Like a few of you have said, I’m finding it harder and harder to get interested in a contemporary romance, because there are only so many unbelievable obstacles one can hurdle, and then have everything perfect. An example is a Harlequin Presents from 5 years ago where a couple is practically in the middle of the wedding ceremony when the groom gets a surprise from his former lover (pre-wife by like 2 weeks) when she dumps his kid off leaving the wife struggling through a new relationship with a kid. Now, that’s not actually the craptastic part, but when he expects her to just all of a sudden have complete faith in him, and to take care of the kid while he is off making the $. Um no. It just didn’t fly. I stopped reading contemps after that, and switched to paranormals which sadly were more believable for me.

I do hate the I-love-you-so-much-that-I-want-to-pimp-you-out stories.  Lora Leigh, come on down! I know some people in reality have this sort of relationship, but its hard for me to get past it, and believe that the h/h will have a long lasting relationship after she’s had half the family/half the U.S. Navy in her vajayjay. Ewww…clean up aisle 2.

I do hate the I-love-you-so-much-that-I-want-to-pimp-you-out stories.  Lora Leigh, come on down! I know some people in reality have this sort of relationship, but its hard for me to get past it, and believe that the h/h will have a long lasting relationship after she’s had half the family/half the U.S. Navy in her vajayjay. Ewww…clean up aisle 2.

Here’s the thing—-there’s a lot that Lora Leigh doesn’t know about polyamory.  A lot.  She’s missing some info about the US Navy too.

the undesirable family characteristics line:

“I can’t be with you because our child will inherit some sort of psychological disease that in fact can be treated or has a very small percentage of actually occurring”

and the concurrent

“you’re too good for me, what with my psychological disease”

As long as the author is convincing about the obstacle, and it requires (as others pointed out) more than a five minute conversation (I hate the Big Misunderstanding as much as anyone). 

I like the forbidden difference (age/cultural difference/background difference) when it’s done really well, and when it’s SURPRISING. When people really WOULD go ‘wtf’ (see “Tim” - heroine is older, hero has intellectual impairment) and yet being apart is worse.  But I’m totally squicked by incest, so when I see that one looming I know there are two choices.  1) It’s going to be a Big Misunderstanding (yawn!) or 2) I’m going to be squicked ... and so I usually bail.  There are exceptions!  I just read a young adult where I’m STILL going to read the third in the trilogy ;)

I love Beauty and the Beast done well—there’s something physically ‘wrong’ with one of them as far as the rest of society’s concerned.  The ‘ugly’ woman stories rule.  Precious Bane with the harelip—now come on. It’s correctable with surgery now, but that’s more than three pox scars on her ankle.  “The Ill Made Mute”—again, she’s no fairy princess, but the hero cheats a little by not actually seeing her ugly face.  “The Unlikely Ones” ... so yeah, an extreme of ‘you’re so not my type’ that shows what a keeper the hero is.

A difficult sell to me is the ‘he/she did something truly appalling that should be unforgiveable but after long thought and bitter experience I realise I might have done the same in their place’ because it’s so very very very hard to pull off.  I think it was pulled off successfully in the “Cast in (fury/courtlight etc)” books by Michelle Sagara ... but it was touch and go. It was also pulled off in Broken. 

I’ve read other books though where I’ve just gone “he/she WHAT? NO WAY!” (flings book at wall).  For instance, a category called “Savage Atonement” in my teens, where the hero sets the girl up to lose a court case after she’s been assaulted by a step parent, and betrays her trust. Nope. Sorry. Not atoned enough for me to do anything but want to tell him to take a long walk off a short pier with concrete boots.

Here’s the thing—-there’s a lot that Lora Leigh doesn’t know about polyamory.  A lot.  She’s missing some info about the US Navy too.

