ME Recommends: Romance Tropes

The ME team have put together a swooning list of their favourite Romance tropes for you to cap off this lovely week.

Juliet loves…

I absolutely love a grumpy one is soft for sunshine one (The Hating Game, Act Your Age Eve Brown, The Summer I Turned Pretty, The Earl I Ruined).   

Also a big fan of a giant alien himbo sap fated mate, it turns out, hence reading all of Ice Planet Barbarians (really, all of them) in the space of one summer.

Rachel loves… 

I’m a sucker for Friends to Lovers stories, whether they end happily or in tragedy. My go-to tv comfort-food is New Girl, and I love the Nick/Jess and Schmidt/Cece relationships, which over the course of the show blossom from friendship to love.

Kiya loves… 

I love an enemies to lovers storyline – especially when it’s combined with some forced proximity or second chance romance! My favourite enemies to lovers include Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail, Lizzie and Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (obviously!), and Chloe and Shara in I Kissed Shara Wheeler.

Catriona loves…

 My favourite romance trope is childhood friends to lovers as I’m drawn to romances where the circumstances and challenges might change, but the romance is enduring and remains a constant. My favourite examples of this are Tish and Fonny in If Beale Street Could Talk (both the novel by James Baldwin and the 2018 film adaptation directed by Barry Jenkins), and Nora and Hae Sung in Past Lives, directed by Celine Song (2023).

Alba loves…  

Like Kiya, I love an enemies to lovers storyline but I like mine with a strong dose of murder! I remember one of the first pairings I loved was Madmartigan/Sorsha in Willow (1988) - full-on tried to kill each other, from different sides of a war. More recently, I’ve loved Captive Prince, The Cruel Prince, Peter Darling and Shadowheart.