May 14 2009
The Love Triangle
[poll id="168"]I have a hard time with love triangles. If done right, some poor nice guy or girl is totally getting the shaft at the end. If done wrong, some initially poor nice guy or girl is demonized by the end to justify that person being cut out of the happy ending. (Like Hardy in Sugar Daddy).
Because I get very attached to characters, I am gunshy over the love triangle but others simply love them. When Jennifer Haymore’s book, A Hint of Wicked, came in for review, even though I knew this book wasn’t my thing there was literally an email scrum over which reviewer would get to read the book first.
Where do you fall on the love triangle? Like them? Love them?
Send to Kindle
May 14, 2009 @ 10:35:05
I pretty much assume the love triangle is a way to make a series novel in which the guy who didn’t get the girl gets one of his own. Even if it’s not true – or if I never get around to actually reading the next novel – I remain blissfully ignorant. Fore me, HEA is implied whenever I read a romance, regardless of how alone and lonely any of the characters seem at the end.
May 14, 2009 @ 10:41:25
As a reader, I struggle with love triangles, to be honest. It’s hard if I become more attached to the guy left out than the hero.
That said, I adored The Vanished Child by Sarah Smith, which definitely featured a love triangle. I thought she handled it really well. However, it’s not strictly a romance I suppose, as the mystery is very important. So in the right hands in can work.
May 14, 2009 @ 10:42:28
I voted no.
A lot of times a triangle is just there to introduce the hero of the next book and doesn’t serve much of a purpose other than that. Hardy at least was fleshed out enough that you could understand why he was part of the triangle. But still if his book had never been written, it would have bugged me forever that he didn’t have his happily ever after!
Some, the losing part of the triangle will turn out to be a bad guy at the very end which makes you wonder how stupid is the heroine? Usually pretty stupid that she didn’t see his skanky evilness and had feelings for the creep!
Or you’ll wonder why the heck did she choose the one she did choose? What if the reader bonds with the losing hero moreso than the one who gets the girl? oops!
I’m pretty sure I read one book where the losing guy never marries and spends his life mooning over heroine but 30 years later the winning man dies and the heroine then marries the loser. That one just messed happily ever after ALL up and I must have blocked it because I can’t remember who wrote it or what it was. It had to be 20 some odd years ago and I think they were cowboys or ranchers. Oh well.. It was a triangle done very very badly.
May 14, 2009 @ 10:55:44
Depends on the author… some can do it in a way I like, some are lousy. Some used to be good but they dragged it on too long. So…just depends. But when the author is GOOD at it, I mean REALLY GOOD…I love them.
May 14, 2009 @ 10:57:20
Personally, I love the idea of love triangles — however they never end the way I want so I end up disappointed and sometimes, downright mad. I’ll never forget how I felt after reading my first King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot story! I don’t want the second hero to simply be sequel fodder for his own story, and I don’t want her to necessarily choose one over the other. I’m actually pretty cool with the idea of her loving both, and having to come to terms with what that may mean.
May 14, 2009 @ 10:58:29
I don’t like them for the same reasons you mentioned. Either a good guy gets shafted (okay maybe he will get his own book but then you have to wonder is he settling) or a once thought of good guy somehow because lecherous and evil. Don’t like them.
May 14, 2009 @ 11:12:51
I like love triangles when the unchosen party realizes on their own that they and their love object weren’t right for each other after all. And I like love triangles that resolve into polyamorous/open relationships.
Love triangles when it turns out one of the two possibles is actually a Bad Person can be good if handled well. The Bad Person has to have a strong motivation for pretending to be a good egg, though, like stealing the love object’s treasure map or something.
I hate the love triangles where a perfectly nice person is thwarted SO MUCH. And, like you, I hate the ones where the unchosen is suddenly saddled with a lot of Bad Person baggage just so we don’t feel bad for him/her.
May 14, 2009 @ 11:17:26
I’m waaaay behind the curve, here, so I just read Sugar Daddy last week. ‘Course, I was so sure Hardy and Liberty would eventually have their HEA that I kept thinking Gage was a red herring…and I have to say because so much time was spent on developing Hardy’s character, I kinda felt Gage got short shrift. In this case, another fifty pages showing his and Liberty’s growing relationship wouldn’t have hurt, IMO.
That said, I thought Kleypas did a pretty good job showing the conflicted mess that is Hardy Cates. From the very beginning, he warns Liberty off — he KNOWS his ambition will hurt her in the end, despite his feelings for her. And he’s right. However, he’s by no means a bad guy; all the good he does, and is, makes him more than redeemable. I had no idea his story was next, so you bet I’m all over that one. :)
So I voted “no,” because although I felt Kleypas handled the triangle well, I still found it frustrating in many ways. But at least it wasn’t predictable.
