Top Ten Tuesday: Romance Tropes

by - February 14, 2017



Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week will be a different Top Ten list. Everyone is welcome to join and link up.

This week is “All About Romance Tropes”. My top ten favorite hate to love romances. I did five from television and five from books.

Television
Also please know that some of the couples form later in some shows and if you haven’t seen them yet . . .spoiler alert. This list is in no particular order. Since I am a huge fan of Korean television of course some were going on this list.



1.      Na Doo Rim & Choi Kang Joo | Bride of the Century (2014)
 
Kang Joo a rich heir and Na Doo Rim a poor girl working at her family restaurant. The two couldn’t be more different yet that’s what makes them the best couple. These two hated each other in the worst way. Kang Joo believed her to be someone else, a person he didn’t like but when they got to know each other it was hard not to fall in love.

Plot: Taeyang Group is the largest conglomerate in South Korea. The Choi family who runs Taeyang has supposedly been under a curse for a hundred years that the first bride of the eldest son will always die. 

When the wealthy heiress Jang Yi Kyung disappears right before her wedding to chaebol heir Choi Kang Joo, Na Doo Rim, a lookalike impostor, is brought in to take her place. Unlike the cold and calculating Yi Kyung, Doo-rim is sweet and sunny, and Kang Joo genuinely falls in love with her. As the wedding plans progress, Kang Joo and Yi Kyung's mothers both scheme and plot behind the scenes.

2.     Jo Lupo & Zane Donovan | Eureka (2006-2012)

Josephina "Jo" Lupo, Eureka's deputy sheriff and former U.S. Army Ranger with a love of firearms. Zane Donovan, a rebellious genius who is recruited to Global Dynamics. He allegedly caused a stock market crash, and agreed to work for GD as an alternative to imprisonment. The two are my absolute favorite things in this show. The two hate each other because Jo is a very strict, no-nonsense by the book cop and Zane is a rebellious prank master criminal with no respect for the law or anything by himself. Surprisingly  even like that the two work.

Plot: The show was set in a fictional town of Eureka, Oregon. Inhabited almost entirely by scientific geniuses, most residents of Eureka work for Global Dynamics – an advanced research facility responsible for the development of nearly all major technological breakthroughs since its inception. Each episode featured a mysterious accidental or intentional misuse of technology, which the town sheriff, Jack Carter, solved with the help of town scientists. Each season also featured a larger story arc that concerned a particular major event or item.

3.      Gong Gi Tae & Joo Jang Mi | Marriage Not Dating (2014)

Gi Tae and Jang Mi meet in a way that you wouldn’t believe and through a bunch of misunderstandings they are put together by everyone and instead of tiredly fighting that talk they pretend to date. 

Plot: Wealthy plastic surgeon Gong Gi Tae has no interest in getting married; marriage is all shop girl Joo Jang-mi dreams about. 

In an effort to get his parents off his back about the constant string of blind dates and marriage prospects, Gi Tae purposely brings Jang-mi home to meet his parents posing as his girlfriend, certain that they'll never approve of her. This romantic comedy portrays a man who doesn’t want to get married, and a woman who has no luck with potential marriage prospects.

4.     Nick Burkhardt & Adalind Schade | Grimm (2011-2017)

Nick a Grimm and Adalind a Hexenbiest (a witch of sorts), are a couple I never thought would work or one I would even like but 6 seasons later and here we are. This is a couple that has so much bad blood that it seems impossible. 

When I say they hated each other I mean it, they’ve tried to kill each other so many times. With blood, dead mothers, stolen kids, fist fights, murder and a bunch of other crap between them their relationship doesn’t make sense but it works.
 
Plot: Homicide investigator Nick Burkhardt of the Portland Police Department learns he is descended from a line of guardians known as Grimms, charged with keeping balance between humanity and the Wesen, or mythological creatures of the world (Wesen is the German word for being or creature). 

Throughout the series, he must battle against an assortment of dangerous creatures, with help from his Wesen friend, Monroe, and his partner, Detective Hank Griffin.

5.     Do Min Joon & Cheon Song Yi | You Who Came From The Stars (2013-2014)

This show and the couple is everything. I don’t even need to say anything else.

Plot: Do Min Joon is an alien that landed on Earth in the year 1609, during the Joseon Dynasty. As he tries to help a young girl, Yi Hwa, from falling off a cliff, he misses his trip back to his planet and is stranded on Earth for the next four centuries. As time goes by, Min Joon is forced to take on a new identity every ten years, as his human appearance never ages. 

In the present, he works as a college professor. With only three months left before his long-awaited departure back to space, he meets Cheon Song Yi, a famous Hallyu actress who suddenly becomes his next-door neighbor. Slowly, he finds himself entangled in Song Yi's crazy and unpredictable situations, and finds out that she looks like the young girl he fell in love with in the Joseon era. Min Joon tries to keep himself away from Song Yi as he needs to leave the planet, but often finds himself failing to do so.

