Insta-Love: Can it be justified?

So it's my 3 month blogging anniversary! YAY! I just wanna say thankyou to everyone who's made my short time blogging so fun and memorable. Everyone I've met and talked too, every post I've read, every comment you've left it's all helped shape my fantastic experience. So thankyou!

As I said yesterday I'm gonna try a new thing out of book-related articles. I've been thinking about this for a while, and it's something I'll probably only do once a month or so (maybe on my anniversary every month!)

But this month's topic is something hotly debated in the YA world: Insta-love. Now I'm not gonna go on a huge rant here, I'm sure you all have your thoughts and feelings on this topic and feel free to share them in the comments. But my aim with this is to show whether Insta-Love can ever be justified 

Insta-love. We’ve all moaned about it at one point. Shy new girl’s eyes meet those of the brooding enigmatic guy across the crowded and noisy school corridor and BAM! They’re in love! Why? Well, because the author told us so of course! 

Now I’m sure I speak for a lot of you when I say this type of relationship can often be unrealistic and frustrating.  Why do authors do this? Well, it could be argued that it’s easier. It takes less explanation, less time, less effort to have the main characters in your story simple ‘fall’ for each other. Vickie from ComaCalm's corner says she hates Insta-love when "there seems to be no particular reason" for their attraction. 

But can this type of love be salvaged? Is there ever a time where this instant connection can be justified? I have a solution. Well, I didn’t create the solution, naturally, but it’s something that present day authors appear to have forgotten about for some reason and that is: The Soulmate Principle.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Soulmate Principle, but someone once said something about assumptions being a BAD thing, so here’s a quick explanation. Soulmates are two people who are destined to be together. Some theories claim there is only one soul mate out there for each person, some claim multiple. Some say we can have romantic and non-romantic soul mates. Whatever your conception of it, the idea is that people’s souls (not necessarily in the Christian way of thinking about it) their essences somehow share some kind of connection. They’re two halves of a whole. In this case, when these two souls finally meet, they undoubtedly would feel a strong ad probably irresistible pull to each other, or feel as though they’ve known each other for years. I think this was best displayed in YA fiction in L.J Smith’s Nightworld Series, which is awesome and definitely deserves a look. 

Now for some reason as I said, this seems to have gone somewhat out of fashion in fiction. Is it too old fashioned? Does it seem too religious? Whatever the reason I definitely feel it’s something writers should begin to incorporate into their writing once more.

I’m sure some of you are sat there thinking “shared/connected souls? Isn’t that a *tad* unrealistic? And how often are people *actually* gonna meet their soul mate, hmm?” Well,  my answer for you sceptics is this: You’ll believe in werewolves, witches, vampires, angels, zombies, shadowhunters, demons and fairies but you WONT believe in the Soulmate principle? You’ll believe Clary Fray just happened to meet the only shadowhunters in NY, which is a HUGE city. You’ll believe Bella Swann just happened to be the only person who was immune to Edward’s power and that they just happened to be both in the same school in the same small town at the same time but you won’t believe in the idea of Soulmates? 

Fate, my friends. You might not believe it exists in real life, but there’s nothing to stop it existing in the fictional worlds we love so much. Shed your cynical sides and embrace it.

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I'm really, really interested to see your thoughts on this!! Questions to consider:
Do you feel authors actually do employ the soulmate principle and are just too subtle about it? 
Or do you think that sometimes they're just lazy/bad writers. 
Have you ever read anything where this kind of love is done really well? 
Why do you think it's used?
Would you read a book that had soulmates as an explanation for why characters fell in love so quickly, or would it put you off?