Whether it is classified as romantic
fiction or a love story, the ever so popular genres have a place in everyone’s
hearts. “Romance is a natural leader here. The genre took off in the 1980s,
when it expanded from the typical dreamy or bodice-ripping historical novels to
include contemporary, plot-driven stories with characters drawn from real life,”
The New York Times explains it.
Two
romantic fiction novels are The Lucky One
by Nicholas Sparks and Lock and Key
by Sarah Dessen. In both there is a plot driven by the purpose of romance. Both
have an interesting background that strives away from the usual love story. The Lucky One starts with him in Iraq
and brings you through his journey to find love. Lock and Key starts with depicting her abusive mother and then goes
on to show her difficulties with her long unseen sister. While Nicholas Sparks
spends more time developing a relationship between the main characters, Sarah
Dessen spends more time talking about harder things like abuse, abandonment, and
recovery.
Lock
and Key
and The Lucky One stick to the status
quo of the genre romantic fiction. Romantic fiction has the expectation of some
kind of love story that is something we live vicariously through. The love
story usually starts strong and then has to overcome something, which it
usually does and they are assumed to live the rest of their lives together. Lock and Key and The Lucky One are no exception to this. They both have that type of
love story. Although they weren’t exactly like any other romantic fiction book
because they went into a lot more depth and strayed away from the norm. Lock and Key stayed on some touchy subjects
that made the story more relatable because people actually experience
situations like the characters do in that book. The Lucky One was close to the regular generalization of a romantic
fiction. "'On our last day together,
Victor told me that I owed a debt to the women in the photo because the photo
had kept me safe-that otherwise there was no balance. It was my destiny to find
her, he said'". This quote from the book shows how unrealistic it is to find a
picture in Iraq that was a lucky charm. It was more unrealistic the way the
whole story came about but sometimes people like a story more unrealistic so
that they can escape into their own little world, instead of dealing with some
more realistic topics.
Both books strike some harder, emotional
topics. The Lucky One strikes on the
issue of death. It is arguable that a lot of romantic fiction use death as an
emotional hook to get readers to keep reading. Death is one of the only things
that you can never change; it is final, which in turn creates a tear jerker.
Many people believe that emotional books are the best kind of books. When you
become emotionally attached to a character you want to see them be happy and
that’s what a lot of authors use that to their advantage to make their books
popular. Lock and Key touches on
parental abuse and abandonment and the people who help you get through that. "It meant I had to brush my teeth with bottled water, and made washing my face out of the question, but these were small prices to pay to avoid Warner, who filled the house with pipe smoke and always seemed to be sweating out whatever he'd drunk the day before."
These topics also make you emotionally attached to the characters. In general,
people root for them to be happy in the future to make up for their sadness in
the past.
The Lucky One gets a 4 out of 5. This is
because it has an original background and great love story but it is also a
little unrealistic. Lock and Key
gets a 4.5 out of 5 because like The
Lucky One it has a creative background and love story. On top of that
though, it also is pretty realistic with some relatable topics for some people. Romantic Fiction has a status quo that
often authors stray away from to be original. The books can be still called
romantic fiction because of the love story, but it is growing increasingly
popular to create a creative background that is attention grabbing. These backgrounds
are the foundation of the book and are important to the love story.
