Recently, we did a Rec League: Ready Set Go! Looking for the best Friends to Lovers books you recommend most. For a few of us, this is trope-tastic goodness; for others, it’s our least favorite. This variation led to a weird discussion at SBTB HQ.
Which got me thinking: is the opposite of Friends to Lovers, like, Hate Fucking, or something like that? Enemies to Lovers passes through “friends” sometimes on the way to the HEA.
So if you don’t like Friends to Lovers, what’s your preferred catnip?
Amanda: Enemies to lovers.
And I mean that enemies to lovers is my preferred catnip.
Shana: For me, the opposite of Friends to Lovers is people who know they want one another, and don’t take 10 fucking years to figure it out.
Of course, my own romantic relationship is a friends to lovers story, lol.
Enemies to lovers isn’t my favorite trope either…why am I so high maintenance?
Sneezy: Because you know what you WANT.
Amanda: I tend to find Friends to Lovers setups don’t often have enough of a reason for the main couple to NOT be together.
Shana: Anyway, my catnip is Arranged Marriages, and Marriages of Convenience.
EllenM: I love Enemies to Lovers and also Marriage of Convenience.
Claudia: I love MoCs and their various iterations — and I think part of my difficulty with friends to lovers is the “why now?” question. My enjoyment depends on how the author answers that question.
For example, in the Sherry Thomas book, Ravishing the Heiress, two events start the chain reaction, but the return of the hero’s former flame, now widowed, is the main one and he’s forced to face things and kind of grow up.
Maya: Oh, man, Marriage of Convenience is MY FAVORITE because good communication is usually (eventually) central to the romance.
And I love it when people learn how to use feeling words!
Sneezy: EMOTIONAL LITERACY FTW!!!!!!!!!!
Sarah: I have so little patience for characters with no emotional communication or fluency. Grow the fuck up. It’s a boner. It’s a feeling.
Oh, and sometimes they happen at the same time! Get over it.
Catherine: Marriage of Convenience is a favourite of mine, too. Enemies to Lovers is good provided the author doesn’t make me believe the hate so much at the start that I can’t believe the love at the end. And I do adore books where the heroine dresses as a man or when someone has a hidden identity.
Sarah: Oh secret identity while becoming friends is delicious.
Catherine: I actually really do like Friends to Lovers but wow it’s hard to think of a good example of it…
Tara: There are some really good f/f ones, with a couple that actually show the friendship forming from the beginning.
I also think I’m fond of them because my husband was one of my best friends before things ever got romantic.
Shana: That’s adorable, Tara.
Aarya: I just scrolled through my Kindle and I counted maybe ten Friends to Lovers books. I have nearly a thousand ebooks. So. Not my trope at all! Or at least I don’t buy it.
Conversely, over half seemed to be Enemies to Lovers. But I also think more Enemies to Lovers gets published so the proportion is skewed.
Shana: Is this why we found it so hard to think of Jim and Pam from The Office recs?
Aarya: Yep.
Sneezy: Thinking about it, I guess Friends to Lovers requires a lot of deft nuance to tell the story well, otherwise it just comes across as contrived whinging, will-they-won’t-they. Enemies to Lovers needs subtlety as well, but it’s easier to get momentum.
Aarya brings up the good point that Enemies to Lovers is more regularly reproduced narrative wise. The idea that love can bring anyone and anyone together is so regularly sold, and I have really mixed feelings about that despite being pretty into Enemies to Lovers myself.
What about you? What do you think is the opposite of “Friends to Lovers?” And is it your trope catnip? If not, what is?
I’m not keen on Friends to Lovers for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. I don’t like Enemies to Lovers when there’s no solid reason for the hate or it’s based on something that happened so long ago and a conversation could resolve it. I really dislike when things gets childish in order to one up the other.
I love banter, intelligent banter. If the two have a reason for the dislike of each other (or the situation they’re in) and banter their way to friendship/lovers – I am sold.
Examples are: Act Like It (Lucy Parker), My Dearest Enemy (Connie Brockway), Just the Sexiest Man Alive (Julie James)
I guess it’s Strangers to Lovers with the added complication of one or both being caught in machinations not of their choosing. That would be my guess of the opposite and my definite catnip.
