The Best Climaxes in Romance
No, not that kind of climax. That’s a different post!
I’m talking about the sort of finale scene in which every plot element (effectively but never heavy-handedly foreshadowed) comes together in a meticulous and satisfying culmination, leaving you shaking your head that any author could pull every thread together so perfectly.
In K.J. Charles’s A Gentleman’s Position, Lord Richard Vane’s friends are being threatened by a team-up of an aristocratic blackmailer (about sodomy) and law enforcement (about sedition), and Lord Richard begs his valet, fixer, and estranged lover David Cyprian to set matters to rights. Cyprian’s genius permits him to untangle this Gordian knot of plot threads, which have been set out across three books and a novella, in a brilliant and gloriously satisfying confrontation in White’s club. You’ll grin while you read it and heave a sigh of satisfaction when it’s done.
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Maybe it’s the theater fan in me. I love the farcical culminations of Neil Simon plays, where door slam, sets topple, and people fall in and out of windows, or the outrageous characters of Arsenic and Old Lace (a brother who believes he’s Teddy Roosevelt, in the basement digging the Panama Canal).
If you like this kind of theater finale, Georgette Heyer’s The Unknown Ajax will suit you to a tee. I hesitate to reveal anything about this epic drawing room sequence, in which a disaster of a family pulls together to save one of its members, because this is one of the less-discussed Heyers in Romancelandia and I hope it’s new to some of you.
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Much further afield- in different star systems, in fact! – Lois McMaster Bujold is the queen of resolving chaos. Over the course of her Vorkosigan Saga, she throws Miles, his family, and friends into situations which are not only unsolvable but sometimes unsurvivable (she once described her writing process as asking “What’s the worst thing I 
could do to this character?” and then doing it). And yet somehow, book after book, Bujold brings them out on the other side. Some of these climaxes are thoroughly comic (A Civil Campaign’s parliament session, the showdown at intelligence headquarters in Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance); others go all the way to dark (Mirror Dance). Every one, however, is brilliant.
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A climax like this is enormously difficult to write, which I’m sure is why it’s so hard to find. But I love them, and I want more!
Do you have any books with terrific finale sequences to recommend to me? Ones which make you laugh, giggle, cheer, kick your feet, bounce in your chair, or otherwise make people around you shoot you odd looks? Ones which make you heave a deep sigh of satisfaction, because at least in your fiction, you can find a place where everything is coming out exactly as it should? Please let me know in the comments!
One of my favorites is Joanna Bourne’s novel “The Forbidden Rose”. By the last pages the heroine has saved the hero (and many others) from the guillotine, the hero has vanquished the story’s villain and had a hand in changing the course of history and they are setting off for England together.
It also helps set up the course for the main characters Adrian, Justine and Severine (as well as peripherally Pax) who will go on to star in their own stories, and eventually their own happy endings- some sooner than later. It also manages pepper in Easter Eggs for the books that preceded it as well as will follow it and leave the reader delighted with the main couple, yet wistful for the fates still not settled.
The scene where Justine appears with Severine is so powerful. I agree with everything you’ve written!
I couldn’t resist this topic because it’s so near and dear to my heart. It frustrates me that so many authors pay so much attention to their opening pages but so much less to their closing pages.
Several scenes that have been mentioned below I agree about — Whalen’s The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia (and actually I thought the ending of Return of the Thief was also magnificent — it had been set up / foreshadowed in The King of Attolia), Possession (that twist was briliant), What I Did for a Duke (the last line was perfect but really the whole last quarter of that book was one magnificent scene after another).
Sherry Thomas is my critique partner, of her romances I love the closing lines of Not Quite a Husband and His at Night best. The one in His at Night is a payoff for something that is mentioned very early in the book, and Not Quite a Husband I love for its quiet, powerful statement that infertility does not necessarily mean a couple’s happiness is any less.
