My favourite romance is 'The Blue Castle'. What's Yours?

[Judith Crabb]

As a Christmas present to myself I used to read 'The Blue Castle' by L.M. Montgomery every year.
I have given 'The Blue Castle' to people I like more than any other title. Reactions generally positive - even from a male reader! (One friend after reading it confessed that she, too, had ..... [plot spoiler].)
I did not read it until I was grown up, even though I was a great fan of both Anne and Emily and had read plenty of other L.M. Montgomery titles. A girl at school had recommended it but by that stage I was reading Jane Austen and the Brontes and thought I wouldn't enjoy it. A terrible mistake. Montgomery was a very witty woman. It is set in a time when female success was measured in terms of how advantageous was the marriage she made. In many but not all respects Montgomery turns that formula inside out but, of course, the happy ending is unaffected.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I often find it hard to know if a book would be defined as a "romance" or not (unless it's very obvious, such as the "Mills & Boon" books). One novel with a strong romantic theme that I've read several times over is Diana by R. F. Delderfield. I believe it was originally published as two separate books but I've got the one-volume edition that was released after the 1984 TV series, which I watched avidly. John (called "Jan") falls in love as a teenager with Diana Gayelorde-Sutton, daughter of a rich landowner, and his whole life is shaped by his devotion to her. It's a sweeping story, poetically written, which takes us through several decades, beginning in the 1920s.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy would also come high on my list.

[Courtenay]

Persuasion by Jane Austen, hands down.

[Katharine]

Not sure if one of my favourites is strictly a romance, but it is The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie.

Another is a school girl book I've had since I was a child - White Holiday by Viola Bayley.

I'm also moved by Snape's devotion in the Harry Potter films.

[pete9012S]

Haven't read a ton of romance novels.
But these are definitely my favourite two. I have read them both a number of times.

[Kate Mary]

For me Georgette Heyer's novel about a marriage of convenience 'A Civil Contract', it develops into a beautifully understated love story and is very funny too.

[Judith Crabb]

I was hoping to get some suggestions for titles I might like to read (or re-read) and I certainly did. Delderfield I know only from the excellent mini-series of 'A Horseman Riding By' and 'To Serve them All My Days', so 'Diana' is a definite. I must agree with Courtenay - Austen is incomparable. Perhaps I should have excluded the nineteenth century in my assessment - maybe I should have said my favourite romance of the last 100 years.
I was pleased to see a reply from Pete. Few men seem to admit to reading any romance. Yes, Kate Mary, Heyer too is very good and 'The Civil Contract' is among her best (or perhaps her best). 'White Holiday' I have not read in sixty-odd years, Katharine, though I enjoyed it as a child. I must get it down from my shelves and put it with Bayley's 'The Dark Lantern' which I've been meaning to re-read for weeks.
I've just finished Gerald Murnane's 'A Season on Earth' - very funny but definitely not a romance.

[timv]

'Diana' was one of my favourite reads, not so much as a romance but because R F Delderfield set it around the area where he grew up (1920s-30s like Jan in the book) , ie Exmouth in NE Devon. The imaginary wooded valley of 'Sennacherib', which I found wonderful and would have loved to own , was supposed to be around the Budleigh Salterton - Sidmouth area E of Exmouth. The town where Jan lives with his uncle and aunt and the offshore island where he goes with Diana were Ioosely based on Exmouth. I have always had a strong sense of 'place' that makes some books special if I can relate to their locations, and RFD set a lot of his books in this part of Devon; the 'Shallowford' area in his 'Horseman Riding By' trilogy, another favourite of mine, was also set here and if you read the books carefully you can see that he includes some geographical details and names in both books. Mind you, I had a bit of a shock to find the 'Diana' story turning into a wartime thriller. The early 1980s TV adaptation with a young Patsy Kensit, Jenny Seagrove and Kevin McNally was very good and should still be on YouTube.