Yup. Which makes it all the more aggravating that there isn’t someone riding her ass during edits-kinda shows me that no one gives a crap/too busy trying to crank it out than worry about facts. I can’t remember what the title was, but her 1st Navy book was a complete wallbanger for me. I know people in the Navy, and she sure took some liberties with that storyline.

inside62…yup her characters have been

Great topic. Like everyone else, I like almost any conflict provided it’s well-written and suspends my disbelief.
I hope I am not repetitve, but I love:
*Rivalry - whether it’s between families (Dallas or Romeo/Juliet), or siblings or work or whatever, that creates tension and brings out the best, worst and human side of the protagonists.
*Marriage of convenience or guardianship - works only for historicals but a great way of throwing H/h together for periods of time not allowed by social mores of the time. A meeting of minds rather than bodies. *sigh*
*Wounded warrior - love the premise that a woman can complete him but it works better if his journey of self-discovery starts before he meets the heroine. Secondary characters that psycho-analyse and push H/h together can be interesting (Windflower).

I hate:
* the TSTL heroine and alpha male with no redeeming qualities - I hate it when he walks all over her feelings for the whole book and then she develops a back-bone, threatens to leave, and he does a complete 180 and it’s HEA.
Uuuggh! It’s about as satisfying as warm beer…
* the big misconception - some big secret that the H/h can’t talk about keeping them apart. When it comes out that it’s minor, and at the end of the book with a single paragraph to explain it, it’s completely frustrating.
* the exception to the rule - characters that consistently behave within ethical or moral boundaries their whole lives, but make the H/h the exception with no explanation. When there is little introspection, remorse or guilt; it is too hard to believe. When it’s well done, it can be brilliant.

One of my favorite reasons a couple can’t be together is because they are—specifically Regencies where the couple was already married for reasons of convenience. It’s not quite the friend thing, it’s more that they’re finding love where they didn’t expect it and screwing things up could mean they’re miserable and stuck together for the rest of their lives. But if they don’t go for it, they’re also risking missing out on love and passion for comfort’s sake.

In more modern stories, I agree with the commenter who likes the tension of m/m stories and the closet. It was one of the things that kept me watching the first season of six feet under.

some sloth strips wrapped around her boobs

Feel free to mock my inability to type.  I know I’m getting a lot of enjoyment from the mental picture of our intrepid heroine running around with a couple of slow-moving mammals strapped to her chest.
That would create some interesting conflict.

Now I’m thinking of the type of story where the h/h is mildmannered something by day - fierce justicefighter/vigilante/superhero by night.
I never bought into the idea that a strip of cloth over the eyes as a mask would make anyone unrecognizable, but a sloth now…that’d probably surprise me enough that I totally failed to note the identity of the sloth-wearer.

For me, almost anything works as conflict, as long as it’s well written and believable within the context of the story. An exception would be The Seekrit Baby Plot. If the heroine has sufficient reason to hide her pregnancy from the guy, he ain’t hero-material. Unless, of course, he’s battled that disturbing sloth-addiction and now needs healing and love.

Hee. Codeword are16. Thank goodness no. Not anymore.

I’m sure this goes without saying, but I abhor the Big Misunderstanding That Can Be Resolved in Ten Words or Less. I have read a few where it worked, but that’s it. Shove the idiotic assumptions about what he/she thinks and/or may have done and communicate already.

This

A bad boy is just an immature ass, which usually shows up as acting like a drunken ‘ho.  I’m totally over that.

HA HA!

Myself, I love internal conflict, which I suppose translates to damaged h/h - where they have some hang-up that prevents them from being able to let go / trust / take a chance. Love friends-to-lovers and ex-lovers-reunited - situations when there is a past history either to build on or overcome.

I can’t remember what the title was, but her 1st Navy book was a complete wallbanger for me. I know people in the Navy, and she sure took some liberties with that storyline.

DeeCee: Was it her that had a SEAL team living in Atlanta or some such city with no large body of water, which definitely wasn’t Coronado or Virginia Beach?  That book went flying at my house too, because holy crap what was up with that?  It’s one thing to be very, very focused on a particular kink in a way that doesn’t reflect reality very well.  For me, getting facts spectacularly wrong is a whole other thing.

