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A book with a love triangle.


Okay, full disclosure: I love a love triangle. I haven't read one in a while, though. I'm counting on the group to add some good books to the Listopia for me!!!


Listopia list is Here: A Book with a Love Triangle

Snark mode: I read once that unless one of the characters is bisexual that it isn't really a love triangle - that the characters aren't triangulating by pursuing each other. What we usually mean by a love triangle is a love corner where 2 characters pursue one protagonist, backing them into a corner to have to choose between them. It changed the way I looked at this trope. Snark done.

I'm also shocked at how this trope is overused in YA dystopian or epic fantasy. (Twilight, Hunger Games, Shadow Hunters, minorly in HP). The world is at war or evil creatures are attacking humanity, and this is the perfect time for a conflict over which boy or girl to date. :)

I clearly need to read better love triangle books

I need to find some nonfiction with this trope. I love Twilight and Hunger Games but those are a bit overused. Though I suppose if it comes down to it I can because I'm doing rereads anyway so I can annotate. We'll see.

I feel a bit like the trend where they were overdone was so long ago, they no longer feel overdone. Can't remember the last time I read one, and I like YA.

The Mothers by Britt Bennett has a love triangle and is a good option for literary fiction readers. I've already read it so hoping there are some more literary/contemporary fiction options out there 😬

There are plenty of choices among classic novels, too: I think I might finally get round to reading Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Do you think a polyamory book would fit here, or does the love triangle have to be a conflict thing with men fighting over a woman?

I'm going to read one of the hannah Swensen mysteries. She's got two boyfriends. That will work for me.

Kaia wrote: "Do you think a polyamory book would fit here, or does the love triangle have to be a conflict thing with men fighting over a woman?"

My take is that since love triangle already has multiple possible interpretations (is it A loves B, but B loves C, and C loves A, or it B and C love A, which will A choose?) something like a throuple or A chooses both B and C would be great fits.

My favorite love triangle that I've read so far is Iron Widow. I was giddy with glee.

The Rook and Rose trilogy (two books so far, The Mask of Mirrors and The Liar’s Knot) also has one that is less annoying than many fantasy love triangles.

Katy wrote: "I'm going to read one of the Hannah Swensen mysteries. She's got two boyfriends. That will work for me."

Katy, that works for me, but do you know when the two boyfriends first appeared? It seems to me that the dentist was the first boyfriend. When did the cop enter?

If anyone knows of nonfiction love triangles that would be good.

Ron wrote: "If anyone knows of nonfiction love triangles that would be good."

Books about John F. Kennedy come to mind...

Dedra ~ A Book Wanderer wrote: "Ron wrote: "If anyone knows of nonfiction love triangles that would be good."

Books about John F. Kennedy come to mind..."

Thanks. Had no where near considered that.

Ron wrote: "If anyone knows of nonfiction love triangles that would be good."

You could read about Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady and Empty without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt & Lorena Hickok.

Lailah wrote: "Ron wrote: "If anyone knows of nonfiction love triangles that would be good."

You could read about Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. [book:Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First ..."

Those sound great! Thank you.

Lailah wrote: "Kaia wrote: "Do you think a polyamory book would fit here, or does the love triangle have to be a conflict thing with men fighting over a woman?"

My take is that since love triangle already has mu..."

Thanks, Lailah! The Mask of Mirrors looks interesting, so I've penciled it in.

Lailah wrote: "The Rook and Rose trilogy (two books so far, The Mask of Mirrors and The Liar’s Knot) also has one that is less annoying than many fantasy love triangles."

OK...instead of trying to figure out where in the Hannah Swenson books the author introduced the second boyfriend, I have decided to try The Mask of Mirrors. It does look very interesting and will be a new author for me.

Dubhease wrote: "Snark mode: I read once that unless one of the characters is bisexual that it isn't really a love triangle - that the characters aren't triangulating by pursuing each other. What we usually mean by..."



yes that's all true but I am a complete sucker for it and I don't care how trite or ridiculous it is, when it's done well, it's sublime!!!

That said, I have NO IDEA what I'm going to read for this one. I'm looking forward to some good ideas on the list

Nadine in NY wrote: "A book with a love triangle.


Okay, full disclosure: I love a love triangle. I haven't read one in a while, though. I'm counting on the group to add some good books to the Listopia for me!!!


Lis..."

Do you have any favourites to recommend?

Kaia wrote: "Do you think a polyamory book would fit here, or does the love triangle have to be a conflict thing with men fighting over a woman?"



Love triangle does not have to involve conflict. (view spoiler)[Seraphina & Shadow Scale (hide spoiler)] ended with a sort of poly relationship, to my surprise.

Ron wrote: "If anyone knows of nonfiction love triangles that would be good."



There are SO MANY, your problem is going to be picking just ONE.

