The reasons why:

• a classic rebound romance: as the Friar says “Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine / Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline.” And Romeo’s response is “Rosaline-who?”
• Could there be a more rushed marriage – a matter of hours between meeting and wedding?
• Oh, and the bitter family rivalry.
• And Romeo’s self-loathing language…

The reasons why:

• any woman who marries you because you can solve a riddle, may not be marrying for the best reasons… even if the riddle was set by a sphinx;
• also, he had just murdered her previous husband in a crossroad spat;
• and she is his MUM!

Don’t get me started on Greek tragedies: Jason and Medea, Herakles and Megara, Herakles and Deianira… no wonder Freud found so much here!

The reasons why:

• the man is one of the rudest and most arrogant prigs in history
• his first wife is locked up in the attic
• he only accepts Jane when he has been blinded so he cannot see how “plain” she is!

I’ve not read Wide Sargasso Sea yet but I feel it won’t rehabilitate him.

The reasons why:

• he is a serial adulterer with little if any respect for her, or any woman
• she is fawning over Gatsby – and who wouldn’t?! The guy would literally do anything for her.
• oh, and there’s covering up the homicide moment

The reasons why:

• Eric is entirely distant from the relationship: this is characterised by its being initially online and we meet Edie when the relationship first becomes face-to-face; then he is away when Edie moves into his house; even when physically present he seems emotionally absent
• the friendship / hostility / flirtation between his wife Rebecca and Edie was much more interesting.

And this is a book waiting to be reviewed in my ever growing to-be-reviewed pile!

The reasons why:

• the relationship was characterised by total imbalance of power in Connell’s favour and then in Marianne’s – although they did find a balance
• starting relationships in secret because your partner would be embarrassed if people knew you were dating is a bit of a red flag
• Connell’s complete inability to communicate effectively

This was a great book and the relationship does improve and is genuinely sweet at times – and ends up in an unconventional place – but it was a bad start!

The reasons why:

• Tom – although he has already left Queenie as the book opens – displays a range of micro aggressions in his frequent flashbacks
• his racist family and his inability / refusal to defend Queenie to them
• Oh and he has another woman

I loved this book but had had enough of Tom a lot earlier than Queenie did and found her pining irksome.

The reasons why:

• enemies to lovers
• a gorgeous bathtime confession, guarded by reanimated skeletons in a haunted mansion
• Gideon’s unquestioning devotion to Harrow, wrenching her way into the haunted tunnels even as she professed to hate her

The reasons why:

• she is an AI, he is a human engineer but their relationship was so sweet
• whilst I can think of many relationships where one character offers to die for their love (Romeo, I’m looking at you), how more intense to offer the choice to live in a body with all its limitations and restrictions

To be honest there were a few relationships in this novel I could have chosen – Rosemary and Sissix, Ashby and Pei (Captain Gapei Tem Seri) – but I loved these two more!

The reasons why:

• oh it was just so sweet and tender!
• Linus was so bumbling and discovering his feelings – for the first time allowing his bubble to be burst and the joy of love to enter it
• and there’s a wonderful phoenix – a phoenix!

For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.

But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.