I had a number of wonderful holidays in the Sidmouth area in the mid-late 1960s and wandered around the wooded valleys there near our caravan (to a limited extent as I was still very young ) so I could picture exactly what the place was like; the steep valleys and lush undergrowth of 'Sennacherib' reflect the real coastal scenery around Sidmouth. I still have some of my father's photos of it at the time. The timeline of RFD's 'Horseman Riding By' trilogy ended in 1965, which was when I first visited the real life 'Shallowford' area, so I could feel that I had been part of it all!

[John Pickup]

Not Scarlet But Gold by Malcolm Saville, the 14th book in the Lone Pine series where Peter and David finally realise what they mean to each other.

[Daisy]

On the strength of Judith's recommendation, I've ordered a copy of "the Blue Castle". I love L.M. Montgomery's books and to date, would rate Anne's romance pretty highly. (Anne of Green Gables). I also absolutely love "Jane of Lantern Hill". I lent it to a friend who enjoyed it so much she got copies as gifts for some of her friends.

Yes, John, I like "Not Scarlet but Gold" very much too, especially the touching scene you mention.

[Anita Bensoussane]

As far as L. M. Montgomery is concerned, I've only ever read the "Anne" books. I ought to try some of her other titles one of these days.

Jane Austen is wonderful for wit and subtlety but in most of her books I long for more passion.

I agree that Snape's devotion (Harry Potter series) is really moving, Katharine.

I find Not Scarlet But Gold very enjoyable too, John and Daisy, though I think Malcolm Saville overdoes the "pairings" in his Lone Pine series. In the final book, Home to Witchend, the romance overshadows the adventure.

It's interesting that you're familiar with the landscape of Diana, Tim. I've also read (and watched) A Horseman Riding By and To Serve Them All My Days and found them both excellent. R. F. Delderfield has an immensely readable writing style and clearly loves nature, literature and history.

Incidentally, my sister and I had one of our biggest ever arguments over an R. F. Delderfield book when I was about 13 and she was about 12. It was either A Horseman Riding By or To Serve Them All My Days - I can't recall which. It was my sister's book but she'd said I could read it first as she was partway through something else. However, when I was only a few chapters in she said she'd changed her mind and wanted to read it immediately. She tried to snatch it off me, and it led to a shouting match and a prolonged tussle. It was most embarrassing for my uncle and his then girlfriend (they've now been married for 34 years), who were staying with us at the time. They still remember the incident well!

[Chrissie777]

As a Christmas present to myself I used to read 'The Blue Castle' by L.M. Montgomery every year.
I have given 'The Blue Castle' to people I like more than any other title. Reactions generally positive - even from a male reader! (One friend after reading it confessed that she, too, had ..... [plot spoiler].)
I did not read it until I was grown up, even though I was a great fan of both Anne and Emily and had read plenty of other L.M. Montgomery titles. A girl at school had recommended it but by that stage I was reading Jane Austen and the Brontes and thought I wouldn't enjoy it. A terrible mistake. Montgomery was a very witty woman. It is set in a time when female success was measured in terms of how advantageous was the marriage she made. In many but not all respects Montgomery turns that formula inside out but, of course, the happy ending is unaffected.

What a nice topic, Judith!
When I was young, my favorite romance was the one described in Janet Lambert's Campbell Family sequel "The Precious Days".
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/687 ... cious-days" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Debbie]

I find Not Scarlet But Gold very enjoyable too, John and Daisy, though I think Malcolm Saville overdoes the "pairings" in his Lone Pine series. In the final book, Home to Witchend, the romance overshadows the adventure.