Of her mysteries, it’s A Conspiracy in Belgravia, hands down. I remember when I critiqued the ending of that manuscript for her and reached the last line, I gasped. I had not seen that one coming at all. Then to wait several months for other people’s gasps and know this huge thing and keep a lid on it! Haaaard.
I think maybe my favorite closing lines in any work of fiction ever is the last sentence of Italo Calvino’s literary fable “The Distance of the Moon.”
However for me the most consistent author of closing romantic paragraphs is romantic fantasy author Sharon Shinn. Though it’s a problematic book, the penultimate and final scenes from Archangel are probably my favorite , but she has many other quotable and less spoilery closing paragraphs.
From Mystic and Rider:
I too love the closing of His At Night. The ending of Almost A Husband is lovely and encompasses an HEA too often lacking in historical romance. And though it is a flawed book, I love the ending of Delicious as well. Honestly, in romance, I’d be thrilled to be in the Sherry Thomas fan club.
Connie Brockway’s All Through the Night has one of my favorite endings in romance. That epilogue is pitch perfect and definitely leaves me heaving a big sigh of satisfaction.
One of my favorite comfort reads is Jo Goodman’s Never Love a Lawman. I love the way the author ties the ending paragraphs to the first chapter opening sequence. Wyatt, our hero, is watching the heroine walk down the street. He muses, “Watching her was a pleasure…. Wyatt’s fingers tapped out the steady cadence of her walk as she passed Caldwell’s Apothecary and the sheriff’s office. She slipped out of his sight when her path took her under the sheltering porch roof in front of the Miner Key Saloon, but Wyatt kept tapping, and she reappeared at the precise moment he predicted she would, just as his index finger hit the downbeat.“ The last several paragraphs of the epilogue take us back to that sequence of watching the heroine walk — this time toward him from the church to that same beat. It’s lovely and always leaves me with a satisfied smile.
Another example I just thought of that more properly fits what you’re looking for (rather than great endings/wrap up I described above) is Megan Whalen Turner’s Attolia series, especially The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia. How everything comes together is truly masterful.
That series is my favorite of Goodman’s.
I can’t think right now of another good example of an author sticking the landing and leaving me surprised and delighted, but I know it feels sadly rare in romance lately. So many books I abandon somewhere after the halfway mark because the author has got the characters together too early, in my opinion, and unless there’s going to be some unnecessary misunderstanding to temporarily tear them apart it doesn’t seem like much of interest is going to happen. Once the characters are happy in their relationship I’m mentally checked out and like the kid in the back seat wondering ‘Are we there yet?’
It’s not really the climax of the story, but what about the “Shopping” scene from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar? Or rather, the shopping bag scene…
https://metteharrison.livejournal.com/302202.html
Bujold is great.
Cotillion by Georgete Heyer had a lovely Beta hero who is rather a Bertie Wooster type. He manages through his own gentle nature and kindness to subvert the entire normal trope. My own jaw dropped with Sherry Thomas’s Hollow of Fear. That was one astounding display of craftsmanship. And I absolutely loved Unknown Ajax. Thanks, Caroline, for that reminder.
I have loved Freddy (and his beta mastery) since I first encountered him more than 40 years ago
I definitely agree about the extended scene near the end of The Unknown Ajax.
Other possibilities, though I may be blurring great climax and great ending:
Traditional Regencies:
Black Sheep (r) Heyer, Georgette
The Toll-Gate (r) Heyer, Georgette
A Rake’s Reform (r) Holbrook, Cindy
The Duke’s Downfall (r) Lynson, Jane
The Mad Miss Mathley (r) Martin, Michelle
Historical Romances:
Ravished (r) Quick, Amanda
Contemporary Category Romances:
Laugh With Me, Love With Me (r) Damon, Lee
Rebel Waltz (r) Hooper, Kay
F&SF (many, but not all, with romantic threads):
The Practice Effect (s) Brin, David
The Walkaway Clause (s) Dalmas, John
Wolfling (s) Dickson, Gordon R.
