SBD -- Age, again

[jmc_bks]

If you are a regular visitor -- do I have those? I dunno...I don't have a site meter or any way to check other than comments -- or at least someone who hops this way on

Smart Bitches Day!

then you may know that I've sbd'd about age before. Mostly about age differentials in RomanceLandia. So haven't I exhausted that topic? Maybe. But that's not what I'm thinking about today. Today's age related topic: are there ages for heroes and heroines that you don't care for?

First, I have to start by saying that I think men and women of ALL ages deserve love and romance. And a good author can take the things that would make romance (a la the romance novel, as opposed to real life) difficult -- the baggage, children, unhappy families, ugly past histories -- and make a story work, so that readers thrill to that heroine's/hero's tale.

Having said that, there are ages or periods in our lives that don't work as romance fodder for me. And one of those is the typical college age, 18-22. That's an age that has amazing potential for romance plots: trying new things, figuring out what you want, going new places, being away from home and independent for the first time. But it is also a period when we make horrendous mistakes; we hurt the people we love; we lose track of old friends as we make new ones; we realize that who we thought we were isn't necessarily who we really are. We all live through it if we are lucky...but some of the things we did are too painful or stupid or cruel or naive or heartless to cast into the bright light of a romance novel.

So there is a gap in my reading. I like YA books, which mostly seem to finish up at high school graduation and/or the exodus to university. And I like chick lit and straight romance, which generally are set in the post-university employed semi-adult world. This past weekend I picked up a book that sort of bridges that gap, Forever in Blue by Ann Brashares, the fourth book of the Traveling Pants series. It reminded me a great deal of Megan McCafferty's Charmed Thirds not so much in plot specifics as in overarching ideas. And IMO as a book that fans clamoured for but probably shouldn't've been written. Like the (much worse on every level) Scarlett follow up to GWTW, some books should not ever hit the printing press -- just let beloved characters ride off into the sunset, leaving readers to imagine their own follow ups. [Neither of these books nor their predecessors in their respective series is a YA romance, although they all have romantic threads.]

FIB is fine, in terms of writing and themes, wrapping up the story of the pants, reminding the four girls that they are family and that being a healthy family is work. But some -- okay, a lot of the behavior of the four girls made me really impatient with them, to the point of almost tossing the book a couple of times. They did things that weren't consistent with who they had been in earlier books. They did dumb stuff. Like Charmed Thirds. In both cases, the behavior dulled my interest in the characters, although it was perfectly normal for college students. Which made me realize that the tolerance that I have for fucking up in YA books is very much limited to age. I can understand objectively that the jump from high school to college is not emblematic of maturity, and acknowledge that most of the college years are a maturing process... but I expected better of these characters. Reasonable? Not really. But there it is, for better or worse.

So, no more following YA series books off to college for me.

But back to my question: are there ages or typical periods in a heroine's or heroine's life in which you would rather not see a novel (romance or otherwise) set?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Well, ya got me ;)

I used to get icked out by older H/H but then I was only in my 20s so that was just normal. Now in my 30s I'm not interested in H/H from anything younger than 25 for the most part. My worst behaviour was definitely in high school so that's not a time I wish to revisit and since I came to romance older than most people, I had already read my share of YA books while I was a YA.

I also have a hard time in believing in HEA if the H/H are in their 20s because my 20s were such a mess (okay, most of the time I'm a mess but the 20s were horrid).

That said, I don't want to read about H/H who are older than 45 at this time. I'm sure that age will increase as mine does but at a certain point I start to think of my parents and that sooo does not work for me ;)

CindyS

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

Hi, Cindy

It's all a moving target, isn't it? Except the parent thing -- I can't think about them having sex lives or I'll need a drink.