May 14, 2009 @ 11:21:46
The Stephanie Plum triangle has left such an awful taste in my mouth I have a hard time reading about them.
May 14, 2009 @ 11:27:25
I hate love triangles. Usually you have heroine, hero, and a villain, where the villain is so OTT evil to make the hero look good that it ruins the book.
Or you have a scenario with heroine and two decent guys, when this happens I just want all three of them to get in bed and have a happy mengae. Erotic romance has corrupted me. :) And if it is two decent guys, then I always fall for the one that the heroine didn’t choose, and I just end up being pissed at the book.
There are some exceptions. If it’s an author that I already love, then I might read a love triangle. But I usually avoid reading them.
May 14, 2009 @ 11:38:24
I like the love triangle when it turns into a quadrangle, that is, when the odd person out finds a new love. I tend to agree with Jane that it almost never works when the third party is demonized. I also generally don’t like it when the nice third party is left alone. However, there are exceptions.
SPOILERS for For My Lady’s Heart
One of my favorite love triangles is the secondary storyline involving Allegreto, Cara and Guy in Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart. It works really well for me because Allegreto makes such sacrifices for Cara even though he knows that he is not the one for her. I think the reason this works is that Allegreto starts out as a very morally ambigous character, and his sacrifices for Cara as well as his understanding that she will be happier with Guy are part of his redemption. Also, it’s implied at the end of the book that Allegreto will eventually marry Elena. It’s the type of triangle that doesn’t usually work for me but in Kinsale’s hands it works in spades.
SPOILERS for Private Arrangements
Another example of a triangle that works for me even though the third party ends up alone is the Camden-Gigi-Freddie triangle in Private Arrangements. I think it works because we can see all along that Freddie and Gigi are wrong for each other, and because Freddie feels he has grown in the relationship and gotten good things out of it. He feels he is a better man, that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. It’s bittersweet but I loved it, and I think it felt a lot more fresh than it would have if Freddie had ended up with Miss What’s-Her-Name in Private Arrangements. Although I know Sherry is always hoping to find the right woman for Freddie and write him a HEA. He certainly does deserve one!
SPOILERS for Something Borrowed and Something Blue
Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed is a chick lit story about two best friends in love with the same guy. Darcy is engaged to Dex even though Rachel met him first and did not pursue things when he expressed interest in her. Rachel is the heroine of the book and in the first chapter, she sleeps with her best friend’s fiance. Darcy is a piece of work in Something Borrowed, so I suppose we could say she is demonized, but it works for me because she’s not completely demonized since she’s depicted as having charm and charisma, and we can understand why Dex was attracted to her and Rachel was her friend. It also works because in the sequel, Something Blue, we get to see Darcy grow up and find love and a happy ending of her own. I enjoyed both books but Something Blue (the one where bad girl Darcy gets her happy ending) is my favorite by Giffin.
May 14, 2009 @ 11:56:19
I almost said “depends,” but then I couldn’t think of a single time where a love triangle really made me excited to continue reading a book. Like others have said, they usually feel like sequel bait, or you’re sad at the end for the guy/girl who didn’t get the guy/girl.
May 14, 2009 @ 12:48:29
Oh, I love Love Triangles and there are so many ways of doing them too. Since I tend to write in Threes, most of my stories have them. In my last story, the two guys were actually one person, a shapeshifter, to demonstrate his conflicted nature which the Heroine helped him resolve. There’s no need for one person to get the shaft in the end, unless he really deserves it and I find that satisfying. Yes, they must be well done or they’re stupid, like anything else.
May 14, 2009 @ 12:49:23
Most of the time I really dislike triangles, but Herendeen’s Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander used one very well. So I voted “Depends.”
May 14, 2009 @ 12:53:28
No. Don’t like love triangles. Don’t like them at all.
Which made me laugh when Janine used my book as an example.
Don’t think mine was a true love triangle. It’s more a line drawn between two dots with a third dot somewhere by itself. :-)
May 14, 2009 @ 13:20:01
Yes I actually do like love triangles.
Most times we know it’s just so obviously of who is going to end up with who it can get very boring – and in some cases can make me want to put the book down (especially if the writing is only so-so). Nothing wrong with a triangle here and there to keep things more interesting. I love reading how more than one person cares about another because that happens in real life too. It’s not always as simple as boy meets girl and they live happily ever after – sometimes there are more than just two people. Now while that’s one reason most of us read romance I would say it’s refreshing to read something that isn’t so obvious for one and for another that touches a little more I think on real life – in the respect it’s possible to be in love with more than one person at a time.
