Romance Tropes: Enemies to Lovers

Ah, romance tropes. Where would we be without you? 

Romance novels are built on established and well-loved tropes. Other genres, of course, are filled with tropes too, like the wise old wizard who helps the hero on their quest. However, whereas “tropey” is often a criticism in other genres, in romance, tropes are wholeheartedly embraced. Fake dating? Love it. Only one bed? A classic. Enemies to lovers? So much fun.

Part of the reason that romance tropes work so well is that readers turn to romance for comfort. We read romance when we’re in need of a happily ever after, when we want to read about joyful things coming for loveable characters. And romance tropes provide the reliable and reassuring framework to reach the essential HEA.

In the same way that the marriage plot structure (initiated by writers like Jane Austen and remaining to this day through romance novels) lets the reader know early on that the couple will wind up together but doesn’t tell you how, romance tropes provide some base information without revealing the essential story—the emotions and development of the characters.

Romance readers know that if two characters wind up having to share a bed, the writer is giving the cue that the sexual tension is about to increase, usually ending in a sexual encounter. There’s room within this for nuance, however—how does it change the dynamic between the characters? How do they feel about what happens between them? 

Tropes provide the framework and familiarity, and the individual characters and their arcs are why we can return to romance over and over without getting bored.

We’ll return to other romance tropes in future blog posts, but for now, we’ll stick with a classic—let’s jump in and explore enemies to lovers.

Enemies to Lovers

Enemies to lovers is a much-loved trope because it introduces tension and stakes from the beginning. It also ties inherently into the central conflict and story arc: Why are the characters enemies? What is putting them into conflict? How does their relationship fit into the conflict? How does overcoming their enmity resolve that conflict?

Characters in an enemies-to-lovers story are fighting both against the other character and against their own undeniable attraction to their counterpart, which leads to all sorts of delicious angst and tension. All stories need conflict of some sort to progress the story and the character development, but this trope puts conflict between the characters front and centre.

What goes into an enemies-to-lovers story?

There are a few essential elements of any story with enemies to lovers as its central trope.

1. The characters must be enemies. 

This seems obvious, but this is worth stating because in some books, the characters are not actually in opposition, but just think they are. (See A Court of Thorns and Roses below.) This enmity can be grand-scale, in the form of leaders of opposing nations, for example, or small-scale, like the tidy and organized B&B owner and the messy and chaotic breakfast cook in Act Your Age, Eve Brown. But they must be in opposition, and they must overcome this opposition by the end of the book.

2. The characters must be redeemable.

In order for a reader to connect with the characters and root for them to come together at the end, whatever makes the characters enemies cannot be irredeemable. From time to time, the romance community finds itself in another uproar because another publisher has published a Nazi/enslaver/oppressor romance. A week ago, multiple publishers bid at auction on a redeemed Nazi romance. I saw another the other day (which I unfortunately can’t find now) about the daughter of an abolitionist who falls in love with a plantation owner, and somehow instead of the plantation owner being “redeemed,” the woman winds up having to choose between her father’s abolitionism and her enslaver boyfriend’s pro-slavery goals. (WHAT?)

Even if your characters meet the baseline of not being a Nazi or plantation owner, make sure that they are, in essence, good enough people that their redemption is realistic. A character who abused or harassed women does not become a good love interest just because he has since learned that women are people too. Your reader should be rooting for both characters, even if they have a lot of work to do before they’re ready to be in love.

3. The characters must both grow and change to overcome their enmity.

Character development is critical for all books, but in an enemies-to-lovers story, the character growth should be directly related to the thing keeping the characters apart. If Darcy is proud and Lizzy is prejudiced and this makes them dislike each other despite their attraction, then by the end of the book Lizzy should teach Darcy to be less proud and Darcy should teach Lizzy to be less prejudiced. They grow and change because of their relationship, and in doing so, they are able to overcome the conflict keeping them apart.