I can’t remember what the title was, but her 1st Navy book was a complete wallbanger for me. I know people in the Navy, and she sure took some liberties with that storyline.

Eirin: Thank you for giving me a good laugh. I’m working a paper about the Maoist insurgency in Nepal so the humor is much appreciated. I just wish that I could draw worth a darn because I think a picture of Slothman would be hilarious.

OK, the comment to Eirin was supposed to be about this:

I never bought into the idea that a strip of cloth over the eyes as a mask would make anyone unrecognizable, but a sloth now…that’d probably surprise me enough that I totally failed to note the identity of the sloth-wearer.

I really shouldn’t post while I’m doing research because I obviously don’t have enough working brain cells left for split focus.

This is interesting to me because it’s another form of YMMV.  I always felt that the pairings on Farscape were really kept apart by their personal crap, not by outside forces.  Those folks had some issues, which is why I loved it so much.

They had issues the size of Titanic’s iceberg alright (especially D’Argo and Chiana), but most of my favorite Crichton/Aeryn moments came because of Scorpius/Nosferatu. God I miss that show!

Second: Cross-dressing heroines. I just can’t suspend enough disbelief to buy the idea that some sloth strips wrapped around her boobs and a pair of pants are going to convince anyone with two brain cells that she’s a guy.  I have friends who a small-busted, have “ruler” figures and wear pants pretty much ever day of their lives.  No one mistakes them for male.  There’s also often more than a little homophobia that shows up when the hero starts to get interested and is weirded out by the attraction.  For me that’s instant FAIL.

Well, in the real world it doesn’t work for a minute, I agree, but that’s just about the entire plot of Twelfth Night, my favorite play of all time, and there it works spectacularly.  Maybe you just have to be Shakespeare to pull it off?

I’m totally squicked by incest, so when I see that one looming I know there are two choices.  1) It’s going to be a Big Misunderstanding (yawn!) or 2) I’m going to be squicked ... and so I usually bail.

A few years ago I read See How She Dies by Lisa Jackson.  Usually I love her stuff, but this one involved a guy falling for a girl who was possibly his half sister, who went missing 20 years before.  The part that really bugged me was that even knowing that they could be related they couldn’t keep their hands off of each other.  I managed to get through the book, but I had nightmares for weeks.  Eww.

Also, another book that I hated was a historical by Candace Camp, who I normally love.  This was the 2nd book in her most recent series.  In this one the heroine swears she will never marry anyone, especially the hero because her father was a drunk, gambler, asshole, who did not deserve to live.  Personally, I think I would rather have read about the asshole father than the obnoxious bratty heroine.  This could of course work if the characters are less annoying and bitchy (in a bad way).  The last book in this series did a spin on that premise in which the heroine’s late husband was a drunk, gambler asshole who left her with no money.  I absolutely loved this story.

Brand new release from [notable romancewriter]:

[center]To Tempt A Slothman

Slothman’s Bride[/center]

I sense a whole new genre here…

It occurs to me that conflict in a contemporary setting is more difficult to handle (for the writer) and relate to (for the reader), simply because it is contemporary, thus forcing the reader to ask herself “How would I deal with this?”.

And sometimes the conflict will be a situation that doesn’t mean a whole lot to the reader, provoking a “Meh” or a “Get over it already” response, whereas other stuff matter so much that the writer must have a very deft hand indeed to avoid the subject/conflict coming across as a superficial contrivance, or what the reader feels is assholish, emotional, chain-jerkage from the author.
Historicals, fantasy, SF etc. allow us to pretend that whatever the problem standing in the way of True Love (yeah, I’ve been watching The Princess Bride recently, why d’ya ask *g*) is, it could be A Major Deal in that setting. Within reason, of course.

Ok, so the center tag thing didn’t totally work out. Hmf.