While I wouldn’t exactly say I’d want to read it in every book I pick up – I don’t find that it’s a problem because most authors are unwilling to go down that road.
Props to Jennifer Haymore for writing a book with a triangle. I can’t wait to read this book.
Thanks for doing this blog – I’ve added A HINT OF WICKED to my list of must buys just to check out the triangle.
May 14, 2009 @ 13:51:39
I do not like love triangles at all.
Sometimes neither relationship in the triangle ever develops enough and you wish the two characters would both simply wash their hands of the protagonist who can't make a decision about who to be with.
Demonizing the character who is not chosen or making him/her turn out to be the villain of the book to me is the sign of lazy story telling and does make me question if the character at the “center†of the triangle is TSTL.
Usually so much time is spent developing the “wrong†end of the triangle that the HEA with the other two characters is (a) not believable and (b) makes me not want to read the author again because I feel jerked around.
Which is not to say that every romance with two relationships should be considered a triangle. I don't consider Darcy/Elizabeth/Wickham in P&P to be an actual love triangle. Sherry Thomas sums it up perfectly:
May 14, 2009 @ 13:57:59
A sign of lazy story telling, not the sign.
May 14, 2009 @ 14:02:31
One of my favorite books features love triangle, or rectangle, really: Vows by Lavyrle Spencer. As much as I love the book, I hate that entire conflict was driven by the Love Triangle. The guy who lost was a Very Nice Guy, and he was heart-broken. The main couple mourned his loss as a friend. I would love to read a book with him as hero, but I don’t think Spencer really ever did that sort of thing. Just the occasional easter egg.
May 14, 2009 @ 14:03:10
RE: Sugar Daddy
My problem with Sugar Daddy was Kleypas did such a good job fleshing him out in the beginning and showing what kind of person that he was, and then he didn’t come in again until SO late she didn’t really leave herself enough time to make me believe he would do what he did. It felt like she compromised his character to hustle the happily ever after.
I don’t think I would have had a problem if Hardy had come back and they had both realized their moment together had passed. But I suppose that wouldn’t have left the proper amount of angst for Hardy in the next book.
Re: Love triangles in general.
I guess this is one of my guilty pleasure tropes. I acknowledge that there’s really no good turn-out (ie the demonizing of someone who was perfectly nice before OR the nice person getting screwed out of a HEA). But I still like them.
Of course, you haven’t mentioned the very worst of love triangles: when two really great people are fighting over someone sucky. Like Highland Velvet by Jude Deveraux where Bronwyn is a royal biotch and yet Stephen and Roger and a buttload of other people are all fighting over her and I’m like “WHY???”
May 14, 2009 @ 14:04:26
Did the spam filter eat my comment? :(
May 14, 2009 @ 14:30:05
I voted “depends” because it truly does depend upon the story. There are simply too many variable to predict until one is actually reading the story.
This question reminded me of a thread on the AAR forums from last fall but the question there had more to do with whether we preferred the extra wheel to be a “good” or “bad” alternative. What I realized while thinking things over was how much starting to read erotic romances featuring menages had clarified or downright changed my thinking about triangles. After rereading my response back then, I don’t believe anything has changed that viewpoint. Here’s what I said then:
May 14, 2009 @ 14:38:42
@Moth:
Oh, yeah. That one is the absolute worst thing possible.
Of course, stacked right up against it are the number of really, really bad triangles that feature not two guys and a gal but two gals and a guy. Why is it that competent romance writers can manage to halfway pull off two guys competing for one woman but totally blow it with two women doing the reverse and end up turning both of them into either shews or nitwits? It boggles the mind. (what is the emoticon for rolling eyes?)
May 14, 2009 @ 14:55:36
I voted ‘depends’. They work well for me in erotic romance where the three can live as a triple, not so well in regular romance where one gets the boot (although I actually know one triple in real life).
Sugar Daddy really threw me for a loop, because I expected Hardy to be the hero and felt jerked around when not only he wasn’t but then he was suddenly a ‘bad’ guy. That seemed totally out of character and a very ‘convenient’ plot device to explain why the heroine went with Gage whom I never warmed up to.
