1) I'm a sucker for the Cinderella trope, especially if Cinderella isn't just sweeping up the floor and waiting for her prince to come. I like a Cinderella who is actively working to change her station in life!
2) Reunion romances make me cry, in all the best ways. I love watching the play of past feelings mingling with new, the personal drama that sets off, and the way people who think they just can't go on together actually find those little things they hated or didn't understand about the other...they now do. Because, as as a good friend once said, don't we all go through those times when we have to find one another all over again?
3) Friends to Lovers. Like reunions, friends to lovers make me a squishy inside. Seeing a friendship grow to more than either person thought it ever could? So rewarding! As flamboyant as the love at first sight story can be, for me the fireworks of a friends to lovers story burns brighter and longer...because there is so much to lose. If love-at-first-sight doesn't work out? You still have your friends...if you take a chance on love and lost a friendship? That sets off little explosions throughout the characters' worlds.
As I was writing my new Slippery Rock Series, I got to play around with a lot of tropes - there are five football player buddies, younger sisters falling for their brother's best friends, friends to lovers, a sloow burn, enemies to lovers, a bit of Cinderella, a secret baby...Hey, there are 4 books and 1 novella - that's a lot space to play around with tropes. You know what I think, though? My favorite trope is The End.
Yeah, I like to think the ending of a romance novels - the happily-ever-after part - is it's own trope, too. The ending, whether I'm there strictly as a reader or as a writer, is my absolute, hands-down, favorite part. I love to watch the hero and heroine riding or walking or driving into the sunset, together. In my imagination, they're holding hands and as they move farther away from me, they're getting smaller, growing older...but they're still holding hands. Because don't we all want to be holding hands with someone that special as we grow older?
So, that about you? What's your favorite romance novel trope? And, like me, do you look at the endings as a trope of it's own?
Kristina Knight's latest book, Famous in a Small Town, releases May 1 from Harlequin Superromance; it is the first book in her new Slippery Rock series.
Forced to leave Nashville after a scandal, Savannah Walters has come home to Slippery Rock, Missouri, with a bruised ego and her singing career in jeopardy. As if that isn't humiliating enough, on her way into town she's rescued by her swoon-worthy childhood crush, Collin Tyler.
His hands are full running the family orchard and dealing with his delinquent teen sister, so Collin doesn't need to get involved with someone as fiery and unpredictable as Savannah. But the intense attraction between them can't be denied. And when disaster strikes, they'll both be surprised by who's still standing when the dust settles.
3 comments:
Enemies to lovers and second chance love
denise
I like second chance romances especially if the friends have fallen out and need to work together on some project or other. Cinderella ones are a close second.
Charlotte
Friends to lovers, reunion, marriage of convenience...most anything that doesn't involve incessant bickering. :-) Nice post, Kristi.
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