My teen
daughter and I are catching up on episodes of the first series of the ABC hit evening
soap, Revenge. Daughter was studying
and I was working when the first season aired Down Under where we live and we
only caught a few episodes.
We’re loving Revenge, and nothing more than the love triangle between the beautiful young protagonist, Emily Thorne, and the two men in love with her—bar owner Jack Porter, and heir to a vast fortune, Daniel Grayson. Both men are gorgeous in very different ways and Emily is not only torn between them, but also tempted from her hell-bent path of revenge against Daniel’s family.
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| Emily has to choose between Daniel with the millions... |
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| Or Jack with the dog |
“They're both so hot, I just couldn’t
choose between them,” my daughter sighs quite often as
we watch. I couldn’t either! And isn’t that the enduring appeal of this type of
story? (Don’t give me any spoilers, please, as I know things don’t work out
quite as these first episodes indicate!)
The words of
the old Mary MacGregor pop song, Torn
Between Two Lovers are humming along in my head—the one where she sings
that loving two men at the same time is “breaking all the rules”. I’m not
talking infidelity here, but having to make a choice. And the choice is what
makes it so interesting for viewers or readers—sometimes we root for one or
other of the guys and that really ups the tension! Who will end up with who?
Who will be left broken hearted? Was it the right decision?
In the early
Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich, didn’t it keep us anxious for the
next book to see whether Stephanie would chose sexy cop Joe Morelli or the dark
and dangerous Ranger? Think of the tragic love triangle in the movie Legends of the Fall between the heroine
Susannah and two brothers Tristan and Alfred (Tristan is played by a young Brad
Pitt that made the choice for me!) Or when Bridget Jones has characters played
by Colin Firth and Hugh Grant fighting over her affections?
There’s Diane
Keaton having to choose between Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves in Something’s Gotta Give (no choice for
me, I couldn’t understand why she chose Jack Nicholson!) In The Notebook, Allie has to choose
between Lon and Noah (pick Noah, pick Noah!) And then of course there’s the beautiful
young girl loved by both a vampire and a werewolf in Twilight.
I’m having fun working on
a romance where my heroine thinks she’s in love with one man when another comes
onto the scene. Being a romance, it has to be very clear who is the right guy
pretty soon, and the complications go from there. Of course if I wrote erotic
romance, I could give her a ménage, where she gets her happily-ever-after
ending with both of them. That’s the ultimate solution to making a choice!
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| I couldn't resist ending with this! |
What do you
think? I’d love to hear! Do you enjoy a love triangle? Any favorite books or
movies that feature a love triangle? Do you think she made the right choice?
Have you ever had to make such a choice?
Please leave a comment to be in the
draw to win a Love is a
Four-Legged Word T-shirt. Be sure to leave your email address with your comment if
you want to be in the draw.
Kandy Shepherd writes fun,
feel-good fiction. Her books include Something About
Joe, Love is a
Four-Legged Word, Home Is Where
the Bark Is and The Castaway Bride—where the heroine runs away from her wedding to one man and
is castaway on a tropical island with another. (There’s really not much of a
choice to make as the hero is so scrumptious!)
Visit Kandy at her website
