CONVERSATION: Don’t Mess with a Past HEA
Conversationsbad outcome / bodice rippers / breakup / character death / HEA / reader expectations / reader response19 Comments
There was recently a hullabaloo about Devil in Disguise, Lisa Kleypas’ historical romance, around the time of its release in July.
Here’s what one Goodreads reviewer said in her review:
Fourteen years ago, I drove like a madwoman an hour away to my nearest B&N with a cranky teething baby to get my hands on Devil in Winter on release day. I read the book in one sitting and then turned back to page one and re-read it again. Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent became my book husband that day and has been ever since. Needless to say, I was thrilled to see him reappear in Ravenel’s series and to see his children get their own HEA’s.
Then this book happened.
First, I’ll address the huge Scot elephant in the room. Yes, the title is a huge tip-off but I was holding out hope that Lisa wouldn’t do me like this [sad face emoji] The revelation came around the middle of the book but by then I already knew that no twist was coming. Sebastian had fathered a child before he met Evie. I can’t properly convey how much I hated this. I hate that he had a child with some random woman and that the child grows into a man who looks more like him than his children with Evie. I reject this with every cell in my body and plan to scrub this revisionist history from my memory forevermore [grimace emoji]
Over fifteen readers commented that they were irate or disappointed, if not crushed by this plot twist. Personally, I was not. I didn’t see what happened as revisionist history or as anything that in any way tarnishes the HEA in Sebastian and Evie’s book, Devil in Winter. But Sebastian and Evie, two of the characters most affected by this plot twist, are fan favorites, and their book, Devil in Winter, is perhaps Kleypas’ most popular book. So maybe the controversy was inevitable.
It got me thinking about what makes readers feel that past HEAs are being messed with and about the nature of our reactions to those plot turns, and I asked the DA crew for some examples of books that amended the HEA of a couple from one of the author’s previous books in ways they disliked. This is the conversation that followed:
Jayne: Oh yeah. I have one. I read this book, enjoyed it and was looking forward to the hero’s best friend getting his own romance. A few months later, I saw the author had a new book out and thought “Yay!” That is until I read the blurb and realized that the author has killed off the hero of the book I read and that the heroine of that book is going to now be paired with the best friend. I was so mad I don’t even want to read it. In book one, h/h fought against an evil villain and finally triumphed and got a HEA, then months later he gets offed?? Nope, nope, nope.
Janine: That’s horrible. Some books in the bodice ripper era did that too, but that at least was a time when reader expectations were different. There was a Sandra Brown book, Another Dawn, where the heroine’s father, the hero of the prequel (Sunset Embrace), bit the dust. I didn’t read it but I wasn’t surprised that many readers were angry.
Kaetrin: That worked for me in Roberta Gellis’ The Roselynde Chronicles. I read them out of order and fairly early in my romance reading career so I can’t say how much those things helped my experience. In the first book, Roselynde, Alinor married Simon, a much older man. They had a wonderful happy marriage for many years but by the second book, Alinor, Simon had passed away and she found another HEA with Ian, who had been Simon’s squire. Maybe because I knew Alinor was married to Ian and it was her second marriage before I ever read Roselynde or maybe because it was just that well done, but either way it worked for me and I love both books.
Even though Sam and Ariana are not main characters in the Mercy Thompson series, the last book has something happen which I think damages their HEA.
Other than that, I don’t know that I’ve read that many books where the HEA has been messed with apart from ones the couple breaks up for some reason and then they get back together. That works for me sometimes, but more often I’m frustrated by it. I’d much rather they work together to solve an obstacle than split up.
I wasn’t bothered at all about Sebastian’s bastard son. I did want to know what Gabriel thought about it (he wasn’t in the book) but it was before Evie and Sebastian was certainly no saint – in fact, he’s the “devil” isn’t he? I mean, what do we expect? LOL
Layla: It does seem to me that adding an illegitimate child to a hero’s backstory doesn’t ruin the hero/heroine’s happy ending. I haven’t read the Kleypas–but what would probably bother me is that instead of just finding new ways to continue the series, a blood heir has to be ‘found’. It is also sad, but again it’s all in how the author handles it, that a child was abandoned by a parent and even if it makes narrative sense (for example everyone knows Sebastian was no saint) somehow it still tarnishes something about him.
