I am in shock and amazement. I just read a trashy romance novel…and they didn’t live happily ever after. It was a little bit The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. An old movie, Mrs. Muir, a widow, moves into a house haunted by its former denizen, the Ghost. Widow and Ghost fall in love, but he’s dead and she’s not so it ends up that she lives her life and finally, after death, her ghost and his walks off into the other world. This book I just finished revolved around a mortal woman who falls in love with Hades, a.k.a. the Devil. He ends up sacrificing for her his ability to visit the mortal plane so she gets to live her life, have his baby, and so on. It is assumed that when she dies they will be reunited, but you don’t even ever see that. Instead your left with him in the Underworld toasting his vision of her and her happiness. I ruin the ending because I don’t think any of you will ever read it.

I feel cheated that this book was sold in the romance section. Yes it’s a romance, they fall in love, but the happily-ever-after part is definitely up for debate. And I suppose eternity is okay after you die, but, hey call me selfish here, I’m not so much interested in living my life alone, a single mother, waiting for the end of my life to be reunited with my lover who is also the God of the Underworld.

I suppose the crux of my irritation is that all sorts of love stories happen all the time. People fall in love and someone dies early. People fall in love and fall out of love twenty years later. People live long, lonely, lives and fall in love at the end. I like those stories; I enjoy reading/watching those stories. But when I pick up a romance novel I have very specific expectations I want filled. Not necessarily the formula to exactness, but certainly the part where they fall in love and LIVE together.

There’s beauty in tragedy, in learning to move on. The human spirit is amazing in its capacity to grow and heal--to love again. But I read romance because I like to make believe sometimes that not everybody has it so very hard, so much of the time. I like to believe that for some people they have a partner to share the burden with. Someone to help with the mundane task of living; someone to be there when the baby is born. Someone to change diapers and get up in the middle of the night and take out the garbage and sit through recitals with.

I have nothing but admiration for someone who can do it on her own. That’s a virtue that is lacking in too many people. It’s a beautiful amazing thing to be happy despite all life throws at you. But when I read a romance story it’s to escape life, escape reality. It’s because I’m tired of real life and real problems and want to believe that for some people the good always outweighs the bad. That’s why it’s escapist.

And the worst part of it all, the part that really makes this unpalatable, is that the story wasn’t all that good. Like all writers who rely on wrenching moments of heartrending agony to make up for the lackluster prose throughout the rest of the story, this book just wasn’t that good. Her hero was left undeveloped, her heroine only marginally less so. Their relationship seems to happen overnight with no explanation of how or why. When tragedy strikes her heroine suddenly feels more than ever even hinted at before. There is a closeness of family that was decidedly lacking earlier on. And the hero’s “sacrifice” comes out of nowhere with no seeming reason. His character doesn’t so much arc as just completely change.

So now I’m left completely unsatisfied and slightly depressed. At least with The Time-Traveler’s Wife you felt like you were reading a profound statement on love and its ability to endure. It was painful, but worthwhile. With this it is simply, bad. Tragedy is an art, but I feel it takes just as much skill, perhaps more so at times, to write a story that is meaningful, moving, and happy. To make characters appear dynamic and full of life, with all of life’s hardships and baggage, and also make it believable that they have found happiness in each other--that’s impressive. As impressive as watching it happen in reality.

Anyone can write a crappy story with a bittersweet ending. But in the best bittersweet endings I think the bitter is the pain of the journey to find the sweet. And the sweet makes it all worthwhile. It shouldn’t just be heart wrenching sadness with the consolation prize of a baby. Kids are fantastic but they don’t hold you every night, or fight with you, or comfort you, or support you. And honestly, I’m tired of authors trying to convince me that children can make one parent stop missing the other. While kids are beautiful, I think there are many single parents who can hold their loneliness up as proof that they aren’t everything.

Stupid, bad, trashy romance novel.