The Destiny of the Sword (s) Duncan, Dave [this was the end of a trilogy, but years later a fourth book was added]
Strings (s) Duncan, Dave
1632 (s) Flint, Eric
The I Inside (s) Foster, Alan Dean
The Tar-Aiym Krang (s) Foster, Alan Dean
Reality Forbidden (s) High, Philip E.
These Savage Futurians (s) High, Philip E.
The Genesis Machine (s) Hogan, James P.
Hellspark (s) Kagan, Janet
The Fairy Godmother (s) Lackey, Mercedes
Dragonflight (s) McCaffrey, Anne
Restoree (s) McCaffrey, Anne
Emergence (s) Palmer, David R.
King of Argent (s) Phillifent, John T.
A Planet for Texans (s) Piper, H. Beam & McGuire, John J.
The Anything Tree (s) Rackham, John
The Double Invaders (s) Rackham, John
The Witches of Karres (s) Schmitz, James H.
Grand Central Arena (s) Spoor, Ryk E.
Noninterference (s) Turtledove, Harry
The Blue World (s) Vance, Jack
The Apocalypse Troll (s) Weber, David
The Excalibur Alternative (s) Weber, David
Path of the Fury (s) Weber, David
Short F&SF:
Ethical Quotient (ss) Phillifent, John T.
Prologue to . . . an Analogue (ss) Richmond, Walt & Leigh
I love all your choices! Another sci-fi author I’d add is Catherine Asaro. Her Primary Inversion has a HFN romance and I think the main appeal of this book to the romance reader would be the intensely character-driven story. The sci-fi details are intricate and amazing, but the character development trumps even that. Sauscony is an amazing heroine. Her personal journey through this book is heart-rending and satisfying. I also recommend her Major Bhaajan series. Not much romance, but great storytelling and world building, and the conflict resolution is great. Both are set in her Skolian Empire world.
Beau Crusoe is a book by Carla Kelly that isn’t talked about as much as some others. It’s a wonderful, emotional story and the reveal is so well done.
One of my all time favorite RS is Envy by Sandra Brown. I highly recommend this book-within-a-book story on audio, narrated by Viktor Slezak. The buildup to the climax is so well done.
Agatha Christie was always very good about tying up lose ends and resolving red herrings. And I always liked how Barbara Vine/Ruth Randell would add a little twist at the end of a book that explained an element of the plot and yet put a different spin on what had come before. I do think I’m more aware when mystery writers fail to resolve all their plot threads because I read mysteries with an eye on all the various subplots. I hate to be left thinking, “But what happened to the pearl necklace,” etc. When I’m reading romance, I tend to focus more on the emotional growth of the MCs rather than on plot threads—but I always notice if a pet falls off the face of the Earth (for example, a dark romance where a woman who lived alone with her cat was abducted by the man to whom her father was indebted; I worried for the rest of the book about who was feeding the cat). A romance writer who I have found does a good job of wrapping things up is Kelly Hunter—especially in her series books. One of her HP series—Claimed By A King—consists of four books; in the last book, several plot points (particularly one regarding the romance between two gay supporting characters) are neatly resolved. And I like how Claire Kingsley weaves an overriding mystery through her series books and then resolves them in the final book.
The ending of A. S. Byatt’s Possession is perfect. I love the ending of The Time Traveler’s Wife and the ending of Circe. I listened to both on audio and was so moved by each that I had to stop what I was doing and just FEEL. For mysteries, the last chapter of Presumed Innocent still gets my vote.
For romances, Julie Anne Long does endings well. I love the climax of What I Did for A Duke and of How the Marquess Was Won. I adore many of Sherry Thomas’ endings, but have a soft spot for that of Private Arrangements.
Presumed Innocent – love both the book and the movie. I did not see that ending coming.
What I Did for a Duke has one of the best scenes I’ve read in years. My American Duchess is also a contender. There have been quite a few over the years, but these most recent have really stuck with me.
I have never read My American Duchess but it’s moving up my TBR list!