With enemies to lovers the hatred has to be equal with both characters being mean to each other. If it’s one sided, with one character being awful it’s just an abusive relationship. Sounds obvious but you’d be surprised how many writers get the balance wrong, I want witty put downs, not tears! Having said that, it’s not my favourite trope, I kind of have a soft spot for fated mates
My catnip is hookups to lovers. They’re DTF but have no idea who each other is as a person. Then for whatever reason – aka, the key to making the story work – they decide to get to know each other. Example: Fast Connection.
Also like the MoC trope because forced proximity is a great way to get to know someone. Enemies to lovers is often too problematic for me. If not for one of the reasons in the post, it’s because “he’s a jerk until she does all the work of schooling him into being thoughtful sometimes” and I just nope out.
I would’ve said I’m not into Enemies to Lovers, but I just realised what I’m not into is forced conflict. Enemies to Lovers where they’re genuine enemies is great! Like The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne, where the hero and heroine are spies on opposite sides of the Napoleonic Wars. Or Stealing Mr Right by Penelope Blue, where she’s a jewel thief and he’s FBI. Those worked for me because there’s real conflicts the characters have to navigate, negotiate, and overcome. Also, the characters have respect for each other even though they know they’re enemies, which is super important to me. I don’t like books where one character, usually the hero, treats the heroine like trash until he decides he loves her.
My trope catnip is something Smart Bitches introduced me to the term for: Sex Puppies! i.e. sweet, goofy, warm-hearted guys who want to give their partner exactly what she wants.
(The post in question: https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2019/07/the-rec-league-sex-puppy/ )
Also, femdom.
What about the anti-Cinderella trope? Which could be poor person rescues rich person, but I prefer two poor/oppressed people rescuing themselves through the power of two.
I dislike ennemies to lover unless the enmity is based on external factors, ie opposite sides of a war.
I much prefer lust to love when two strangers meet each other, are attracted to each other then get to know each other enough to fall in love. Sort of a fairly normal process …
I can accept Friends to lover if the reasons why they didn’t get together are bad timing (ie they were in other relationships at the time). I think that’s true to life really.
Surely the opposite of friends to lovers is when people break up and realize they’re better as friends? 😉 All kidding aside, I love those human interest stories (that may be a little bit emotionally manipulative at times, I admit) about divorced couples that end up staying friends and/or treat each other as family. The ones where they’re part of each others’ weddings, or donate a kidney, etc. Especially when there are kids involved but just in general it’s heartening to see exes can be kind and thoughtful towards each other. I realize in real life, sometimes distance is the only safe and sane option from a bad relationship, but I enjoy seeing people who can navigate back to friendship. I much prefer that scenario than a “second chance” romance story. Obviously it would have to be a general fiction story or a B plot in a romance, but I think it can be done well and I swear I’ve seen it and just can’t think of it.
I actually love enemies to lovers AND friends to lovers because they both hold slow burn potential (maybe with a side of fake relationships and arranged marriages). I find insta-lust kind of boring and some authors just pour it on way too thick for my taste. Or you can have two for the price of one in a story like “You’ve Got Mail.” They’re enemies, no they’re friends! No they’re in love! (I’m always looking for more epistolary romance).
I’m not a fan of friends-to-lovers for all of the reasons iterated here and then some—primarily because it’s hard for me to believe that two platonic friends one day look at each other and say, “You! It’s always been you!” I agree that all good romances must include reasons why the couple LIKE as well as love each other and the sense that they become friends as well as lovers, but the “we’ve been friends since junior high but now, 15 years down the road, we realize we love each other” is not a favorite of mine.