A lot of classic authors & artists were in love triangles and love polygons, so you could read a biography of any of them:
* Robert Louis Stevenson with Fanny Osbourne and whomever her husband was.
* Vita Sackville West, Virginia Woolf & her husband Leonard Woolf
* Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley and a few other people too - those three did not confine themselves to a triangle!
* George Eliot, George Lewes, and Agnes Jervis
* Dickens, his wife, and Ellen "Nelly" Ternan
* Paul Verlaine, Verlaine's wife, and Arthur Rimbaud
* Hemingway and whichever women he was hooking up with (there are several novelizations of some of these relationships)
* Picasso and all the women he hooked up with
*Diego Rivera and a bunch of people including Frida Kahlo
* H.D. and a bunch of people, including Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound, and Annie Winifred Ellerman
* Anais Nin and a bunch of people, including Hugh Parker Guiler, Rupert Pole, Otto Rank and Henry Miller & June Miller (the famous "Henry and June" that she wrote about)


and then there are the historical couples like
* Cleopatra, Mark Antony & Julius Caesar
* the abovementioned Roosevelts
* whichever woman King Henry 8 was schtupping at any given time
* King Edward & Wallis Simpson and her husband

and famous Hollywood affairs like
* Eddie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, and Elizabeth Taylor
* Spencer Tracy, Louise Treadwell, and Katharine Hepburn
* Nancy Sinatra, Frank Sinatra, and Ava Gardner

and more modern:
* Bruce Springsteen, Julianne Phillips, and Patti Scialfa
* Mia Farrow, Woody Allen, and Soon-Yi Previn
* Laura Dern, Billy Bob Thornton, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Jennifer Aniston (kind of a five-pointed-love-star of stars there)

Wow, I had not thought to look into celebrity profiles. Thanks for the list, Nadine.

I read and thoroughly enjoyed Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan back when it was on the Women's Prize list in 2021. From the description: "An intimate, bracingly intelligent debut novel about a millennial Irish expat who becomes entangled in a love triangle with a male banker and a female lawyer".

I think Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding would fit this. I loved that book.

Im going to be reading Emma by Jane Austen. I think this book fits the category.

I truly hate love triangles, but they are so common that I don't hate this prompt, lol - I'm bound to read one.

Any of the Janet Evanovich books should work, there's always a love triangle (or two) in there. I love her books, but I don't love the triangles.

Oryx and Crake
Love in the Time of Cholera
Twelfth Night
A Tale of Two Cities

Nonfiction:
Doomed Romance: Broken Hearts, Lost Souls, and Sexual Tumult in Nineteenth-Century America

Nadine in NY wrote: "* Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley and a few other people too - those three did not confine themselves to a triangle!"

Having recently red a biography of Mary Shelley and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley I don't think that this particular love triangle works, at least not according to this biographer. But there are others that would work in their circle. Percy Shelley was married to another woman at the time he and Mary Shelley hooked up (though he was romantically over his 1st wife by that time). Mary Shelley's sister Claire Clairmont had a thing for, probably slept with, and may have gotten pregnant from Percy Shelley. Claire definitely slept with and had a child by Lord Byron. Actually, she was so enamored with Byron, that she lied to him about Mary Shelley being interested to get into his bed. That was a significant driver to their meet up in Geneva that produced Frankenstein.

Plan to read the third for the challenge.
- Verity by Colleen Hoover
- Flock by Kate Stewart
- Evidence of the Affair by Taylor Jenkins Reid

If anyone wants to go for a classic, or double up with the "retelling of a classic", anything Arthurian would work - Arthur / Guinevere / Lancelot have been doing their thing for about 900 years...

(as an aside if anyone knows of any polyamorous Arthurian retellings please rec them to me I have been searching for that story for so long, so very very long)

Cendaquenta wrote: "If anyone wants to go for a classic, or double up with the "retelling of a classic", anything Arthurian would work - Arthur / Guinevere / Lancelot have been doing their thing for about 900 years......"

That's awesome, I had not even considered that.

Then I'm guessing The Mists of Avalon would work.

An artist's love triangle: Beatrice Wood, Henri-Pierre Roche, the author of Jules and Jim, and Marcel Duchamp, the iconoclastic Dadaist, I Shock Myself: The Autobiography of Beatrice Wood by Beatrice Wood and, also Spellbound by Marcel: Duchamp, Love, and Art by Ruth Brandon.

I might reread Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy for this one.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen would also work.

And perhaps The Southern Vampire Mysteries series by Charlaine Harris? I have no idea which book the love triangle starts in, but there's the whole Bill/Sookie/Eric situation.

Jamie wrote: "I might reread Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy for this one.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen would also work.

And perhaps The Southern Vampire Mysteries ser..."


Not to mention Quinn and Sam....

In the moments between waking up and sleeping, I realized any book about Charles/Diana/Camilla would work, For those people who want to go nonficton.

I see a lot of people snarking on it, but the Hunger Games really is excellent. (It's also a very compassionate look at trauma and trauma bonding.)

The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Mockingjay


If you want to expand beyond a triangle and you like high fantasy, then any books of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan would work (except the prequel). At first it's Rand/Egwene and both Rand and Egwene's shifting interest, then transitions to Egwene's choice (view spoiler)[between the two brothers (hide spoiler)] and Rand's (view spoiler)[three ladies (hide spoiler)]. Plus there's all the Aiel sister wives. In an interesting twist, in some ways the relationships between Rand's ladies is more intricate and important than his relationship with each of them.