Much as I love Malcolm Saville, unfortunately I have to agree. I liked Peter and David, and Tom and Jenny, but Jon and Penny never ran true.
Penny would have discovered boys once she was out from her all girls' school, and enjoyed leading them all on and Jon would never have been exciting enough for her; Jon would have found a girl at uni that didn't laugh at him and enjoyed discussing the science he loved. The only way they'd have survived as a couple was by Jon ignoring Penny and getting on with his science Uncle Quentin style!
Harriet and Kevin actually felt a bit wrong too, I think, to me, it felt that Harriet was determined to make it a couple because she was the odd one (pairing the twins off) and Kevin went along out of gratitude.
To me the most romantic Lone Pine is The Neglected Mountain. It's just the beginning of showing from Loyalty (or normal friendship) becoming Love.

The Blue Castle is one of my favourites. It's a real love story with a twist.

I don't really go for romance stories, but I do rather like "No Going Back" with Tamzin and Meryon (Monica Edwards) as they have that quiet understanding that is very touching, and it builds slowly. You have the jealousy from Risa initially, again quite true to life, a mixture of also fancying Meryon and worrying that their friendship will change (going back to Malcolm Saville, I also thought Penny was rather jealous of Peter and fancied David, but is never explicitly said).
And then when she meets Dion (in a later book) that becomes a much better match. Again ME slightly over egged the coupling by putting Lindsey and Roger together, but it isn't as much a "stick the last two people together" feel as MS made.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I feel the same as you about Harriet and Kevin, Debbie.

To me the most romantic Lone Pine is The Neglected Mountain. It's just the beginning of showing from Loyalty (or normal friendship) becoming Love.

Yes, it's convincing and touching and doesn't detract from the adventure. The Neglected Mountain stirs the mind and heart - it's my favourite Lone Pine book

[timv]

The scene with David and Peter trapped in the mine in Not Scarlet But Gold is the emotional climax of the Lone Pine series for me, and shows that Malcolm Saville could do gripping drama and emotion for teenagers in a 'grown-up' manner as well as spy, crime and other adventure plotlines. Earlier than that, the moment near the end of Neglected Mountain where Peter risks her life to save Mary in the plotholes and David doesn't know for a few moments if she's still alive or not is also very intense and makes this book special. After those episodes, the David-Peter romance seems to be a 'given' and to be generally low-key until the last book, Home to Witchend - which is a bit of a disappointment and to me seems a hastily-put-together 'pot-boiler' wrapping up the characters' stories and putting in all the major characters with shoehorned-in appearances. (Jon and Penny don't get much to do, for instance, and Rye is sidelined though the hunt for the banknote-forgers starts off there with the police warning to Penny about the forged notes.)
There are good emotionally intense moments for the other main characters too, when Jon pulls Penny out of the canal (the real Royal Military Canal near Rye) when she gets trapped by reeds in Treasure at Amory's (one of my favourites, partly due to my knowing the sites well) and when Tom (my least favourite of the main characters) rescues Jenny and Peter from the kidnapping fishmonger in Where's My Girl. MS is also good on suppressed jealousy, though I would agree with critics that he seemed to find it difficult to get into the minds of 1960s and 1970s teenagers as easily as he did in the 1950s. (There's one good moment in Rye Royal, late 1960s, though, when Peter turns up at a trendy 1960s coffee-bar in Rye with short hair in a mini-skirt and David gets anxious that young men will chat her up and relieved she admits to feeling out of place!

With Monica Edwards, I preferred the understated friendship of Lindsey and Roger to the Tamzin- Meryon relationship, probably from finding Meryon intimidatingly capable at everything whereas Roger is more shy. There's a great moment, almost like Saville's David-Peter drama, at the finale of the final Punchbowl Farm book (The Wild One) where Lindsey is confronted by an escaped bull and Roger doesn't exactly rescue her (the puma cub does that) but looks after her as she goes into shock. And Monica Edwards could do romance humour too - in The Outsider, Andrea falls for Meryon on his first visit to PF and Lindsey tries - successfully - to gently prise her sister off Meryon , who is embarrassed but does not want to snub or upset Andrea, by persuading him to adopt some habits that Andrea dislikes so she'll go off him!