When I first heard about Choose Your Own Love Story, I was so pumped for this. I wore out nearly every Choose Your Own Adventure book my school’s library had when I was a kid. So combine that with some romance and I wanted to get my hands on this immediately. Unfortunately, the introduction of the concept was the only thing I liked about the book.
The basic premise is that your long term boyfriend has just announced that he’s had an epiphany (while at Burning Man no less) and wants to see other people, mainly another women he’s met while at Burning Man. From there begins your adventure. Do you try to convince your ex you should stay together? Do you try your hand at online dating? If you do, whose profile stands out more – someone who quotes Jane Austen or the man who seems well traveled?
Now, the beauty of the original CYOA books is that the stories were vague enough that the readers could insert themselves into the action. You were supposed to make decisions off what you’d do if you were in those scenarios, and if you fucked up, of course you’d backtrack and tell yourself you had meant to pick the more successful option anyway. You just wanted to check after all.
However, romance readers are complex individuals. All of us have certain tastes and preferences that correspond to nearly every aspect of a romance novel. What heroes do we like? Settings? Do we prefer virginal heroines or brash ones? And no, of course they’re not mutually exclusive. To boil these things down into generic scenes without complexity just feels…wrong.
In one scene in particular that bothered me, the heroine (though it seems strange to call her that) goes out on a fifth date with a guy and finally has sex. She’s a little taken aback by the fact that he’s very vocal in the bedroom, but nothing he said was really all that shocking. It was your standard sex talk fare. But she’s unsure of what to do. The next day, she consults her friend about whether to talk back even though she feels silly for doing so or just keep quiet.
So the next date, you choose whether you want to be more vocally responsive or not. Neither outcome is a good one, really.
Writing about love and romance is tough. And I don’t think people give romance authors enough credit trying to create these genuine or vulnerable moments. Before going into a romance novel, we already have some idea of what to expect. The jacket copy is often very helpful at giving us an idea of what sort of characterization to expect from the hero and heroine, and what things they may have to overcome. As we get to know these characters, we have some idea of their strengths and weaknesses, and how they may handle the obstacles before them in order to achieve their true luuurrve.
But here, it’s just completely devoid of that characterization because it’s supposed to be static enough to allow you to insert yourself into the story to make those decisions. And it just bummed me out. The heroine is a caricature and kind of annoying. No matter what choice I made, I was unhappy with how she acted within the designated scenes.
As for the heroes, none of them really stood out to me. They weren’t dynamic or even representative of the common archetypes we see.
I don’t know much about the author, save for that she has experience with acting and working in the entertainment industry. But I have to wonder if she’s even read a romance novel. Or perhaps I’m being too harsh, and the genre is too personal to readers and simply wouldn’t work in this medium no matter who tried it.
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Have you guys heard about the personalized romance novels thing?
http://www.bookbyyou.com/romance/
Essentially, the book is already written (various genres and plots, like vampires, pirates, race car drivers, etc), but you pay a fee, fill out a questionnaire, and they personalize it for you… mostly just the basics, like character names, eye and hair colour, pets, best friends, etc. I can’t speak for the quality since I never actually bought one (though they do have previews for each book where you can plug in some sample information and see what it looks like), and I suspect the plot is likely set in stone, but this review made me remember them.
Back in grammar school, I read a few CYOA books (some D&D ones, a Justice League one) and while they were fun, it was only so long before you wound up with all the possible outcomes and got bored.
A good recent one is TO BE OR NOT TO BE, by Ryan North. This applies the CYOA format to HAMLET, where the reader can “play” as Hamlet, Ophelia (who’s an inventor here, much like Princes Bubblegum on ADVENTURE TIME), or the ghost of King Hamlet. Possible endings include living happily ever after, developing an internal air conditioning system, or becoming the Incredible Hulk! It’s a lot of fun (although damn hard to finish, given the hundreds of possible outcomes it’s difficult to keep going back and pursuing all the possible story paths).
@Leah: I had an ex do that for my birthday. It was kind of strange. Some people may enjoy it, but it was weird to see myself and all these personal details reflected in the text.
Is there no such thing as the text equivalent of an otome game? What’s possible in one medium should be possible in another…
This review reminded me that tucked away in a box somewhere in my house, I have 2 little erotic choose your own adventure books by Alina Reyes. One is called Sexual Labyrinth and I don’t recall the other title. I have no idea how they hold up after so many years, but at the time I was enthralled by the combination of CYOA and adult content.
I don’t think they’re available on Amazon, but might be fun to track down.
@Heather: I’d definitely be interested in finding those! I’m curious whether this CYOA format doesn’t work for me in general or if it was just this one book.
I wonder if part of the difficulty stems from differences in reader maturity. It just strikes me that so much of the pleasure that adults gain from reading is identification (to a more or less sophisticated degree) with the characters, descriptions, and situations in a novel. Maybe part of why the Choose Your Own Adventure books are so popular with kids is that they mimic or support a particular stage of reader development–and, by the time we get past that stage, the mechanic seems distracting. For example, I know that I devoured the Goosebumps You Choose The Scare books as a kid, and while I enjoyed Ryan North’s To Be or Not To Be tremendously, it wasn’t for the same reasons–I didn’t put myself in the “you’s” shoes the same way I did twenty years ago.
Jayne Rylon’s written a couple of these that worked pretty well–they are pretty hot though, just as a caveat 🙂
http://jaynerylon.com/pick-your-pleasure/
http://jaynerylon.com/pick-your-pleasure-2/
http://jaynerylon.com/pick-your-pleasure-3/
Back in the day I remember finding chose your own romance type books at my local library. They were from a British publisher but I don’t remember the title or the author. One that does stick out was that the heroine worked at a radio station and read and reported the news and she had to choose between two guys she worked with. It was very tame but they are out there.