Romance

One of the reviews for Double Life came in and wasn't so super positive (which is totally okay!). But there was a line in there that I do want to blog about:

"[I]t verges on being a love story except her brother always seems to be in the way."

To re-use a gif:

There are many things that I intended Double Life to be, but a romance was NEVER one of them, unless you count the love between a person and herself. And Vel is, if anything, pushing for them to get together versus getting in the way. But, still, that spurred me to want to blog about (the lack of) romance in my book.

So thank you, kind sir, first and foremost for taking the time to read my life's work AND a few more minutes to write a review. But also for giving me something to blog about.

I've blogged about romance before, in that I openly dislike it. Maybe I'm just channeling Razia at the moment, or maybe it's because I've gotten romance about once in my life, but it's not something that I like to dwell on. I hate reading about girls with crushes, or girls doing silly things to get a guy's attention. Maybe because my crushes were always with guys way out of my league (or rumored to be gay), and I never did anything silly to get a guy's attention, so, to me that's inauthentic. If two people are gonna fall in love, it's gotta be deep, it's gotta be real, and it's a slow development from two people on the same emotional plane.

I know my ABFF Renee wants to see Sage and Lyssa get together. So does Harms, so does Vel. But I don't, not right now. Because I love Sage too much to let her hurt him like that.

Lyssa's a self-centered, egotistical brat that cares nothing for other people. She wasn't born that way - years of abuse, abandonment, and fear have left her that way, and it's also quite possibly genetic (I mean, dear God, look at her father!). But still, she is no where near at a point where she would treat Sage the way he's supposed to be treated.

Yeah, I said that. Men deserve to be treated with respect too. #feminism

Examples:

He comes and saves her from Relleck, she screams her head off at him.

He tries to get Dissident off her back, she screams her head off at him.

He saves her in the middle of a space jump, she screams her head off at him Whoops, that's Book 2. :D

My point is that Lyssa needs to do a lot of growing up before she's receptive to any kind of romance. She needs to learn - first of all, to trust others - and then she needs to learn how to be selfless and not just trust others but do for others. Most of all, she needs to get over her fear that she's unable to change (life lessons in books 2, 3, 4, respectively).

THEN and only then will she be the kind of girl that I would want to see with Sage Teon.

In the meantime, he will continue to look out for her, and she will continue to hate him for it. And we will continue to swoon over him and shake our heads at her.