On the other hand, enemies-to-lovers (or “antagonists-to-lovers”—my preferred term) is heavy-duty catnip for me; although—as noted above—there have to be valid reasons for the antagonism on both sides and the behavior of the MCs has to proceed organically from those reasons and not because of emotional immaturity or abusive tendencies. I absolutely love it when the MCs realize how much they admire and are unwillingly attracted to their antagonist. A perfect recent example for me is CD Reiss’s IRON CROWNE (one of my favorite books of 2019): she’s an environmental lawyer, he’s a real estate developer with a reputation for skirting environmental regulations. They meet when her law firm sues his company and sparks fly. Reiss does a really good job of keeping the sexual tension on a constant simmer and of being even-handed as to the feelings and motivations of both the hero and heroine. Great stuff!
I like both Friends to Lovers and Enemies to Lovers.
And I very much love… How to describe this? You know, when the H is teaching the h how to become… whatever. Dateable, sexy, sociable, desirable for someone…
Oh, oh, I know! Let’s call it My Fair Lady 🙂 Or give me the correct Romancelandia term for it.
I recently read a cute YA version of this: GIRL AT HEART by KELLY ORAM.
The wonderfully dirty version is, of course BEAUTIFUL PLAYER by CHRISTINA LAUREN.
And… wait for it… My all time favorite: BEARD SCIENCE by PENNY REID.
I’m ok with friends to lovers as long as it develops somehow organically. Me and the bf were good friends for 4 years until we decided to fake flirt bc another guy wouldn’t stop creeping on me and it worked a little too well. We’re celebrating our ten year anniversary this August.
What I really can’t stand is when the hero and heroine are friends until one of them starts dating somebody else and the other realizes they love them and noone else can have them (it’s like kids who don’t want to share their toys). This happens a lot in movies and I hate it every single time.
I’m a little indifferent about enemies to lovers. It really depends on the setup for me. Sometimes the situation is just so bad that I feel like the couple shouldn’t get together even if they can somehow resolve the issue (I’m thinking about “Once Upon A Marquess” by Courtney Milan here).
Surprisingly friends to lovers really works for me if there’s some unrequited love involved (at first at least, I don’t want the protagonists to suffer forever). I also enjoy some insta love/insta lust if it develops into something that goes beyond physical attraction later. I feel like this also applies for arranged marriages/marriage of convenience.
I hate enemies to lovers because too often they are just hateful or sniping to each other for 50% or more of the book. That kinda just dilutes the good romance energy I need to enjoy the book, imo.
My catnip is a little niche, but I love it. It is an offshoot of friends to lovers. It is when the couple long, long, longs for each other but something (realistic) keeps them, apart. They act as friends because that is the only way they can be together, they may even acknowledge their feelings, but agree that it just isn’t possible. Basically Romeo and Juliet but without the death at the end.
This is best deployed in historical romances, because modern day romances most impediments can be mown through.
One of my favorites was, Relentless, a futuristic romance by Lauren Dane set in a time/place where a social caste system was rigidly enforced. You simply didn’t marry outside your class. But the H&H are hot and heavy try to figure a way around it.
There is an old skool Barbara Delinksy that does this one well, called Within Reach. The heroine is an unhappily married woman who buys a beach house in order to have a place to connect with her politically ambitious husband. But he never has the time and she befriends her hot, but sensitive, next door neighbor. A little dated, but hits my happy place for this brand of the trope.
Lynne Connolly’s first Richard and Rose, Yorkshire, book also works here for me. It takes place in the Georgian era and he is betrothed to someone else when he meets Rose and they fall in love. They make a big deal about the difficulty and scandal it would be to be for Richard to try to break the betrothal contract.
Friends to Lovers can work! Like in Jane Austen’s Emma. Or it can be stupid, like in many examples outlined here.
I like Enemies to Lovers if the two protags are actual enemies for plot/ideological reasons, then their regard for one another forced them to confront what is keeping them apart. But I tend not to read Enemies to Lovers, because instead mostly you get a screwball comedy sort of banter, where our heroes are super rude to one another for most of the book then inexplicably get married. Don’t marry rude people.
I love Marriage of Convenience.
Sarah Mayberry’s Her Best Worst Mistake is my first rec. He’s the Baxter (jilted ex) for her best friend.
In a similar vein, The Wedding Party by Jasmine Guillory also features two people who get off on the wrong foot but through forced proximity get to know each other better.
The one I straight up hated so much I could never read another book by that author was Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James.