I adore when the hero can’t act on his feelings for the heroine because his duty to her comes first. Oooo bodyguard stories. For some reason I also love when either h/h is totally clueless - one is in love but the other originally only sees them as a friend/coworker/whatever, and their feelings slowly grow throughout the story.

Also, while I don’t like when the h/h do something to ruin their lives, I do like stories that have permanent consequences. One of my favorites has both the h/h committing treason out of love for the other, forcing them to flee the country. Neither of them can ever return to the homes they loved so much and it’s truly tragic, but they’ll be okay, even happy, because they have each other.

I enjoy damaged characters, but only if they are a) not damaged so much that I can’t believe they could ever truly recover and b) damaged enough so their hangups don’t seem ridiculous. I liked Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation but the heroine drove me crazy. As far as I could tell, her major hangup - besides a “wrong side of the tracks” childhood - was that she calculatingly gave her virginity to a popular boy and then he humiliated her about it the next day at school. Fifteen years later, this is still considered by every single character in the book a horrifically traumatic, emotionally crippling event that of course explains why she can’t commit to the hero. What clinched it for me was when the hero himself gasped in all seriousness “God, I’d hate me too!” upon learning the story, despite being very little like the jerky high school kid. Seriously??? The rest of the book was great and I loved the h/h relationship; I just did not understand the focus on this one high school event.

When I’m fighting the urge to yell GET OVER IT ALREADY to a character, that’s not a good sign.

most of my favorite Crichton/Aeryn moments came because of Scorpius/Nosferatu.

I love them, as the Bitches would say, like whoa and damn, but I always felt that Scorpius was more a a multiplier of their issues and the actual cause. Either way they’re one of my all time favorite couples. 

God I miss that show!

I’m with you.  The fact that they didn’t get to do another season still bugs me to no end.

Eirin: I would totally read about Slothman and his bride.  But I’m weird like that.  I also think you’re right that when reading contemporaries we tend to cut characters less slack for behaving in ways that don’t make sense to us, where in historicals we right a lot off to “it was a different time”. 

On one hand, I think that can be unfortunate and/or unfair because there’s a lot of variation in the world. On the other, there are some things that just don’t work for me, whether actual people do them or not. 

Tying back to an earlier part of the conversation—I couldn’t read the Men of August books because they hit my incest squick. My thinking is that generally if you’ve seen a person’s O face up close you have a sexual relationship him. If he’s related to you a sexual relationship = incest, which I do not want to read about. I know that this isn’t where the line is drawn for everyone.  When I asked my significant other about it he thought it was gross and weird, but definitely not incest. Obviously lots of people find it neither gross nor incest.  YMMV and I think in general it’s good to remember that.

As far as I could tell, her major hangup - besides a “wrong side of the tracks” childhood - was that she calculatingly gave her virginity to a popular boy and then he humiliated her about it the next day at school. Fifteen years later, this is still considered by every single character in the book a horrifically traumatic, emotionally crippling event that of course explains why she can’t commit to the hero.

@Karen: I took it that the issue was the wrong side of the tracks problem and having been treated badly by lots and lots of people who “belonged” and never missed a chance to make the family feel less than for being outsiders. The think the virginity thing was just the capper.  And Finn was the ultimate insider in Temptation.  Was her issue exaggerated? Almost certainly, but hurts inflicted in childhood tend to be blown out of proportion like that.

I like the friends to lovers plot a lot, as well as enemies to lovers. It’s nice to see an existing relationship of some form evolve into love. I guess I’m much more focused on the internal dynamics than action-packed plot. If I do go for a very action-driven story, I prefer it to be funny and adventurous, rather than dark and dramatic. For me, romance novels are all about the good vibes I get from reading it, and the pleasure from seeing the lovers get a happy ending. I guess they have to work a little to get it and deserve it, but honestly the really serious tales end in a feeling of something more akin to relief than joy for me. That’s why I go for simple stories.

