I have a love-hate relationship-an emphatically ambivalent
one- with romance novels. The appeal is feeling the wild thrill of falling in
love over and over again vicariously in new ways with each couple and each
story. I’m drawn into them when my life descends below the high tide line of
chaos, thinking that the comfort of reliving the fairy tale will somehow be
therapeutic.
The trouble is that true
love stories- real life love stories- are messy and complicated and nestled
into the spaces between the madness of other crises and dramas. In most romance
novels, the heroine (because the main character is a woman tailor-made to
appeal to the female psyche) already has the life the rest of us only dream
about! And, most importantly, the story ends when he says “I love you”.
In this case, 4 friends run a wedding business- a business
that is booming and expanding (of course, in order to have such a business in a
small town, everyone would have to get married 3 or 4 times each). One is the
photographer, one the florist, one the cake baker and decorator, and the final
one is the coordinator. They are personality types, drawn together in an almost
perfect Benetton ad of girl friendships…
By the end of Vision in White, I predicted the matches for
the remaining books, but couldn’t pull myself out of the vortex of the bubble
gum romance long enough to stop reading before they were all married off. Nora Roberts has improved drastically in her
character building and the realistic relationship building (especially since the
show-business family series back in the day), but the magic in the bubble gum
is how she can make me step into someone’s world and feel with them rather than
judge them. Considering how judgmental and separate I am most of the time,
that’s quite a trick!
I connected to each of the characters in a slightly
different way, from the practical, jaded photographer to the flighty princess
of the florist, the no-nonsense baker, and the control freak coordinator. I
sometimes wish for something deeper and more meaningful in a psychological kind
of way- the tough guy is always a damaged and insecure bad boy at heart, and
the straight laced business man just hasn’t opened up to the right woman. It is
both refreshing and frustrating to have such easily anticipated results… and
thus the ambivalence.
The truth is, my ambivalence doesn’t really matter, since I
will continue to come back for more bubble gum.
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