Love triangles? How square.

Had a conversation over the weekend with a fellow reader discussing the books we enjoyed and what we didn't enjoy,

We love Romance for the HEA. What we didn't like was love triangles.

I do not like love triangles. Not at all.

I believe love triangles work anathema to the goal of HEA. If it's a true love triangle, somewhere, someone's gonna lose.

You've got Our Heroine and she's in love with two guys, Our Hero 1 and Our Hero 2. Both blokes are painted as decent fellows and it's really difficult for her (and the reader) to choose. Unless it's the kind of book where polyamory is the goal, eventually she has to go with one over the other.

Yay for Our Hero 1, if she goes that way.  May they live happily ever after.

But what about Our Hero 2? What does he get for all his effort?  He loses. He does not get the girl, he does not get his HEA. The author's gone to all this trouble to paint this really decent character, one who is worthy of loving and being loved and then shafts him. I think that a tragedy and dreadfully unfair.

So what about a false love triangle?  Our Heroine is in love with two guys, Our Hero and Dastardly Bastard. We, the readers, know that Dastardly Bastard is dastardly. We know he's no good and he's gonna break our heroine's heart. Yet she's still in love with him.

We hates this too, we does. We look at Our Heroine and sadly shake our heads. What on earth is she thinking, falling in love with Dastardly Bastard? He's a jerk! If she's so besottedly blind as to not see what he's up to, Our Heroine loses some respect from us.

Okay, there's the possibility of DB playing Our Heroine, fooling her, pulling the wool over her eyes, and we'll forgive her for that. We've all been played by Dastardly Bastard at one time or another.

But as a book [should be] the story of Our Heroine's personal growth, part of that is her coming to the realisation that Dastardly Bastard is dastardly and to get the hell outta Dodge, the sooner, the better.

I confess we do love it when she comes to her senses and goes, "These boots were made for walking."  No woman should put up with crap from a man if she doesn't have to.

All in all, the whole love triangle thing? Not my cuppa. I don't wanna see the perfectly good Our Hero 2 get his heart broken, and I don't wanna see Our Heroine spend too much time mooning over Dastardly Bastard.

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Her Grace has seen too many good people lost in the battles between Team Edward and Team Jacob.