Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Romances

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the ladies over at The Broke and the Bookish.  Visit their blog for more information :)

This week's prompt is top ten romances.  Now, I don't read "romance" novels, but I have read many beautiful love stories.  Let me also say that a book with a really great love story makes you really appreciate how great your own relationship is (if you are in a wonderful relationship with the person of your dreams) because you compare all the great things about the book character's relationship to your own.  I am of course talking about book relationships that are real, grounded, relationships.  Not like the relationship in Into the Darkest Corner.  Here are my favorites:

1. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger.  I think I sighed through this whole book.  And cried.  The love between Clare and Henry is so beautiful and so strong.  I definitely think if you haven't read this one yet, you NEED to.  And read the book before you see the movie.  I liked the movie, but it left out some of my favorite parts from the book and didn't give me the intense feelings that the book did.

2. A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray.  First, let me just say that the whole thing is amazing.  It's set in the 1800s, there's magic, and, of course, an unforgettable romance.  I get all shivery and teary eyed just thinking about these books.  Need to read them again.

3. Emma by Jane Austen.  I feel like I don't have to explain myself with Jane Austen :)

and...

4. Persuasion by Jane Austen

5. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.  I know this isn't technically a romance AT ALL.  But the relationship between Corrigan and Adelita.  I guess you can't even really call it a romantic relationship, but the love between them was so strong.  And now I want to reread that book.

6. Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier.  This was once by go to book when I needed a pick me up and wanted to clear by brain and read a story I was familiar with, one that I new the ending to.  I lost my copy a few years ago though.  I'll have to buy a new one so that it can continue to be my go to book.  I think I've read it like 4 or 5 times.

7. The Sally Lockhart books.  Remember those??  My Philip Pullman??  I devoured them growing up.  And I could never get enough of Sally and the main male character.  It's been so long that I forgot his name.  But I loved him :)  He may actually have been my first literary crush..

8. The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman.  I loved that this was a love story but so much more.  And the relationship between Tom and Isabelle seemed so real, because they weren't always happy and super duper in love.  They had to work hard sometimes to stay together.  And then there's also the heartbreaking love between Lucy's birth mother and father.

9. The House I Loved by Tatiana de Rosnay.  Though we never actually meet Rose's husband because he has been dead for years, he is ever present throughout the story.  Rose still thinks of him constantly and writes to him.  This book also had me sighing through most of it because you could feel how much Rose loved and missed her husband and it was heartbreaking.

10.  I'm going to cheat here and say Marius and Cosette from the musical Les Mis.  Because COME ON.  I can't leave it out.