That book actually made me realize that I expect the people who are intro’d in the first couple of chapters to be the hero and heroine of the story. While this may not have been as much of a convention in earlier decades (I’ve been reading old Signets were the love triangles were really open until almost the end of the books), I firmly expect it now and was really annoyed at Kleypas for doing this to Hardy. I even knew he wasn’t the hero because I’d listened to the first 37 (good awfully narrated) minutes of Blue-eyed Devil and still the whole book (SD) felt wrong.
I’m sure there are folks who feel this was innovative genre bending… needless to say it didn’t work for me.
The ones in ‘regular’ romance where one party turns villain really don’t do jack for me and I’m feeling totally bad for the nice one left in the rain which is not what I read romance for. I want to be happy at the end!
As much as I dig menage, for regular romance, triangles aren’t my cup of tea.
May 14, 2009 @ 15:40:58
GrowlyCub, your mention of Signet regencies reminded me of another triangle book I really loved — Edith Layton’s The Duke’s Wager. Great book in which the heroine is presented a choice between bad and worse. Only you don’t know which one of the men is bad, and which one is worse. Gosh, I loved that book. Not every author could pull it off, but Layton did.
May 14, 2009 @ 15:51:26
Janine, yes, I liked TDW too, but I was incredibly disappointed in the sequel, because I thought the guy deserved a better heroine and a *much* better story. Reading that book kind of put me off Layton, which is a shame because ‘The Duke’s Wager’ was very enjoyable.
May 14, 2009 @ 16:06:35
I wish there were a box for ‘dither’.
I’m dithering.
I liked ‘some’ triangle stories when I was younger but now I just don’t have the fortitude for a bittersweet romance. They generally also call for too much head-hopping and I want the focus of the story to be on the two main protagonist with a definite and well defined HEA. And a pony.
I voted No.
May 14, 2009 @ 16:18:52
Of course, there’s also the Geore Lucas route where you turn one of the guys into her secret twin brother, and then everybody’s happy, right? ;P
May 14, 2009 @ 17:17:55
I put “yes”–and then realized that what I really like are not necessarily triangles, as are being discussed here, but books where the heroine finds she has a cheating boyfriend or spouse, and either dumps him or fights to save the relationship. Not a true triangle, then. But I really liked Emily’s Giffin’s take on it, and like the other commenter, while I sympathized with Rachel, some, I liked Darcy better.
May 14, 2009 @ 19:18:43
I think it depends on the people and the circumstances. One of my all time favourite movies is “Bandits”. Bruce Willis, Billybob Thornton and Kate Blanchett breath life into the most unlikely of triangles and you love all three of them for it.
Then you have the triangle where only one person is having the triangle, oterwise known as infidelity. Those sorts are of triangles are behind most divorces, responsible for hirings and firings, replete in Hollywood, the backbone of the bi-sexual world and can be found even in the christian church (everything seems to be a trinity). So don’t look all shocked. Triangles are everywhere.
Before you go dissing someones new book, r-e-a-d it first, then remark on the style of the author and the quality of the relationship between the pages. You may not like a love triangle in your own life, but a fantasy is just that… a fantasy. Isn’t that why we read romance novels – for the fantasies?
May 14, 2009 @ 20:33:19
I chose depends. I haven’t really read all that many books with love triangles, so that’s why I’m still on the fence about it. One such love triangle I did read was Shayla Black’s Decadent. I was so sad with it, because I ended up liking the hero who was rejected more than the hero that was picked. But I hear Shayla’s working on the rejected hero’s book, so I’m not sure what to think about that.
I am eagerly waiting for the review of A Hint of Wicked, since it’s on my TBR list.
May 14, 2009 @ 21:40:59
I like love triangles when all three parts are fully developed and the path to the center of the triangle choosing their mate focuses on them growing as a person. That way the “loser” in the battle also realizes they aren’t the right mate for that person. I only dislike love triangles–and this is something seen in too many romances and romantic comedies–is that one love interest is blatantly wrong for the hero/ine. What is the point for creating such a false love triangle other than drawing out a superficial conflict?
May 14, 2009 @ 21:58:26
Ehm, who was dissing anything? You sound just this side of aggressive there. What brought that on?
As for the Haymore title: I saw the ad on SBTB, clicked on it, read more and decided I didn’t want to go there, even though the initial hook of the triangle relationship worked for me. What decided me against, was that I immediately questioned how realistic the legal situation would be handled (she’s a bigamist after all) and then the fact that it did sound like there would be no good solution to this triangle. I’m not in the mood for sad right now.
