Top Ten Tuesday: Romances Again

There's only one problem with this excellent topic: I've listed my picks before. And they haven't really changed. Amy and Laurie? Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth? Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester? Does it get better?

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Probably not. I could, however, go on listing for a very long time. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. For today, we'll stick with twenty.

11. Kitty and Levin from Lev Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. That scene where they're talking to each other in first letters is just. So. Cute.

12. Ian and Wanderer from Stephenie Meyer's The Host. A particularly sweet and engaging love story, with a fair amount of depth to it and too many adorable moments to choose from.

13. Percy and Annabeth from Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. I never would have thought a couple in a humorous middle grade boy story could be so compelling.

14. Barney and Valancy from L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle. I'm always faintly creeped out by the images of Ryan Gosling with "Hey, girl" stamped across them—maybe because I don't know the context—but Barney's "Oh, girl..." gets at my heart every time.

15. Perrin and Faile from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. While Mat and Tuon form a more unique and interesting pairing, and I grew to sympathize with the Rand/Min passion (if not their morals), the love between Perrin and Faile was especially satisfying.

16. Harry and Ginny from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. They could laugh together. I was pulling for them from book two.

17. Ron and Hermione from the same. Her mercury and his sulphur were an explosive combination. I was pulling for them from the middle of book one. :)

18. Sophie and Howl from Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle. In the book—I've yet to see the Miyazaki adaptation—this is actually not a particularly sweet romance. It is, however, adorable.

19. Ella and Char from Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted. They slid down banisters together and wrote the cutest letters to each other. I just loved them.

20. Shasta/Cor and Aravis from C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy. Fighting all the time may not be the best way to fall in love in real life, but it makes great fiction. It's mostly foreshadowed, as they're children in the story, but the beginner's chemistry is all there.

Honorable mention to Pat and Jingle from L.M. Montgomery's Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat; they would certainly have made this list had Pat not taken so desperately long to get her heart around the truth.

Who else should we name?