This is for the book lovers who keep questioning the love they read.
You begin reading.
The interactions, the chemistry and ultimately you stay for the love. The passionate, often heartbreaking, love story between the two main characters.
Though frantic and sometimes chaotic, romantic novels have draught many readers throughout the years. And now, they even have their own space and community in Tik Tok under the #BookTok. Intended for women, these types of novels create expectations of what love should mirror: a woman strained in the personal development of her partner.
“I knew the second I met you that there was something about you I needed. Turns out, it wasn’t something about you at all,” Travis said in Jamie McCguire’s “Beautiful Disaster.” “It was just you.”
The book follows the good girl-bad boy trope. Abby Abernathy falls in love with Travis Maddox, who is everything she wants to leave behind. He drinks, he fights, and he is a playboy. Characters that begin as best friends turn into lovers complementing each other into something chaotic yet beautiful.
Still, the narrative hangs by the thread of Travis’ personal development while leaving Abby as an instrument of his changing behavior.
When she is not around, he turns into a “Walking Disaster” as the second book (and Travis’ POV) is called. Abby tames the beast and ultimately, he learns how to do so for himself as well.
This narrative is not only everywhere, but it is contagious.
“I thought oh well, he only met you during the summer, he still wasn’t really himself then, he’s been so much better since,” Sally Rooney wrote as part of Melissa’s email after she found out her husband was having an affair with Frances, the main character in “Conversations with Friends.”
“And now I realize that you’re actually a function of the betterness, or it’s a function of you,” Melissa says in the book.
Though Rooney’s book provides a more in-depth view of people’s behavior and thinking, she still develops a narrative dooming Frances to the continued improvement of Nick, even at the end.
“What makes Sally Rooney’s books so compelling is that they offer us the possibility of allowing pleasure to be important, even above our better judgment,” Constance Grady said in an article about Rooney for Vox. “We can recognize a relationship is doomed and still let it make us happy for the moment.”
Still, the book leaves women as constant contributors of someone else’s story, even if they oversee the narrative.
And when we are out in the real world, we may look for something like this. Twisting facts and overlooking our needs to fulfill the purpose of finding love.
But reality is more complicated. We do not have a master of puppets controlling every situation. Instead, we have two persons clashing within each other, their feelings and expectations.
No woman should expect change from her partner.
Love can be pleasurable, and it can even feel magical.
But modern love is about contributing, loving and learning about yourself. It is about being an instrument for your personal change. And that is what romance novels do not tell you.