I have always loved movies. My fifteen year old son not only loves movies but writes movie reviews for kidrated.org. So, we got together and spent a bit of time brainstorming this list. There were discussions. There were arguments. Movies were proposed only to be shot down in flames. At the end, this is the list we came up with.
Truly, Madly, Deeply
To me, this is “Ghost” but better. The main character is in love with a boyfriend who had recently died. This boyfriend comes back as a ghost, but to dispel her romanticized version of him. He really has her best interest at heart. It doesn’t hurt that the boyfriend was played by Alan Rickman.
The Lake House
I don’t want to spoil, but this pairs Keanu Reeves with Sandra Bullock. The basics of it are two people who meet each other through letters that appear in a lake house’s mailbox. There is a lovely time overlap theme that is really moving.
Warm Bodies
Romeo and Juliette, but with zombies. It sounds awful but it’s funny, tragic and beautiful.
Howl’s Moving Castle
This is probably my favorite Ghibli film. This is a Studio Ghibli film where a young woman is cursed by a witch and falls in love with a wizard who lives in a moving castle. The character of Howl is vain, brave, childish, passionate, pure and sees the protagonist for who she is, not what she looks like.
Shape of Water
There is a reason why “Shape of Water” won a whole slew of awards. Guillermo del Toro is such a master of the weird and wonderful that he made a “woman falls in love with a fish man” story into one of the most romantic films ever made.
Your Name
This may be my favorite film ever. It is by Makoto Shinkai and is about two teenagers who mysteriously swap bodies and then fall in love. The animation is gorgeous, the plot is unique and the romance is gut wrenching.
Ghost
I hesitated about adding this one, because it really does have an element of cheesy. I don’t really like the actors and their performances, and let’s not forget the badly aging “men can’t say I love you” trope, but the plot is strong and the themes resonate with me. In Ghost, a man is murdered but his spirit remains on Earth to protect his girlfriend from impending danger, seeking the help of a psychic to communicate with her. The thriller aspect of this is good and the horror elements are even better. The bittersweet culmination makes up for the cheesy.
Weathering with You
Another film by Makoto Shinkai, featuring a romance intertwined with supernatural weather phenomena. Shinkai does a great job with subtle yet powerful romances. This may be true for anime in general. The relationships between the characters are less “in your face” than Hollywood and it benefits from that.
Somewhere in Time
People overlook this one because it’s old, but it was one of the very first time travel romances. This is about a playwright who becomes obsessed with a photograph of a young woman. He then uses self-hypnosis to travel back in time to meet her, only to discover that their love is destined to face tragic obstacles. It was a very early “paranormal timeless love and destiny” story. It also had one of the best romantic movie soundtracks ever written.
Edward Scissorhands
I think this was the movie that made Johnny Depp a superstar. It’s about a gentle artificial man with scissors for hands who is taken in by a suburban family and falls in love with their daughter. The neighborhood finds him charming and attractive until his unique condition leads to misunderstandings and alienation. This movie was directed by Tim Burton, another director who isn’t known for romance but does a great job at it.
Honorable Mentions
The Hunger- this horror meets lesbian romance was intense and the first of its kind.
The Return of the King- OK, I’m not thinking of romantic love on this one but the incredible bond of friendship between Frodo and Sam. Anyone who doesn’t cry when Sam carries Frodo up Mt. Doom has no heart.
Wicked- It’s not a movie yet but the play is an intense love between Elphaba and Galenda. It’s written as if the major love is between Fiyaro and Galenda and then Fiyaro and Elphaba but he is very shallow. There is even a song about how shallow he is. The major love here is between the two female characters.
Limerent Series
Book Three
LS Delorme
Genre: Romantic Historical Paranormal Mystery
Publisher: Limerent Publishing
Date of Publication: April 19, 2024
ISBN:979-8-9874880-4-1
ASIN: B0CYCQ6XCF
Number of pages: 230
Word Count: 97000
Cover Artist: Brittany Wilson
Tagline: In 1944 Harrisville, Veronica’s dangerous love ignites a flame that reveals dark secrets, awakens ghosts and threatens to destroy all she loves.
Book Description:
There is something rotten in Harrisville.
It’s 1944 and Veronica works tirelessly just so she can afford to eat. Maybe one day she will save enough to own the home her family is living in, but for now, she doesn’t have time for fanciful thoughts, or much else. She doesn’t have time for the fire whispering to her, the ghosts trying to talk to her and the son of her boss, who can’t stop staring at her. She definitely doesn’t have time to think about Lazlo, the handsome black soldier that she processed at the draft office, but she can’t seem to stop herself. As her ability to ignore Lazlo evaporates, so does her self-imposed ignorance about her hometown. There is, and always has been, something rotten in Harrisville. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, Veronica works in the cigarette factory, where corpses hide in the tobacco with the roaches.
It’s 1944 and Veronica works tirelessly just so she can afford to eat. She doesn’t have time for fanciful thoughts, or much else. She doesn’t have time for the fire whispering to her, the ghosts trying to talk to her and the son of her boss, who can’t stop staring at her. She definitely doesn’t have time for love, even less for dangerous love. You see there is, and always has been, something rotten in Harrisville. It shouldn’t have been a surprise.