Kaetrin–I too am worried about Samuel and Ariana’s happy ending!
Janine: I think a fractured Atlanta is a sound reason to feel the HEA is compromised. Kate and Curran live there and so the consequences of that will impact their future. Also, Atlanta is almost another character in that series and one whose fate readers care about.
Jennie: I couldn’t think of any at first (except that I do remember the Sandra Brown books and how pissed everyone was when the hero of the first died in the second; it was years after the HEA, since he had a grown child, but still not the HEA any romance reader wants for their h/h).
What made it worse (SO MUCH WORSE) in my estimation was that he was shipwrecked with some trampy other woman and of course he did not even try to resist her wiles but just had sex with her to pass the time or something. So to recap: she thinks he’s dead, moves on; he just cheats because he’s a man and has needs. And then he’s mad at her. Ugh. I’m not sure if this is exactly an example of the second book containing a break-up that pissed me off. What pissed me off wasn’t that it was the second book and the HEA was interfered with; what pissed me off was that the “hero” was an absolute douchecanoe.
I also thought of the Skye O’Malley books by Bertrice Small. The heroine there had several “bestest love of my life” relationships (and some side flings as well). To be fair, these books were more “sweeping saga” type-books about Skye than traditional romances where the h/h get equal shrift. So I don’t remember being bothered when she ping-ponged between one guy and the other (I *think* there were two main guys?) and she did, IIRC, end up with one in the final book. (I think the other one conveniently died? Or maybe she thought one was dead and that was why she fell in love with the second one? If so, Small handled it better than Robards did!)
Janine: I read those too, Kaetrin. Awful stuff. There’s no accounting for taste when you’re only fourteen, though, so although I wasn’t exactly a fan, I was able to enjoy parts of the first one and compartmentalize the rest. So I (partly, anyway) bought the HEA in that book. But the sequel (Dark Fires) incensed me. After all that Steve and Ginny had suffered to be together (and all that I had to suffer through to finish the book), a breakup and more trials and tribulations!
But all post-HEA split-ups present a problem for me. You’ve convinced me that this couple or trio belongs together, but apparently, I was wrong. If it didn’t stick the first time, why should I believe it will work out the second?
Recently I finished Rachel Reid’s erotic m/m romance about two rival hockey players, Heated Rivalry. It was sexy and romantic and I had a great time (thank you, Sirius!). There’s a sequel in the works now and I’m torn about that. On the one hand, I’m dying for more Ilya and Shane, but on the other–after it took them *seven* years to find their (currently unconventional) HEA, do I really want to see them backslide?
Sirius: Oh oh I didn’t know she would do another Ilya and Shane book. Crap. Do I want?
Janine: That’s horrible. Some books in the bodice ripper era did that too, but that at least was a time when reader expectations were different. There was a Sandra Brown book, Another Dawn, where the heroine’s father, the hero of the prequel (Sunset Embrace), bit the dust. I didn’t read it but I wasn’t surprised that many readers were angry.
Sirius: So this is probably not exactly on point but I can give one example. Ilona Andrews Kate Daniels series and Julie’s book which may start a new one. These are favorite authors but of course not every single thing they do works perfectly for me – such thing is impossible. So thank goodness they don’t mess up with Kate and Curran’s HEA. But I still felt down and annoyed because at the end of Kate Daniels I felt that fractured Atlanta was on the way to be somewhat stronger, healing (not healed but healing), less fractured city. And at the beginning of Julie’s book – as if no improvements over previous ten books happened and man I was annoyed.
I barely remember these two Karen Robards books – they were apparently her first two romances – Island Flame and Sea Fire. They were published in 1981 and 1982 but I think I read them somewhere in the 90s. I don’t remember anything about the first one, except it’s very bodice-rippery and the hero is a pirate who captures the heroine. What I remember about the sequel was that the hero is shipwrecked, without the heroine, and she thinks he’s dead. She ends up in another relationship (with real-life pirate Jean Lafitte, unless I’m remembering wrong?) and then the hero comes back and is all, “you slutty slut” at her, even though she thought he was dead.