@Lori: Yeah, I could see the whole insiders/outsiders thing, and how returning to a small judgmental town could bring all those issues to the fore. I guess I just felt that after fifteen years she could have worked on those issues more, and that everyone’s reactions to the virginity story were just too over-the-top to be believable.

I like the enemies to lovers as well, provided there’s something reasonable at the bottom of the antagonism. It really bugs me when he hates her on sight because…ehr…she wears a red scarf like his lyin’ cheatin’ first girlfriend and drives a blue Miata; and she hates him ‘cause he’s a rockstar and probably a scumbag and…also, stupid hair.
When it’s done well though…yummi hot, angry sex and reluctant getting to know each other and did I mention the hot sex?

ou know, I could do with some recs in that vein right now:)

Woah, Crusie gets credit for copping Coleridge.

Say that ten times fast.  :D

Any copies of Slothman’s Bride available or do I need to read To Tempt a Slothman first? I’ll pay money.

LOL no worries, everyone cribs the line.  I just read it and laughed out loud.

Weirdly… that essay on the willing suspension of disbelief is one of the things actually caused the AHA! bubble for me in school.

Aliens.  Aliens just make me laugh hysterically and wonder if there is going to be tentacles involved.

Or egg sacks.

Either way it’s a cop out if they turn out to be compatible and humanoid.

Hmmm. Reading this, I’m not sure if I “prefer” any in particular. I actually rather like the Temptation example because they get over their own issues and seeing each other as “jerky frat boy” and “bad girl.” And Farscape. It’s difficult, but possible.

The best ones are usually the ones that prevent the h/h from ever getting together…which is the problem. Buffy/Angel being a classic. Or any coupling where someone has AIDS (hello, Robin Scorpio). So inherently, you have to find a very good excuse, but one that can be gotten over with work.

The one I hate is “one is childfree, the other isn’t, get the childfree one to cave in, they end with a baby.” Haaaaaaaaaaaate. That is in my “please don’t go there” category. Or “I can’t have your baby because I’m infertile” and then she gets pregnant anyway.  I also loathe the Spider-Man “I can’t be with you because it makes you a target, except obviously she’s ALREADY a target” example.

I’m currently reading the latest in the Cal Leandros series. I’m not sure how I feel about the excuses in that one, which boil down to (a) “There is no way on this earth I will have sex with anyone who can get pregnant, period, I don’t trust birth control” (this is a little paranoid, but given what’s happened to Cal in his life I sorta can’t blame him for paranoia, especially since he can’t go to a doctor for a vasectomy), and (b) “My evil family/enemies have promised to slaughter everyone I love while I watch.” It’s all kind of justified and kind of not at the same time.

I kinda feel scared that you will all throw sloths at me, but I love the whole “Mate” thing. When the hero/heroine is fated to that person and then they have to overcome the fear of a biological only type love into feeling the complete package. Love it.

Also have to chime in on the whole damaged hero, especially an alpha one.

Or any coupling where someone has AIDS (hello, Robin Scorpio).

HIV doesn’t actually make it impossible for people to be together.  It changes some things obviously, but being HIV positive doesn’t mean a person has to be alone. In fact, from what I understand, Robin Scorpio is now married and has a baby (I gave up on GH many years ago).

As for the Cal Leandros thing, does that world not have a little thing called the vasectomy? I

In fact, from what I understand, Robin Scorpio is now married and has a baby (I gave up on GH many years ago).

well, aren’t you the smart one?  some of us still haven’t gotten the message that GH is dead as a door nail.  It gets worse everyday, but i still watch when i have the time.  its kind of like watching a train wreck or a car crash.  you just can’t look away.

well, aren’t you the smart one?  some of us still haven’t gotten the message that GH is dead as a door nail.  It gets worse everyday, but i still watch when i have the time.  its kind of like watching a train wreck or a car crash.  you just can’t look away.

Smart? Unfortunately not—-I still haven’t been able to totally give up on All My Children.  It’s such a train wreck it’s not even fun to snark about it any more.