However, Song Yi gets entangled in the dangerous game of an equally dangerous man. Min Joon finds himself saving her multiple times and eventually the neighbors fall for each other. But this man turns out to be much more dangerous than Min Joon suspected and he mysteriously also starts to lose control over his super powers.


Books
These books are all the first books in their respective series.

6.     Lucas Hunter & Sascha Duncan | Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh

Psy-Changeling


 In a world that denies emotions, where the ruling Psy punish any sign of desire, Sascha Duncan must conceal the feelings that brand her as flawed. To reveal them would be to sentence herself to the horror of "rehabilitation" - the complete psychic erasure of everything she ever was...

Both human and animal, Lucas Hunter is a changeling hungry for the very sensations the Psy disdain. After centuries of uneasy coexistence, these two races are now on the verge of war over the brutal murders of several changeling women. 

Lucas is determined to find the Psy killer who butchered his packmate, and Sascha is his ticket into their closely guarded society. But he soon discovers that this ice-cold Psy is very capable of passion - and that the animal in him is fascinated by her. Caught between their conflicting worlds, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities - or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation.

7.      Elena Deveraux & Raphael | Angel’s Blood by Nalini Singh

Guild Hunter

 
Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux knows she is the best- but she does not know if even she is good enough for this job. Hired by the dangerously beautiful archangel Raphael, a being so lethal that no mortal wants his attention, Elena knows failure is not an option—even if the task is impossible. 

Because this time, it's not a wayward vamp she has to track. It's an archangel gone bad.
The job will put Elena in the midst of a killing spree like no other—and pull her to the razor's edge of passion. Even if the hunt does not destroy her, succumbing to Raphael’s seductive touch just might. For when archangels play, mortals break.

8.     Kate Daniels & Curran | Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

Kate Daniels

 
 Atlanta would be a nice place to live, if it weren’t for the magic…

When the magic is up, rogue mages cast their spells and monsters appear, while guns refuse to fire and cars fail to start. But then technology returns, and the magic recedes as unpredictably as it arose, leaving all kinds of paranormal problems in its wake.

            Kate Daniels is a down-on-her-luck mercenary who makes her living cleaning up these magical problems. But when Kate’s guardian is murdered, her quest for justice draws her into a power struggle between two strong factions within Atlanta’s magic circles.

            The Masters of the Dead, necromancers who can control vampires, and the Pack, a paramilitary clan of shapechangers, blame each other for a series of bizarre killings—and the death of Kate’s guardian may be part of the same mystery. Pressured by both sides to find the killer, Kate realizes she’s way out of her league—but she wouldn’t have it any other way…

9.     Sam Parker & Jared | Here Be Sexist Vampires by Suzanne Wright

Deep In Your Veins

 
Sam Parker is a vampire with a gift so strong and substantial that she is invited to partake in a test for a place in the Grand High Master Vampire’s private army. She finds that not only has the army never included a woman, but it has never included a Sventé vampire; a breed that is regarded by the super strong Pagori breed and the hypnotically beautiful Keja breed to be too tame and human-like. Most refuse to take her seriously, especially a Pagori commander named Jared who she craves in spite of herself.

            The Grand High Master, however, sees her potential and offers her the position of Jared’s co-commander to help train the newest squad in time for the impending attack on his home. Sam has to demonstrate to Jared and the squad of chauvinists why it is incredibly foolish to underestimate a willful, temperamental, borderline-homicidal Sventé female.

10.   Kit Colbana & Damon Lee | Blade Song by J.C. Daniels

Colbana Files

 
Kit Colbana - half breed, assassin, thief, jack of all trades - has a new job: track down the missing ward of one of the local alpha shapeshifters. It should be a piece of cake.

So why is she so nervous? It probably has something to do with the insanity that happens when you deal with shifters - especially sexy ones who come bearing promises of easy jobs and easier money.

Or maybe it’s all the other missing kids that Kit discovers while working the case, or the way her gut keeps screaming she’s gotten in over her head. Or maybe it’s because if she fails - she’s dead.

If she can stay just one step ahead, she should be okay. Maybe she’ll even live long enough to collect her fee...

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5 comments

  1. Whelp, I'm going to have to see where I can watch some of those shows.

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  2. I totally wouldn't have expected Nick and Adalind to work either but they actually do don't they. :)

    Lauren @ Always Me

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  3. Sometimes I think I am not really in this world. Every single one of your choices are new to me. How can that be?!

    https://readerbuzz.blogspot.com/2017/02/love-stories-i-love-and-hate.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love your list! I could only do three, I did not feel like thinking too much this week.
    My TTT.

    Don't forget to enter the giveaway!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love your Kdrama couples :) They are some of my favorites! I need to rewatch Marriage Not Dating again.

    ReplyDelete