I finished a romance the other day that I really enjoyed and suddenly realized that I had no idea what the pair was going to be doing. Like the next day.

Much less ever after.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that extreme but I did feel a sense of “So, what happens now?”

And did I mention that I really enjoyed this particular book? The romance was good. A new author find for me, in fact. I was simply left at the end without a clear picture of where the couple was going in the immediate sense. And, therefore, somewhat in the ever after sense, too, I suppose.

Now, by that last, I don’t mean I need an iron-clad guarantee of happiness because that isn’t what I consider a “happily ever after” is supposed to be. It’s a “promise” that they have a good chance if they work at it, nothing more, and certainly nothing less. What I mean here though is that I honestly had no idea what their life was going to be like from the point where the story ended and onward even though the narrative said quite clearly where they were going the next day.

See why I’m confused?

Now it might’ve been that it was a shorter futuristic ebook but I’ve had this happen with regular sized paperback romances, too. In fact, it happened with the very next book I read – a contemporary paperback. Curiously enough, I don’t remember it all that much with historicals. Mostly, contemporaries and futuristics of both the fantasy and non-fantasy bent.

Used to, I noticed I this more with certain types of romances that focus on very contained events, i.e. road romances, cabin romances, etc. You know the types where they get stuck outside their regular lives to begin with and we never really see them functioning together in their “real” world environment together. Come to think of it, that’s probably why most of those aren’t my favorite types of romances. I can never quite buy the promise of a HEA with those unless the author goes to great pains to show me the couple can make that adjustment in the end.

That isn’t necessarily the case here, though. Both of these were pretty much normal circumstances. So, I can’t help wondering what the heck happened. Why I came away feeling as if the endings were in some way chopped off. Or why that’s been happening more and more lately.

Has anyone else been noticing this trend?

2 Comments

  1. I have a harder time with short stories of late – they meet, the have sex while shooting at the bad guys and then the H asks the heroine to marry him and give him a passle of kids. This is after being together for two days. I just don’t buy into it so I avoid short stories as a rule now.

    I should look up one of my posts on I *think* it was Standing in the Shadows but I felt there were many things that shouted ‘this will one day end badly’.

    I wonder if Anne Stuart has dulled me to that for the most part. I remember the first time I read one of her fiction books and I was sure there were pages missing at the end. No ‘I love yous’ or anything! Now, I have come to expect this from Stuart and it no longer bothers me because she usually has the H/H say exactly the right thing to let me know that yeah, they’re going to be fine.

    You should tell us the books that this happened for you with – maybe we have read them. What I’m having trouble with are books that are connected so you kind of have things left dangling all the time (Ward).

    CindyS

  2. People talk about reading slumps, but I think that I sometimes have “Suspension of Disbelief” slumps. I can see the crafting of the book, and I can’t see any major flaws, but somehow I don’t “Believe” in it?

    (I don’t do to many rereads of books I’m iffy on, but sometimes if I let one like that sit for a while and then come back to it, it begins to work. Which indicates to me that the fault is in my ability to get swept up in the story. I think. I could be entirely wrong about this too.)

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