The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan kind of has this as well, although it’s more of, two-people-at-cross-purposes-who-really-really-like-each-other.
I used to absolutely love enemies-to-lovers to the point where that was all I read and wrote as a teenager and then at some point I fell out of love with the trope . These days I simply don’t read it unless the “hate” is limited to some flirty snark. Part of this is simply because I may have read too much of it and another part might be life happened and the trope became less appealing and seemed less of a plausible way to start a healthy relationship, at least to me.
Today I Prefer friends-to-lovers with a little slow burn thrown in for good measure, it’s just more enjoyable to me these days. However, I can understand how it doesn’t appeal to some people when done poorly . Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
So, it’s not a common book, but the friends-to-loveres opposites/subset I absolutely LOATHE is three way relationships in which 2 were friends interested in each other and not together (can’t/ won’t/ don’t try) and suddenly the third person appears and it’s all HEA time. Otherwise, I enjoy a good more than two romance, but I absolutely cannot with this version. Like these people are just incapable until X shows up. The ire is rising even as I type.
One I love is MoC or fake relationship between opposite-types with a purpose, particularly to receive an inheritance from antagonistic family. Can’t think of a title off the top of my head.
Or smug person saved by sensible person. (Like that one Amanda Quick where he thinks he’s getting revenge against her family and she just turns it all around on him,Scandal)
Friends to enemies to lovers is one of my all time favorite dynamics. I blame it on reading too much Smallville fan fiction at an impressionable age.
I guess Friends to Lovers doesn’t have enough sexual tension for me. I mean, how often in real life does someone get out of the friend zone? Unless there has been a slow burn all along with an obstacle to them getting together.
I prefer strangers to lovers, which in historicals is usually an MOC, or in a contemporary it might be hookups to lovers.
Friends to lovers is my top-of-the-list favorite trope. I especially one-click M/M childhood-friends, with one always having been in love, or maybe both secretly in love. A perfect example of this is Him by Elle Kennedy and Sarina Bowen. My gateway onto this road to love that I didn’t know I was missing.
Friends to lovers is one of my favorite tropes, I think because it works very well with what is most satisfying for me to read : a slow burn with good old fashioned pining. It has taken me several decades of life and romance reading to figure out that I need there to be an emotional connection before sex, both in my own life and in fiction. Insta-lust is baffling for me, as is the unfortunately common attitude that sex can exist just fine without romantic love, but romantic love without sex is impossible.
I don’t like arguing and aggression IRL, so enemies to lovers is a hard sell for me. I like friends to lovers, fake relationships and marriages of convenience, but my favourite (probably because it’s so rare) is Two Against The World, where the hero and heroine team up to win the bet, survive the snowstorm, outsmart the manipulative family or make it against incredible odds. Doesn’t even have to be the same problem – The Mrs Mckinnons won me over the other week. She helped him with his alcohol dependent ptsd and house restoration and he helped her avoid a manipulative father and befriended her son.
This is such a boring answer, but for me it really comes down to the execution of the conception. If the chemistry is convincing, the obstacles to the couple getting together are plausible, and the romance unfolds at a pace that makes sense given the overall premise and the character psychologies, I’m satisfied. If not, I’m not. There are definitely some tropes that appeal to me more than others (and some that I’m flatout allergic to), but I’m equally happy to read slow-burn romances or insta-lust romances or whatever, as long as I feel that the relationship progression is justified by the text.
I could write essays on what makes X trope work or not work for me, so trying not to do that, but friends-to-lovers works best for me when there’s chemistry all along but some reason no one ever thought to act on it, rather than “oh they’ve been BFFs for fifteen years and suddenly and semi-randomly they’re in love,” which doesn’t work for me at all; I can accept something like that if the people involved were casual acquaintances, but not if they were close friends. Enemies-to-lovers I gravitate towards more, but for romance, I’m definitely in the camp where I prefer there to be an external reason for them to be enemies and not just lots of sniping. I feel differently about this in non-romance.