Any book that can make me wonder half way through ‘how on earth is the author going to make this work?’ works for me. It doesn’t matter as long as the problem/conflict is a real sustainable issue, not a ‘we can solve this in one conversation but then the book would be over’.
I tend to lean toward the wounded heroes myself :)

I think I hate it when the thing keeping the hero and heroine apart is something they both know but can’t figure out how to avoid or mitigate. My favourite romances tend to be the ones where for whatever reason the thing that keeps them apart is that they don’t know they are in love (and that this lack of knowledge is understandable, even if it could be cleared up in one conversation if it makes sense not to have the conversation). It could be that one of them hasn’t twigged to the fact that what is going on is Love, or it could be that one knows that s/he Loves but is sure that the other doesn’t. Challenge by Sophie Weston (Harlequin Presents) is one I love—the heroine thinks that the hero isn’t serious and he doesn’t realise right away that a light-hearted flirtation isn’t the right place to start with her. (Maybe that doesn’t sound very brilliant, but I really like the characters.)

Much easier for me to list the conflict issues that make me nuts, as I enjoy a variety of conflict issues as long as they’re well written.  The big Too Stupid To Exist Hall of Fame Wing of EWWWW goes to the ever popular “I think you did this bad bad thing but I refuse to actively participate in any meaningful dialogue that would clear this up in about ten seconds so we can drag out the Big Misunderstanding Based On Misinformation conflict for 500 pages before I can say, oh, wait! You were not secretly the lead guitarist for WHAM!” drama.  People, people, open your pie holes and communicate.  I HATE that crap.

As for the Cal Leandros thing, does that world not have a little thing called the vasectomy?

It does, but Cal unfortunately is not quite human (which is the root of his problem) and that would raise doctors’ eyebrows.

I haven’t read the latest one yet but boy, am I looking forward to it.

Cross-dressing heroines. I just can’t suspend enough disbelief to buy the idea that some sloth strips wrapped around her boobs and a pair of pants are going to convince anyone with two brain cells that she’s a guy.

I read a book a few years back about women dressing as men during the Civil War: They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War. I had some issues with it, but the authors did a pretty tight job of explaining how so many women could pass themselves off as men: some of it was probably because many soldiers were very young and the women could pass themselves off as younger (boys in their teens), but a lot of it also seemed to be about expectations. There was NO overlap between male and female clothing and fashion at the time, unlike today—so if someone was wearing pants, why would you EVER think they were anything other than a man? People’s brains just weren’t trained to check for gender clues like ours are—it sounds a little fantastical to modern-day readers, but it made sense. A lot of women were only found out when they suffered wounds or were killed (although one woman was discovered because she gave birth in camp!).

@Lizzie:  Yes, that’s the gist of the historical “passing as male” argument, and there are some impressive historical examples.  Most gender clues are cultural, and if you can mimic them, most people don’t even consider the possibility that you’re faking it. 

Cross-gender performance is my scholarly specialty, as it were, and it’s pretty amazing what you can pull off even in today’s culture.  Once when I was playing a male character on stage (a fairly small space, with an up-close audience), and one of the critics said that he “had me pegged” by the middle of the second act—he was convinced I was gay (male)!  One of the nicest compliments on my acting ever, thanks very much.  And while I’m not drop-dead gorgeous,  I don’t think I’m the type that “would not pass as a romance heroine.”  (If I could figure out how to post a picture here, I would, darnit.)

Of course it would be harder day to day, face to face, in real life.  For an excellent view of how it might be done (one that doesn’t conveniently skip over the details, a la Shakespeare), I recommend Pam Rosenthal’s Almost a Gentleman.

