Turn the page for a little love
Check out the best bad romance stories
‘Bad romance’’ gives us the best of both worlds: sweet and sour; light and dark; funny and fragile. Its heroes are nasty knights; its heroines are dysfunctional dreamers. And long before the delicious diva, Lady Gaga, reminded us of how much we need the amorous psycho and vertigo shtick in our lives, Emily Bronte christened the page with that powerhouse of risque passion, Wuthering Heights. Ever since, the illicit passion between broken boy Heathcliff and Cathy has set the benchmark for twisted love literature.
But it’s 2020 and, rather than Yorkshire Moors simmering with unnatural urges, hot and sticky summer days at the beach beckon. So, shed the whalebone corsets and tight breeches.
Here are six recent ‘‘hate you, date you’’ pageturners guaranteed to spice up idle afternoons of sunbathing and uneventful hideaways at the bach.
Wicked meet-cute moments
It takes two to tango: an adage New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren (pen-name for writing besties Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings) exemplifies.
In their latest bad romance, The Unhoneymooners (Piatkus, $28), Olive Torres is single and stuck in a dead-end job, while her twin sister Ami’s a go-getter with the perfect career and, in Dane, a handsome beau.
What’s worse for Olive, is having to endure the wedding, where she’s forced to spend time with sworn enemy, Dane’s best man, Ethan. When food poisoning strikes, however, Ami and Dane’s honeymoon in Maui is offered to the adversaries.
A free trip to paradise is just what Olive needs but, is it worth it, when she’s stuck with detestable Ethan? The result is classic lighthearted love-hate material.
Rachel Winters’ richly-layered first novel, Would Like to Meet (Putnam, $28), is full of loved-up movie memories. The novel stars downtrodden screen agent Evie, whose promotion relies upon star client Ezra completing his next rom-com blockbuster script. The only problem is, he hasn’t put pen to paper. So it’s down to Evie to inspire him, by turning her dating-life into recreations from iconic romantic films. Does art influence life?
When Evie meets handsome single dad Ben and his tenacious daughter Anette, she starts to think so. Fans of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and An Affair to Remember will enjoy losing themselves in this hilarious, stardust story, especially its flashbacks to their favourite movies.
Star-crossed lovers
In The Girl He Used to Know (Trapeze, $26) by New York Times bestseller Tracey Garvis Graves, matchmaking arrives in a game of chess.
When wearied Illinois academic Jonathan spars off against shy English undergrad Annika, checkmate becomes date night. Soon this unlikely pair are going steady, then tragedy overturns their perfect passion.
Flash forward a decade and Tracey is a librarian and Jonathan a Wall Street whiz. When they meet accidentally in Chicago, old feelings reignite. But the darkness of the past haunts them. It’s a tender, tumultuous tale of love’s thwarted opportunities and seemingly impossible second chances.
Vietnamese-American author Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin, $34), is part-poetic homage to failed love, part-literary struggle with identity, and part-confession upon the theme of migration.
The book opens with a long letter written by American protagonist Little Dog to his illiterate Vietnamese mother. The struggles of the outsider to belong in America, and of the gay man to find cultural and personal acceptance, result.
But, most touchingly, this is a book examining Little Dog’s broken relationship with closeted tobacco farm-boy, Trevor. Vuong is an awardwinning poet, and his skilful cadence and lyrical voice imbues On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous with a profound and raw writing style.
Romancing the rainbow
From the author who famously quipped, ‘‘I’m not the bi messiah’’, Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue (St Martin’s Press, $36) brings a Gen Z cynicism and queer-eye sharpness to the ‘‘bad rom-com’’ genre.
This alternative 2016 America sees a Democrat woman win the presidential election.
But her spotlight can’t compete with that of her hot ‘‘influencer’’ son, Alex. His on-point social media pronouncements wow the internet, but set him offside with English celebrity nemesis, Prince Henry.
Cue an American-British diplomatic crisis, patched up by a fake Instagram friendship. But, as these media darlings get to know one another, sparks of a different kind start to fly. Think Love, Simon meets The Princess Diaries.
Bad romance goes futuristic in Jeanette Winterson’s 2019 Booker Prize long-listed novel Frankissstein (Jonathan Cape, $35).
Trans doctor Ry is spellbound by renegade artificial intelligence academic Victor Stein. Their romantic involvement is counterpointed by Winteron’s reimagining of the rain-dampened passion between Mary Shelley and her poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Throw in straight-talking, sex-bot entrepreneur Ron Lord – a rather influential Alan Turing acolyte – and a subterranean world hidden below Manchester streets and Frankissstein offers an innovative take on the bad romance read, with an examination of eroticism and cupidity in the imminent age where the human body is manipulated by science.