Why Book Best Friends Are Better Than Boyfriends

In the bookish community, we put a lot of emphasis on the book boyfriends. The love interest. The swoony hot guy. Etc. I feel like in putting all the emphasis on the gorgeous boyfriend, we often forget about the best friend that was there for the main character all along! But don’t worry; I’m here to list 7 (because I couldn’t think of ten so maybe that negates my entire post) reasons why the book best friends are BETTER than book boyfriends!!! (shocker, right??)

1. They talk about the boyfriend. How annoying is it when there’s a huge misunderstanding between the two love interests and you want to go scream TALK YOU FOOLS!! Thankfully, we are saved by the friend pouring her heart out to the best friend. And better yet–when the best friends talk about how hot the bf is and the readers get to drool.

2. They’re more relatable. Haven’t we all sat around and talked with our friends before? Acted like insane people and gotten funny looks by adults and then died laughing? (just me? okay…) BUT maybe we’ve never had a swoony boyfriend because let’s be real books set unrealistic expectations (@mrdarcy) so I just CAN’T RELATE!

3. The more the better! Also known as: NO LOVE TRIANGLE! Yasss for #squadgoals; we can have all the friends in the world with no infuriating love triangle drama!

 

4. We can count on them. Usually. I think I die a little when a friend betrays my precious main character. BUT usually it’s the “boyfriend” that gets the main character so upset and miserable and the best friend is there to eat ice cream together.

5. You can get attached to them. Similar to #4, they usually aren’t going anywhere. No annoying Love Interest #2 is going to pop out of nowhere and turn LI#1 into an ahole. We can get attached to our bffs and not worry about having our heart ripped out and stomped on later.

6. We (readers) can fall in love with them. You don’t have to worry about breaking up an OTP when you jump into the story and steal the boyfriend for yourself! How great is that??

7. Kenji. Okay the truth is out Kenji from Shatter Me is my favorite person ever and I’m all like screw Adam and Warner let me have my Kenji and so of course he’s here I mean why not???

If you couldn’t already tell, this list is kind of a joke/me being my weird and silly self. It was partly inspired by the success of my old post Books > Boyfriends, which was written in this style! I actually wrote this a long time ago but then I kind of forgot about it and I had nothing to post today so I panicked and threw it up and here we are 🙂

PS: if you want to read an actual serious post on book friendships I highly recommend checking out Kelly’s discussion on platonic friendships