It’s Not Enemies-to-Lovers
I've seen a trend of people talking about things that we want to leave behind in 2023 and this is a big reading one for me.
STOP SAYING EVERY ROMANCE THAT DOESN'T START WITH FRIENDSHIP IS ENEMIES TO LOVERS!
YOU ARE HURTING OTHER READERS AND AUTHORS BY DOING SO!
Let me explain...
Enemies-to-Lovers is a VERY Popular trope on the Bookternet. People love the tension it brings to the romantic leads of a story, the quippy banter between them, and how the relationship dynamic changes from hate to love. I have to admit that it is a nice arc to follow, but I don't find myself reaching for any book that has this trope as the tagline. The main reason is because people use this tag incorrectly ALL of the time.
When I think of Enemies-to-Lovers, I imagine two people on opposite sides of the war who start out wanting to kill each other. I imagine an assassin going after the son of the man who killed his parents. I even imagine two people who used to be friends, but they hurt one another in a big way, and now, in their adult lives, they cannot stand each other.
Enemies-to-Lovers should start with visceral hate and disdain for one another. The first thought when one of the characters sees the other should be, "How do I make their day horrible?" It is that initial relationship that pits the two of these characters against each other, and then something else makes them interact differently, and over time, they start to see the other person in a different light, which eventually shows them that rage they felt before in their stomach was actually butterflies waiting to hatch. Those butterflies could easily be killed off in a third-act break-up scene, but that's beside the point.
Like I said before, the idea of a true enemies-to-lovers story sounds great because it can show that relationships can change over time, and you can find love where you were never expecting it. But because this trope is so popular, book reviewers can try and attach this tag to any book that has the slightest bit of annoyance between the characters in the beginning.
One book that I was shocked that some reviewers were trying to attach this trope to was "Icebreaker" by Hannah Grace, a romance book about an ice skater and a hockey player whose teams are forced to share the figure skating ice rink at their university. While these two are not on the best terms at the beginning of the book, I would never call them enemies. Sure, Ice Queen Stassie is not fond of hockey players, we know that early on, but when she is introduced to Hockey Captain Nate, she doesn't feel visceral hate towards him, she's just annoyed that she's gonna have to share her rink with him and his team of brutes going forward. Nate, on the other hand, thinks Stassie is very pretty and just wants to be her friend in the beginning. Their dynamic is grumpy meets sunshine and annoyed at fight sight to lovers AT BEST!
Annoyed at First Sight to Lovers is a trope that I wish people would use to describe a book more instead of Enemies-to-Lovers. That is a category I think a lot of these so-called Enemies books actually fall into. I explain it as when you don't vibe with someone when you first meet, but once you start to get to know them, they're not that bad. It happens a lot in real life, like when you add new coworkers to your team, and it changes the office environment a bit. You may not like it at first, but once everyone gets settled into their new positions, everything is fine.
This is what is happening in many of the stories that some like to tag as Enemies-to-Lovers, and tagging a book so wrong can hurt the book overall.
There is this thing called the Promise of the Premise that I've learned from "Save the Cat! Writes a Novel" by Jessica Brody. When a potential reader of a book looks at the synopsis or sees a review from another reader, they are seeing a "Premise" for the story, a little hint at what you can find in the book that might set a reader's expectations.
For example, the synopsis on the inner dust jacket for Leigh Bardugo's "Six of Crows" mentions "criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker" taking on "a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams" that "he can't pull off alone" and that his crew might "kill each other first" before they get the job done. So when you go into "Six of Crows," you're going in expecting a heist novel where a team of criminals led by Kaz Brekker is going to try and pull off a lucrative job, but they can only stay alive while doing it if they learn to get along for the time being.
And guess what?
That is exactly what you get when you read this book. It fulfills the Promise of the Premise. Leigh Bardugo promised a heist novel with a team of reluctant allies, and she gave you one. It meets the reader's expectations and sometimes surpasses them depending on how the reader feels about how the story was done.
Now, I've read novels that have not met my expectations going in. I was promised one thing in the synopsis that I thought would be a bigger deal than it was. I've read books that brought up issues that were left unresolved at the end of a standalone. I've read books that were marketed as "Enemies-to-Lovers" that ended up being two people who had a minor misunderstanding years ago that is resolved in chapter two.
Because of this, I've given books a lower rating because I am trying to warn other readers that this book might not meet their expectations if they read it.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
By blindly assigning books as enemies-to-lovers because of a slight annoyance between the two leads in the beginning, reviewers can set other people's expectations before they even think of picking up the book.
One reader will pick up the book because they love enemies-to-lovers, but give the book a lower rating because it didn't fulfill that promise. One who would have loved that book might not pick it up at all because they are wary of that tag. Even worse, the author who spent so much time working on this novel will either get bad reviews or miss out on a fervent audience for their books going forward because someone mis-assigned their book.
I know many reviewers don't mean to do this when they write their reviews, but it happens a lot. Sometimes, even the author will misidentify their book because they think adding this tag will help them sell it, but it actually hurts them in the long run. There is more than one trope out there for marketing or gushing about a book, and I encourage you to use more of them in 2024.