May 15, 2009 @ 07:06:08
@Karen Templeton: I felt the same way about Sugar Daddy. So much was invested in Hardy, that I couldn’t get behind Gage. Despite Hardy getting his own love story in the next novel, there was too much invested in Liberty and Hardy for them both to go different ways.
That is definitely the crux of my problems with love triangles. Like Jane said, if you like the character…they must do something dastardly at the end to account for them not getting the girl. Which is just disappointing.
Like the Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle in LOST or the Edward/Bella/Jacob Twilight triangle. No matter the outcome, someone is getting the shaft, and no matter who it is, you feel sad because they are all so likeable.
And for it to be a TRUE love triangle, all characters MUST be likeable. Otherwise, like someone else commented, it’s not really a love triangle but a brief annoying glitch in the hero/heroine story.
May 15, 2009 @ 11:08:25
Hate, hate, hate them. Especially if done well – since the whole reason is for another book. So that means contrived and I always feel really bad for the outside person and really not liking the center of the triangle – usually the female. Attraction maybe, but love, nope, don’t like those. Which tends to eliminate a lot of books for me right now. Sigh.
May 15, 2009 @ 15:45:18
I voted depends. For me it depends on the story. However, it takes alot to overcome the triangle and for me to actually buy the book because I already am predisposed to know I have a 50/50 chance of being peeved.
Unless of course it ends up with all of them together happily ever after, but that doesn’t happen too frequently outside of erotic romances.
May 16, 2009 @ 03:49:36
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Patricia Briggs’ Mercedes Thompson series. Haha this is going to be ambiguous because I’ll try to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t read it yet (and if you haven’t, go do so, right now!).
I thought the love triangle worked really well because it didn’t stretch too long – while reading the third book I remember going CRAZY because of the triangle and saying that if Mercy didn’t make up her mind soon I was going to stop reading and lo and behold, she chose :) While I did like the man she ended up choosing better, I thought both of the men Mercy had were really likable. Briggs didn’t victimize or bash the one who wasn’t chosen; in fact I feel his character is heading for a really interesting character arc because he wasn’t chosen (and not necessarily a romantic one where he has his own book – he has quite the past that needs exploring IMO) after the fourth book. Then again this is an urban fantasy series so I’m not sure how much reader assumption/expectation would play into the likability of the execution of a love triangle.
On the other hand, I don’t like the lover triangle/quartet/howevermanyguysnow that Riley Jenson has in Keri Arthur’s Riley Jenson series, and that’s an urban fantasy series. So me and Riley are currently taking a break right now.
Emma Holly’s Menage, despite the title, gave me the feeling that the heroine had to choose between one or the other so the fact that in the end [SPOILER] she married one but kept the other in the relationship for sexy time here and there just annoyed me [END SPOILER]. Of course, this was before I read all those threesome erotic romances -____-
Poll: Romance Tropes – Which are Your Favorites? «
May 21, 2009 @ 10:12:20
[...] by Dear Author’s recent poll on love [...]
Jul 11, 2010 @ 23:07:51
i really love “love triangles!”
especially the ones in which you wouldn’t immediately know who will end up together..
i love SUGAR DADDY by Lisa Kleypas! I love GAGE TRAVIS! can’t get enough of him!
;)
Jul 12, 2010 @ 09:12:10
@joana My favorite in that series is Jack’s story.
May 25, 2011 @ 11:28:43
Most love triangles are no-brainers and they show the female being dumb and incompetent. They’re a waste of time from the real important parts from the story and plot.
Nov 29, 2011 @ 01:46:33
Hate them.
Its gotten so bad and prevalent that if you read about a book that has a good plot that gets you excited to read it.Then this paragraph or a variant thereof appears…
“she must chose between “x” or “z”
And you immediately lose interest.
CC Hunters “Born at midnight” takes this to the extreme,not only does it have a love triangle…extra guys keeps appearing out of the blue(not literally)to show interest in the heroine. :/
Feb 21, 2012 @ 13:43:07
I voted “depends.” I did this because love triangles are always tricky. Sometimes the heroine falls for a scumbag and the nice guy is the obvious choice. But sometimes there are two great guys. I think author Stephanie Meyer did an AMAZING job with the love triangle. And I love how Bella realized that she did love both men. However, she realized which guy she was meant to be with. And Stephanie Meyer didn’t leave the readers hanging. She provided a happy ending for the other guy and made everything make sense.
The love Bella felt for Jacob did make sense and helped all three main characters grow. If an author wants to have a love triangle, then there should be a reason for it. The characters should learn something and grow from this triangle. Kudos to Stephanie Meyer for creating and solving the perfect love triangle!