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Readers have a lot of opinions about Sarah J Maas. Lots of love, lots of hate. I’m not going to get into all of my own thoughts here, because this blog post has a purpose. So it wouldn’t do me any good to spend time discussing how much I disliked the way she referred to the faeries as “males” and “females,” or how grating her speech tags—she breathed, he growled, she shot back, he bit out, she murmured—were, or how she weirdly chose to end most of her questions with full stops instead of question marks, or the problematic dynamic of a thousand-year-old being falling for a teenager, or the line “His growls of pleasure filled the tent, drowning out the distant cries of the injured and dying.”

Where were we? Oh, yes, enemies to lovers.

A Court of Thorns and Roses is often described as an enemies-to-lovers romance arc. (Please note that this is about to get very spoilery. Be warned.) The first book could arguably be labelled thus, since Tamlin and Feyre actively dislike each other at the start for pretty legitimate reasons. But the possessive, controlling love interest from book one is not the ultimate love interest. (Thank God, I thought, upon starting book two.)

In the second and third books, Feyre is thrown together with Rhysand, her enemy from the first book. She hates him, understandably, because he did a whole bunch of really terrible things to her in the service of the Big Bad, Amarantha. But we learn almost immediately that Rhys was just pretending! He hated Amarantha, and had to act like her puppet to protect the people he loved, including Feyre! He was actually a perfect angel the whole time—literally; he has wings—and when Feyre realizes this, she falls for him too!

It’s this last bit—the “Rhys actually loved her the whole time and it was just a big misunderstanding” bit—that makes this series categorically NOT enemies-to-lovers. This is, rather, a misunderstanding that is easily resolved when the truth comes out. In order for a book to follow the enemies-to-lovers trope, both characters must start the book actively opposed to each other. Both characters must grow and change to shift away from their animosity to find love.

In A Court of Thorns and Roses, no one grows or changes. Feyre is a badass right from the start, a human so awesome that she can hold her own against faeries. Rhys is perfect from the beginning, even if we don’t realize it, subjecting himself to fifty years of torment while pretending to be evil so he can protect his people. Neither of these characters is required to grow at all to reach a place where they can love each other.

The Matzah Ball

As much as I wanted to love this book, the fundamental enemies-to-lovers premise failed to be truly compelling: Two people in their late twenties still hate each other because their tween camp relationship ended badly.

While I do think that The Matzah Ball checks off the required elements of enemies to lovers—they legitimately dislike each other, they both grow as people, and they are certainly redeemable—the childishness of the entire premise makes their enmity unconvincing.

Is it still a cute story? Definitely. I loved that it was an enthusiastically Jewish book that engaged with chronic illness and truly kind people. But the enemies-to-lovers arc, for me, was lacking.

Pride and Prejudice

For years I argued that Jane Austen didn’t write romance novels because, like so many readers, I had yet to realize that a book can simultaneously be a romance novel and a biting critique of society. 

Pride and Prejudice is both an enemies-to-lovers romance novel and a stunning and witty piece of social criticism. Writers and scholars have spent two hundred years analyzing it as both social criticism and as romance.

Sarah Calfee is the romance editor behind the upcoming book How To Pride and Prejudice, and she has a wonderful breakdown of romance novel arcs on her website that uses Darcy and Lizzy’s enemies-to-lovers arc.

Basically: Lizzy and Darcy meet and immediately dislike each other for valid reasons: she thinks he’s proud and rude, and he thinks she’s flippant and quick to judge people without knowing them. Both are correct. Throughout the book, they grow closer through forced proximity (another excellent romance trope) and tragedy, and it is the evolution of their relationship that helps each of them grow and change to the point where they’re ready to be together. 

It’s a perfectly executed enemies-to-lovers book. And it’s a scathing social satire. All at once. 

Do you write using enemies to lovers?

Writing enemies to lovers can be a gloriously fun time, full of tormenting your characters while safe in the knowledge that they’ll get to be together in the end. 

It can also be frustrating as you try to get your character arcs and conflicts executed effectively. If you’re a romance writer struggling to get your enemies-to-lovers arc just right, Rookwood Editing is here to help! Get in touch today to make your book the best it can be.