Kaetrin: That reminds me of the Rosemary Rogers series with Steve and Ginny, that started with Sweet Savage Love Jennie! He was a rapey douchecanoe combo – definitely not FTW.How about you, readers? Have you encountered HEA-ruining books, and if so, which are they and how did they kill your happy glow? What other ways are there to damage the HEA in a sequel? And do you think it’s possible to write a post-HEA sequel about a previously established couple or trio that doesn’t wreck your faith in their partnership?
As a writer, I’m nervous every time I write an update on a previous hero/heroine because I don’t want to mess with their romantic HEA. At all.
The Ever part of the romantic Happy Ever After is important to me both as a reader and a writer.
What an enjoyable post, especially since I’m familiar with many of these books.
I haven’t read the new Kleypas book, but the notion he had an illegitimate child prior to his relationship with Evie does not surprise me and seems in keeping with his womanizer reputation.
You asked, “And do you think it’s possible to write a post-HEA sequel about a previously established couple or trio that doesn’t wreck your faith in their partnership?” I think some series do this successfully. The … in Death series by JD Robb comes to mind as do the Alpha and Omega books by Patricia Briggs and the Claimings series by Lyn Gala.
Laramie Briscoe did this to me in the Heaven Hill MC series. I was late to that particular party so I read the full series in one swoop, and was devastated about two-thirds of the way through when one of the MMC from the series was suddenly the bad guy who was tormenting the new FMC/MMC couple. It was actually really tough to read the rest of the series knowing that a character that I cared about had taken such a horrible turn. It also added some real stakes to the rest of the stories – I couldn’t assume that everyone got an HEA, which actually added some real tension to the events in the books.
@Cynthia Sax: Yes, the happy ending is hugely important for an author to nail. It’s what most romance readers come to the genre for, I sometimes get annoyed when there’s a lot of focus on previous and future couples in the final chapter. I can handle sequel and prequel baiting earlier in the book, but it does bug me when it comes right at the end. It doesn’t ruin the HEA for me or anything, but it does disrupt my happy glow over the hero and heroine’s joy just when I most want to bask in it.
@Kareni: I haven’t read the Gala books but I don’t count the Eve Dallas books or the Alpha and Omega series as romances. They are romantic SF mysteries and Urban Fantasy series novels structured to be open-ended so the author can add as many books as she wants. What I’m talking about is a situation where a book is published as a single title romance and structured like one, with each of the main conflicts reaching a resolution at the end of the book. And then book two comes along, often years later.
I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Orson Welles: “A happy ending depends on where you stop the story.” But part of the “contract” between romance writers and romance readers is always, “This couple may go through hell, but eventually they will achieve an HEA.” I can only think of two books marketed as romances that most decidedly did not have HFNs or HEAs (although I’m sure there are others): Taylor Fitzpatrick’s beautifully-written and absolutely gutting THROWN OFF THE ICE and Natasha Knight’s dark mafia romance SERGIO. But both books before the question, can a book without an HEA/HFN actually be considered a romance?
Coincidentally, I just encountered this “changing the ending of one book in a subsequent book” situation in a duet I read this weekend: THE IMPOSSIBLE BOY and THE LOST BOY by Anna Martin (a new-to-me author when these books showed up on my KU recommendations). The books cover five years in an on-then-off-then-on-again relationship between a pan-sexual musician and a gender-fluid fashion journalist. THE IMPOSSIBLE BOY (published in 2017) ends with the couple together, even discussing marriage. But THE LOST BOY (published in 2020) begins five years later, the heroes having long since broken up. I was bummed at first, but Martin shows how the couple never really fully addressed some of their issues (anorexia, drug addiction) and the relationship couldn’t stand the strain. The couple spend the second book working on resolving their issues in a healthy way. There is an HEA, but what if Martin stretches this to a trilogy? Another “they were happy but now they aren’t” book?
