Guest post: Romance in YA fiction by Raimy

Today I want to welcome the wonderful Raimy from Readaraptor to the blog. She's written a wonderful post about romance in young adult fiction from a different perspective. 

Over to Raimy...

Ok I am not the best person to ask about romance, I am not a romantic, I would rather have something practical, or a dinosaur, bought for me than a box of chocolates or some flowers... in fact once when my boyfriend bought me flowers, he also bought a vase because he knew I didn’t have one! So with this in mind, me being here today to talk about my favourite romances in books may seem a bit crazy... I don’t like it being put into books for the sake of it and I don’t often read contemporary romances, if there is romance in my book I want there to be a real reason for it... and don’t even get me started on intsa-love.

Anyway the type of romance I do like is subtle romance, the romance you can see blossoming during the book and that builds ever so slightly, at a steady pace and nicely. I don’t like macho rubbish and I don’t like giggly girls. The below are great examples of romance in some of my favourite books. 

Belle Epoque - Elizabeth Ross 

I read this just a week or so back and it is incredible, I loved everything about it and the romance between the main character and a gentleman she meets in the book is just perfect. They are obviously attracted to one another but its so subtle that its a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kinda thing until right at the end. Everything is in Maude’s perspective in the book and I don’t even remember her admitting to being attracted to him so by the end of the book I was so happy to see them becoming even closer. 

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares - Rachel Cohen & David Levithan 

So this is a contemporary romance, however there are so many things going on in addition to the romance that I loved it anyway. The romance that developed between Dash & Lily though was beautiful and I loved ow they used a notebook to get to know one another. The whole book is very serendipitous and I loved it for that. 

The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo 

Mal and Alina are special and I love the two characters separately and together. The romance in this trilogy (which is currently only up to book two) is beautiful and I love that it is a back story to everything and takes its time to develop. In book one I wasn’t even sure they were going to actually get together or stay together but in the second I was happier with them how they were but it didn’t take over the full story either which was awesome. 

Chopsticks

Chopsticks is quite possibly the most bizarre book I have read for review, ever. In fact you can’t really call it reading because there are around 100 words in the entire thing I think! It like a scrapbook that tells the story of two characters who each have a lot of crap to deal with and take comfort in each others company. The two characters find themselves falling into each others world, each trying to deal with the others’ problems rather than their own and it made for an incredible book and a beautiful romance.

There are probably loads more romances that I have loved despite my inclination to be a muttering old hag when it comes to love. I think when done well I can’t get enough of romance but I find it takes over so much that I come to hate it, so I really like it when it can co-exist with other topics and not be the full story. If you have any romances you loved that I should check out do let me know! 

Thank you so much Raimy! It's refreshing to hear about different kinds of romances in novels and the types of romance different people like. What's your favourite kind of romance?!