@Tina – I wish there were more books about star-crossed non-dead lovers! It’s a setup that attracts me too. Similarly, I tend to be attracted to books where the relationship might not be forbidden, but would be an obviously logically terrible idea, like if they’re stepsiblings or the wrong person’s ex.
I sometimes like Enemies to Lovers if their journey to lovers includes forced proximity. Like it Act Like It where once they’re forced to get to know one another they realize they aren’t really enemies. I don’t like it when, as someone said above, they hate each other until suddenly they inexplicably don’t. I’m also not a big fan of the opposite-sides-of-a-war version because it’s super angsty and such a huge obstacle that it’s hard to have a believable HEA.
The forced proximity version of Enemies to Lovers and MOC (or strangers to lovers, I like that) are my all time favorites.
I would think the opposite of friends-to-lovers would be a book where someone spends the entire book expecting to marry their perfectly nice, acceptable friend then realizes they are in fact in love with someone else. Two Quinns come to mind, Because of Miss Bridgerton, where the h expects to marry the H’s younger brother who she likes very much as a friend, then discovers that the H doesn’t really hate her, he just wishes she’d tone it down and stop getting in trouble. The opposite side of that is The Girl With the Make-Believe Husband where the H is the one expecting to marry the neighbor girl (everyone keeps saying they’re “practically engaged”) but falls in love with someone else while serving in the Army. These work out nicely because nobody gets hurt; as long as the jilted partner lets out a “Whew! Dodged that bullet!” at the end (or better yet turns out to have married someone else in the meantime, or been an antagonist all the while) I am perfectly happy with that trope. I think Heyer’s Powder and Patch may be another example but it’s been a while since I read it.
I don’t like Enemies to Lovers and yet The Hating Game is one of my favorites.
I’d say my favorite trope, if it’s even a trope, is Woman Breaking Free of Expectations, redefining herself, forming her identity and getting mixed up with some unsuitable guy who aids in navigating this (The Kiss Quotient, Brazen and the Beast, pretty much all the Molly Jamesons and most of the Sarah Macleans)
As usual, I agree with everything @DiscoDollyDeb said-I much more buy the enemies to lovers than the friends to lovers. I think because the enemies to lovers starts with strong emotions-which aren’t always rooted in very bad behavior on someone’s part. Misunderstandings, bad communications, can be the cause of the “enemy” status. In my own history, I have had “relations” with men that did drive me crazy, but I realized that we also had the element of attraction. In terms of recommendations, I’m thinking of the O’Malley series by Katee Robert-I think several of them had the enemies to lovers theme.
I agree with Lynn, the hero and heroine of Once Upon a Marquess are divided by too much to ever get together! I do love enemies to lovers, a recent one being A Conspiracy of Whispers, which is also a road trip.
My own story is friends to lovers, or maybe oblivious to lovers since everyone but me knew we were dating, and I thought we were just friends.
I agree with Jill Q on the technical opposite of Friends to Lovers being Better off as Friends.
I hate those stories myself – or at least I hate them at feature length; I love “I Can’t Believe We Were Married” the Paul Kelly song. And I liked the ‘ex is still family’ bit in “Rectify”, though frankly that part was the healthiest segment of the unromantic arc. And I liked the idea of “being a good ex” in “Penny and Aggie”…
I just see ALL shades of red when this vein of fiction has the repercussion in my life of my steps (or ‘outlaws’ as they’re calling themselves to sound cool, since they’re tehnically de facto, not legal) reckoning they get ‘plus one (and more)’ invites into my life because ‘more relatives is more love’.
No it is not; in a dysfunctional family, adding enablers to the mix makes the scapegoating, gaslighting, etc worse.
So no wedding attendance from me, even if it were relevant. Au contraire, I want to elope myself. I always thought doing a Lydia Bennett would be awesome (if acting responsibly).
On a smaller fictional scale, I have seen people ‘toning down’ their relationship, I guess?
There’s a beta couple in “The Rich Man’s Bride” by Catherine George who have divorced because they were getting on each others’ nerves. They’re still lovers, though. Visitor lovers.
