Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite romances

Top Ten Tuesday is a regular feature on the Broke and Bookish blog. This week's list is a look at the top 10 favorite romances. Though in my case, it's a top five because romance is just not my thing, and the romances in books I've read and enjoyed even where the romance isn't front and center tend to slip out of my mind rather quickly.

1. The Perilous Gard - I think this may be the first book in which I ever registered the romance and it didn't bug me. It just felt so natural and beautiful, so ingrained a part of the story without supplanting it or being the point of the book.  Christopher's words to Kate have always stuck with me - "If you were any other woman, I could tell you I loved you easily enough, but not you - because you've always seemed to me like a part of myself, and it would be like saying I loved my own eyes or my own mind. But have you ever thought of what it would be ]to live without your mind or your eyes, Kate? to be mad? Or blind? I can't talk about it. That's the way I feel." <3 font="">

2. Ashes of Honor - After five books of them messing around and avoiding coming out and saying it, Toby and Tybalt finally step forward in their relationship, and the care they show one another, the fierce protectiveness and trust, really struck me.

3. The Lions of Al Rassan - Notable for being the only love triangle I've read that I truly and deeply bought into, I get so tired of love triangles which are really a couple and then a third wheel with some claim on the proceedings. In this? I could understand why she loved both men. I could see her finding happiness with either, and finding heartbreak with either. The way that decision got made broke my heart.

4. Mistborn - I enjoyed the turnaround in Vin and Eland's relationship, the way they played off one another and the very real insecurities each of them dealt with. Another one that felt very organic and real to me.

5. Library Wars - Guilty pleasure time! This is not a very good manga and I won't claim otherwise. The romance is contrived as anything, and I'll admit that too. But something about the two characters just draws me in and makes me cheer for them even as I'm laughing at the ridiculousness of the story.