The New YA Love Geometry

I never got that fired up over the whole YA Love Triangle Issue. Until recently, when a bookish love triangle got me really aggravated. 

I found the perfect person to vent to: my blogger friend Lauren from Love Is Not a Triangle.

She and I decided to do posts about the issue. You can find Lauren's post, A Peek Inside the Love Triangle Rule Book, here.

My post is going to look at a New YA Love Geometry.

Maybe it's time to figure out some other geometric shapes that don't cause so much angst to either the readers or the characters. I mean, my friend Jen from The Starry Eyed Revue makes a great point about love triangles: they put too much power into the hands of one character. And often, that character abuses that power by a) toying with the emotions of the other two or b) bouncing from one person to another or c) just being annoying by complaining about how hard it is to have two people in love with you. How confusing.

Yes, a literary love triangle is suspenseful ... until it's resolved. Then about half of the readers end up heartbroken and angry. 

If we can't just have a couple in love with each other, here is another possibility:

The good thing about a love rectangle is that there are four people involved, so theoretically everyone could get paired up. 

 Take this Love Rectangle from the Juliet Immortal and Romeo Redeemed books by Stacey Jay:

Romeo and Juliet were together, then they broke up. Badly. Romeo wanted to make things right, but Juliet fell in love with Ben. When she was in Ariel's body. But in theory, there were four people, if that pesky body sharing thing can be worked out.  But you can see how symmetrical the flow of power is in this formation.

Here's another example, from Vampire Academy.

In the Vampire Academy books, this looked like a love triangle, with Rose in love with Dimitri and Adrian in love with Rose. Then something terrible happens to Dimitri and it looks like Rose might be with Adrian.  But wait ... a fourth character is lurking in the sidelines. Nicely played, Richelle Mead!You can see that this one has more of a potential for trouble as most of the power flows to and from Rose.

Here's a third example from The Diviners by Libba Bray.

I don't think this one is going to end as well. There's a slight romantic spoiler if you haven't read the book, but this rectangle is still unresolved.

Evie, our main character has a best friend Mabel, who adores Jericho from afar. Sam seems to adore Evie from afar. Evie knows that Mabel is crazy about Jericho and appears to be falling for him. Not cool, Evie! In this rectangle, most of the power flows to and from Evie.

In science fiction, we get all kinds of love geometry possibilities:

In What's Left of Me by Kat Zhang, we have two girls in the same body. So, yeah, a complicated love life right there! Addie and Eva share a body (that's what my = sign indicates) and Ryan and Devon also share a body. Eva is attracted to Ryan.   This could get messy! Or, it could work out great. We'll see...

Tell me, what do you think about Love Geometry? Are you a fan of these tortured multi-person relationships? Lauren and I hope to do more posts on the issue!

It's a busy month -- I'm reviewing Perfect Scoundrels later this morning!