I’m actually looking forward to Shane & Ilya’s finale in LONG GAME. As of the end of the most recent book, ROLE MODEL, Shane & Ilya are still more or less closeted whereas all the couples from the other books in the Game Changers series are out, so I think Shane & Ilya will be outed in LONG GAME—perhaps not on their own terms (just a guess—I have no inside knowledge) and have to decide how they will handle their relationship becoming public. I also think Scott and Kip’s wedding (finally!) will play a role in the story—but again, just speculating.
The Aurora Teagarden Mystery series by Charlaine Harris, while not pure romance had Aurora meet and marry until around book 6 when her husband is killed off. Subsequently she gets back together with the man who left her in book 1. The author said that was always her true love, but it incensed me. I didn’t like him for what he did in book 1 and this did not make him any more appealing. I never did finish the series.
@Janine, you bring up a good point as to how books are categorized. I’d always considered the …in Death books to be futuristic romances; I read the first book when it came out and then was happy to see a subsequent book show up half a year later. Likewise, I encountered the Alpha and Omega novella by Patricia Briggs in the On the Prowl anthology and thought of it as a romance with paranormal elements. [I just checked the Amazon page which states “Four stories of inhuman passions from four of the hottest authors in paranormal romance….”] I describe Lyn Gala’s Claimings series as male/alien male romances, but others might well categorize them differently.
I can think of some male sci-fi authors who like to destroy the happy ending of one book at the beginning of the next book. (But I can’t think of their names.) Perhaps they’re afraid of being seen as [mock shudder] romantic. Speaking of sci-fi, I hated the third Alien movie, because it starts by destroying the happy ending of the second movie.
@Jennie: Yeah, I don’t think I’d be able to continue a series like that. I love redemption (or as I prefer to think of the term, moral reparation) stories, it’s possibly my favorite trope, but I hate moral decay arcs with at least equal fervor. All my friends raved to me about Breaking Bad during the 2000s and my reaction was “Yeah, no, hard no, and thanks for the warning.”
This pertains to DA Jennie’s comments in the piece about Sea Fire and Island Flame by Karen Robards. I read those too (I must have read half the bodice rippers published before 1985 by the time I was in my mid-teens; the well-stocked public library was housed in the same building complex as my high school and we were allowed to go there during our free periods, my idea of heaven) and I just remember that the first one was terrible and the second much worse and ruined any faith I had left in the couple. My response to Jennie’s comment—
—is that finding out that the hero is vile in the sequel is colossal interference with the HEA.
@DiscoDollyDeb: That’s a great quote. You’ve made me curious about Thrown Off the Ice and Sergio, tell me more.
In a scenario like your Anna Martin experience I wouldn’t pick up the third book on principle.
I did come up with a post-HEA sequel about the same couple that didn’t ruin the HEA for me: Ruthie Knox’s novella Making it Last, a followup to her earlier novella, How to Misbehave. In HTM, the characters met and fell in love; in MIL, they were married and taxed by work and raising young children, too tired and stressed to find time for sex, and resuscitated that with BDSM role play while on vacation. It worked because they were so committed to fixing this problem before it would harm their marriage and because what diverted them from enjoying their bodies together was their greater commitment to raising and providing for their children. That’s also teamwork and partnership.
@Janine Ballard: is there a way to code a spoiler box in the comments? If there is, let me know how and I’ll explain about those two books, but put my comment in the spoiler box.
I fell off the Stephanie Laurens bandwagon long ago, mostly due to purple prose and skimpy plots. But one of the reasons had to do with The Promise in a Kiss. In Devil’s Bride, the H’s mother is widowed, and he has a younger illegitimate half-brother. So obviously problems in the marriage. Then along comes TPiaK, with a HEA for his parents. Don’t publish a story where you’ve already killed off your hero in an earlier book, AND he cheats on his wife, and expect me to care about him.
@DiscoDollyDeb: Try using (remove the spaces) [ shush ] to hide things [ /shush ]
I don’t usually have this problem because I cherrypick rather than reading a series in order, and once I’ve read the HEA in one book I rarely have any further interest in the couple. A case in point is Sarina Bowen/Elle Kennedy’s Him. I enjoyed it but didn’t feel the need to follow them into the relationship problems that they apparently overcome in the sequel. Heated Rivalry will be different because I want to see the reaction of everyone around them when their relationship becomes public.
