I Once Had a Fictional Crush on Benvolio (Revisiting Old Favorites Part 2)

One of my reading goals this year is to re-read some old favorites and see if they still hit the way they once did. I'm looking at the last twelve years and selecting my top book of the year for each, which means that I'll be re-reading one per month for all of 2025. 

For February, I re-read Still Star Crossed by Melinda Taub (my top book of 2014). Still Star Crossed is set after the events of Romeo and Juliet and imagines what might have happened to the famous family feud of Montagues and Capulets once the lovers are dead. It focuses on the characters of Rosaline, Juliet's cousin, and Benvolio, Romeo's cousin. 

I discovered Still Star Crossed at the public library when I was eighteen and in my last semester of high school. My first job was at the library where I shelved books for sixteen hours a week. This book drew my attention in the young adult section and I was instantly intrigued. Romeo and Juliet has always been my least favorite Shakespeare play because of the titular characters, so I was very curious what the story would be like without them. Once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. I took it with me to ballet class that night and read it when I was supposed to be doing homework the next day. 

In this continuation, the feud between the Montagues and Capulets is still ongoing even though they vowed it would stop after the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. To try and stop this new feud from getting out of hand again Prince Escalus of Verona tries to set up an arranged marriage between Romeo's cousin Benvolio and Juliet's cousin Rosaline. Chaos ensues and Verona is almost destroyed, but eventually Benvolio and Rosaline fall in love and everything ends happily. 

In revisiting this one, it didn't hit quite the same as it once did. I've read much stronger writing and romance novels in the last eleven some years and I really don't like love triangles anymore, which this novel has (to the author's credit though it's not as frustrating as some). What I did realize this time around though is that Still Star Crossed introduced me to a lot of the romance tropes that I still love. It is enemies to lovers, which I already knew I liked, but it introduced me to the arranged marriage trope which is one of my favorites. It also has a scene where Benvolio comes to realize his feelings for Rosaline because she almost dies, which for some reason is a trope I'm obsessed with. Rosaline also dresses up as a man towards the end of the novel; I couldn't tell you why but that's another of my favorite tropes. Hmmm, I might have to spend time dissecting the psychology behind that one later...

Melinda Taub did write a great hero in Benvolio and even though I've read better since, he's still pretty swoon-worthy. I remember in college I watched an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with one of my friends and when Benvolio came on the screen I was angry at how ugly the actor was. I had to spend a very long time trying to explain to my friend that the reson Benvolio is supposed to be hot and the best character in the play is because an author named Melinda Taub made him that way.