After all, Veronica works in the cigarette factory, where corpses hide in the tobacco.
Excerpt:
Veronica
froze.
Lazlo began
walking the very same path she had walked minutes earlier, although he looked
much more graceful than she must have looked. His gate was long and easy. His
eyes were down, staring at the track as he walked. Veronica sat as still as she
could, terrified that he might see her, equally terrified that he wouldn’t.
As he came
to the spot where she was sitting, he didn’t look up. He walked right past her,
as if he hadn’t seen her. Veronica felt a stab in her heart. Before she could
stop herself, she called out.
“Aren’t you
Lazlo Fox?”
He turned
quickly.
“That’s
me,” he said, and a grin lit up his face.
Now that he
was here, Veronica realized that she hadn’t planned what she would say if she
saw him. For a second, she considered saying that the draft office needed more
information about him, but she realized that was both stupid and an obvious
lie.
“I have an
extra biscuit, if you’re hungry,” was what she managed to squeak out.”
She had
hoped to be able to speak with him for a just a moment. She knew that it would
be dangerous for him to even be seen with her, but as he walked toward her, she
held the biscuit out for him. She knew that he would have to climb up to her to
get it, and despite the danger, this is what she wanted.
Instead of
scrambling up the broken concrete, as she had done, he gracefully jumped from
one to the next, balancing on the ball of one foot as he landed on each one. In
less than a minute he was standing on the rock next to her. She expected him to
take the biscuit and leave, but she wanted him to stay… how badly she wanted
him to stay.
Lazlo
smiled and took the proffered biscuit bag gently from her, but his eyes were on
her face, not on the bag. For a moment, he paused, and then he sat down next to
her. He wasn’t so close that she might accidentally touch him but his feet
dangling over the edge of the rock next to hers felt weirdly intimate. He
opened the bag and pulled out the biscuit. Veronica looked down at her biscuit
and took a tiny bite, pretending to be engrossed in eating but her heart was
racing so hard, she almost choked on the bread.
“Lazlo,
that’s an unusual name, is it a family name or something?” she asked.
Lazlo
turned and smiled at her. She was suddenly afraid that she had said something
wrong or stupid, although she couldn’t for the life of her think what it was.
Lazlo’s
eyes suddenly got wide.
“Well, my
mama named me that cause she’s a witch,” he said quickly, and then winced and
shook his head.
“That
sounded awful,” he said quickly. “I’m not talking bad about my mama. She’s
actually a witch, so she thinks like attracts like. And if she gives me a
rich-sounding name that will draw money to me.”
Lazlo then
laughed and shook his head.
“I can’t
believe I just told you that,” he said. “I never told anyone that before.
Probably because—”
Then he
stopped.
Veronica’s
heart felt like it had grown to take up the whole of her chest. She was
frightened of what Lazlo would see if she looked at him, so she took another
bite of her biscuit. When she did look up, he was looking at her with eyes that
were hopeful and wary in equal measure.
“It sounds
like your mother really cares about you,” was what she finally said. And that
was all.
Looking at
Lazlo’s guarded yet hopeful eyes, Veronica desperately wanted to tell him that
none of this stuff mattered. She wanted to say that they could be friends, or
even more. Inside, her crazy heart said that they could just run away together.
She longed to say this out loud, but she knew it wasn’t true. Neither of them
could outrun their class or caste. Lazlo was a colored man.
She was the
poor white daughter of a single mother. If he was an untouchable, she was
barely one step above that. Her brain told her that, even if her heart argued
otherwise.
Lexy is the Author of the Limerent novel universe. The first two books in this universe were Caio and Bright Midnights. They are two of the three foundation books of the Limerent Series, and as such can be read in any order.
Bright Midnights was picked as an Editor’s Choice by Booklife and received a Golden Wizard award in the UK in the category of YA.
Lexy has also been a travel writer and author of The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland Hong Kong and An Expat Mom’s Unofficial Guide to Disneyland Paris. She is an ex rock musician, ex science grad, recovering attorney and now an expat writer. Her love of writing stems from an eclectic life. As a navy brat, she grew up in various states across the U.S. until her father retired to North Carolina when she was a teenager.
As an adult, she has continued this tumbleweed life, having since lived in 3 countries, 9 US States, and 21 cities around the world. But, through all this change, her love of writing has been the one constant. Writing the Limerent Series allows her to use her unusual past to help create new worlds.
Lexy now lives in Paris with her husband and two very cool sons.
“Writing fiction gives you a place where you can put all the attractions that you probably shouldn’t feel, all the thoughts you are afraid of saying out loud, and all the rage that you can’t vent because you would kill people. While we live, these moments stay with us, but when we die, they die too. When you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, you put these things out there in the world where they can be read by others. This means that they have a life outside of you and outside of your own head, and that’s something that is really compelling to me. I like the idea that these amazing moments that I’ve had in life don’t disappear when I disappear.” - LS Delorme
“For me, writing is like therapy…just cheaper. As most writers are not really individuals but a collection of individuals trying to find a way to live together in one brain, fiction allows them to make a home for all these people who live rent free inside their heads. It’s also place that you can capture unique moments in life that impact you or that make you feel deeply.” - LS Delorme
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