BEST ROMANTIC BOOKS

BEST ROMANTIC BOOKS

• Bared to You 
• JOJO MOYES
• THE FAULT IN OUR STARS
• TO ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED BEFORE
• NOTEBOOK
• THE FIFTY SHADE OF

Bared to You (Crossfire #1) by Sylvia Day: This was where all the magic and drama began. Eva Tramell and Gideon Cross’s chance meeting outside his office building sparked a romance that would test their emotional limits.

Gideon had laser-like focus on making Eva his and protecting her from the outside world. She wasn’t sure of his motives or that she could trust him. Without fully knowing what exactly happened to both of them in the past, it was clear that they had survived trauma that would haunt them the rest of their lives. There was a bit of a dark tone to the plot because of this, but Gideon, Eva, and her friends added humor and sometimes even playfulness to the scenes that lightened it up.

“Oh, Eva.” He rubbed his cheek against my damp face. “I must’ve wished for you so hard and so often you had no choice but to come true.”

Even though there was a lot of erotic dialogue and love scenes, there was still wonderful tenderness between Eva and Gideon which is what I loved most about them.

Jojo Moyes

Jojo Moyes’s big-hearted, five-million-copy bestseller Me Before You (2012) charted the relationship between quadraplegic Will Trantor and his carer Louisa Clark and made the uncomfortable subject of assisted dying a hot topic of debate for reading groups everywhere.

After You picks up the narrative 18 months later, when Lou has had to flee her home town to get away from the pointing fingers. With Will’s bequest she’s bought a flat in east London, but she’s still not obeying his last piece of advice: to “just live well”. Her bubbly feistiness is gone and she’s stuck in a dead-end job at the City Airport’s naff Irish-themed pub, where she watches the planes come and go, knowing her own life has ground to a halt. At night, she sits out on her roof, drinking white wine, gazing out across the city and getting maudlin.

Grief might seem another theme for a bestselling writer’s “too difficult box”, but Moyes, like her peers David Nicholls and Marian Keyes, possesses the enviable gift of making the reader laugh in the gloomiest of circumstances. 

She’s also not afraid to put a bomb or two under her narrative, thus avoiding a common difficulty with a sequel, which is re-energising everything. Hence, chapter one ends with Louisa falling off the roof. Enter, stage left, two new characters: “Ambulance” Sam, the gorgeous paramedic who disentangles her from the downstairs neighbour’s awning, and Lily, the delinquent 16-year-old who accidentally caused her to fall in the first place. These mismatched strangers, together with the motley crew at the “Moving On” therapy group that Louisa grudgingly attends, help her emerge from the dark place she’s in. Lily, particularly, is splendidly evoked, a poor little rich kid who turns Louisa’s life and property upside down.

Plenty of familiar characters pass through. Lou’s parents, her senile Granddad and sister, Treena, are like a comic chorus with their whacky Irish warmth. Her mother discovers feminism, which leads to some super slapstick drama. Will’s grieving parents, now divorced, have a more serious part to play. And always we feel the absence of Will. 

After You is most of all about Louisa’s journey, a random, bumpy process of accommodation to loss and the fear of starting over. “You live,” Ambulance Sam cries in frustration at her constant shilly-shallying. “And you throw yourself into everything and try not to think about the bruises.” I’m sure there’s room for Book Three – I can’t wait!

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

Seventeen-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster reluctantly attends a cancer patients' support group at her mother’s behest. Because of her cancer, she uses a portable oxygen tank to breathe properly. In one of the meetings she catches the eye of a teenage boy, and through the course of the meeting she learns the boy’s name is Augustus Waters. He's there to support their mutual friend, Isaac. Isaac had a tumor in one eye that he had removed, and now he has to have his other eye taken out as well. After the meeting ends, Augustus approaches Hazel and tells her she looks like Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta. He invites Hazel to his house to watch the movie, and while hanging out, the two discuss their experiences with cancer. Hazel reveals she has thyroid cancer that has spread to her lungs. Augustus had osteosarcoma, but he is now cancer free after having his leg amputated. Before Augustus takes Hazel home, they agree to read one another’s favorite novels. Augustus gives Hazel The Price of Dawn, and Hazel recommends An Imperial Affliction.