Which leads me into the one way an author can reliably dim the glow of a previous HEA: by having the characters turn up in someone else’s book and wear out their welcome! Ilya in Role Model was one of the very few examples of a previous hero adding to my enjoyment of a sequel.
And finally, I’ve said this all over the internet for years: I do not get the love for Devil in Winter! Sebastian in the previous book was a fabulous villain just ripe for gradual and heart-tugging reformation, but Kleypas gave him a personality transplant between books and he was a complete teddy bear almost from the moment he drove off with Evie. Such an opportunity wasted!
@oceanjasper: Maybe I should clarify what I said about not having any further interest in the couple. I mean that I think of them as the way they were in their own book and anything that happens in another book doesn’t change my earlier impressions. Their book is a world in and of itself rather than a slice in the life of real people. Back in the day I read the Sandra Browns mentioned above and when the hero of the first book was killed in the second one it was a surprise, but I was more upset by the fact that the romance in the second book was a disappointment. If the author can imagine a fate for a favourite character that I don’t like, I can just imagine it never happened….
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Testing first to make sure it works:
Buried Comment: Show
Ummm…obviously it didn’t work. Lol
@DiscoDollyDeb: Actually it did work. I’m not sure where the stuff before “obviously this didn’t work” came from but your hidden comment is hidden.
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Ok—I will try again. There will be spoilers for Taylor Fitzpatrick’s THROWN OFF THE ICE and Natasha Knight’s SERGIO. Don’t click if you don’t want to know:
Buried Comment: Show
@DiscoDollyDeb: Re Ilya and Shane. I love them, especially Ilya, so much that I’ve reread certain scenes multiple times and the short story on Rachel Reid’s site twice. So in that sense, I’m dying for more. I’ve had the same speculation as you about the sequel, that they’ll be outed ahead of their schedule. It’s the only big conflict left and the most engaging thing she can do, and I’d be very entertained and engaged by how that plays out. Like Oceanjasper, I’m very interested in the rest of the world’s reactions.
However, here are my concerns about the sequel:
(A) I don’t think that alone is enough to drive an entire book. A long novella, yes, but not a whole novel. So she is probably going to have to introduce some smaller tensions. The short story already hints at some (for example that throwaway thought where Ilya starts to suspect that Hayden might have a secret crush on Shane). That kind of thing requires asbestos-glove handling.
(B) I loved the way the conflict in Heated Rivalry was resolved precisely because there weren’t any rainbows and unicorns–it wasn’t a fantasy about the NHL community suddenly embracing queer athletes. I’d love to see that happen in the real world, but when I read fiction outside SFF genres I have to be able to suspend disbelief that the story is taking place on Planet Earth and not in an alternate universe. It will be a lot harder for me to do that if Ilya and Shane get married (I’m certain there are a lot of fans clamoring for that, though). All the more so when she adds in the full bench of other professional hockey athlete heroes from the earlier books in the series who are already out yet have had happy endings.
@Sandra: That sounds absurd. And also like a way to milk every penny out of a popular series.
@oceanjasper: That sounds like a great ability! I wish I could disregard sequels like that, but the more I love a book the more I want to read further about the characters and so I can’t blow off the sequels.
You’ve made me think about epilogues though. Most of the time I don’t want epilogues in romances; they’re only necessary when you really need a postscript to address a small conflict that can only be resolved later in the timeline. Otherwise, if the author has done her job and convinced me that the couple is well-suited and the relationship works, they’re redundant. I feel about them the same way I feel about shoelaces. You don’t need to show me a character tying their shoes; I just take it as a given that their shoes are tied. And if an author hasn’t convinced me in the course of the story that the relationship can work, an epilogue won’t fix it.
@DiscoDollyDeb: No, those two lines of gobbledygook always show up when we use the spoiler tags in comments these days (they didn’t use to :-/). But you can still find the hidden text under them.