The Eye of the World
The Great Hunt
The Dragon Reborn
The Shadow Rising
The Fires of Heaven
Lord of Chaos
A Crown of Swords
The Path of Daggers
Winter's Heart
Crossroads of Twilight
Knife of Dreams
The Gathering Storm
Towers of Midnight
A Memory of Light


And if you like supernatural alt history, the middle books of the Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger would also work, if you're looking for a non-het option. (It doesn't really develop until book two, and pretty much resolves in book four.)

Changeless
Blameless
Heartless


For that matter, the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson also works, or at least books two through four.

Words of Radiance
Oathbringer
Rhythm of War

Jamie wrote: "And perhaps The Southern Vampire Mysteries series by Charlaine Harris? I have no idea which book the love triangle starts in, but there's the whole Bill/Sookie/Eric situation."

Heather L wrote: "Not to mention Quinn and Sam�"

Not to mention (view spoiler)[Calvin Norris (hide spoiler)] and sorta-kinda (view spoiler)[Alcide Herveaux (hide spoiler)]. Sookie has a…complicated…love life for someone who never had a love life before the series.

I would say it starts in book two? And book three has an extra triangle. For that matter, book four has more than a triangle by the end� Oh, and then there's Jason's complicated relationship starting in book five. Oh, and Sophie-Ann. And (view spoiler)[Sookie's grandmother's side thing with a fairy, which is kind of the root of everything (hide spoiler)].

Is there anyone who ISN'T in a triangle? Or some other complicated geometric form? We probably need diagrams�

2: Living Dead in Dallas
3: Club Dead
4: Dead to the World
5: Dead as a Doornail
6: Definitely Dead
7: All Together Dead
8: From Dead to Worse
9: Dead and Gone
10: Dead in the Family
11: Dead Reckoning

That's as far as I read, so I can't speak to the last two. Maybe everyone is quite settled on a single partner by then. (Yeah, right.)

Dea� Oops, I forgot about Alcide. 🤣 Sookie’s life pretty much stays tied up in knots until the end of book 13 (last in series). I finally finished the last two books for this year’s challenge (book about the afterlife and tiger on the cover).

Ah, yes - I forgot about all of the others! It's been a long time, although I definitely shouldn't have forgotten Sam since he was one of my favorite characters. Sookie was certainly popular!

Ron wrote: "Cendaquenta wrote: "If anyone wants to go for a classic, or double up with the "retelling of a classic", anything Arthurian would work - Arthur / Guinevere / Lancelot have been doing their thing fo..."

I appreciate the suggestion!

The No-Show by Beth O’Leary

I am not a fan of love triangles and would love to read something that mixes up the trope a bit. Does anyone know of any books with a "true" love triangle as someone mentioned above, where all three members of the triangle are connected romantically? If they end up in a polyamorous relationship, all the better. Thanks!

Kate wrote: "I am not a fan of love triangles and would love to read something that mixes up the trope a bit. Does anyone know of any books with a "true" love triangle as someone mentioned above, where all thre..."

Iron Widow fits this to a T.

Jen wrote: "Kate wrote: "I am not a fan of love triangles and would love to read something that mixes up the trope a bit. Does anyone know of any books with a "true" love triangle as someone mentioned above, w..."

Thank you!

Chances are I'm gonna read The Last Letter from Your Lover but im not sure if an affair counts as a love triangle...

im also trying to finish the ACOTAR series, and i know this would fit. and Yeah I know. im late to the party lol

If you like historical fiction with romance, adventure, mystery, and strong female characters, several of the Pink Carnation books would fit! Napoleonic era, mainly France and England.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
The Deception of the Emerald Ring
The Seduction of the Crimson Rose
The Temptation of the Night Jasmine
The Betrayal of the Blood Lily
The Lure of the Moonflower

Possibly others from the series, but those come to mind.

I hate love triangles. My least favourite plot element ever. I can make some exceptions like for the Hunger Games or the CoTaR series, but in general, it is always too much for my taste, a little bit like Power Gaming in RPGs. But - alas - I just began to read Where the Crawdads Sing and yes, there is also kind of a love triangle included. Lucky me, if I'm not doing a reread of Hunger Games or the CoTaR series, this will be it.

I just read In Five Years by Rebecca Serle and am considering it for this category (because I don't know where else to put it). It isn't a traditional love triangle, but I don't really care for love triangle stories, so it just may have to work. What do you think?

Heather L wrote: "... Not to mention Quinn and Sam... ..."


Sookie's got it going ON!!! As much as I loved Eric as a character in both the book and the show, I really thought she was better with Quinn or Alcide

Kate wrote: "I am not a fan of love triangles and would love to read something that mixes up the trope a bit. Does anyone know of any books with a "true" love triangle as someone mentioned above, where all thre..."


Seraphina & its sequel Shadow Scale