I’ll just leave this here.
I saw bits of this discussion on twitter, and it inevitably comes up every time someone decides to market a book as a “romance” even though the book has no HEA (happily ever after) or HFN (happy for now) ending. And then wonders why readers lose their shit. Then inevitably the commentary starts (almost always from non-romance readers, usually male) that happy endings aren’t realistic. This is a great response to that.
Aside from “the story must revolve around a romantic relationship”, the happy ending is the single most important element of any story in the romance genre. Period. For a book to be a romance, the story has to be about a romantic relationship of some sort, and the story has to end with all the participants of said relationship (regardless of number, gender, sexuality, etc, etc) happy and together for the foreseeable future. That’s it. If it doesn’t have both of those things, it is not a romance. (Nicholas Sparks does not write romance.)
And some writer out there ALWAYS decides they’re gonna be ‘edgy’ and write a romance with a downer ending. Seriously: do not fuck with romance readers, and do not fuck with their happy endings.
(And before anybody yells about ‘there’s no suspense because you always know the ending’, the tension in a romance novel is driven by the reader’s emotional involvement, and by not knowing how the happy ending will come about or what it will look like. It’s the writer’s job to make the happy ending seem all but impossible, and then pull it off.)
This is Not a Blog 