Review: Four unconventional love-related books for Valentine's Day

First of all, this is not just any old list of romantic novels that follow the simple recipe we all know so well. While the comfort of that kind of book can be fun, I feel the need to venture outside of that bubble for the time being.

These four books I’m excited to share with all of you are not your run-of-the-mill picks for a time like Valentine's Day. Among them is love of all kinds, different genres, memoir and even, at times, heartbreak. 

For a holiday that tends to feel mundane without the joy of spending it with someone else, these books, I hope, can show the love that exists everywhere in our world, even without romance.

"Tom Lake" by Ann Patchett

Set during the spring of 2020, Lara and her family return to their cherry tree orchard in northern Michigan amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Bored by the menial task of picking the cherries from their branches, Lara’s three daughters convince her to tell the story of her time at a theater company known as "Tom Lake."

Lara tells of her time performing the renowned play "Our Town," where she played the role of Emily. While staying at "Tom Lake," she enters a turbulent relationship with one of the other actors, and her life at the company becomes all the more complex. 

At the same time, she navigates the course of her life since then, the lives of her beloved daughters and how even the smallest of decisions in her past changed her entire future.

A sweet tale of the ways love can so often shift and change our lives for the better, "Tom Lake" is probably one of my favorite romance novels to date. 

"The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov

This novel tells the drawn-out love story between two characters: the master, a writer in the depths of creating a novel, and Margarita, who loves him so deeply she agrees to go to hell in order to save him. 

When the Devil himself arrives during spring in Moscow, accompanied by a witch and a cat who speaks and plays chess, chaos quickly inhabits itself all over the city as they seek to punish it for believing in neither God nor Satan.

In the midst of all this mayhem, they come across the poorly fated lovers and seek to help them. In an alternate timeline, Pontius Pilate, the subject of the master’s complicated novel, is deciding whether or not he will choose to execute Jesus Christ. 

Intricate, humorous, supernatural, macabre, energetic and direly heartfelt at its core, "The Master and Margarita" is a story of how our greatest evil can often be cause for even our greatest good, especially for the people we love. 

"Conversations on Love" by Natasha Lunn

Natasha Lunn, a journalist, decided one day that she would make it her goal to find the answers to our most dire questions about love, relationships and how to maneuver amidst a world where love has become more and more convoluted.

From this objective came "Conversations on Love," an anthology of different authors, experts and people as they give their answers to these questions, alongside Lunn’s personal experiences within each winding avenue. 

Featuring parental love, sibling love, dating, marriage and everything outside or between, Lunn has provided for us a wholehearted guide that feels refreshing against a long line of romantic novels that have, personally, left me wanting more. I would even add this book to a "good to read in your 20s" list.

"Paul" by Daisy Lafarge

"Paul" is about a tumultuous relationship that takes place nestled along the hillsides of rural France, as Lafarge follows the character, Frances, through the snags and hitches of her summer. 

Frances, an English graduate student, is spending her summer volunteering for an eco-farm, eccentrically named Noa Noa. She’s here, for one, to take a break from the stressful life of a grad student, but also to escape a painful breakup she has left behind in Paris. 

As she lives her day-to-day life, she falls under the eye of the farm's charismatic owner, Paul. As his bullish nature constricts her into something like love, she finds herself caught up in something she had never intended to find this summer. 

As the story progresses, both Frances and Paul are forced to face the confusing sides of power, humility, being morally righteous and how to love each other under their strange and uncomfortable circumstances. 

Whether these books bring you the warmth of Valentine's Day or not, I hope they can shine a little light on a genre that has become diluted over the years.

@dthlifestyle | lifestyle@dailytarheel.com