A week after Hazel and Augustus discuss the literary meaning of An Imperial Affliction, Augustus miraculously reveals he tracked down Van Houten's assistant, Lidewij, and through her he's managed to start an email correspondence with the reclusive author. He shares Van Houten's letter with Hazel, and she devises a list of questions to send Van Houten, hoping to clear up the novel’s ambiguous conclusion. Hazel is most concerned with the fate of Anna’s mother. She figures that if Anna’s mother survives her daughter’s death, then her own parents will be alright after Hazel dies. Van Houten eventually replies, saying he could only answer Hazel’s questions in person. He invites her to stop by if she is ever in Amsterdam.Hazel explains the magnificence of An Imperial Affliction: It is a novel about a girl named Anna who has cancer, and it's the only account she's read of living with cancer that matches her experience. She describes how the novel maddeningly ends midsentence, denying the reader closure about the fate of the novel’s characters. She speculates about the novel’s mysterious author, Peter Van Houten, who fled to Amsterdam after the novel was published and hasn’t been heard from since.

Shortly after Augustus invites Hazel on a picnic. It turns out he's planned an elaborate Dutch-themed picnic where he reveals that a charitable foundation that grants the wishes of kids with cancer has agreed to grant his: he's taking the two of them to Amsterdam to meet Van Houten. She is thrilled, but when he touches her face she feels hesitant for some reason. Over time she realizes that she likes him a lot, but she knows she'll hurt him when she dies. She compares herself to a grenade.

In the midst of her struggle over what to do about Augustus, Hazel suffers a serious episode in which her lungs fill with fluid and she goes to the ICU. When she is released after a period of days, she learns that Augustus never left the hospital’s waiting room. He delivers Hazel another letter from Van Houten, this one more personal and more cryptic than the last. After reading the letter, Hazel is more determined than ever to go to Amsterdam. There is a problem though: Her parents and her team of doctors don’t think Hazel is strong enough to travel. The situation seems hopeless until one of the physicians most familiar with her case, Dr. Maria, convinces Hazel’s parents that Hazel must travel because she needs to live her life.

The plans are made for Augustus, Hazel, and Hazel's mother to go to Amsterdam, but when Hazel and Augustus meet Van Houten they find that, instead of a prolific genius, he is a mean-spirited drunk who claims he cannot answer any of Hazel’s questions. The two leave Van Houten’s in utter disappointment, and accompanied by Lidewij, who feels horrified by Van Houten's behavior, they tour Anne Frank’s house. At the end of the tour, Augustus and Hazel share a romantic kiss, to the applause of spectators. They head back to the hotel where they make love for the first and only time. The following day, Augustus confesses that while Hazel was in the ICU he had a body scan which revealed his cancer has returned and spread everywhere. They return to Indianapolis, and Hazel realizes Augustus is now the grenade. As his condition worsens he is less prone to his typical charm and confidence. He becomes vulnerable and scared, but is still a beautiful boy in Hazel’s mind. As this change occurs, she ceases calling him Augustus and starts referring to him as just Gus, as his parents do. Hazel recognizes that she loves him now as much as ever. Augustus’s condition deteriorates quickly. In his final days Augustus arranges a prefuneral for himself, and Isaac and Hazel give eulogies. Hazel steals a line from Van Houten about larger and smaller infinities. She says how much she loves Augustus, and that she would not trade their short time together for anything in the world.

Augustus dies eight days later. Hazel is astonished to find Van Houten at the funeral. Van Houten explains that he and Gus maintained correspondence and that Augustus demanded Van Houten make up for ruining the trip to Amsterdam by coming to his funeral to see Hazel. Van Houten abstractly reveals the fate of Anna’s mother, but Hazel is not interested. A few days later Isaac informs Hazel that Augustus was writing something for her. He had hinted about writing a sequel to An Imperial Affliction for her, and as Hazel scrambles to locate the pages she encounters Van Houten once more. He drunkenly reveals that Anna was the name of his daughter. She died of cancer when she was eight, and An Imperial Afflictionwas his literary attempt at reconciling himself with her death. Hazel tells Van Houten to sober up and write another book.

Eventually Hazel learns that Augustus sent the pages to Van Houten because he wanted Van Houten to use the pages to compose a well-written eulogy about Hazel. Lidewij forces Van Houten to read the pages and sends them straight off to Hazel. The novel concludes with Hazel reading Augustus’s words. He says getting hurt in this world is inevitable, but we do get to choose who we allow to hurt us, and that he his happy with his choice. He hopes she likes her choice too. The final words of the novel come from Hazel, who says she does.