#cynically romantic

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'Adrian?' Hand stilling, he turned his head to look at her. She swallowed. 'Was this a date?' His lips parted, at first in surprise, but then in hesitation as he searched for a response. Pulling the marker away from the booth, the used the capped end to scratch behind his ear. 'Well. This was the first time a girl's ever won me an enormous stuffed Dread Warden doll, so...you tell me.' Her cheek twitched. 'That wasn't a real answer.' 'I know.' They stared at each other, and Nova's heart started doing acrobatics inside her chest. 'Would you have said yes,' said Adrian, 'if it was?' No, her brain said. Emphatic and aggressive. No. While something else whispered back...Maybe. But Nova, suddenly a coward, looked past Adrian's shoulder and plastered a startled frown to her face. 'I think I just saw something.'

Marissa Meyer, Renegades

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'Happy is happy. What is wrong with that?' I push Mrs. Hill off my lap. 'It’s not. . .it’s not romance. It’s not enough.' 'It’s not enough for you, Lizzie. Don’t project your expectations onto them. You’ll make yourself miserable. Not everyone gets a fairy tale romance.' 'I suppose you’re right,' I decide. 'Most of us ache for that love we read about, but it isn’t realistic. There is no Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars, no Heathcliff and Cathy, no Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Love stories just build up our expectations before a crashing fall. In the end, the prince often turns out to be a charmless wonder or the princess runs off with a truck driver.' My father sighs. 'Now you’re being too pessimistic.' 'Sorry,' I try to compose myself. 'Especially for the bit about the truck driver.'

Trudy Wallis, Longbourn Library

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'This one might be my favorite—' She smiled at Curtis. '"A cautionary tale about poor timing and why neither mail delivery nor drugs are reliable." Yes, if you take nothing else away from Romeo and Juliet: send important mail with delivery confirmation, and don’t do drugs.'

Tiffany Schmidt, A Date with Darcy

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On the topmost point of the star stood another happy couple. She scowled. Her lip curled in disgust of its own accord, even as the crowd roared gleefully in her eyes. They were proof, people kept saying. Adrian Everhart and Nova Artino were evidence that there could be common ground. That the divide between heroes and villains wasn't as wide as they'd always thought. That love conquered all. She didn't know about any of that, but it was clear enough that those two were disgustingly infatuated with each other.

Marissa Meyer, Supernova

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She wanted love that warmed the coldest corners of her soul, that whispered into her darkness with words of welcome. But she didn’t believe it existed.

The Tiger at Midnight, Swati Teerdhala

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Kunal was an interruption. Something that shouldn't have come into her life, but now that he was here, she was feeling herself change in tiny, imperceptible ways.

The Tiger at Midnight, Swati Teerdhala

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That note had been an arrow to her heart. The heart she claimed to not have or hid away deep within herself. Seeing someone risk certain death for love--would she ever find that again? Once a killer, always a killer. Once your hands were stained, you could never be an innocent. And her hands had been stained many times over.

The Tiger at Midnight, Swati Teerdhala

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The icy cool that had been in her veins began to thaw, and her throat went dry with a desire that had been bottled up over years and years. To have someone to love that deeply, to be loved that deeply. It brought an image of her father's kind eyes to her mind, the way he'd let her have her favorite mango-shaped sweets even after she had been naughty or had skipped a lesson with the tutor. The way he would pluck a jasmine for her every day to add to her flower braid.

The Tiger at Midnight, Swati Teerdhala