He’s dead.  Or she’s dead.  So they can’t be together.  Even though the dead person has come back as a ghost. But of course we only find this out in the last chapter.
And if he’s from a different historical era, so much the better…

Going back to Deathwish, it’s worth noting that both Cal and Niko have severe trust and intimacy issues (yet aren’t assholes! It can be done!) and Cal has a particular Madonna/whore thing going on with his relationships with Georgina King and Delilah. Those reasons cited above are perfectly valid within the framework of the story, but the best part of Thurman is that there’s a lot of human personal issues going on with her monsters.

Having thought about it more, I think that my problem with the cross dressing romances is tied to the fact that I’m not crazy about love at first sight stories and other plots where people fall for each other when they don’t know each other well.  I’ve read a lot of those over the years and they’re just not working for me these days. 

I’ve met drag queens & kings and a couple of transvestites socially and at one time had a coworker who was transitioning male to female.  My experience is that cross-dressing doesn’t hold up all that well to close proximity where you’re really paying attention to the person. I know it has happened IRL, but the circumstances behind the cases I’ve heard of were generally more sad than romantic.

So, I rarely read stories where the “I thought she was a boy” thing holds up for me and the couple has spent enough time together for me to care about the relationship.  Because I have very limited time to read and a TBR that could cause physical damage if it fell on me I just avoid that particular plot device. 

I think this is generally how it works for me.  There are very, very few conflicts or plot devices that are the automatic kiss of death on their own, but lots of combination that don’t go well together.

No, HIV doesn’t make it impossible, but it’s a pretty big complication to throw into a plot. Depends on how willing the other person is to risk getting the disease, which Robin has had play out from both sides now.

Regarding historical crossdressers, there was a young woman in my hometown who took part in the Napoleonic Wars. The local museum has a portrait of her as well as a sword and uniform jacket that belonged to her. The jacket is tiny, so even given that people were smaller in centuries past she must have been very petite.

The young woman did not manage to pass completely, an officer must have found her out, because he made sure that she was quartered separately from the other soldiers. She survived the war and was celebrated as a heroine and example for all women upon her return.

I need to chime in and agree with all those that love a “damaged” man. Though I am a fan of all of JR ward’s books, Zsadist’s was the most compelling and most powerful to me. I just read the novella and it was like chocolate on a bad day - a great lift.

In terms of contemporary, I have two words: Kathryn Shay. Her firefighter series is among the best I’ve ever written. The first involved a firefighter with two teenagers in an unhappy marriage when he meets the heroine. They are attracted to each other, but do nothing, since hello, he’s married. When they finally get the HEA, you can’t help but reach for the Kleenex. All the books in this series are along those lines and I can’t put them down.

It’s difficult for me to “suspend my disbelief,” to quote Jennifer Crusie, in those circumstances

After 111 posts, nobody is going to notice this nitpick, anyway!  While I have no doubt that J.Crusie will have referred to suspension of disbelief, it is not her concept, as your wording seems to suggest.  It was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge around 1815.  I’m sure you knew that, really.  I imagine that this must be taught in most literature courses, but it is 50 years since I did any Eng.Lit. classes, so I may be wrong.

Suspension of disbelief is central to our reception of fiction, and in these days of supernatural elements occurring regularly in fiction intended for adults, is the chief explanation of the different responses and tolerance of different individuals - we all have different boundaries, points beyond which we are unable to suspend disbelief.

;-)

As for the Cal Leandros thing, does that world not have a little thing called the vasectomy?

It does, but Cal unfortunately is not quite human (which is the root of his problem) and that would raise doctors’ eyebrows.

I haven’t read the latest one yet but boy, am I looking forward to it.

I also get the sense that Ms. Thurman just doesn’t find Georgina all that interesting a character.

Well, Cal has a human mother, so the species match enough for mating to be made and reproduction to obtain.  In any case, I could never understand why Mr Spock lived, and the offspring of T’Pol and Trip did not…

It’s hard to be interesting when you’re on a pedestal. I’m hoping for a future entry in the series where in 1st person narration George reveals she’s constantly jumping out of her skin with desire to get laid, or had a weird tic.

Promise is more boring to me, frankly.