And I read a literary book (that, yes, does have an irritating trope romance fans generally can’t abide) called “A Celibate Season” where the wife goes off to be part of a Canadian federal inquiry feminist working group thing and the husband has to carry the parenting load and their relationship turns epistolary. It was meaty food for thought. Well, at least for me at that age.
I don’t really mind friends to lovers but it’s tricky to pull off convincingly – the dynamic is more brother and sister or same sex. To go from that to I want to shag you is a bit of a twist. Enemies to lovers I can get behind. You’ve got the tension there. Not really a romance series but I love the dynamic in Jeffery Deaver’s crime thrillers where the grumpy genius parapalegic forensic scientist ends up with a gorgeous smart woman who pretty much does all the chasing in the relationship.
The opposite of Friends to Lovers for me I think would be insta-lust or love at first sight/insta-love. Insta-lust can work well for me as an inverse Friends to Lovers, where they already know they want to stay (sleeping) together but have to get to know each other as people–I think I prefer hookup-to-lovers over marriage of convenience just because MoC often gets me thinking “wait, is marrying this person you barely know/claim you can’t stand really the ONLY option you can think of?” (MoC with Friends-to-Lovers, on the other hand…) Insta-love or at-first-sight is just an insta-turn off for me. I came here to find out WHY these people were in love! Show your work!
In theory I like both Friends to Lovers and Enemies to Lovers…but in practice, I usually end up asking “if you were friends for so long what kept you apart” or “what exactly made you stop being enemies” and the answers are often not satisfying. That, and there are plenty of times I can’t even believe the friendship (existing in the same small town does not make you friends! Do you guys even like each other?!) or the enmity (you get along perfectly every time you interact! How does it benefit you to say you hate this person?!)…so, I’ll still say I like the tropes but dislike the execution.
Generally, I’m drawn to Enemies to Lovers that comes with darker themes, like they’re on opposite sides of a war or they have some other actually dangerous, no-thank-you-in-real-life dynamic (bounty hunter/criminal, perhaps?) that turns into “I hate that I love you so much” and forces them to change their perspective of themselves, their “side,” their enemy, and their whole worldview. I’ve got to believe both of them are capable of changing, and I want them both to start out as not-so-good people who get better because of that change.
I dislike, no matter what tropes it brings with it, smug arrogant heroes vs. heroines who get instantly flustered by them and can’t stand up to them. Apply to all gender dynamics, because ‘hero’ and ‘heroine’ are roles here.
In addition to Friends- and Enemies-to-Lovers, I like Second Chances as a result of missed opportunities the first time around (such as having no money for marriage or giving into family/peer/political pressure–not just ‘got together, broke up, try again’), where either so much time has gone by or the situation has radically changed so that they can’t just slot back into the roles they were in originally. It gives the characters the chance to question who the other person really is and what, if anything, they want this relationship to be–and from there, to question who they really are, as well.
At the end of the day, I need both characters to change to believe the romance has really affected them, rather than one person forcing the other to fit their ideal or one person waiting patiently for the other to stop being boneheaded.
I think the main reason Enemies to Lovers is so prevalent is because it handily solves the Why Aren’t They Together Now question that every romance author has to solve in order for there to be a plot. There always has to be some reason the characters DON’T just hop into a HEA in chapter two, or there’s no book. If the characters start off actively disliking each other, you have a built in reason why it would take a novel’s worth of action for them to sort out their shit, which makes life a lot easier from a writing perspective.
I rather like friends to lovers to enemies to lovers, personally. Er, where two people were friends and then fell in love when they were young, but then something goes horribly wrong and everything is fucked up and then eventually when they are older and slightly wiser they meet again and finally start the slow painful unfucking process. When done well it’s the best of all possible worlds, to my mind. Because like, they CAN be good together, and you know it, and they know it, and they keep slipping back towards it, but it’s completely understandable why they’re shying away from it. Courtney Milan’s Once Upon a Marquess is the gold standard, there.
Oh, wow! I was just going to request a Req League for romances with a North & South feel and realized that movie is totally Enemies to Lovers!
That’s not really what I’m after though. I’m thinking of the feel of it rather than the dynamic. I find myself wanting romances that are melty, like the train kiss.