Was anyone besides me a little overwhelmed with the constant matchmaking in the sixth book? I swear, I turned the page and all of a sudden, one character was making eyes at another, who returned the gaze with a absolutely smitten stare. See, I understand that JKR is trying to show that the characters are growing up, but even the older characters were hooking up with one another. I think that this bothered me so much because the romance was quite gradual- no one really got anywhere with anyone besides Hermione and Harry with Viktor Krum and Cho Chang, respectively- until BOOM! Everyone's hormones started going mad!
Now, love and romance is not a bad thing at all, but I think that JKR pushed it a little in "HBP." I mean, I know that they're teens and they're going to be wanting to date and everything, but my oh my, I couldn't get away from it all. First it was Ginny and Dean, then Pansy and Malfoy, then Ron and Lavender, then Harry and Ginny, then Tonks and Lupin (albeit very cute, those two). I felt like I was entering a soap opera. I don't think that all of the coupling would have bothered me except for the fact that every hook-up happened so fast and ended just as quickly (minus Pansy and Malfoy- Tonks and Lupin we don't really know too much about yet). Harry spent the entire book pining for Ginny, then they hooked up and broke up within what, fifteen pages within each other, if that? Not to say that I wasn't creeped out by that, either. Harry is like Ginny's brother... The whole "Harry and Ginny is a couple" thing was really weird to me as a reader.
Then Ron and Lavender, it seemed like JKR was just finding someone in order to have Ron finally enter the dating scene; Lavender as Ron's girlfriend seemed to have been picked out of a hat.
Next book, I'm hoping for some relationships that'll last longer than a few weeks. We all know Ron and Hermione are going to get together but I'm really rooting for old Neville to get with Ginny and Harry to find romance with Luna (as strange as she is, she understands him). Tonks and Lupin I like as a couple too, so I hope that they stay together. Still though, I don't want the book to end up with everyone nicely paired up- it just isn't realistic. All in all though, JKR shouldn't have felt obligated to stick relationships in the book in every such way; she could have fit them in better. I felt like she thought that she NEEDED to put the relationships in, and while of course a series like the Harry Potter books need romance and such, it should be placed in conscientiously, not hurriedly (although I love the way Ron and Hermione were attacked by the green-eyed monster).
Basically, I'll have to agree with Beth and say that for the most part, most of the relationships didn't add anything to the story and that at times, they took away from it, at least for us.
